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The discovery that loans for the payment of slave abolition compensation had not been repaid by British taxpayers until 2015 took many by surprise. But it is the financial contribution of British Afro-Caribbeans towards the emancipation of their own ancestors that is most significant, calling for a re-examination of abolition historiography. By using Jeremy Bentham and Edward Gibbon Wakefield as analytical constructs, each July 1832 to February 1833 Colonial Office abolition proposal can be analysed against the greatest good of the greatest number principle. The result involves re-conceptualising abolition as an exercise in administering distributive justice through maximising freedom within a community of enslaved, enslavers, and British taxpayers. Here, freedom is the product of policy choices over who would bear the cost of financing abolition. In addressing these issues, this essay is written as reparative history, drawing parallels between the exclusions of 1832/1833 and Afro-Caribbean historiographical diasporic exclusions within the British academy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This introduction seeks to perform two tasks: it provides a roadmap for readers yet to be initiated into the reparations dialogue and provides fresh insights for those already well versed in it. Reparations are a program of acknowledgment, redress, and closure for a grievous injustice. This edition deals with reparations for black Americans whose ancestors were enslaved in the United States for government policies that allowed centuries of chattel slavery and legal race discrimination. The articles in this double issue represent the most up-to-date rigorous social science, policy, and historical research on the topic. This introduction discusses the world history of reparations efforts and the history of movements for black reparations in the United States; compares various plans for black American reparations, including various monetary estimation approaches; and discusses who should pay and what form payments ought to take. It closes by looking toward the future of the black American reparations movement.

Reparations policies that seek to make amends for a harm incurred face exigent challenges. In this article we focus on what makes reparations successful and what policy components are necessary, if not sufficient, for success. To study the success of reparations policy design we employ a case study approach. Our analysis investigates the motivation, design, implementation, and impact of past policies to understand what has been successful or unsuccessful within each component of the policy in each historical case. Ultimately, our discussion identifies patterns in the creation and execution of reparations policy that offer important considerations for policies that would provide reparations to Black Americans.

The article explores the concept of reparative justice for historical injustices and addresses the philosophical problem known as the Nonidentity Objection. It proposes an alternative model called the Wrongful Interaction Model of Reparative Justice (WIM), which focuses on addressing the wrongful actions of the injustice. The text discusses the challenges and possibilities of reparative justice and introduces new problems that the proposed model may face. It also discusses the distinction between restitution and reparation and argues that even if restitution is impossible, reparation may still be owed. The article acknowledges the challenges of determining who owes reparations and characterizing the identities of the parties involved, but concludes that the concept of reparative justice should be preferred over alternative models. [Extracted from the article]

