News Releases

Sir Hilary Beckles launches new book on Britain’s Black Debt

For Release Upon Receipt - May 28, 2013

St. Augustine


ST. AUGUSTINE, Trinidad and Tobago – Last Thursday, Pro Vice Chancellor and Campus Principal of The University of the West Indies (UWI) St. Augustine, Professor Clement Sankat, hosted the launch and public lecture of Britain’s Black Debt: Reparations for Caribbean Slavery and Native Genocide, a new book by Professor Sir Hilary McD Beckles.

Beckles, a leading economic historian of the region, is Campus Principal and Pro-Vice Chancellor at The UWI Cave Hill and a seasoned activist in the wider movement for social justice and advocacy of historical truth. These factors uniquely position him to explore the origins and development of reparations as a regional and international process. Since the mid-nineteenth-century abolition of slavery, there has been a growing call for reparations for the crime of African enslavement and native genocide. In the Caribbean, grassroots and official voices now constitute a regional reparations movement. According to Beckles, it is a fractured, contentious and divisive call, but generates considerable public interest. His is the first scholarly work to look comprehensively at the reparations discussion in the Caribbean.

Sankat noted that Dr. Eric Williams would have been extremely pleased, “not just because this book revives his outstanding work documented in Capitalism and Slavery but more so because, in the 1960s, he envisioned a university that would be “the conscience of the nation”. A university that would not be an intellectual enclave but rather, a central part of the wider society, bringing together persons from all parts of the country and region in pursuit of light, liberty and learning.”

Beckles presents a compelling argument for Britain’s payment of its black debt, a debt that the country continues to deny in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. His lecture focussed on examples of detailed historical data on Caribbean slavery and the transatlantic slave trade together with legal principles and the politics of post-colonialism. He set out a solid academic analysis of the evidence, which the book details.

Chaired by Professor Funso Aiyejina, Dean of the Faculty of Humanities and Education at the St. Augustine Campus, the launch and public lecture also featured remarks from famed novelist, Earl Lovelace. Those in attendance were also given the rare opportunity to interact with Professor Beckles, relating personal experiences of ways in which the implications of the Caribbean’s history of the slave trade continue to pervade society today.

For more information on Britain’s Black Debt: Reparations for Caribbean Slavery and Native Genocide, please log onto http://uwipress.com/content/britain%E2%80%99s-black-debt

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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.

 

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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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