OVERVIEW
Colonial Memories and
National Memories:
An Uneasy Encounter between
Africa and Europe
Celeste Muñoz Martínez
Lecturer in the History of Africa,
University of Barcelona
I
n 2006, then British Prime Minister Tony Blair caught the world by surprise when he
issued an unprecedented apology for Britain’s part in the Atlantic slave trade, which he
characterised as a “crime against humanity”. 1 This conceptual category, according to
William Schabas (2012: 51-53), developed precisely in the context of the abolition of slavery
and early colonialism, and even though it is now accepted by the United Nations to describe
the slave trade and apartheid, the nations involved have rarely voiced a mea culpa. A year
later, in 2007, the city of Liverpool, which had been the epicentre of the Crown’s slave trade
in the eighteenth century, opened the International Slavery Museum to commemorate the
bicentenary of the Act for the Abolition of the Slave Trade (1807) as a way to acknowledge
this uncomfortable past. Step by step, Britain moved forward from words to deeds. These
actions, however, were not nearly enough for many African nations and especially for
Afro-descendant communities, who have called not only for economic reparations for the
families of victims of racism and structural socioeconomic exclusion, but also for more
forceful condemnation. 2 In this respect, it is legitimate to ask: if British slave-owners
received compensation after abolition in the form of a multi-million pound loan that was
not paid off until 2015, paradoxically with taxes collected from many of the descendants of
the slave trade, then why not pay reparations to the victims today?
1 “Blair fights shy of full apology for slave trade” in The Guardian (27 November 2006).
2 Kuba Shand-Baptites, “While the US debate heats up, why won’t the UK even talk about reparations for slavery?” in The Independent (17 July 2017).
60
Observing Memories
ISSUE 3