@adivunsolicited: From the Caribbean to Brazil to the American South, the former colonies of the Americas were built on the bodies of enslaved Africans and stolen Indigenous land. Yet the version we were taught has been softened and stripped of names, so the empires behind it could pose as the heroes who "ended" it. The truth is sitting in their own archives, written in their own handwriting. Jamaica, sold today as paradise, is one of the clearest examples. Thomas Thistlewood came to Jamaica from England in 1750. He oversaw the Egypt sugar estate and later bought land and enslaved people of his own. For 36 years he kept a daily diary: 37 volumes, over 10,000 pages, now held at Yale. Between notes on weather and gardening, he recorded whippings, torture, and the systematic sexual abuse of enslaved women. Historian Trevor Burnard counted 138 women he recorded abusing, nearly all of them enslaved. He was an ordinary overseer. That's how normal the violence was. 📌 Close to a million enslaved Africans were brought to Jamaica. At emancipation in 1834, about 311,000 enslaved people remained. Planters worked people to death and bought replacements. 📌 When Britain abolished slavery, it paid £20 million in compensation to slave owners. The enslaved received nothing. 📌 The loan behind that compensation was finally paid off in 2015, partly with taxes from Black Britons. 📌 The Windrush generation came to rebuild Britain after WWII, staffed the NHS and public transport, and decades later faced detention and wrongful deportation. "We ended slavery" leaves out who profited, who got paid, and who is still paying. 📚 READ FURTHER • Douglas Hall, In Miserable Slavery • Trevor Burnard, Mastery, Tyranny, and Desire • Vincent Brown, Tacky's Revolt • Richard S. Dunn, A Tale of Two Plantations • Eric Williams, Capitalism and Slavery • Nicholas Draper, The Price of Emancipation • David Olusoga, Black and British • Amelia Gentleman, The Windrush Betrayal • Hilary Beckles, Britain's Black Debt • UCL Legacies of British Slavery database #BlackHistory #jamaica #caribbean #windrush #slaveryfacts

Adivunsolicited

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Sunday 27 September 2026 17:09:09 GMT