This study begins with an overview of illustrative scenarios that historically have resulted in imbalances of economic well‐being, growth and stability which demarcate the Global South and the Global North. The authors examine alternative approaches to reparations for those structural imbalances, from monetary transfers that are more likely to have demand‐side implications to capacity‐building approaches that are more likely to affect supply‐side conditions for the Global South. Targeted supply‐side strategies lean more towards rehabilitation rather than purely compensatory measures aimed at redress for historical injustices and exploitations faced by the Global South. Economic analysis underpins a discussion of these different reparations strategies. The authors argue that a dynamic approach to understanding the impact of reparations is essential. This calls for a broader strategy to be adopted, offering unconditional support in practical areas such as industrial policy, investment in manufacturing, capacity building in research and development, and initiatives for general infrastructure development. More importantly, these policies must be guided by the needs identified by the people of the nations in the Global South. Moreover, for any reparations endeavours to have enduring effects, they must be reinforced by the elimination of current external imbalances that exist within the frameworks of international economic relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I document and analyze all municipal, state, and county-level efforts for Black reparations in the United States. Most efforts resemble H.R. 40's exploratory commission model, possibly due to policy path dependency. Few geographies have allocated funding for committee recommendations, but some have allocated funds for committee activities. Only Evanston, Illinois, has allocated and distributed funds to qualifying residents. On average, cities with reparations efforts demonstrated mixed performance on metrics related to Black wealth, with insufficient evidence to suggest local Black-White disparities are more severe than the nation as a whole. Several proposals emphasize the Black-White racial wealth gap as emblematic of slavery-derived disparity, but no municipal or state proposal can rival the scale or potential of a federal program. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims to rethink the origins and discontinuities within the history of reparations for historical injustices. It does so by exploring the case of the 1654 reparations made by the Dutch East India Company (VOC) to the heirs of the English victims of the 1623 Amboyna trial. In particular, the article analyzes in what settings—and how—modes of remembering and representing past suffering merged with legal reasoning in concrete claim-making practices. It situates the reparations ordered by the binational arbitration committee established by the 1654 Westminster Peace Treaty within three principal contexts: early modern memory practices, a legal language of reparations, and peace treaty making and arbitration. Accordingly, the article uncovers the logics governing early modern historical reparations and reconsiders what this means for our understanding of the differences and similarities between modern and early modern reparations. It shows that reparations in the early modern period were concerned with the rehabilitation of the honor and status of the victims rather than with regret and atonement in the form of apologies. They functioned, second, as exceptions to imperatives of forgetting, not as materialization of gestures of atonement. Finally, as early modern reparations habitually entered the realm of international politics and diplomacy they became subject to political conflict. In contrast to modern historical reparations, however, they did not take the form of "reparations politics" aimed at the emancipation of historically disadvantaged groups. The article, accordingly, seeks to begin a much-needed dialogue between scholars of modern and early modern reparations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the "Slavery & the Bank" exhibition at the Bank of England Museum, which explores the institution's historical involvement in slavery. The exhibition highlights the connections between the Bank of England and slavery, including the personal fortunes made by bank officials through the slave trade and the bank's role in providing loans to businesses involved in slavery. The exhibition also acknowledges the challenges of accurately representing the lives of enslaved individuals due to the selective nature of historical archives. The article praises the exhibition for its critical approach and calls for reflection on current moral dilemmas in banking. It concludes by recommending a visit to the exhibition for those interested in the history of slavery and organizational memory. [Extracted from the article]

Reparations policies that seek to make amends for a harm incurred face exigent challenges. In this article we focus on what makes reparations successful and what policy components are necessary, if not sufficient, for success. To study the success of reparations policy design we employ a case study approach. Our analysis investigates the motivation, design, implementation, and impact of past policies to understand what has been successful or unsuccessful within each component of the policy in each historical case. Ultimately, our discussion identifies patterns in the creation and execution of reparations policy that offer important considerations for policies that would provide reparations to Black Americans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This introduction seeks to perform two tasks: it provides a roadmap for readers yet to be initiated into the reparations dialogue and provides fresh insights for those already well versed in it. Reparations are a program of acknowledgment, redress, and closure for a grievous injustice. This edition deals with reparations for black Americans whose ancestors were enslaved in the United States for government policies that allowed centuries of chattel slavery and legal race discrimination. The articles in this double issue represent the most up-to-date rigorous social science, policy, and historical research on the topic. This introduction discusses the world history of reparations efforts and the history of movements for black reparations in the United States; compares various plans for black American reparations, including various monetary estimation approaches; and discusses who should pay and what form payments ought to take. It closes by looking toward the future of the black American reparations movement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the issue of political reparations for reproductive abuses against Black women. It discusses the historical injustices and abuses that Black women have faced in reproductive health, including non-consensual surgeries and forced sterilizations. The author proposes specific political actions to address these issues, such as changing Medicaid sterilization policies and advocating for coverage of infertility treatment in all health insurance plans. The article also highlights the importance of recognizing racism and oppression in the prison system and calls for defunding of police and carceral systems. The text argues for financial reparations as a means to address the harm caused and promote healing, and emphasizes the responsibility of obstetrician-gynecologists to acknowledge their role in marginalizing Black women and work towards rectifying the harm. [Extracted from the article]

