Britain likes to tell the story of the day it abolished slavery.
Here is the part that gets left out: on the day the law took effect, almost nobody was actually freed. They were reclassified as "apprentices" and made to keep working for their former owners, unpaid, for another six years. The Slavery Abolition Act took effect on 1 August 1834. Children under six were freed. Everyone else over six became an apprentice bound to the same estate. Field workers owed forty-five hours a week, unpaid, for six years. Domestic workers owed four years. They could be flogged for refusing. Special magistrates were appointed to hear complaints and were frequently the planters' friends. Women could be punished on the treadmill. Meanwhile the owners received twenty million pounds in compensation — a sum so large that Britain borrowed it, and did not finish repaying the loan until 2015. So the arithmetic of British abolition, honestly stated: the enslavers were paid, and the enslaved were required to work another four to six years for nothing. Freedom was not given in 1834. It was scheduled, and then the people it was owed to forced it forward.
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