Our present government, unfairly perhaps,
is often caricatured as self-serving,
racist and incompetent – and yet,
with a rather modest investment
of taxpayers’ money, has published
a report which may revolutionise
our study of history, showing
not just the costs but the benefits
to victims of great crimes: ‘There is a new
story about the Caribbean
experience which speaks to the slave period
not only being about profit
and suffering but how culturally
African people transformed themselves
into a re-modelled African/Britain.’
After ‘THE CARIBBEAN EXPERIENCE’
an ambitious revisionist might write of
‘THE BRAZILIAN EXPERIENCE’ – where
half of the ten million were enslaved – then
‘THE REWARDS OF THE U.S. PENAL SYSTEM’,
and ‘APARTHEID: THE BLACK DIVIDEND’.
Next might come three or four new volumes
commissioned under the generic title
‘THE BENEFITS OF GENOCIDE’: as witnessed
in Australasia, the Americas;
by the Armenians; the Uyghurs;
the Roma and the Jews.
By David Selzer