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Helpful prior knowledge and learning objectives
Helpful prior knowledge and learning objectives
Helpful prior learning:
Section 1.1.1 The economy and you, which explains what an economy is and how it is relevant to students’ lives
Section 1.1.2 The embedded economy, which explains the relationship between the economy and society and Earth’s systems
Section 1.1.4 Regenerative economies, which explains how circular, distributive and caring, needs-based and sufficient economies can meet human needs within planetary boundaries
Section 7.1.1 Global exchange as a system, which describes global exchange as a system with parts, relationships, functions and emergence
Section 7.1.2 History of global exchanges, which describes how global exchange systems have evolved over time, shaped by changes in technology, power, and environmental factors
Section 7.1.3 What moves across borders? which describes what flows across borders and explains how visible global flows are linked to less visible social and ecological effects
Section 7.2.1 Why do countries trade and restrict trade? which describes different forms of protectionism and explains arguments for and against freer trade
Section 7.2.5 Who writes the rules of global exchange? which explain who shapes the rules of global exchange and how various sources of power influence which rules are written and whose interests they reflect
Section 7.3.1 Unequal global value exchange, which explains how unequal prices and unequal wages systematically transfer value from periphery countries to core countries
Section 7.3.2 Unequal labour and care flows, which examines the structural conditions and power relationships that drive labour migration between Global South and Global North, and the uneven distribution of its costs and benefits
Section S.1 What are systems?, which explains what a system is, the importance of systems boundaries, the difference between open and closed systems, and the importance of systems thinking
Section S.2 Systems thinking patterns, which outlines the core components of systems thinking: distinctions (thing/other), systems (part/whole), relationships (action/reaction), and perspectives (point/view)
Section S.4 Stocks and flows, which explains how inflows and outflows affect stocks of things, leading to behaviour-over-time patterns
Learning objectives:
explain the proposals and case for reparations for transatlantic slavery, as well as the objections and responses
In 1804, Haiti became the first country in the world to be led by formerly enslaved people, after a successful revolution against French colonial rule. Twenty-one years later, in 1825, the French king sent fourteen warships into the Haitian harbour and demanded 150 million francs. This was the price France set for formally recognising Haiti as an independent country. The money would compensate French plantation owners for the property they had lost in the revolution. Under French colonial law, enslaved people counted as property, so the demand included compensation for the loss of the enslaved people themselves. With fourteen warships in the harbour, Haiti had no real choice. It agreed, borrowed the first payment from a French bank, and spent the next 122 years repaying the debt, even after France reduced the amount owed in 1838. The actual payments, in today's money, came to around 560 million US dollars. Economists estimate that if Haiti had kept and invested that money instead, it could have added more than 20 billion US dollars to its economy over time. The country had won its freedom, but paid a steep price for it.
Figure 1. The Baron de Mackau of France presenting demands to Jean-Pierre Boyer, President of Haiti, in 1825.
(Credit: Wikimedia Commons, public domain)
What is the economic case for reparations?
What is the economic case for reparations?
Reparations means making up for serious harm to people, or to their descendants. This can include money, returning property, investing in public services, cancelling debt, or formally acknowledging what happened. When harm is this serious and long-lasting, repair usually cannot restore what people lost. Instead, it aims to address the harm and its ongoing effects.
The first argument for reparations is historical. Colonisers extracted the labour of enslaved people, seized land, and removed natural resources, transferring this wealth to European countries (Section 7.1.2). Even after slavery ended, colonial rulers continued to prevent the colonised from building wealth of their own. They forced people to work for very low wages, kept them off the best farmland, and trapped them in debt. These were specific, identifiable acts whose economic consequences can, at least in part, be estimated.
Another argument is that slave owners used enslaved people as collateral when borrowing money from banks, in the same way that a person today might use a house to secure a loan from a bank. For example, a plantation owner who used fifty enslaved people as collateral could borrow money to buy more land. That land could then produce more crops, generating more income and wealth for the slave owner. Slavery therefore generated wealth not only through forced and unpaid labour but also, in some economies, by increasing slaveholders' access to credit which they could use to build even more wealth.
What has been proposed, and by whom?
