When will Britain face up to its crimes against humanity? | News | The Guardian

On 3 August 1835, somewhere in the City of London, two of Europe’s most famous bankers came to an agreement with the chancellor of the exchequer. Two years earlier, the British government had passed the Slavery Abolition Act, which outlawed slavery in most parts of the empire. Now it was taking out one of the largest loans in history, to finance the slave compensation package required by the 1833 act. Nathan Mayer Rothschild and his brother-in-law Moses Montefiore agreed to…

via When will Britain face up to its crimes against humanity? | News | The Guardian

“Dido” Elizabeth Belle | toritto

Dido Elizabeth Belle and the Lady Elizabeth Murray

“Dido” Elizabeth Belle was a bi-racial woman born into slavery in 1761 in the West Indies, the daughter of a slave woman, Maria Belle and a British career naval officer, John Lindsay, who was stationed there.While the details of their relationship is unknown, Lindsay was transferred back to Britain in 1765 and took the child with him. Lindsay would later in his career be knighted and would reach the rank of Admiral in the British Royal Navy.

Lindsay entrusted the young girl to his uncle William Murray and his wife Elizabeth, where she escaped a life of slavery for, you see, William Murray was the First Earl of Mansfield.The Murrays educated Belle, bringing her up as a free gentlewoman at their Kenwood House, together with their niece, Lady Elizabeth Murray, whose mother had died. Even as an illegitimate child, she was afforded the privileged life that came with her father’s bloodline. But because she was also biracial/black, she was denied full…

Source: “Dido” Elizabeth Belle | toritto

“The acutest, the astutest, the archest enemy of southern slavery that ever existed”

Author Adrienne Morris

John Quincy Adams. Shall we bow our heads for an early nap before discussing a white dead president? It’s kind of superficial to judge a person because they’re white and dead, don’t you think?John Quincy was pretty cute (okay that’s superficial) as a young guy, but he was much more than that.

You know how we always love to trash kids who have famous parents?We say they got where they got because their father knew, say, George Washington, but a meeting with a president doesn’t always assure you a brilliant career. John Quincy started his brilliant career at the age of 14. Yes, fourteen. He accompanied Francis Dana as a secretary on a mission to Saint Petersburg. (WIKI)

Do you know any fourteen-year-olds? How many impress foreign diplomats and presidents? Well, maybe Justin Beiber did in his prime, but if you check out John Quincy’s love poems to…

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November 11 1814: Lord Castlereagh to William Wilberforce.

A missive written in 1814 by Lord Castlereagh to one of my ancestors, William Wilberforce, about the abolition of slavery.

pastnow

On November 11 1814, Lord Castlereagh writes to William Wilberforce.,

Vienna, November 11, 1814.

My dear Sir — I have received your letter to Prince Talleyrand, and have obeyed your commands in laying copies before the Sovereigns here.

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If I ruled the World

There is nothing new under the sun.

Acton Books

The talk these days is about demagogues and caliphates whose aspiration is to stage a bizarre rerun of the Crusades. My book An Infinite Deal of Nothing, coming out in August, is the untold story about two of the most outrageous attempts at international financial fraud across the 19th century. Stick with me here, this is not just a shameless puff for the book — did I mention the title, An Infinite Deal of Nothing? — and there is a connection with wanting to rule the world. One of the men involved was almost certainly a founder member of the San Francisco ‘castle’ of a secret society with a grotesque agenda of domination known as the Knights of the Golden Circle. Like ISIS, the Knights wanted to remodel the world so that they would be no longer the losers.

A note to putative tyrants though. If you are going…

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