Is there a moral case for reparations for the Trans-Atlantic slave trade? - C.Y. Pitt writes

In the wake of Ghana's recent successful motion at the UN declaring the Trans-Atlantic slave trade as the worst crime against humanity, several raging debates have emerged about reparations for the descendants of the victims of the centuries-long atrocity.

While some have argued that reparations are unnecessary, as the current generation of Europeans and European Americans are not culpable for Black slavery, others insist that reparations are in order, since the current generation of Europeans and European-Americans continue to benefit from the economic gains of Black slavery.

To those who suggest that reparations are somehow unnecessary, because it happened in a bygone era, I humbly beg to differ.

That argument is an insult to the memory of the millions who died in the middle passage, and the millions more, who were brutalized, raped, starved, branded with hot iron, forced into hard labour, flogged, and lynched over the period.

It is a matter of public record, that the economies of Europe and the New World of the Americas, were built on the backs of the forced slave labour between the 15th and 19th centuries.

WHO SHOULD PAY REPARATIONS?

The US, Portugal, England, France, Spain, Holland, and all the European countries which commercialised the trafficking, brutalization, torture, and enslavement of an estimated 12 million West Africans from the 15th to the 19th century, and benefitted economically from the forced free slave labour, for FOUR CENTURIES.

Portugal, France, England, Spain, Denmark, Holland, the US (and later Belgium), were the worst offenders. These countries, along with the Portuguese and Spanish colonies in South America, were all built on the blood, sweat, tears, and dead bodies of African slaves. Fact.

A recent front page article in the British newspaper, The Guardian dated 30th April 2026, shares details of a report by a team of international experts, which reveals that in Barbados alone, "Britain stole 25 million years of life and labour, in 200 years of chattel slavery."

The report estimates that the economic damages suffered over the period by Black African in Barbados alone, amounts to $2 trillion. This valuation is consistent with several others which have been made, in respect of other former slave ship destinations.

A 2023 audit estimated the total damages in 31 territories during and after slavery in the Caribbean and the Americas, as between $100-131 trillion. And this does not even include the West African nations whose human resources were plundered by the millions over the period.

ARE WEST AFRICAN NATIONS DUE ANY REPARATIONS?

The source populations of the Guinea coast and Gold Coast of West Africa (also called the Slave Coast) were the most deprived of their human resources and economic potential. Fact.

Therefore, it beggars belief that some debaters would presume that there was no trauma, loss, or social disruption in the source West African coastal societies. However, both the source populations and those forcefully trafficked to the New World, suffered as victims.

For the better part of four long centuries, the terror in coastal communities, and the destruction of families as Europeans ruthlessly pursued economic gain, was a reality for local West African communities.

That is why we advocate for reparations for the BOTH the source populations, and those who were forcefully trafficked to the New World by European skulduggery.

OFFICIAL EURO-AMERICAN LEGALIZATION AND SANCTION OF THE SLAVE TRADE

What the UN now acknowledges as the WORST atrocity in human history, was a massive organized crime by Europeans, legally sanctioned and officially backed by their various governments.

This was official European and American  government policy, and involved government approval and protection. Ships were specifically built, fitted, and configured in Europe, for the sole purpose of African slave trafficking. Read that again.

Successive British Prime Ministers like William Gladstone owned slaves. His father, John Gladstone MP, owned 2,508 African slaves in Jamaica and British Guyana.

After Abolition in 1833, Gladstone received the largest payout of £106,769 in official compensation (approximately £10.3 million today). This was official state compensation under the Slave Compensation Act (1837) of the Parliament of the United Kingdom.

Besides Gladstone, another Prime Minister, Robert Peel, was deeply involved in the slave trade, as were several MPs. Henry Dundas, for example, was the President of the Board of Control of the infamous East India Company.

It must be noted that £20 million (about £3.1 billion today) was paid in compensation to British slave owners for the loss of slaves, while nothing was paid in compensation to the African slaves who actually laboured,  suffered, and died under inhuman conditions in the New World.

In the US, the first President George Washington, owned between 600 and 1000 slaves, before, during, and even after his presidency. President Thomas Jefferson also owned 600 slaves during his presidency.

In fact, several US Presidents owned slaves while in office, from James Madison (100+), James Monroe (75), Andrew Jackson (200), Zachary Taylor (300), James Polk (56) Andrew Johnson (9), John Tyler (29) , etc.

In Europe, several kings and queens had African slaves. Fact.  Some gullible people naïvely presume the Trans-Atlantic slave trade was some random private enterprise by European adventurers and explorers.

They must bear in mind, that most of these explorers and adventurers, from Christopher Columbus to David Livingstone, had royal backing and funding for their travels.

For this reason, most English explorers would report directly back to the sovereign, (eg. Queen Victoria) with the loot (gold, silks, spices, slaves, etc.) plundered during their travels. Newly "discovered" territories and landmarks would also be named after their royal patrons (Victoria Falls, Victoria Lake, etc.).

In the main, it must be understood, that the Trans-Atlantic slave trade was an OFFICIALLY ORGANIZED state industry, backed with legality by the American and European governments for their economic benefit. Fact.