What has been proposed, and by whom?
Several organisations have developed formal proposals for reparations. They share a common principle that governments and institutions carry out the repair, not individuals. Communities that experienced the harm help design the proposals, and the process happens over time. Proposals include financial transfers, public investment, the return of cultural artefacts removed during colonial rule, the cancellation of debts that originated in colonial-era financial arrangements, and formal truth and reconciliation processes, in which societies acknowledge past harm and work toward healing.
CARICOM Reparations Commission
The CARICOM Reparations Commission, established in 2013, published a Ten-Point Plan for Reparatory Justice. CARICOM revised the plan in 2026 to include the genocide of indigenous communities alongside the transatlantic slave trade (Section 7.1.2), and to name the parties it holds responsible: enslaving nations, monarchies, churches, institutions, corporations, and families that profited from slavery. The plan calls for a formal apology, together with long-term investment in public health, education, and mental health support in Caribbean nations, to address harms it traces back to colonialism.
Figure 2. Cover of the revised CARICOM Ten Point Plan for Reparatory Justice, published in June 2026.
(Credit: CARICOM, 2026)
African Union
The African Union has argued since the 1993 Pan-African Conference in Abuja, Nigeria, that the effects of slavery and colonisation are ongoing. In 2023, the Accra Proclamation extended this position to include climate justice, noting that the descendants of enslaved and colonised peoples now face the greatest risks from climate change, a crisis they did not cause. The AU and CARICOM have since developed a formal partnership, presenting their case jointly at the United Nations.
In March 2026, the United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution designating the transatlantic slave trade as the gravest crime against humanity. The resolution passed with 123 votes in favour, three votes against, and 52 abstentions. The vote does not create legal obligations. But it represents the most significant formal international recognition of the slave trade to date and strengthens the political foundation on which reparations claims rest.
What objections to reparations are raised, and how do advocates respond?
What objections to reparations are raised, and how do advocates respond?
Size of reparations
Size of reparations
Estimates of what is owed run into trillions of dollars, and critics argue that no state could realistically commit to payments of this size. Mia Mottley, Prime Minister of Barbados and a well-known advocate for reparations, has responded that the starting point is recognition that a debt to Global South countries exists, and that payments could be made gradually over a long period. The CARICOM framework proposes a programme of repair spread across time and across different forms of investment, rather than a single financial transaction.
Generational fairness
Generational fairness
A second objection concerns generational fairness. Critics argue that people today should not pay for wrongs their states committed centuries ago. Reparations advocates make two responses. First, repair targets institutions, not individuals. States, banks, and corporations built up wealth through extraction, and many still hold that wealth today. Second, people in former colonising countries still benefit from that extraction. It helped build the infrastructure and institutions they use now. Wealth tends to create more wealth, through investment, property, and political influence. This reinforcing feedback loop is called success-to-the-successful, discussed in Section S.9. This growth has not been equal. Economic inequality within wealthy countries has grown, so not everyone shares equally in this accumulated wealth. Even so, the gap between the countries that extracted wealth and the countries it was extracted from has continued to grow over time.
Legal responsibility
Legal responsibility
Critics argue that slavery and the slave trade broke no international law at the time, so no state carries legal responsibility for them now. Lawyers call this the intertemporality principle. A law applies only from the date it takes effect.
In August 2026, the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) challenged this argument. Most states signed a binding treaty on racial discrimination in 1965. This treaty requires them to address racial discrimination that still exists today. CERD argues that the effects of slavery are a present-day form of that discrimination, not only a historical event. States must therefore act on those effects now, under a duty they already hold, whether or not slavery was legal when it happened. The UN recommendations call for monetary reprations, opening historical archives, reviewing public memorials, and creating independent truth commissions.
Figure 3. CERD is one of the treaty bodies of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR).
(Credit: OHCHR)
Addressing current unequal exchange
Addressing current unequal exchange
A third objection, sometimes raised within the Global South, is that reparations arguments look backward rather than addressing the current global economic system. Critics who raise this objection argue that structural reform of trade, debt, and financial institutions would do more for people in the Global South than focusing on historical claims.
