Britain paid slave owners, not the enslaved, when it outlawed slavery
Enslaved people got nothing, and had to work five more years unpaid, while one prominent family got a fortune on top of its fortune.
The Joe Rogan Experience · #2556 - Siddharth KaraWhen Britain outlawed slavery in 1833, it did not pay the enslaved people. It paid their owners.
Parliament, which included many slave owners, approved 20 million pounds to compensate them, according to researcher and author Siddharth Kara. Payment was the price of getting the abolition bill through, and owners argued the law was taking their property. The sum equaled 40 percent of total government spending then.
Owners received compensation certificates based on the number of people they claimed, then collected the money. Enslaved people received nothing, and were required to keep working for five more years as unpaid apprentices, to give owners time to adjust.
The government borrowed the money to write those checks. Taxpayers, who mostly did not know what the debt was for, kept repaying that loan for almost 180 years, until 2015.
One of the largest checks, about 105,000 pounds, went to the Gladstone family, already wealthy from sugar produced by enslaved labor.
Questions people ask
What would 20 million pounds in 1833 be worth today?
Estimates vary with the measure used, but using retail prices or average earnings, 20 million pounds in 1833 is generally valued at several billion pounds today, often cited around 2 to 4 billion pounds. Using a share of the economy, which captures how large it was for the government, the figure is far larger. The key point is that it was an enormous public expense, at 40 percent of the budget.
Why did the government pay the owners at all?
Slave owners argued that enslaved people were legal property, so abolition was the state taking their property. Paying compensation was the political price of getting the abolition bill through a Parliament that included slave owners. No comparable payment was proposed for the enslaved workers.
When did enslaved people in the British Empire actually become free?
The 1833 law required most enslaved people in the British Empire to serve an apprenticeship, generally lasting until August 1, 1838, before they were fully free. Apprentices were supposed to work without pay while former owners adjusted to paid labor. In practice, conditions often remained harsh and close to slavery.