Reparations for slavery and the slave trade: a transnational and comparative history

Slavery and the Atlantic slave trade are among the most heinous crimes against humanity committed in the modern era.

Yet, to this day no former slave society in the Americas has paid reparations to former slaves or their descendants.

European countries have never compensated their former colonies in the Americas, whose wealth relied on slave labour, to a greater or lesser extent.

Likewise, no African nation ever obtained any form of reparations for the Atlantic slave trade.

Ana Lucia Araujo argues that these calls for reparations are not only not dead, but have a long and persevering history.

She persuasively demonstrates that since the 18th century, enslaved and freed individuals started conceptualising the idea of reparations in petitions, correspondences, pamphlets, public speeches, slave narratives, and judicial claims, written in English, French, Spanish, and Portuguese.