New Bristol v-c confronts university’s ‘uncomfortable’ past

For over 200 years, powerful kings in what is now the country of Benin captured and sold slaves to Portuguese, French and British merchants. This is not a British only problem. The British did far worse in China yet Bristol University milks Chinese students for fees. The Chinese were treated like second class citizens in their own country while western powers set up Concessions in every major city, yet the poor Chinese have to come here and do it all in a second language and pay gross fees for it. If Bristol is so concerned with Slavery, why not focus on the millions off people being subjected to slavery in 2022--instead of those who have been dead for 200 years.

"China transitioned from being the most powerful economy in the world before the Opium Wars to its GDP dropping by half just a decade later. ... This is reflective of the damage China took from the Opium Wars" at the hands of British colonizers. Bristol University is build on this funds resonating from the Opium Wars and ought not be charging Chinese students any fees and should be setting up a fund to send money to sister universities in China.

Britain profited large-scale from slavery for some 200-300 years, before becoming one of the earliest countries to abolish it in the 1830s. Likewise as said we exploited China (opium trade) and even after slavery ended, the UK continued to exploit our colonies - as did other major European countries, France, Spain, Portugal. But who could we pay reparations to? Can we trace the descendants of those slaves (not all will have any, and some may now be quite wealthy - others, not), or should we pay it to the Governments of former colonies (that could be seen as continued neo-colonisialism, if we check how it's spent, if not, will it just line Govt official's pockets, or fund civil strife?). Maybe we should look at the plight of the living - we cannot really help the dead, however awful lives they lived, however much that awfulness was down to slavery or other forms of colonial exploitation. Maybe we shou;ld look at who is poor now, in all countries, and ask how we can alleviate their plight, maybe defining poor as income below a certain fraction of average for that country, with an absolute minimum baseline worldwide (or else we would be omitting the poorest in the poorest countries). Help the poor now - rather than atoning for sins committed by people long dead, on other people long dead. that would do much more to add to the sum of human happiness (yes, unashamadly Benthamite here).

Britain as a state never owned slaves and slavery never took place in England itself. It did have a feudal system from the time of the Normans and workers had no rights until the late 20th century. Most of the wealth of England was generated internally and claims of great wealth coming from slavery are made up nonsense. A few private companies made a fortune and nearly all of them lost it over a century ago. The few donations made to univerisities are nothing in today's money compare to international student fees. The British did far greater harm as a state than did these private trading companies such as almost wipe out entire races such as the American Indians and Australian Aborginals--it is these people we owe more to as a state. As for its colonial past, we cannot hold those living in Britain today responsible for the exploitation carried out by a few CEOs of private companies (Royal African Company etc). The Royal African Company went insolvent before 1750, but the University of Bristol received its royal charter in 1909. Pol Pot and Cambodia is much more recent and war crimes are being perpetrated in Ukraine as I write. Maybe it is better to focus on those. Even if we could go back in time, it was .01 percent of the British population that did these wrongs and we would not even be able to blame the other 99.9 percent of the population that was living at the time they did these wrongs, let alone 100 percent of the population living today. Modern slavery is where the focus needs to be. 25% of the British have no ancestors in this country yet are now being asked to pay for what .01 percent of the British did 200 years ago. Ironically, the descendants of the Benin King’s and relevant nations involved are not equally being asked to pay up. These were great wrongs, but they sit along with so many wrongs in the history of the world that they are best to be taught in history classes and not dominate the entire public debate of this country year after year with no contemporary victim group getting any voice. I doubt very much real wealth remains in any British university from slavery. As the first commentator above notes, the sums will be so small in real terms that they pale into insignificance compared to the staggering fee income milked from students from countries that were the victims of colonization such as China and India. It is time to move on and focus on modern atrocities and put out energy into finding solutions.

The University of Bristol's financial statement states it has 27,673 Student FTEs. That is hundreds of millions from student fees. Surely these poor students are not going to get the bill to pay for what some rouge aristocrat did 200 years ago?