Through a particular document listing his losses during the Revolution, this article explores Benjamin Franklin's reaction to British depredations and seizures of goods from his house in Philadelphia and his wish for reparations expressed between the years of 1776–1784. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Jews of Turkey have been applying for citizenship restitution from Spain and Portugal through processes formalized in 2015. Using 29 interviews, I analyze applicant motivations and find that cultural connections play a minor role in applicant decisions. The citizenship application process did not lead to self-questioning of identity for these applicants, unlike Sephardic Jews in other contexts. The more important motivators were Jewish fears about the future of Turkey, the practical benefits of easy travel on a European Union passport, and the desire for global mobility, allowing individuals to chase prosperity wherever it may go. While Jewish fears are mostly in the background, the other two motivations were more pressing. I place these motivations in the context of changing conceptions of citizenship in Europe and the global inequality of citizenship, crystallized in a hierarchy of passports. I find that after acquiring Iberian citizenship, Jews from Turkey relate to their new citizenship solely in practical ways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When African-American history is done well, it allows us to see the places where inequality hides. Scholars in the areas of the history of capitalism, African-American history, and urban studies have popularized the language of historical phenomena such as white flight, redlining, and privatization, in the process of explaining the origins of contemporary challenges. A reasonably educated person understands that deindustrialization at mid-century led to job losses. Every May, pundits write essays about the failure to equalize schools as the nation memorializes the anniversary of the Brown v. Board of Education decision. Popular journalists Ta-Nehisi Coates and Nicole Hannah-Jones owe their careers to their study of historical work in order to leverage public-facing conversations from reparations for slavery to the politicization of the teaching of civil rights. Essentially, good history helps us search for the state practices and policies that soften the blow of inequality, assault human dignity, and normalize poverty. In his deeply researched and thoughtfully written book The Black Tax , Andrew Kahrl addresses another obscure mechanism that has historically worked to dispossess and disadvantage African Americans across regions and generations, and has ensnarled both landowners and tenants. Kahrl's book forces readers and scholars to think about the ways that a lack of federal authority and will to protect Black citizens allowed states and municipalities to assess, tax, and place liens on Black property—from vacant plots to farm land to family homes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to shared colonialist histories, current economic and political struggles, and challenges in charting inclusive futures, it is, in the opinion of the authors, essential for the people of the Caribbean and Africa to unite in their advocacy for reparations and justice. This article articulates what such an alliance might look like through a comprehensive analysis of documents between the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) and the African Union (AU) and by building upon Robin Kelley's critical Nine Theses on Decolonisation and CARICOM's current 10-Point Plan. In assessing the current state of collective reparatory movements, the authors have identified three gaps that require further research: the representation of the Indigenous Caribbean in theory but not in practice, the overarching emphasis on the state-to-state approach to reparations, and the lack of youth participation. Their proposed expansion of the Caribbean-Africa Knowledge Programme will, argue the authors, address these gaps and further the conversation on the importance and urgency of a trans-regional call for reparations by Caribbean and African citizens. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"After One Hundred Winters: In Search of Reconciliation on America's Stolen Lands" by Margaret D. Jacobs explores the question of how non-Indigenous persons can make amends for past violent landgrabbing, displacement, and family separation actions against Native Americans. The book emphasizes the importance of educating about the past, listening to indigenous voices, and becoming accountable in the process of reconciliation. It is divided into four parts, covering historical atrocities against Native Americans, reconciliation policies, reconciliation attempts throughout the twentieth century, and a guide for successful reconciliation. The author, a witness and participant in contemporary reconciliation efforts, provides a comprehensive and cross-national perspective on the topic. [Extracted from the article]

