AHC: make at least one country pay reperations for slavery upon abolishing it

some people make a nonesense claim about reperations for slavery being "too late"; but this overlooks the fact that the victims of serious injustice are rarely in the position to demand reperations sucesfully right afterwards. so your challenge; it can be ASB; but only do that if you cannot think of a better way; is to have at least one country pay reperations to former slaves at the time they abolish slavery.
 
some people make a nonesense claim about reperations for slavery being "too late"; but this overlooks the fact that the victims of serious injustice are rarely in the position to demand reperations sucesfully right afterwards. so your challenge; it can be ASB; but only do that if you cannot think of a better way; is to have at least one country pay reperations to former slaves at the time they abolish slavery.
Would the amount that war paid in reparations matter much in determining whether there will be future calls for reparations? Say that former slaves are given small plots of land or the plantation they worked at becomes the collective property of all ex slaves. Combined with a apology, and voting rights if they inhabited a democracy. Would that count as reparations?

The Reconstruction period[edit]​

The arguments surrounding reparations are based on the formal discussion about many different reparations, and actual land reparations received by African Americans which were later taken away. In 1865, after the Confederate States of America were defeated in the American Civil War, General William Tecumseh Sherman issued Special Field Orders, No. 15 to both "assure the harmony of action in the area of operations"[28] and to solve problems caused by the masses of freed slaves, a temporary plan granting each freed family forty acres of tillable land in the sea islands and around Charleston, South Carolina for the exclusive use of black people who had been enslaved. The army also had a number of unneeded mules which were given to freed slaves. Around 40,000 freed slaves were settled on 400,000 acres (1,600 km2) in Georgia and South Carolina. However, President Andrew Johnson reversed the order after Lincoln was assassinated, the land was returned to its previous owners, and the blacks were forced to leave. In 1867, Thaddeus Stevens sponsored a bill for the redistribution of land to African Americans, but it did not pass.

Reconstruction came to an end in 1877 without the issue of reparations having been addressed. Thereafter, a deliberate movement of segregation and oppression arose in southern states. Jim Crow laws passed in some southeastern states to reinforce the existing inequality that slavery had produced. In addition white extremist organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan engaged in a massive campaign of terrorism throughout the Southeast in order to keep African Americans in their prescribed social place. For decades this assumed inequality and injustice was ruled on in court decisions and debated in public discourse.

In one anomalous case, a former slave named Henrietta Wood successfully sued for compensation after having been kidnapped from the free state of Ohio and sold into slavery in Mississippi. After the American Civil War, she was freed and returned to Cincinnati, where she won her case in federal court in 1878, receiving $2,500 in damages. Though the verdict was a national news story, it did not prompt any trend toward additional similar cases.[29]
If Abraham Lincoln had not been assassinated would reparations have been given every former slave in the United States?
 
Would the amount that war paid in reparations matter much in determining whether there will be future calls for reparations? Say that former slaves are given small plots of land or the plantation they worked at becomes the collective property of all ex slaves. Combined with a apology, and voting rights if they inhabited a democracy. Would that count as reparations?


If Abraham Lincoln had not been assassinated would reparations have been given every former slave in the United States?
that would count; as long as it is actually done
 
Not sure would any country pay if not enforced.

But I can imaginate some possible ways:

1. Nazi Germany wins WW2 but falls apart on reason or another. Then foreign nations pressure pay new government pay for ex-slaves.

2. Apartheidist South Africa decides legalise slavery and enforce lot of natives as slave labor on farms. After Apartheid collapses, new government decides either voluntarely or pressure of other nations pay reparations to slaves.
 
Would land given to freedmen/freed serf count as reparation?

actually handing out cash to individuals, particularly those at the bottom of the society is something even developped countries with modern tax capacity and banking systems can struggle with, much easier to seize the land of landowners and distribute it, or offering the freedmen a plot of land on the frontier
 
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OTL, both the United Kingdom and the Netherlands DID pay reparations.... To the slaveowners for having to give up for free their hard-earned workforce...
 
If Abraham Lincoln had not been assassinated would reparations have been given every former slave in the United States?

As far as I know, Lincoln was pretty non-commital about any plans he might have had for the former slaves post-bellum.

Interestingly, in Birth Of A Nation, Lincoln is poryrayed as an ally of the South and its planter class, and his murder as opening the door for the Radical Republicans to force Black domination and miscegenation upon the whites.

