Reparations for Slavery and the Slave Trade

A Transnational and Comparative History

Ana Lucia Araujo

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2023
• Print ISBN:
  9781350297661
• Edition: 2
• eBook ISBN:
  9781350297685
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Social History
• Index: 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. Ana Lucia Araujo shows that these calls for reparations have persevered over a long and difficult history. She traces the ways in which enslaved and freed individuals have conceptualized the idea of reparations since the 18th century in petitions, correspondence, pamphlets, public speeches, slave narratives, and judicial claims. Taking the reader through the era of slavery, emancipation, post-abolition, and the present day and drawing on the voices of various of enslaved peoples and their descendants, the book illuminates the multiple dimensions of the demands of reparations. This new edition boasts a new chapter on the global impact of the Black Lives Matter movement, the seismic effect of the killing of George Floyd, calls for university reparations and the dismantling of statues. Updated throughout, this edition includes primary sources, further readings, and many illustrations.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title Page
• Title Page
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• List of Primary Sources
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Reparations in the Past and the Present
• 1 “Greatest Riches in All America Have Arisen from Our Blood and Tears”
• 2 “And What Should We Wait of these Brutish Spirits?”
• 3 “We Helped To Pay this Cost”
• 4 “What Else Will the Negro Expect?”
• 5 “It’s Time for Us To Get Paid”
• 6 “Seeking Justice for Them and Ourselves”
• Epilogue: A Global Framework
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index
• Copyright