Ep. 154 - The History of African Enslavement (Martin Plaut)

Hello, everyone. This is Connie Morgan with the Free Black Thought Podcast. Today's guest

is Martin Plout, author of Unbroken Chains, a 5,000-year history of African enslavement,

who joins us to explore overall history and challenge common misconceptions. He's a former

African editor for the BBC World Service, and he brings decades of experience and deep

knowledge of the continent. This is a conversation that may challenge what you think, you know,

and reveal aspects of slavery, including its ongoing presence today, that often go and recognize,

because remember, there's no such thing as a black perspective, just black people with perspectives.

Martin, hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm super excited to have a conversation about

kind of your area of expertise in a recent book that you've written. And I know this is one of

the most popular topics that we've ever talked about on this podcast in other episodes, so this

is just going to be a huge hit. But before we get into the work you're doing today, bring me back

to the past. Tell me a little bit about where you're from, how you're raised, and how your life kind

of got you to where you are today. Well, it's fairly chaotic. I was born and brought up in Cape

town in South Africa. I lived there for the first 27 years under a partate, which was less than fun,

even though I'm white. And so, you know, I was therefore privileged, obviously, but, you know,

it was it was a terrible time. And I was involved in helping the trade union movement, the black trade

union movement get off the ground again. And then I came to the UK and I was going to go back and

work with unions. However, I fell in love. And also, I arrived in 1977. I'm still here.

Okay, so you fell in love. I presume you got married. Did you have kids? Did you do all that?

That good stuff? Yes, but not the kids, but I then worked for the British Labour Party for five

years. And then I got a job with the BBC. And I worked for the BBC for 27 years, mostly on Africa.

I also went to India for a year with a crazy scheme, the BBC cooked up. And I worked a bit for

domestic politics, but mostly it was on Africa. And that's my sort of my beat, so to speak, for,

I don't know, 40 years. And then since then, since I retired, I have now written books on Africa.

I've actually written 10 books, would you believe? Wow, wow. Yeah, that's a lot. And so when you were

at the BBC, you were a reporter. Are you doing other behind-the-scenes stuff?

If you can think of it, I've done it. I've been, you know, I used to, I was ended up the Africa

editor, and I used to be sent to Africa to cover stories that we didn't have a particular,

you know, somebody particularly to cover for it. I mean, mostly we work through our

correspondence in Africa or our stringers, you know, who were paid by the piece. And, but,

you know, occasionally about three, four times a year, I'd go out to Africa and report from,

from, you know, on the ground, which was always marvellous. I love doing it. It was the toughest

thing you ever did. And, you know, sometimes it was extremely hairy. I mean, I've been in

coos, I've been in civil wars, I've been in famines, I've been in rebel groups, and I've been

against rebel groups, well, not against, but, you know, so reporting on them, they were trying to

kill me. But I mean, on the whole, I, you can see I'm still here, so it must have worked.

And what made you always focus on Africa and not say, okay, I've done enough of Africa a time

to move on to a new continent. Very simple. Africa is the most fascinating, vast continent. I

mean, it can swallow the whole of, I think, China and America and still have room left over. It's

massive, absolutely enormous. And it has such diversity. But the one thing I, wherever I've ever

been is that Africans are the most charming, pleasant, lovely people. And, yeah, I mean, they have

the most terrible leaders mostly, and they have corruption and all the rest of it that everybody

else has. But I mean, you know, you never had a bad time. I never had a bad time. And, you know,

I used to go and see my colleagues in, shall we say, the European service from time to time in

the BBC. And they were always gloomy. Gloomy and depressed. I couldn't work with that lot. While

we were always having a party. No matter what was happening in Africa, we worked incredibly hard.

But, you know, they were the most fascinating people to work with. And I, you know, had huge respect

for my African colleagues. And we worked really well together. And I think, you know, it was the

fact that we could work together that made it such a treat to do it. I haven't spent much time

in Africa. I've only been there twice. But once was very recently, I was in Ethiopia actually. And

it was a conference with a lot of young people who want to fix a lot of the problems that Africa has.

So it was, you know, a bunch of delegates from countries across Africa were at this conference.

Like I said, they were young and entrepreneurs, people that were just very motivated. And obviously

everybody recognizes the corruption and the problems there that that have to be solved in order

for this continent to flourish because it should. It has so much diversity and natural resources

and beauty and so many beautiful things. Do you think that Africa as a continent kind of has to

come together and fix some of those things or will it have to be kind of country by country,

sort of chipping away? You know, we kind of sort out this country, then we sort out that country

and we move along that way. You know, there is no easy answer to that question. I mean, you know,

if you were to look at the United States, would you say that you could fix the whole of the country

in one go or that you can fix it state by state or, you know, I don't know, region by region,

I mean, you know, these things aren't open to easy answers. I mean, only way you have a place like

China where they have a, you know, completely despotic communist party that runs everything.

