Bank of England owned 599 slaves in 1770s, new exhibition reveals

10 comments
  1. In the fucking 1770s, in the 1600s people were being slaughtered for being from the wrong village. Dinosaurs indiscriminately killed any prey they came across. Who fucking cares it’s ancient history and has no relevance to today.

  2. Seems like stating the obvious. Hardly a revelation that wealthy people back then owned slaves.

    The more interesting story is the lengths gone to to make sure slavery was actually abolished – any good exhibitions on that?

  3. I have to admit I’m surprised. If I had to guess, I’d have put the number in the thousands.

    I’m confident they gave out hundreds of loans that helped lead to new planation’s or expeditions at the very least.

    Still sounds an interesting exhibition. Its always important to know your countries history. Especially the bits you shouldn’t be proud of, that’s the only way we can be sure it won’t happen again.

  4. Doubt anyone on reddit has heard of the fallacy of presentism.

    These people weren’t rubbing their hands together evilly rejoicing at the fact they owned slaves. It was just normal back then. If you were rich, *you* would have owned a slave.

    People weren’t evil for owning slaves, people weren’t evil for opposing homosexuality, people weren’t evil for believing women shouldn’t vote. People weren’t evil for believing they were racially superior.

    People are sheep. They always were and always have been. Back then they were conditioned to believe it was OK to have slaves. Now you are all conditioned to believe it’s OK for children to have a sex change. In 100 years people will be conditioned to believe eating meat is evil and they will judge all of you as evil animal abusers.

    That’s why every time I see these ‘x person did y thing that’s no longer acceptable 300 years ago’ by self righteous pricks, I fucking cringe, because every single one of you would have thought that was acceptable had you been born and raised back then.

  5. Wealthy people owned slaves back in the 18th Century? Say it ain’t so.

    This really doesn’t feel like news to me. Seems obvious.

Leave a Reply