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Uncomfortable silences: anti-slavery, colonialism and imperialism

The history of anti-slavery is replete with lessons, but those commonly cited by the new abolitionists are not the right ones.

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shutterstock_242290285.jpg

A 19th-century engraving of African captives yoked and walking to the coast for sale. Everett Historical/Shutterstock. All Rights Reserved.

Take up the White Man's burden,
Send forth the best ye breed
Go bind your sons to exile,
to serve your captives' need; To wait in heavy harness,
On fluttered folk and wild-
Your new-caught, sullen peoples, Half-devil and half-child.

—Rudyard Kipling, 1899