Almost 100 years later, Spielberg summed up Lincoln's thoughts on postwar racial relations with a comment to his Black seamstress: "I expect we'll find a way to get along."
 
some people make a nonesense claim about reperations for slavery being "too late"; but this overlooks the fact that the victims of serious injustice are rarely in the position to demand reperations sucesfully right afterwards. so your challenge; it can be ASB; but only do that if you cannot think of a better way; is to have at least one country pay reperations to former slaves at the time they abolish slavery.
I still maintain that reparations for slavery shouldn't be paid but since it's controversial i'ld rather not argue it here and get banned.
 
Would the amount that war paid in reparations matter much in determining whether there will be future calls for reparations? Say that former slaves are given small plots of land or the plantation they worked at becomes the collective property of all ex slaves. Combined with a apology, and voting rights if they inhabited a democracy. Would that count as reparations?


If Abraham Lincoln had not been assassinated would reparations have been given every former slave in the United States?
I would bet so given they basically were already gearing up for that.
 
Getting both top-down abolition AND reparations to the enslaved through a state's political apparatus in one go would be difficult.

If the state is abolished along with slavery i.e. Saint-Domingue, then land expropriation is easy (although hard to pull off smoothly, as we saw IOTL with Petion), but clawing money back from the dead is almost as hard as getting it from a former metropole.

In America, we had top-down abolition, but the Northern political center was based less in abolitionist ideology than in general free soil material concerns: land for smallholders and no competition from black labor free or unfree. It'd take extreme national radicalization to give freedmen land-based reparations postwar (and cash reparations probably not feasible at that time.) Without that political radicalism, you can go farther than Andrew Johnson, but not as far as figures like Thaddeus Stevens or G.W. Julian.

In Brasil, the Lei Aurea came just before the entire political apparatus collapsed. A surviving Isabel would have other concerns i.e. shoring up support among the powers that are. Reparations does little to solve her first-order issues.

The British public being on board with punishing African slave-polities and their own slowed down model of abolition is one thing; doubt the exchequer is going to sign up for handouts to freedmen -- if anything they'd give money to reimburse slavers first.

Reparations-as-idea owes much more to political rhetoric now than it does to political realities back then.
 
Well most European slave powers did pay reparation when they abolished slavery… to the people losing their property.

But it also show the problem, for these states ending slavery were no different than the abolishment of other kind of bondage, and after paying East sum of money to free the slaves, no one supported giving the ex-slaves some more money. The only way to convince the states to do this was if they could see how it benefitted the state. As example the end of serfdom were often connected with land reforms, simply because it was seen as a way to increase the tax base.
 
Successful Reconstruction could have 40 acres and a mule + anything more honestly. The reasoning for not applying ex-post facto was cleverly argued against by the courts that the plantation owners failed to pay tax for the years of secession, which the government is conveniently going to use to give freedmen.

There could also be feudal reparations in the wake of a social revolution in either France or Russia, through land reform as well. Land is honestly pretty much the easiest asset to expropriate at times because of how non-liquid it is.
 
Would land given to freedmen/freed serf count as reparation?

actually handing out cash to individuals, particularly those at the bottom of the society is something even developped countries with modern tax capacity and banking systems can struggle with, much easier to seize the land of landowners and distribute it, or offering the freedmen a plot of land on the frontier
it would count
 
The British Empire fought multiple campaigns against slave-trading states in Africa and Asia. I'm sure at least one of those states was forced to compensate the British government for the cost of coming over and stamping out their slave-holding practices.
 
OTL, both the United Kingdom and the Netherlands DID pay reparations.... To the slaveowners for having to give up for free their hard-earned workforce...
France went a step further - they demanded and got money from Haiti in the early 19th Century to for revenue lost.
 
by rewarding the slave owners
>h-How dare they ensure the peaceful release of those enslaved people?

Horse trading is how things get done in the real world. If you find that distasteful, fine. But don't act like the abolitionists being willing to open the public purse in order to expedite the emancipation of millions was a moral failing.
 
some people make a nonesense claim about reperations for slavery being "too late"; but this overlooks the fact that the victims of serious injustice are rarely in the position to demand reperations sucesfully right afterwards. so your challenge; it can be ASB; but only do that if you cannot think of a better way; is to have at least one country pay reperations to former slaves at the time they abolish slavery.
Thomas Sowell iirc had a lecture about it on record where he says that practically all of societies did practice slavery in one form or another. Problem being technically that can be like almost like a huge margin of the population of the world probably has enslaved ancestors, question is to whom? Because technically if were speaking about slave owners, even some former slaves became slave and plantation owners themselves.
 
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