Britain and the slave trade

By all means reflect on the past, including Britain’s role in the slave trade and the suppression of the Demerara uprising (“Two centuries of forgetting”, August 19th). And it certainly should form part of the history curriculum in schools. But as Tom Holland would say in his studies of history, context is everything. To imply that Britain has never come to terms with aspects of its ignominious past is to disregard those moments and periods of history where Britain stood alone, not only in condemning and abolishing slavery, but sending out the Royal Navy on the high seas to stop it. William Gladstone, one of Britain’s greatest prime ministers, whose own family profited from slavery in Guyana, branded slavery the “foulest crime” in history in 1850.

Gladstone’s descendants recently issued an apology for slavery. Since the end of slavery and after Caribbean and African nations became independent, Britain has provided billions in development aid to its former colonies. British students could learn more about, and take pride in, this history too.

Dale Doré

Oslo

According to a poll you cited, 44% of Britons thought that the royal family, “whose ancestors monopolised the early slave trade through the Royal African Company”, should pay reparations. There were six members of the royal family among the initial 200 subscribers to shares of the company in 1672, with James, Duke of York (later King James II of England and VII of Scotland) as the largest shareholder. However, most of the shareholders were London merchants, including 15 past or future lord mayors of the City of London and 25 past or future sheriffs of London.

John Locke, who expounded the principle of self-ownership and the corollary right to own property, invested £400 sterling in the initial share issue and another £200 three years later.

Robert Dimand

Professor of economics

Brock University

St Catharines, Canada