Reparations advocates in both the AU and CARICOM respond that the past and present cannot be separated. Colonial powers deliberately structured African and Caribbean economies as suppliers of raw materials and labour, while European economies developed manufacturing and financial systems that generated far greater wealth (Section 7.3.1). Advocates of reparations argue that important features of today's unequal global exchange still reflect these patterns, and that reparations are part of the work of changing an economic system whose extractive relationships were designed during the colonial period and have not fundamentally changed since. This is why reparations and structural reform belong together as part of the same project of regeneration. The remaining sections of Subtopic 7.4 examine how these structures might be reformed.
Activity 7.4.2
Activity 7.4.2
Concept: Systems, Regeneration
Skills: Thinking (critical thinking, transfer)
Time: varies, depending on the activity
Type: Individual, pairs, or small group
Option 1: United Nations Declaration of the Trafficking of Enslaved Africans and Racialized Chattel Enslavement of Africans as the Gravest Crime against Humanity
Time: 30-40 minutes depending on how much sharing of ideas happens
In March 2026, the United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution designating the transatlantic slave trade as the gravest crime against humanity. The vote was 123 in favour, 3 against, and 52 abstentions. The three countries that voted against were the United States, Israel, and Argentina.
This activity asks you to analyse the vote and what it means.
Step 1: Think about the vote - In your group, discuss the following questions. Write brief notes on your answers.
123 countries voted in favour. What does this suggest about how most of the world views the transatlantic slave trade?
52 countries abstained, meaning they did not vote yes or no. Why might a country choose to abstain rather than vote against?
The resolution does not create any legal obligations. If it has no legal force, what is the significance of the vote?
Step 2: Consider the perspectives - This section describes reparations as a debate between different groups with different positions. Consider the perspectives of three different actors on this resolution:
A Caribbean government that voted in favour
A European government that abstained
The United States, voted against
For each, write two or three sentences describing:
What they might see as the significance of the resolution
What they might want to happen next
Step 3: Connect to the section - The resolution does not mention reparations directly. It designates the slave trade as a crime against humanity. Discuss:
Why might formal recognition matter even without legal obligations?
What does it change, and what does it not change?
Be prepared to share your thinking with the class or others, depending on how the work has been organised.
Option 2: Case study of Britain’s slavery debt
Time: 25 minutes
Read the case study below and answer the questions that follow.
When Britain abolished slavery in 1833, the government needed to manage the transition. It decided to compensate the people who legally owned enslaved people for their ‘loss of property.’ The government borrowed £20 million for this purpose, roughly 40 per cent of its entire annual spending at the time. This was one of the largest loans the British government had ever taken.
The people who had been enslaved received nothing.
The government did not repay the loan quickly. Instead, it rolled the debt into its wider public finances, where it was managed alongside other government borrowing. The British government made the final payments on this debt bundle in 2015.
At the same time, Britain did not end its economic relationship with the Caribbean overnight. Formerly enslaved people were required to continue working for their former owners for a further four to six years under an ‘apprenticeship’ system, unpaid or for minimal wages, before they were fully free. Land in the Caribbean remained concentrated in the hands of plantation owners. Access to credit was largely unavailable to Black Caribbean communities for generations.
Questions to consider:
The £20 million was paid as compensation for ‘loss of property.’ Whose loss does this description recognise, and whose loss does it ignore? What does this contrast tell you about whose interests British law protected in 1833?
The loan was finally paid off in 2015. What does this mean for British taxpayers who were alive in 2015? How does this connect to the generational objection discussed in this section?
Look at the apprenticeship system and land concentration described in the case study. How do these connect to the argument in Section 7.4.2 that colonial structures continued to prevent wealth accumulation even after slavery formally ended?
Using evidence from the case study and Section 7.4.2, explain in two or three sentences why reparations advocates argue that this history is relevant today, not only to the past.
Click the arrow for sample answers, but give it a go yourself first!
The law recognised the enslavers' financial loss but ignored the loss suffered by enslaved people themselves, who received nothing. This shows that enslaved people were categorised as property under British law, equivalent to land or livestock, so only their owners had legal standing to claim compensation. The law protected the property rights of enslavers, not the human rights of the people they had enslaved.
