The Economics of Slavery - Professor Jeremy Black MBE

Jeremy Black MBE is a British historian, writer, and former professor of history at the University of Exeter. He is a senior fellow at the Center for the Study of America and the West at the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia, US.

He is the author of over 180 books, principally but not exclusively on 18th-century British politics and international relations, and has been described by one commentator as “the most prolific historical scholar of our age”. He has published on military and political history, including Warfare in the Western World, 1882-1975 (2001) and The World in the Twentieth Century (2002).

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The abuse of history for political purposes is as old as history itself. In recent years, we have seen campaigns to rewrite the history of several democratic nations in a way that undermines their solidarity as communities, their sense of achievement, even their very legitimacy.

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00:00 - Introduction
01:27 - Lecture
31:12 - Q&A
31:40 - Reparations
37:29 - Was slavery responsible for the wealth and economic development of Britain?
40:02 - How much money was paid to slave owners by the taxpayer?
42:36 - Is slave labour inherently inefficient?
45:09 - Russian Serfs