News Releases

Sir Hilary calls on the Caribbean to litigate the case of Britain’s Black Debt

For Release Upon Receipt - April 11, 2013

UWI


UWI REGIONAL HEADQUARTERS, Jamaica – Since the mid-nineteenth-century abolition of slavery, the call for reparations for the crime of African enslavement and native genocide has been growing. In the Caribbean, grassroots and official voices now constitute a regional reparations movement. It is a fractured, contentious and divisive call, but it generates considerable public interest.

Britain’s Black Debt is the first scholarly work that looks comprehensively at the reparations discussion in the Caribbean. Author Hilary McD. Beckles is a leading economic historian of the region and a seasoned activist in the wider movement for social justice and advocacy of historical truth, and as such, he is uniquely positioned to explore the origins and development of reparations as a regional and international process. Beckles weaves detailed historical data on Caribbean slavery and the transatlantic slave trade together with legal principles and the politics of post-colonialism, and sets out a solid academic analysis of the evidence. He concludes that Britain has a case of reparations to answer, which the Caribbean should litigate.

International law provides that chattel slavery as practised by Britain was a crime against humanity. Slavery was invested in by the royal family, the government, the established church, most elite families, and large public institutions in the private and public sector. Citing the legal principles of unjust and criminal enrichment, Beckles presents a compelling argument for Britain’s payment of its black debt, a debt that it continues to deny in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

Britain’s Black Debt is at once an exciting narration of Britain’s dominance of the slave markets that enriched the economy and a seminal conceptual journey into the hidden politics and public posturing of leaders on both sides of the Atlantic. No work of this kind has ever been attempted. No author has had the diversity of historical research skills, national and international political involvement, and personal engagement as an activist to present such a complex yet accessible work of scholarship. 

Britain’s Black Debt: Reparations for Caribbean Slavery and Native Genocide written by Hilary McD. Beckles, and published by the University of the West Indies Press is now available. The book launch for Britain’s Black Debt will take place on May 2, 2013 at the Faculty of Medical Sciences and Research Complex, UWI, Mona at 6 p.m. 

If you would like more information about this topic, or to schedule an interview, book signing or author tour with Hilary McD. Beckles, please call Donna Muirhead, Marketing and Sales Manager, UWI Press at 876-702-4081/2, 876-977-2659 or email uwipress_marketing@cwjamaica.com. 

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About the Author

Professor Sir Hilary McD. Beckles holds a Chair in Social and Economic History, The University of the West Indies, Cave Hill, Barbados, where he is also Principal and Pro-Vice Chancellor. He is Vice-President of the International Scientific Committee for the UNESCO Slave Route Project, and member of the International Advisory Board of the Cultures and Globalization Series. A leading voice on reparations issues, he led the Barbados National Delegation and coordinated Caribbean actions at the UN Conference on Race in Durban, 2001. His many publications including Natural Rebels: A Social History of Enslaved Black Women in Barbados; Centering Woman: Gender Discourses in Caribbean Slave Society; and A History of Barbados: From Amerindian Settlement to Nation-State.

 

About UWI

Over the last six decades, The University of the West Indies (UWI) has evolved from a fledgling college in Jamaica with 33 students to a full-fledged University with over 40,000 students. Today, UWI is the largest and most longstanding higher education provider in the English-speaking Caribbean, with main campuses in Barbados, Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago, and Centres in Anguilla, Antigua & Barbuda, The Bahamas, Belize, Bermuda, British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Dominica, Grenada, Montserrat, St Christopher (St Kitts) & Nevis, St Lucia, and St Vincent & the Grenadines. UWI recently launched its Open Campus, a virtual campus with 45 physical site locations across the region, serving 16 countries in the English-speaking Caribbean. UWI is an international university with faculty and students from over 40 countries and collaborative links with over 60 universities around the world. Through its seven Faculties, UWI offers undergraduate and postgraduate degree options in Engineering, Humanities & Education, Law, Medical Sciences, Science & Technology, Food & Agriculture, and Social Sciences.

 

(Please note that the proper name of the university is The University of the West Indies, inclusive of the “The”, hence The UWI.)

 

 

 

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