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Should we blame our ancestors for slavery when we’re equally culpable?

15 January 2022

9:00 AM

15 January 2022

9:00 AM

White Debt: The Demerara Uprising and Britain’s Legacy of Slavery Thomas Harding

Weidenfeld & Nicolson, pp.302, 20

Blood Legacy: Reckoning with a Family’s Story of Slavery Alex Renton

Canongate, pp.400, 16.99

The premise of White Debt is that the author’s ancestors ran a business selling a product grown by slaves. Therefore he wants to investigate Britain’s role in slavery — which is a rather odd framing, since his family’s tobacco firm wasn’t started until decades after slavery in British colonies was abolished.

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