Can you, you know, enforce your will across the whole region? And they have done, I mean,

let's be fair to the Chinese. They've done a marvellous job in raising hundreds of millions

of people out of the poverty. But, you know, at the price, it's been unbelievably high and the

suffering of people has been huge. But as in Africa, you know, it's a bit like everywhere else in

the world, you know, chaotic. And, you know, it's hard even, I mean, the place that I love Ethiopia,

I have been allowed to go there for years and years for the reasons which I can explain if you

really want, but it's a bit complicated. But, you know, even Ethiopia is massively difficult

to understand with such, you know, depth of, you know, specificity in each area with culture

that goes back, you know, to thousands of years. And, you know, it's a magnificent country

that has also had huge, huge problems. But, I mean, that is really the issue

for the whole of Ethiopia. And that's just Ethiopia before we start talking about anybody else.

And so it's difficult, you know, that there are no simple answers.

Yeah, and I kind of suspected you would say as much because I, you know, at this conference,

I'm not an Africa expert by any means. And I know that there's so much complexity to the continent

and to the various countries. And I don't think I'm generally a negative person. I'm not a glass

half full or half empty. I just kind of probably somewhere in the middle, typically. But I'm sitting

at this conference and I'm listening to all these problems. And I'm like, can this even be fixed?

It just feels so complicated and huge and just, just the systemic problems, you know,

echoing through generations that it's quite overwhelming to try to think about what the next

best steps are for any given country, let alone the whole continent.

Yeah, I mean, that is absolutely true. On the other hand, you know, two things have always struck

me. First of all, that I think Africa will solve its own problems in the end. It will,

it will not be easy by any means. But, you know, having said that, there are then a lot of good

things that are going on. I mean, you know, people come together, they develop things. And I mean,

you know, just to give you one specific example, the there has been an attempt to persuade African

women, and it is mostly women, to stop cooking on three stones and to use solar powered ovens,

you know, to cook on. And people have done, they have spent years and millions trying to do it.

And I've never seen one that worked or one that people would use. So, I mean, that's really

interesting. On the other hand, Africans have embraced technology at a rate you can't believe

and at vast cost. So, for, let me give you a few examples, the singer sewing machine.

Nobody ever had an aid project for it. It was everywhere. The bicycle, everywhere.

The, you know, the cell phone. I mean, you find them across the continent and they're not cheap

because they are so useful. And of course, the gun. Nobody had an aid project for any of those things

and you find them everywhere. It's a great, great point, great observation. And I know that there's

a lot of, or, you know, tech, even just tech development now happening in Africa as well. I'm not

mistaken. Sure. Let's talk about the way that we kind of discovered you at Free Black Thought,

which is your book Unbroken Chains. And would you mind just starting off by giving us kind of

the premise of the book and what all you unpack? Sure. I mean, it's, you know, it's called Unbroken

Chains, a 5,000 year history of African inslavement. And I mean, I'll just give you a very short

explanation why I got into it. I grew up with in Cape Town and there were people who,

we at the time called Malays. Now, there were people who'd been brought over by the Dutch East

India Company when they controlled the Cape. They'd been brought over. We thought from Malaysia,

they didn't come from Malaysia. Almost all of them, there were a few, but most of them came from

India or they came from Indonesia. Almost all of them were Muslim. And, you know, they were all

around us. And we, my first memory is of them was in the in the mosque, calling people to prayer.

And they were, you know, very strong community. But I realized after I'd written another book which

involved some people who were themselves from that community that I knew next to nothing about

inslavement and how they got to South Africa. And I thought, you know, where did this happen?

Then I realized they'd come across the Indian Ocean. They hadn't been brought from West Africa

anywhere. They'd come across the Indian, and I realized I knew nothing about the Indian Ocean's

slavery. So I then began looking into this. And after about three and a half years of work,

I produced this book, but now the one thing I would, I would, I really want to make clear,

is that what I have written and what I have found in no way contradicts anything that you probably

know about the transatlantic slave trade. It's, I mean, give or take, it's all true. And the role

of the West and the role of Britain and the role of Portugal and the role of the United States

is that that's absolutely accurate. But it's one small part of the picture. And that is what I tried

to do was to then unravel the bigger picture. Because 95% of all research on inslavement in Africa

is about the transatlantic slave trade. And that's for one simple reason because the, you know,

people who are African Americans, once they got to a position of, you know, being in academia and,

you know, in security, then thought, where did we come from? What is our history? We must find

it. We must dig it out and quite rightly too. But it was only one part of it. And the problem is

that it has become so enormous that it has obscured the rest of the story.

Yes, I definitely think in the United States, we actually aren't

educated. We aren't given a super thorough education about slavery, at least in the school's

system I was brought up in. You knew that slaves existed and that a civil war happened in the

United States of freedom. You knew that ships brought them over. Even that, I think we weren't

necessarily told the whole truth. You know, what I thought until somewhat recently is that, you know,

white people just went and ran around Africa, chasing Africans, rounding them up, you know, forcing

them into the ships when that's not really the full story. And I didn't know anything about

the British attempting to stop the transatlantic slave. You know, there are so many pieces

of the slavery story, including Chattel's slavery still existing today in Africa that I never was

told. So I mean, you say probably everything you know is true. And maybe I would say maybe,

I don't know, probably what I know is true. But I know such as, like you said, I think even less

than you're grante the truth that we're given just in basic elementary school through high school

in the United States at least. I can't speak to other countries.