British taxpayers in 2015, including many people with no personal connection to slavery, were still contributing to a debt incurred to compensate slave owners in 1833. This shows that the financial consequences of slavery persisted for more than 180 years. For the generational objection, this is significant. If governments can inherit financial obligations from previous governments, the principle of inherited institutional responsibility already exists in practice.
The apprenticeship system meant that formerly enslaved people provided years of additional unpaid or very low-paid labour after formal emancipation. Land remained concentrated among plantation owners, so formerly enslaved people had no asset base from which to build wealth. These structures directly blocked the accumulation side of the wealth feedback loop, even as former slave owners began investing their government compensation.
The 2015 payment date shows that the financial consequences of slavery were still active within living memory. The wealth gap created by centuries of extraction and blocked accumulation has continued to grow through the reinforcing feedback loops described in Section 7.4.2. Reparations advocates argue that this makes the historical case a present-day economic issue, not only a historical one.
Option 3: Reinforcing feedback loops and arguments for reparation
Time: 25 minutes
Section S.9 introduced the success-to-the-successful system trap. It is a system trap where early success brings more resources and advantages, creating a cycle where winners keep winning because of the system, while others fall behind. This same trap appears in arguments for reparation.
Draw the loop using the case study in Activity Option 2 as your evidence. Identify the parts of the loop, for example wealth, political power, and ability to shape the rules, and connect them with arrows marked + or − to show how a rise or fall in one part affects the next.
Talk through the loop for slave owners, then talk through the same loop for enslaved people.
Consider these questions:
How did the increasing wealth of slave owners influence their political power, and therefore also reinforce wealth through that mechanism? Consider the case study of Britain from Activity Option 2.
Explain what role the success-to-the-successful feedback loop has in supporting the case for reparations. To what extent do you find the arguments convincing?
Click on the arrow for sample answers, but give it a go yourself first!
Sample reinforcing loop: This would be drawn in a circle with each part connected by an arrow and a + symbol indicting a direct (positive) relationship between the variables. In the centre, you could add an R with a looping arrow around it to show this is a reinforcing feedback loop, rather than a balancing feedback loop.
Wealth → (+) Political power → (+) Ability to shape rules and laws → (+) Wealth (loop closes)
One reinforcing loop. More wealth gives more political power, more political power shapes rules in your favour, and those rules generate more wealth. If you run the same loop starting from less wealth (because land and labour were taken from the colonised peoples), and every part falls together: less wealth means less political power, less political power means less influence over the rules, which leads to less wealth.
Question 1
Slave owners' wealth ran through this loop from the start. Wealth gave them political power, since many enslavers sat in Parliament or funded politicians who did. That power shaped the rules in their favour, most directly in the Slavery Abolition Act, which delivered £20 million in compensation to enslavers and years of unpaid apprentice labour, while enslaved people received nothing. That outcome fed straight back into more wealth, which kept the loop climbing.
Question 2
The loop shows that the wealth gap between slave owners and enslaved people came from the structure of causal relationships. The same loop ran in opposite directions for the two groups, and once a group started climbing or falling, the loop kept reinforcing that direction. This supports the case for reparations because a gap produced this way will not close on its own. Something has to interrupt the loop.
There are limits worth noting. It is hard to say precisely how much of today's wealth gap traces to this specific loop, since other factors, including later state policy, geography, and shifting global trade, productivity and other factors also shaped outcomes over two centuries. A student might find the loop convincing as an explanation for why the gap persisted and grew, while still wanting more specific evidence on how much of the current gap it accounts for.
Ideas for longer activities and projects are listed in Subtopic 7.5
Checking for understanding
Checking for understanding
Coming soon!
Further exploration
Further exploration
The CARICOM Ten Point Plan for Reparatory Justice: A Manifesto for the Coming Enlightenment – CARICOM's full 2026 manifesto, setting out ten detailed demands including a formal apology, an Indigenous Peoples development programme, debt cancellation, and monetary compensation. It also traces the history of the reparations movement from early Caribbean resistance through to recent international developments. Difficulty level: high
The Atlantic slave trade: What too few textbooks told you – A short animated video from TED-Ed, examining the scale and lasting legacy of the Atlantic slave trade, which forcibly transported more than 10 million Africans to the Americas. It covers the historical, economic, and personal impact of this system. Difficulty level: easy.
