Between Blood and Gold

Download or read book Between Blood and Gold written by Frédérique Beauvois and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2016-12-01 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Today, a century and a half after the abolition of slavery across most of the Americas, the idea of monetary reparations for former slaves and their descendants continues to be a controversial one. Lost among these debates, however, is the fact that such payments were widespread in the nineteenth century—except the “victims” were not slaves, but the slaveholders deprived of their labor. This landmark comparative study analyzes the debates over compensation within France and Great Britain. It lays out in unprecedented detail the philosophical, legal-political, and economic factors at play, establishing a powerful new model for understanding the aftermath of slavery in the Americas.