Well, I mean, all I can say is that, you know, in the rest of the world, you probably find exactly

the same. But there's, I think there's probably even less about enslavement than in

taught in British schools. It's now being taught a bit more, but you know, probably not

not enough. I mean, you know, it's so it's only when people get to university that they really

begin to, you know, get a bigger picture about it if they work on the subject. So it's not part of our

daily discussion. It comes up from time to time when they are incidents. I mean, there was a big

rar, for example, in Bristol in the west of England a few years ago when the people got together

and decided they shouldn't be a statue of somebody who'd been a huge slave owner, but it also

been a big beneficiary to Bristol. And they put up a statue up to him. And eventually,

through this damn thing in the in the harbour. And it had to be rescued. So, you know, occasionally

if this comes up, the most of the time it's not, it's not a contemporary issue.

Did you encounter resistance when presenting the ideas in this book to people or to publishers or

to whoever it is that you work with when you write these? No, quite the opposite. I worked with

somebody I've written a couple of books for and they were very interested and they were keen to

encourage me. I mean, I then had to disappear often, you know, do all the work, which as I say,

took about three and a half years. And you know, I just discovered that there was this vast mountain

of information which academics had scurled away on for years and years and years. But what they had

not done was to do it in a form that was synthetic. In other words, they brought it all together

in a readable way so that people could actually get the picture in a totality in a relatively

simple way. Everybody wants to go down their own particular rabbit hole, you know, about their

particular area and they don't see the totality. And I think unless you see the totality,

you don't really get the picture. Is three years kind of the typical timeline for a book like this?

I don't know. I mean, for your other nine books that you wrote. No, no, no, no. Most of them I,

I mean, we wrote one on the terrible war between in the northern north of Ethiopia between 2020 and

2022. And we wrote it as the war was going on. I mean, we started about six months after it began

and it was ready within six months of it finishing. That was two years. And I worked with a number

of other people. So that was quicker. And I've written other ones which were quicker.

But I mean, usually it takes about 18 months, two years to write a book.

Okay. What was the most surprising or disturbing discovery you made while researching for this book?

Well, you put your finger on one of them. One of them is that, you know, they are still

hundreds of thousands of people who are bought, sold or inherited in Africa to this day in five

countries. And there is nothing done about them by the major organizations, the African Union,

or the Arab League. The Arab League has 11 members in Africa. And they do not want to talk about it.

It is too embarrassing because it is an issue that, you know, doesn't, it doesn't fit with their

analysis. Who would mean they'd have to confront their own members. So that was one. The other

one that I thought was really interesting from my point of view was that, you know, there's a sort of

idea that that colonialism and slavery were somehow stuck together. And it just isn't true.

I mean, if you look at the way enslavement even by the Europeans took place,

the Portuguese begin in the 1440s and they come down Africa and they do indeed take slaves.

And then they build forts all the way along the coast of West Africa. And that continues and

the Portuguese do actually get involved in colonialism. They go deep into Angolo and Mozambique.

But the other states that are involved in slavery, whether they're the French or the British or

the Danish or anyone else, didn't get really involved in colonialism. So the British enslave

in about in the 1830s and then try to stop it by other means and we can go into that if you like.

But colonialism by the 1870s only held 10% of Africa. So 90% of Africa was run by local people.

And then you get the the conference of Berlin and the 1880s everywhere except Liberia and Ethiopia

are taken by the colonial powers. So between 1830 and 1870, there's this huge period of time

when there's very little slavery and only a tiny part of colonialism. So the link between the

two is a mistake. There is some truth in it. I'm not arguing there's none. But it isn't.

And the third one that I found absolutely extraordinary is the depth of indigenous slavery

that you know, just like the Romans enslaved Europeans, the Chinese enslaved other Chinese,

the Indians enslaved Chinese Indians equally Africans enslaved Africans. So and that I gave

I worked on two specific examples. One was Ethiopia where you know, it's it's perfectly clear that

that enslavement began at the beginning as far as we can trace it. We can't find the beginning.

It goes back to the beginning of time and continues until probably the 1960s which is pretty shocking.

And the other example was the Socketo-Caliphate which is in Nigeria and Niger. And there there were

the same time as you were fighting a civil war, largely about slavery in the 1860s,

there were as many slaves in the Socketo-Caliphate as there were in the United States.

Can you actually had a question about the Socketo-Caliphate? For some people listening,

that's going to be the first time they've ever heard that phrase in their life. Can you explain

a little bit more about what that is? I mean, you talk about how that there was a lot of slavery

there, but just explain its role kind of in the historical timeline. Yeah, I mean, there's it's

it's essentially it's brought from a group that came across the Sahara and worked in the Sahara

and still do and the the Falani and they came down into the region where you find trees and

you know it's it's much called greener and in that part of the world they were mostly

inhabited by people who were called Hauser and the Falani who had cavalry and were much better

organized and were Muslim took the Hauser, some of them were Muslim, some of them were not.