Did the slave trade make Britain rich? – CAGE, an economic history research centre at the University of Warwick, partnered with Discover Economics to produce a series of short videos for secondary school students. The series explores how colonisation and imperial interventions shaped the long-term economic development of Africa and India, drawing on research including the 2024 Nobel Prize-winning work on institutions. In this video, economists examine the connection between the transatlantic slave trade and Britain's Industrial Revolution. Difficulty level: easy.
Sources
Sources
African Union. (2023). Accra Proclamation on Reparations. https://au.int/en/decisions/accra-proclamation-reparations
African Union. (2025). Justice for Africans and people of African descent through reparations [AU Theme of the Year]. https://au.int
Beckles, H., & Shepherd, V. (2007). Trading souls: Europe's transatlantic trade in Africans. Ian Randle Publishers.
CARICOM Reparations Commission. (2014). Ten-point plan for reparatory justice. CARICOM. https://caricom.org/caricom-ten-point-plan-for-reparatory-justice/
CARICOM. (2026, June). The CARICOM ten point plan for reparatory justice: A manifesto for the coming enlightenment. Caribbean Community Secretariat. https://caricom.org/wp-content/uploads/CARICOM_ReparationsManifesto-D_260617_104759.pdf
HM Treasury. (2018). Freedom of Information Act 2000: Slavery Abolition Act 1833 [FOI2018/00186]. https://taxjustice.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/FOI2018-00186_-_Slavery_Abolition_Act_1833_-_pdf_for_disclosure_log__003_-2-1.pdf
Kaboub, F. (2026, March 25). Slavery is the gravest crime against humanity. Global South Perspectives. https://globalsouthperspectives.substack.com/p/slavery-is-the-gravest-crime-against
Liu, Y., Xu, J., & Zhou, Y. (2026). Quantifying the legacy of trauma: The long-term impact of the African slave trade on contemporary firm corruption. Journal of Corporate Finance, 96, Article 102884. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcorpfin.2025.102884
Martins, I., & Green, E. (2026). Theoretical foundations of the economics of slavery: Enslaved people as capital investments in the Atlantic world. Journal of Global History, 21(1), 22–40. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1740022825100296
Mottley, M. A. (2023, December 6). Not until then [Public lecture]. London School of Economics and Political Science, London, United Kingdom. https://www.lse.ac.uk/lse-player?id=313c55bb-c42d-4783-a687-f9d591fa4c40
The National Archives. (n.d.). 1833 abolition of slavery act and compensation claims. https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/explore-the-collection/explore-by-time-period/georgians/1833-abolition-of-slavery-act-and-compensation-claims/
Nunn, N. (2008). The long-run effects of Africa's slave trades. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 123(1), 139–176. https://doi.org/10.1162/qjec.2008.123.1.139
Porter, C., Méheut, C., Apuzzo, M., & Gebrekidan, S. (2022, May 20). The root of Haiti's misery: Reparations to enslavers. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/20/world/americas/haiti-history-colonized-france.html
Shepherd, V., & Hemmings, G. (2022). Introduction to reparation for secondary schools. University of the West Indies Press.
United Nations General Assembly. (2026, March 25). Declaration of the trafficking of enslaved Africans and racialized chattel enslavement of Africans as the gravest crime against humanity. https://docs.un.org/en/A/80/L.48
United Nations Office at Geneva. (2026, August 25). Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination closes one hundred and eighteenth session after adopting concluding observations on Finland, Honduras, India and Kuwait, and general recommendation on reparatory justice for colonialism, trafficking in enslaved Africans and racialised chattel slavery. https://www.ungeneva.org/en/news-media/meeting-summary/2026/08/committee-elimination-racial-discrimination-closes-one-hundred
Whatley, W. (2022). How the international slave trades underdeveloped Africa. Journal of Economic History, 82(2), 403–452. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-economic-history/article/how-the-international-slave-trades-underdeveloped-africa/FC95130D1559C153AC571F1A2CAE66AC
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