Reparations for Slavery and the Slave Trade - by Ana Lucia Araujo (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

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. European countries have never compensated their former colonies in the Americas, whose wealth relied on slave labor, to a greater or lesser extent. Likewise, no African nation ever obtained any form of reparations for the Atlantic slave trade.

Ana Lucia Araujo argues that these calls for reparations are not only not dead, but have a long and persevering history. She persuasively demonstrates that since the 18th century, enslaved and freed individuals started conceptualizing the idea of reparations in petitions, correspondences, pamphlets, public speeches, slave narratives, and judicial claims, written in English, French, Spanish, and Portuguese. In different periods, despite the legality of slavery, slaves and freed people were conscious of having been victims of a great injustice.

This is the first book to offer a transnational narrative history of the financial, material, and symbolic reparations for slavery and the Atlantic slave trade. Drawing from the voices of various social actors who identified themselves as the victims of the Atlantic slave trade and slavery, Araujo illuminates the multiple dimensions of the demands of reparations, including the period of slavery, the emancipation era, the post-abolition period, and the present.

Review Quotes

"Araujo's history offers a compelling review of the rationales made for reparations payments, the historical actors who made such claims, and historical events that motivated their political demands ... Reparations for Slavery and The Slave Trade is an insightful and expansive history of enslavement that reveals the interconnected nature of the Atlantic world from the origins of enslavement to the present day." - Origins: Current Events in Historical Perspective

"The book is absolutely indispensable and makes an important contribution to what Araujo concludes is an 'unfinished struggle.'" - The Americas: A Quarterly Review of Latin American History

"What is so clear in this important and timely book is that many people keep making moral claims even as they are repeatedly, rudely, and firmly rejected by those in power ... While the focus of the book is on reparation claims, Araujo puts those claims in the context of the broader movement for economic and social empowerment of people of African descent. It is this comprehensive and broad story that makes Reparations the best book yet on reparations for slavery ... As others take up the difficult moral questions it raises, such as who should pay and why, this book will be at the center of discussions of ways in which the past burdens the present." - New West Indian Guide / Nieuwe West-Indische Gids

"In this insightful and compelling study, Ana Lucia Araujo shows the importance of a transnational and comparative approach to examining the ways in which slave societies throughout the Americas presented the case for reparations." - The North Carolina Historical Review

"Araujo has cemented herself as a senior historian thoroughly in command of her craft ... In addition to the U.S., nearly every country in Latin America and the Caribbean makes an appearance. While focused on reparations, the book also serves as a global primer on slavery and emancipation ... Overall, Araujo's book offers a valuable contribution to scholars of the African Diaspora." - Black Perspectives

"Araujo is the first scholar to examine reparations for slavery and the Atlantic slave trade comparatively and transnationally, drawing on a broad range of texts in English, French, Portuguese, and Spanish ... An important book for all collections. Summing Up: Essential. All libraries." - CHOICE

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