They took them on, they crushed them and they enslaved them and they then produced this huge

caliphate which went from Cameroon in the east all the way through to what is today Bakina Faso

in the in the west. They were over 30 Emirates and they ran them from Socketo and they did what

you would imagine with with slaves. They used them in every way possible both in the field and in

the home. They used them on plantations not very different from American plantations that they

were they were producing cotton. The cotton and slaves were sent southwards to the coast of Nigeria

or northwards to the coast of Libya across the Sahara and they traded and they made a lot of money

and it existed for a hundred years from about 1800 and 304 till about 1900 and 304 when it was

destroyed by Britain who sent a force up the Niger River and then up other tributaries and then

finally took the money in Socketo and crushed them and Britain who had not had slaves from the 1830s

until 1903 suddenly found two million slaves on their hands that they'd inherited was they inherited

this day. What happened to those slaves? That's a good question. Lord Lugard who was the the

administrative at the time he felt that he couldn't let them free them all immediately because the

entire economy of the caliphate was based on enslavement and if he'd done so the whole economy would

have collapsed. So he released them gradually and it took 20 years before the last were finally

released. Although there are you can actually find elements of enslavement still in Niger

to this day. There was an absolutely fascinating example of a young woman who talked about her

enslavement in this is you know in the last 10 years and in an independent Niger and she took

the her case to the tribunal the Human Rights Commission in that's run by the African Union and

eventually got a ruling which said yes this was true and she should be freed and compensated

but I mean I'm afraid that is only one person I mean a very very brave woman who took that on

most people don't. Do you have thoughts on what kind of freedom oriented countries but the West

if you will should do from like a policy perspective to deal with these countries that aren't even

typically like big players on the world economic stage anyways like what should have should have

Britain or a United States do about countries in Africa that still have slavery today if anything

in your opinion. Well I think the first thing they should do is start talking about it. It'll be

very unpopular African countries will hate it but I mean there is a UN special record who more

less works on his own and has produced some excellent reports on this you can find it that they

are published on the UN website you know you have to look really hard but you know they are

there so there's no reason why this shouldn't be talked about and openly discussed and you know

told you know Africa should be frankly embarrassed into doing something about it they need to take

the on the issue themselves but it means taking on Mauritania Marley Niger Sudan Libya huge areas

and you know it'll be very difficult to do it but I think that you know it'll be it'll be wrong

not not to do that and African leaders should you know deal with this issue themselves so I think that's

the first thing that that should happen I mean it would be possible to come up with more sophisticated

policies I'm a journalist and an author I'm not a I'm a policy person but I would I you know one

could do sanctions of various kinds but you know parts of the area that we're talking about in

the Sahel which is you know between you know just south of the Sahara are some of the most chaotic

and you know conflict written places where you you still have you know huge islamist groups that

are active in the area some of them I have now thrown out the French they kicked the French

up as they said the French were imperialists fair enough but the they've now got they're now

rely a lot of them on the on the rations through the Wagner group I don't know you remember the

Wagner group but they were run by a very unsayory person and they are basically they act as mercenaries

there and that's what they that's what they do and they are now becoming very unpopular as well

so I don't know how this is all going to end it's one of the many complicated stories in Africa

which I don't think there's an easy answer to we had our our friend Charles Jacobs who is the

president of the American anti slavery group on the podcast gosh it's been a couple of years now

and he talks about a lot of he focuses on slavery worldwide but he's really knows a lot about

African slavery to like to you know today's and modern times and he thinks that people don't

want to talk about it because it'll come across as people will spin it as islamophobic right

and that you know if because of frequently it's it's islamist Muslims that are involved in a lot

of the slavery stuff that's ongoing that people just want to stay away with it from it because it

seems too risky to kind of dip your toes and then maybe be called names do you think that's why

people don't talk about it seems like such a no brainer to me I agree you know I think that's

no no reason not to talk about these things we always talk about everything that that is going

wrong in the world and I don't care who's doing it and I don't care what their religion or their

ethnicity or the color of their skin is I think you know everyone who wants justice and fairness

and equality I've never met anybody for example who said oh I don't want to have a vote no

no thank you please take it away from me I mean do you have you ever met anybody who thought that

and yet all these African leaders say oh if it wasn't for me you know I with the place would be

a hell in a hand basket running quite frankly it's that's generally true so you know my view is

that you need to confront these things directly openly talk about them do research and encourage

local people to do research on them I mean let me give you just one example the

the Saudis long before that was the Saudi Saudi Arabia I mean the Arabs imported slaves from

