Transcripts for BBCNEWS HARDtalk 20211223 04:32:15 archive.org - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from archive.org Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
a tremendous history, but it s also one of great, great tragedy. absolutely. the entire structures we see here, these economic systems called plantations, the enslavement of thousands of african peoples on these islands, the tragic nature of the slave trade, the exploitation of people at the most extreme levels in human history, all generated tremendous wealth. and barbados became known as the wealthiest colony in the world because of slavery and sugar, and the way in which it plugged into the british economy, the way in which britain grew wealthy out of all of this. but, so the legacy of british enslavement, the exploitation of african peoples on these plantations, the legacies are all around us. the poverty, the underdevelopment, the consistent institutional racism, white supremacy, all of those structures that made the system work
well, this is where the global world and a small island came together 400 years ago. this is barbados, the first slave plantation economy in the world. this is where slavery plantations, british capitalism all came together. a small place becoming a centre of the financial world of the west. it s a tremendous history. a tremendous history, but it s also one of great, great tragedy. absolutely. the entire structures we see here, these economic systems called plantations, the enslavement of thousands of african peoples on these islands, the tragic nature of the slave trade, the exploitation of people at the most extreme levels in human history, all generated tremendous wealth. and barbados became known as the wealthiest colony in the world because of slavery and sugar,
we won the war, then we were invited to britain, my parents generation came to britain to clean up the mess that the british had experienced from all the bombings of the germans, and the first opportunity they were surrounded by deepening institutional racism that hurt those caribbean people to the core. they appealed to the monarchy, they appealed to the government, there was silence because that is the history. but let me tell you, there s a photograph on the cover of my recent book, britain s black debt, and it shows queen elizabeth visiting the bell sugar plantation in 1966, february, on the eve of independence, and what did the queen do? she came to barbados to visit a sugar plantation that was owned by her first cousin. and here is the earl and the queen on the sugar plantation in barbados in february 1966. a plantation that was bought by the family of the earl
this is the house on the grounds of the plantation, built in the 16505, where the slave owners lived in great style. my guest is barbados born eminent historian sir hilary beckles. he s vice chancellor of the university of the west indies and chair of a caribbean commission to gain reparations for the descendants of enslaved africans. what are his chances of success? professor sir hilary beckles, welcome to hardtalk. tremendous honour, pleasure to be here. right, so, we re here in the part of barbados that is your ancestral land, your great great great grandpa rents worked on sugar plantations just nearby. what is the legacy of that history of slavery here in barbados?