Director’s Lecture Series: How Europe Underdeveloped Africa and the Caribbean - the Reparations Debate

SOAS President Zeinab Badawi, Professor Sir Hilary Beckles, SOAS Director Professor Adam Habib

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“Europe became the center of a world-wide system and that it was European capitalism which set slavery and the Atlantic slave trade in motion.”― Walter Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa

This year, 2022, will mark the 50th anniversary of SOAS alumnus Walter Rodney's ground-breaking book, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa . In honour of this, Professor Sir Hilary Beckles, Vice-Chancellor of the University of the West Indies, has published his own book, How Britain Underdeveloped the Caribbean . Professor Sir Hilary Beckles will join SOAS Director Adam Habib and SOAS President Zeinab Badawi for a lively debate on the book, but also the issue of global reparations.

The debate surrounding reparations for the transatlantic slave trade has deepened in recent years. The toppling of the Edward Colston statue in Bristol brought the debate about the legacy of slavery and colonialism into the spotlight in the UK. However, African and Caribbean countries have been calling for reparations from European countries for years with many former colonial powers refusing to accept responsibility.

The transatlantic enslavement of African people and unpaid forced labour generated wealth for the British Empire with cities like Bristol and London profiteering. European colonial powers built their empires with the wealth extracted from the territories and the people they exploited. After independence, many countries have faced suppressed economic development and the legacy of colonialism has left many descendants in poverty.

Jamaica recently announced that its government plans to ask Britain for compensation for the Atlantic slave trade. Barbados became a republic in November with Prime Minister Mia Mottely calling for former colonial powers to apologise for their role in the Atlantic slave trade in 2020 and a reparations bill is likely to pass through Congress in the US. The Reparations Debate is a timely and significant debate in addressing reparatory justice in 2022.

The SOAS Director’s Lecture Series focuses on the planetary questions of our time and how to enable a collective human response. In this historical moment, all of our big challenges – pandemics, climate change, inequality, social and political polarisation – are transnational in character and require a cohering of the human community.

This is the third event in the SOAS Director’s Lecture Series.

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Organiser: SOAS Events

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