Ethiopia for centuries absolutely centuries they're only officially outlawed in the 1960s

among it was outlawed in the 1970s and the response from the from the Arab

from the Saudis to requests about this you know to talk about it have been to close the archive

now I mean that just tells you everything you need to know about their attitude towards it and

other people when you raise it you know are very unhappy about you raising these things you know

which is which I think is such a mistake I think we should all confront our past with as open

a mind and you know with as much clarity as we can I mean I'm not saying there is no such thing

as a final answer to anything because you know we can always reinterpret our relationship with the

rest of the world any which way you like but I certainly wouldn't I think it's wrong not to confront

it just because quite a lot of the people who are involved Muslims after all a heck of a lot of

the slaves and Muslims too so you know just the fact that you're raising it doesn't make it

either better or worse it just is speaking of kind of complicated historical threads that cross

over can you talk about how the kingdom of Congo became involved in the slave trade with Portugal

I think that's an interesting one oh it is absolutely I mean the king leopold at the

conference of Berlin in the 1880s which I which I mentioned was awarded the whole of the Congo

as a personal possession not even for the state I mean he owned it personally as a you know as a

king he thought he'd make a fortune out of it he soon discovered that it was a huge loss leader

and he tried to extract money from it by every means possible and particularly he's

absolutely notorious for extracting the rubber part for the people were forced to grow

and if you as an didn't come up with the the quantity of rubber that he expected you to provide

your hands were cut off and bags there are pictures of bags of hands I mean absolutely appalling

so he was quite one of the worst in slavers and the worst you know colonial masters

but he then decided to try and extend his rule further across the continent Congo wasn't enough

I mean it's it's it's a huge country but he wanted to take control of the areas across the

whole of central Africa more or less everywhere west of what is today Rwanda or Burundi and he sent

an army up the the Congo river about a thousand fifteen hundred of them with only most of them

who were actually Africans the rest were about a hundred and hundred and fifty then were European

officers and men and but of course they had machine guns which does help and he then encountered

somebody who was called tipu tip now tipu tip was the most notorious of the umani

slavers he'd been working for decades and the umani's had made so much money out of the slave

trade that they moved their capital from Oman in Arabia all the way down to Zanzibar and they set

up a state there and then sent these expeditions into Africa going hundreds and hundreds of miles

into Africa um you know and they control the center of of Africa which Kimbeopold was trying to

take over um just to give you an idea of how far they went they actually came out on the coast

of Angola I mean that is like crossing the whole of the United States to come out on the other side

and you know starting off in I don't know in New York and ending up in San Francisco and saying whoops

uh miss pick up a few slaves on the way back and they they marched people for two or three years

to get them back to the coast and then to sell them the route along the way was so

littered with bodies you could almost smell it to to go it was absolutely appalling

anyway so tipu tip and uh king leopold clash over the center of of Africa of uh um of Africa

in the 1880s and for two years there's a there's a series of clashes between the two of them

in a war that very few people know about to be honest with you although I'd worked on Africa for

30 years I had never heard of it until I came I had no idea that there was an amani

war with uh with Belgium in the 1880s for two years they fight this is a series of conflicts

and eventually tipu tip and the umani's are defeated and uh king leopold then controls a vast

area from which he extracts ivory and slaves um identity ever made a great deal of money out of

the it was a bit of a disaster from the city from Belgium point of view but it forced the uh the

umani's back to the coastline which they then controlled and uh you know continued

enslaving people just along the coast and not so much in the interior you you also

raise the complexity of reparations because many societies are both victims and participants

so how do you think societies should approach this this issue in a responsible way

you know I I just think that it's I think it's an omelette you just cannot want to

scrambles eggs that you just can't unmix uh I just think it's impossible look if uh in

Britain I which is all I can really comment on there's some people who say look my family

personally made a lot of money out of Jamaica and then sort of a charity they work with people

in the area that they used to control and they they give money back and they work with them

and I think that's absolutely fair I think I you know I would encourage people to do that

the uh anglican church in Britain has laid aside a hundred million uh pounds

we'll set 120 or 130 million dollars uh two for exactly this purpose and I think that's fair

enough too what I think is impossible is for states to get involved with this because

first of all the uh the numbers involved are so enormous some of the calculations

are in quadrillions which I have never even heard of until I came across this I don't know have

you ever heard of it quadrillion no and uh you know I think the the sum involved was something

like if I've got this correct and I may be wrong more than seven times the whole GDP of the

United States well I mean you know nobody's ever going to entertain this these kind of numbers

I think it's just fantasy land and I think a much better approach in my view but I mean you know