OFFICIAL STATE PROTECTION FOR SLAVE SHIPS

Additionally, European insurance companies insured the illegal cargo of humans, as part of the lucrative organized criminal activity. There were often insurance scams where an entire ship's cargo of chained Africans would be deliberately thrown overboard for insurance payouts.

In other cases, pirates would often pursue the slave ships for their human cargo. This would lead to the European slave traders throwing their chained human cargo overboard, in order to lighten their ships to sail faster.

As a result, the Portuguese, English, French and Spanish navies were sometimes officially assigned to protect the human cargo.

The forts and castles on the West African slave coast, were a strategic part of the criminal European slave industry, likened to giant barns or huge warehouses in which they stored their captured human cargo, until the next slave ship arrived.

For almost FOUR HUNDRED YEARS, Europeans and their governments engaged in this massive organized crime, trafficking millions of Africans to the New World in chains.

The Africans were forced to labour, sweat and die, in order to build the prosperity of the Euro-American countries we see today. When the question about who should pay reparations arises, please bear all these facts in mind.

REPARATIONS FOR OTHER VICTIMIZED DEMOGRAPHICS

Reparations are not a new concept. Under the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, the Japanese living in the US were compensated with $20,000 each ($54,000 today) for the confinement and persecution they suffered after Pearl Harbour. Jewish survivors who suffered under the Nazi regime are still being compensated by Germany.

Even the descendants of the European invaders who settled in the former Rhodesia, and stole with force of arms, farmlands belonging to the native Africans, were paradoxically compensated.

Under the Luxembourg Agreement, the German government has paid Jews billions of dollars in reparations for the confinement, suffering, and massacres inflicted on them during World War 2. After an initial $714 million in 1952, Germany continued to pay annual reparations to the survivors of the Holocaust.

As recently as 2025, the Conference On Jewish Material Claims Against Germany (Claims Conference), acting on behalf of Israel, distributed approximately $530 million to over 115,000 survivors scattered in 84 countries. Under the agreement, Holocaust survivors will continue to receive one time payments from the German government until 2027.

According to it's website, the Claims Conference will also allocate $960 million in grants to about 300 social services agencies which provide social services to Holocaust survivors.  This is just ONE example of reparations administered efficiently in a complex, multilateral situation.

As horrible as the Holocaust was, the forced slave trafficking of Africans to the New World, remains the very WORST human atrocity, according to the UN. Fact.

Yet, the spurious arguments which have suddenly emerged against the justified payment of reparations for the Trans-Atlantic slave trade, have their roots in the racist mindset which regards other races as more deserving than the African.

And it is pushed not only by White racists, but by their African surrogates who have such low self-esteem, that they fight anything which seeks Black equality with their White massas. One wonders if these 'clever' Africans would oppose compensation, if their own children were abducted and harmed by a home invader. But I digress.

WHAT ABOUT AFRICAN COLLABORATORS?

It is interesting to note, that despite the reality of some Jews collaborating with the Nazi regime, it did NOT hinder the moral imperative for reparations for the Jews. Again, there were some Japanese collaborators in the unfortunate aftermath of the Pear Harbour detentions and persecutions of Japanese Americans. Yet, reparations were paid by the American government.

This puts to bed, the unbelievably puerile argument that collaboration by some Africans absolves the Europeans of blame, and therefore negates the case for reparations. How shallow!

After the American and European countries systematically organized, legalized, and sponsored the slave industry for their own economic benefit, it beggars belief, that some sheeple would actually come up with the issue of collaborators, as an escape clause for the culpable Europeans and Americans.

Collaborators notwithstanding, once they had committed the crimes against the Jews and Japanese Americans, they were honest enough not to absolve themselves of blame, and paid reparations. Thus, the inane "collaborators" argument against reparations, fizzles and is dead on arrival.

THE LAW TODAY 

Under the miscarriage of justice system in the US today, a wrongfully imprisoned man is paid millions of dollars in compensation after some years in prison. Examples abound in the media.

This is because the legal system acknowledges that a man's freedom is his most prized possession, and that robbing him of it, must come with consequences.

In most states, 10 years served in wrongful imprisonment, attracts a minimum of $1 million in compensation.  But it is often higher, depending on the impact on the victim, and the legal prowess of his attorney. The highest compensation awarded (in September 2025) is $25 million, after Maurice Hastings served 38 years for a murder he did not commit.

So why is this overarching legal principle of natural justice, not being applied in the case of the loss of freedoms suffered during the Trans-Atlantic slave trade?

The morally-challenged descendants of the slavemasters who awarded themselves huge compensations after Abolition in 1837, are again denying the payment of just reparations to the descendants of those who suffered and died at the hands of their soulless ancestors.

Alas, once again, people of African origin, perennialy treated like the residue of men by a racist world order, are being collectively denied the natural justice extended to other races. And this is regardless of their having been subjected to the WORST suffering in human history.

When the question of reparations for 400 years of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade is raised, all upright men with a functioning moral compass must bear the double standard in mind, and speak up against the hypocrisy.

©2026 C.Y.Pitt.