L'image qui coiffe ce billet est d'Otto Detmer.
Compenser financièrement les régions touchées par l'esclave qui a contribué à forger des empires en Europe? Un débat historique intéressant qui est loin de faire l'unanimité. Beau topo sur le sujet ce matin dans le NY Times et les historiens contribuent à la réflexion, mais aussi à la représentation devant les tribunaux. Qui doit quoi et à qui?
"But only reparations can reverse the long-term harm. As Ralph Gonsalves, the prime minister of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, said, “We have to have appropriate recompense.”
The claim is not, however, about compensating individuals, but their communities. And in this way, since most countries in the Caribbean are financially in debt to international banks, Caricom is making a provocative argument: It is actually Europe that owes the Caribbean.
This is more than just creative accounting. When economists debate why some countries are poor and others are rich, they often focus on the cultural, political or economic structures of poor countries. But historians of the Caribbean have long argued that national inequality is a direct result of centuries of economic exploitation.
The foundations for this argument go back to a 1944 book by the Trinidadian historian Eric Williams, “Capitalism and Slavery.” Mr. Williams had to pay $500 to help subsidize its publication by the University of North Carolina Press, but the book became a classic, and he later became his country’s prime minister.
His argument, that the profits from the slave trade and slavery were the foundation for Britain’s Industrial Revolution, spurred decades of debate and research, and today there are hundreds of books documenting slavery’s profound impact on the modern world."
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/29/opinion/international/confronting-the-legacies-of-slavery.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20131029&_r=0
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