I'm I'm I'm just one person uh my view is that that in addition to what individuals want to do

and what societies want to do and that's entirely up to them uh I think we should uh encourage

investigations of every aspect of enslavement make it as publicly known as possible

encourage the sharing of archives in Britain for example should establish museums

uh or you know study centers across the Caribbean because that was our Britain's major responsibility

and share every bit of information that we possibly can encourage Caribbean scholars to come

over Britain to do any kind of research that they like and that I think is the only way that we

can really deal with this but you know people point out that um well you know the owners when in

in the 1830s when when all the slaves were freed the owners were paid and paid huge sums of

money because they'd lost their property and the British state paid them for their property

so you know and they said and the slaves got absolutely nothing uh in fact many of them had to

work as indentured laborers for years even after they were freed so it was a very very unfair

um situation that developed but I just don't see how you can you can you can deal with this because

you'd be you would I mean most taxes are taken from the from the the less well off uh I mean of

course the rich people pay a percentage where I was a lot of money but most taxes come from ordinary

people of the poor and I can't see how in any way you know giving money to a government of a state

should we say Jamaica or Ghana wherever you want to give it uh you know by the poor in Britain

is really a way forward especially when if you go to somewhere like Ghana well there are plenty of

people in Ghana who made loads of money out of slavery too so where do you begin where do you end

how do you unscrew this I think it's a mess and I think it's not the way forward yeah I tend to

agree that it's not um and probably most of the guests that come on the free like that podcast and

is not the very pro reparations because it's just too messy and impossible uh to sort out though

there are there have been people who come on and think there's a way to do it but in the united

states you know and I've made this point before but I'll say it again is that we've kind of been

through this before where a type of reparations has and is given to Native Americans

in the united states they have reservations they can you get a check from the government for your

whole life lots of you can go to college for free you can there's ways to basically make your life

be free um if you're Native American most of it or large sums of it free health care all the things

and it hasn't gone well for Native Americans Native Americans are not the most successful

population group in the united states alcoholism is high suicide is high drug addiction is high

teen pregnancy is high and so that's kind of the argument I say as a black American and just

you know descendant of slaves it's like yeah that what happened was really bad and but let's say

there was a way to write every descendant of slaves in America a check for a million dollars or

a hundred thousand dollars or whatever the amount is would that help us as a people seems like we

have an example and it didn't it didn't really seem to help them as a people at all it made things

worse and why that is the psychological and social reasons as to why that is I'm not even really

trying to debate but there's the example and we can all say that they're not doing too great as a

people right now yeah I can only agree with you and that's but I mean you know it's it's

it's you know I can't really answer the the issue it's you know it has a complexity of levels which

are way beyond my capacity it's not something I can really answer I mean I can only answer as

anyone would you know based on common sense and I think common sense tells me that you're right

but you know others may come up with different answers and that's up to them

so what do you advise to someone this is something that I struggle with I feel like all the time

I find a book like yours or someone on social media who drops you know this history nugget

or a knowledge nugget that kind of blows your mind I had no idea there were still slaves next I

had no idea this happened it you know historically but then you'll have people say well that's not

really true you know they're they're they're whitewashing history or they're twisting it to fit their

you know Western narrative and vice versa people are always arguing about what is the truth that's

about historian this is a good historian no you know for the layman like me who's just a simple person

not a historian not a researcher what am I to do how do I sort through all this stuff that's being

given to me and presented to me as truth or not all that can be truth because some of it directly

contradicts I think it's very simple all one has can do as a an engaged person is who wants to

find out about these things is to read with a with a critical mind and to read as widely as possible

and you know I always you know the first thing I do when I get a book I look at the source

is where do they get this information from what who they quoting how is this put together even

before I actually read the the story they want to get across I mean obviously if it's an if it's

a novel then you don't read the sources it's a novel but if it's a if it's factual book then I

start reading I look at the the the sources and then you begin to see who they are working with

and on and if you think that those people are people who look credible and that they

it they look reliable then I think you are it's then worth investing your time in reading the

rest of the book but I mean if it's if it looks really you know flaky and they don't

quote their sources or it looks as if they've chopped their sources up and then I you know I

I don't invest the time in working on it but there is no you know you know I I I used to read

quite a lot of Karl Marx a long time ago I don't I haven't read him for a while but I mean he

said there's no royal road to science by which he meant knowledge there is no royal road to science

there's no royal road to knowledge if you want to know something put the arts and the effort and

the energy into it there's no other alternative what has been the number one thing people have said

to you or commented on who read the who read your recent book but you kind of said what you thought

found was the most surprising or you know shocking things about doing your research is that matched

up with what the readers have think have thought about it have people given you comments back that

kind of surprised you no I mean people have mostly I mean listen I'm not just saying this because

you're asking I genuinely people were surprised a lot of people there were a lot of things that I'd come

across which people were hadn't hadn't heard of before and they were surprised by when you speak

to academics who work on the area I mean for example the soccer caliphate you know I hadn't

heard about it well I'd vaguely heard about it when I was working on Nigeria you know when I was

working for BBC but when you when you speak about it to people who work in the area they say yeah of

course they don't find it strange then they know nothing about Ethiopia and what the Ethiopians did

and they say well I'm not an Ethiopianist so it depends who you speak to but if you speak to

ordinary most ordinary people have been really interested they've been engaged I mean I always

make I always begin the same way by in a sense saying what I told you everything you know about

transatlantic slavery is true or more or less everything you know is true but it's only one

element of it and if one begins that way then I think people are ready to accept that you're not

trying to I'm not trying to whitewash anything that anyone has done and if somebody comes out with a

whole new theory and a whole new set of facts I'll be the first to read it because you know that

is what you have to do history is never a finished article history like all aspects of human science

and understanding is always an engagement and a contest for intellectual space and intellectual

acceptability sure yep I got you had a question right at the tip of my brain do you oh do you

already know what you're going to be working on next I certainly do can you can you can you tell

it share anything or is that under wraps oh no no I can absolutely tell you what it is but you

will be very surprised because it has nothing to do with slavery it has nothing to do with Africa

