The wealth of the west was built on Africa's exploitation
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1552921,00.html
Britain has never faced up to the dark side of its imperial history
Richard Drayton
Saturday August 20, 2005
The Guardian
Britain was the principal slaving nation of the modern world. In The
Empire Pays Back, a documentary broadcast by Channel 4 on Monday,
Robert Beckford called on the British to take stock of this past. Why,
he asked, had Britain made no apology for African slavery, as it had
done for the Irish potato famine? Why was there no substantial public
monument of national contrition equivalent to Berlin's Holocaust
Museum? Why, most crucially, was there no recognition of how wealth
extracted from Africa and Africans made possible the vigour and
prosperity of modern Britain? Was there not a case for Britain to pay
reparations to the descendants of African slaves?
Richard Drayton
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.atheism/msg/acbfa23226e77068
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