The governments of several African nations have joined the reparations campaign, either directly or through expressions of support for CARICOM’s demands. This creates a significant moral problem that the campaign has never addressed.
Several of those governments are the direct successors of kingdoms that were major suppliers to the Atlantic slave trade. Ghana is the successor state of the Ashanti Confederacy and other kingdoms that traded enslaved people to European merchants at coastal forts. Benin is the successor state of the Kingdom of Dahomey, which built its power specifically on slave raiding and trading. Nigeria encompasses the territories of the Kingdom of Oyo and the Kingdom of Benin, both of which participated in the trade.
These governments are in the position of claiming reparations for harms in which their own predecessors were complicit. They are seeking compensation from one set of participants in a collaborative enterprise while declining to acknowledge their own side of that enterprise.
The Republic of Benin’s 1999 apology for Dahomey’s role in the slave trade was a notable and admirable exception. But it has not been accompanied by any suggestion that Benin therefore has reduced standing to seek reparations from European nations. The logic that would follow from such an acknowledgement has not been pursued.
For Britain to pay reparations to African governments whose predecessors supplied the people being enslaved would be a remarkable outcome. It would not be justice. It would be a transfer of money from British taxpayers to the political successors of slave traders, routed through the language of historical redress.