I'm writing a book about hamstered heath which is an area of open ground in the center of London

which took 120 years to fight for and it's it's a beautiful area of open countryside in the

middle of London with houses all the way around it and we use it to run on to exercise on we

can even ride on it and I've written a little bit about its history and things that even local people

don't know about it when I give you just one example look too it is the hedgehog capital of London

more to jogs than anywhere else and it has a pound by which I mean a pound for animals where you

could keep pigs and cattle if it was bought for people for animals that strayed and it's thought

there in working order hasn't been used for a hundred years so I mean this is just but I'm just

writing about it because I live here I like writing writing these kind of things as well as writing

more complicated things maybe later I'll get on to other things close to slavery or in slave

into Africa but at the moment I've wanted a bit of a rest so I'm working on this something a

little lighter and I should have asked you this because I just thought of another question that I

had or you know earlier in the conversation you had said oh we can we could talk about that a

little bit more the that being the British ending slavery and then you know in Britain and then

going out and ending in other places and we touched on that a little bit but I think that's one

of the most mind-blowing counter narrative things that people in the United States largely don't

know about so I'd love if you could unpack the British's role in ending slavery in Africa and

worldwide I mean it was it was a really remarkable event and the people who were really involved

initially engaged with it were the Quakers and I think you have Quakers in America as well and they

are a really odd group of people they take a long time to make their minds up but once they set

their mind to something goodness me they will go on over decades as long as it takes and they were

most of the activists not all but most of the activists that they worked with were Quakers and then

they also worked with for example some Africans who you know were in Britain was there were no

they weren't very very few slaves in Britain who were Africans a few were brought over with tiny

tiny numbers and and a lot of them were were preachers and these people came together and they

worked for years and eventually they managed to overturn both the legislation and in a sense they

captured the the ethical space around the issue and Britain for decades after the 1830s it was

one of the key priorities of Britain and don't forget this was a period when Britain was supreme

in Europe I mean after 1815 when you know Napoleon was defeated until 1914 there were I mean

Britain was involved in a lot of small colonial wars but in Europe there was no challenger so

Europe and Britain didn't have a major issue in Europe to fight and they put huge resources into

trying to persuade whether it was the Ethiopians or the Ottomans in others the Turks or other people

to stop being involved in slavery and they put two squadrons of Royal Navy ships off the west

coast of Africa and the east coast and I mean they went on and they stopped slaving ships

that were taking Africans across the Atlantic they captured about a hundred and ships carrying

a hundred and fifty thousand African slaves and they were they then freed them in places like Liberia

Cyrione and other places including Saint Helena they didn't really know what to do with them after

that and in fact one of the big problems was when you put people ashore in an area at the first

maybe a few dozen of them it wasn't a problem the local community could absorb them even if

they hadn't come from anywhere near them they may have come from hundreds of miles away

but as as this went on and on and you know hundreds became thousands of course the local people

were objected and they were the lots of fighting and if you look at the history of Liberia

it that is the history of the conflict in that way established between the people who were freed

by Americans or by Brits and the the local people and then they they tried to persuade other

countries to join them and gradually they didn't finally you know the United States also had

warships off of Africa also trying to stop the stock slavery and it took a long time it was very

difficult to do but it eventually happened so you know that was a huge effort by by Britain

you know because they had captured the intellectual and the morals the high ground and I mean even

foreign secretaries you know really were keen to do this the navy were some people were keen to

do it but many of them thought this was waste of time and it wasn't what they joined the navy for

but Britain lost 17,000 sailors trying to free slaves in the Atlantic alone

this is kind of an off topic question but related you mentioned that you know Britain didn't have

any major wars any challenges at the time and so you know let's go fight slavery kind of thing

it reminded me of something I heard in a gentleman say once he was kind of pontificating on why

there's sort of a masculinity crisis in the West and men are lost and things like that and he's

like we need a war we need men need something to do like we need to go be breaking something conquer

something fighting for something and I feel like maybe that the slavery issue was that like okay well

we don't have a war to fight where can we go solve a problem let's go deal with the slavery issue

maybe I'm that's beyond my knowledge I can't really I can't really comment on it I don't

want to get in trouble either but that's just what that made me think of hey we're just close to the

hour mark so let's get into the speed round questions and actually one of these we we answered

in the interview so I'm gonna change a little bit but these should be kind of fun you're supposed

to not think too hard about I'm just spit out what you think those sometimes people do need to get

on a soap box when I hit them with a question that strikes them in a certain way so that's fine too

so Martin your first question is what is your least favorite color

gray what is your favorite board game

I suppose monopoly but I haven't played it for years what's the best book you've read this year so far

