‘It’s a sad truth that much of our wealth was derived from the slave trade’, said London’s mayor Sadiq Khan. Others agree: for Al Jazeera’s Imran Khan, ‘Britain was built on the backs, and souls, of slaves’. But there is a problem with this analysis; it’s wrong. Just like the story told of an island nation standing alone since 1066, it’s a myth that the monstrous evil of the slave trade made Britain the wealthy country it is today.
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Sam Ashworth-Hayes is a journalist and economist with an MPhil in economics from Oxford. He blogs at Marginally Productive and can be found on Twitter at @SAshworthHayes
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