By Kaveesha Fernando
LONDON, UK (CWBN)_ The UK government provided £1 million ($1.4 million) towards an index of investors in Britain’s slave trade. The funding will help compile the Dictionary of British Slave Traders, which will list 6,500 members of British society who were a part of the slave trade over a period of more than two centuries.
The index will not be limited to individuals, but will also focus on corporations and other investors in the slave trade. The move is hailed by many as a timely attempt by the UK in disassociating with the nation’s heavily exploitative slave trade. News of the fund come months after Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests were carried out throughout the globe following the tragic killing of George Floyd in the United States.
A prominent international news channel reported that Britain enslaved 3.1 million Africans between 1640 and 1807. The slave trade has already been linked to many institutions and establishments in the UK. British Insurance company Lloyds of London has admitted that they have links to the slave trade, as has British brewery Greene King.
The nation’s top universities are also not blameless. Oxford University will decide in January whether to remove a statue of Victorian imperialist Cecil Rhodes from the university’s Oriel College. Similarly, the University of Cambridge will conduct a two year study into the university’s links to the slave trade and is set to make reparations for any links to the legacy of the slave trade – these links may be in funding or symbolically (erecting monuments or renaming buildings for instance).