I'm reading one and I can't think what the the name is it's about a woman who goes and keeps duck

houses off the coast of Norway do you have a hidden talent

I'm I'm still pretty good at running should churches including mosques synagogues etc remain tax exempt

yes how do you like to relax I watch romcom films

well that's kind of related to this next question what movie made you laugh the hardest the

first time you watched it oh four weddings in a funeral this is an interesting one for you to get

where is their systemic racism in America where well where isn't that that's your full answer

well you can tell me anywhere there isn't any racism I'd love to know about it no your answer is

just fine you don't eat elaborate anymore should someone less than half black still be considered

black they're a quarter black or an eighth black I think that we should allow people to self-identify

it's I mean what color do you think I am you appear to be a Caucasian guy

I am but that isn't that in the sense that you were using the word color I would say that I'm an

African and there people were a similar color to me from shall we say Algeria so I mean I think color

is the least interesting issue in the world I mean I mean we should we should relate to people as

they are not by the color of their skin and your fight final question and again I'll be

interested to see how you answer this as as not an American what is your favorite black TV show

meaning like a TV show that has a lot of black characters black characters maybe the lead

the main character in the show I didn't think I know one yeah I wasn't sure what I wouldn't

because you know I randomly pull these and I was like I don't know if a guy who lives in Britain

would really have an answer for this unless you're watching like American TV I mean the one

thing I do find difficult and I'll be honest about it is that when you put black actors into

historical dramas shall we say set in I don't know 17th 18th century Britain I just think it

looks weird I'm not saying there were no black people there but the idea that you can say

Lord it's so and so is is black just looks strange and I can't I can't get used to it I mean you

know I don't mind you know black actors playing any role they like it is it's not my not an issue

for me but I just think in historical dramas it looks odd yeah you know and so that that I think

is strange but I mean it and you know people say well we should have color neutral casting yeah have

you ever seen in modern times a white person player fellow and I don't do a lot of Shakespeare but

that's a mistake that's a mistake honestly I am absolutely passionate about Shakespeare

as you should be and I'm not I'm not anti Shakespeare by any stretch I'm sure you have access

to a lot more Shakespeare over there than I do in rural United States but there's actually my

midsummer night stream production going on in my hometown right now so I and I already bought

my tickets to it so I hope you absolutely adore it it is it is one of the funniest I mean I know

the language is antique but the the if it's played well it is just one of the funniest stories

and you know I I agree with you about historical casting and I think maybe you're referring to

things like I haven't watched these shows but like Bridgerton and things like that where they're

casting yes and other shows where they're it's like she's the Queen of England and she's black

or something it's Mary Queen of Scots and it's an Asian lady or whatever I'm just randomly kind of

giving examples but it's doing that is a little bit demeaning I feel like to black people or

people with African heritage because it's basically saying we don't have our own stories we don't

have our own leaders we don't have our own history that we can share via movie television show

or whatever that's worth sharing so we're just gonna kind of I agree with you steal steal another

storyline and insert ourselves into it it's just I know that there's great stories from Africa or

black Americans in Britain or the United States all over the world let's just tell those stories

history if you want to cast more black people in those historical shows and movies yeah I agree with

you okay Martin I hope people check out your book we'll link it in the show notes but any other

final thoughts for our audience no I mean not really I mean it's I'm I'm grateful that you you know

you had a look at it and read it and or and that you you talk you know I need to talk about it

because I do think it's an issue that we need to understand it in in the round so to speak and

begin to see it for what it is and I mean I'm passionate about the need to

free people who are enslaved today and I mean I work on this almost all the time particularly

in relation to Ethiopian Eritrea which are sadly trapped in in a cycle of violence and

you know many of the people who are now in being held in in enslavement in Libya are from from

Eritrea and Ethiopian they are treated in ways which are indescribable I mean so bad and you know

so you know I'm not gonna give up on this and I you know I'm never going to I mean I'm never

going to give up on Africa which as I said right at the beginning is the most fascinating

content I know and you know a wonderful place with wonderful people and so you know I'm happy to

go on working on it what's a good resource for people who do want to do something and they might

feel like they're helpless because you know who am I I'm just a little nobody but if they're like I

want to do something about the slavery that still exists in the world you do know a place that they

can learn more donate volunteer things like that that's very hard I would work with with groups that

are already established on it I mean you said you you spoke to somebody who was from an anti-slavery

movement and anti-slavery international still does exist and still does work on this although it

tends to concentrate on what it calls modern slavery by which they mean people who mostly

being you know trapped because their passports are taken away from them they aren't actually

bought and sold and inherited I mean their situation is appalling I'm not trying to undermine it

but you know I you know they still do work on this and there are other groups that do it and I

think I would I would just encourage people to work with them and you know also to you know look

for the subject there's a great CNN documentary about slavery in in Libya and you can just go and

have a look at it I find it's really easy to find excellent well thank you so much we'll try to

find that too and then link it as well I appreciate what you do Martin love the book and good luck

on the next one well thank you very much and I'm happy to talk to you for a long time about

time to sit here

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