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Black Lives Matter Blog British Empire History South Africa

The Berlin Conference 140 Years On

Remarks on the Preconditions Alan Lester These notes were the basis of a ten minute talk delivered at the Africa Centre, London as part of a panel in commemoration of the 140th anniversary of the end of the Berlin Conference of 1885.[i] I will aim to complement Dele’s [the previous speaker’s] focus on the discussion and outcomes of the conference itself by discussing its pre-history: the events and ideas that allowed European leaders to conceive it as both possible and legitimate to decide among themselves the fate of another continent while its inhabitants looked on from the sidelines. Such events […]

Blog British Empire History Reparations

Policy Exchange Attacks Church of England: for Overstating the Sin of Investing in Slavery?

Alan Lester The right wing think tank Policy Exchange has published a report attacking the Church of England Commissioners for planning to engage in reparative measures with an investment endowment fund of £100 million over the next nine years. The plan was devised after historians and accountants found indisputable evidence of the Church’s complicity in slave trading. But instead of simply stating why it is opposed to the plan, Policy Exchange has tried, and failed, to undermine the historical research behind it. The Conservative Peer, Lord Sewell of Sanderstead CBE initiates the report’s chastisement of the Church Commissioners with a […]

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