The past decade has brought global efforts by settler colonial states to provide healing and justice for past and ongoing harms against Indigenous communities. Many of these efforts have manifested in the creation of truth commissions, nonjudicial entities which seek to establish a reliable historical record of harm, promote reconciliation, and foster healing by providing harmed parties the opportunities to share their stories and--in some cases--to confront their perpetrators. To date, these commissions have been established by various settler colonial states, including Canada and Greenland. Most recently, however, Scandinavian countries have turned to truth commissions to provide redress for past harms against their Indigenous peoples. In fact, within the last few years, Norway, Finland, and Sweden have all created independent truth commissions to investigate their nations' respective systemic discrimination against the Sami people and provide forms of healing and pathways to reconciliation. This Article specifically examines the creation and operation to date of Sweden's Truth Commission on the Violations of the Sami people by the Swedish state ("Swedish Sami Truth Commission"). Relying on materials issued by the Swedish Sami Truth Commission as well as interviews conducted with representatives of the Swedish Sami Truth Commission, this Article analyzes the events that led to the creation of the Swedish Sami Truth Commission, its mandate and expected goals, and the type of work it intends to engage in to facilitate truth and healing among the Swedish Sami people. Currently, there remains legislation pending in both houses of US Congress for the creation of a truth and healing commission to address the use of Indian boarding schools in the United States, at which thousands of Native American children were removed from their families, forcibly assimilated into American culture, and often sexually, mentally, and physically abused. Utilizing diffusion theory, this Article seeks to draw lessons from the Swedish Sami Truth Commission that the United States may learn from in creating its own national truth commission to address past harms against Native Americans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The abolitionist movement seeks to fundamentally dismantle the prison industrial complex. Modern abolitionists recognize that mass incarceration of Black and Brown people is twenty-first century slavery. True abolition, they note, cannot be realized by merely tinkering with the carceral state. Instead, the complete elimination of modern-day badges and incidents of slavery must occur. The U.S. Supreme Court has held that § 2 of the Thirteenth Amendment grants the U.S. Congress the power to pass legislation to eradicate any “badges and incidents” of slavery. By passing federal antigang legislation and failing to outlaw similar state statutes, which are modern badges of slavery themselves, Congress abdicates its duty to enforce the Thirteenth Amendment. The Reconstruction Amendments’ legislative history suggest that in the absence of Congressional action, federal courts are the last resort for striking down state laws that perpetuate the institutions of slavery and white supremacy. Thus, this Article calls upon the United States Supreme Court to exercise its duty and join the abolitionist movement to target antigang statutes as but one institutional legacy of slavery that must be toppled. Part I of this Article engages Thirteenth Amendment scholars’ writings and adopts a prominent position that the intent of the Thirteenth Amendment, to eradicate all forms of slavery, is applicable to many modern-day instances of oppression. This Part adds to other abolitionist scholars’ efforts by demonstrating that Black Codes, Jim Crow-era vagrancy laws, and gang injunctions have evolved into the sophisticated antigang statutes of today, and they were initially intended to be— and still are—”badges” and “incidents” of slavery. Part II identifies the specific individuals who drafted, advocated for, and facilitated the passing and the enforcement of the first gang statutes in this country. Those individual drafters’ racist ideologies and objectives will be exposed by way of their writings, public statements, and campaigns then challenged to upend their justification for gang statutes. Part III gives some sense of the economic cost of gang prosecution, the human toll on gang members and the communities from which they come and how gang statute prosecutions violate the plain language of the U.S. Constitution. In addition to the economic cost of gang enforcement regimes—which are almost impossible to fully calculate—this Part highlights how gang prosecutions do not address the public safety concerns of largely Black and Brown communities. Part IV applies an abolitionist framework to gang statutes and explores solutions that not only make better use of economic resources and restore integrity to constitutional due process, but actively work towards an abolitionist horizon. This Article offers a proposal for the reallocation of funds towards antiracist structural change and a centering of community justice based in the power of the Thirteenth Amendment. Th e United States was founded on genocide and white supremacy, but the Reconstruction Amendments presented an opportunity for the country to start again. By revisiting the legislative history of the Th irteenth Amendment, the abolitionist intent behind it, and the way in which white supremacists have thwarted such intentions, this Article argues that the present social climate is ripe for redressing Th irteenth Amendment jurisprudence, beginning with the total eradication of antigang statutes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores two museum exhibits in Frankfurt—Gustave Courbet's painting at the Städel Museum and Cameron Rowland's "Amt 45 i" at the Museum für Moderne Kunst (MMK)—and discusses the complex historical connections between art, finance, and slavery. It highlights how the Städel Museum's focus on Courbet's aesthetic mastery neglects the artist's later radical political actions during the Paris Commune, a social movement that demanded reform of the economy. Meanwhile, Rowland's exhibition at MMK delves into Germany's historical involvement in the Atlantic slave trade, using documentary evidence and conceptual works to reveal the financial interconnections and material culture of slavery. The article critiques German scholarship for potentially perpetuating a form of nationalism and emphasizes the importance of acknowledging and addressing historical wrongs beyond mere recognition. Rowland's artworks, particularly the conceptual piece "Bankrott," challenge the idea of reparations by creating a debt contract that symbolizes the enduring social debt of slavery within systemic structures, offering tools to transform historical understanding and effect change in the present.

Haiti's claim for restitution of the debt coerced by France in exchange for Haiti's 1804 independence has unique legal advantages that can open the door to broader reparations for the descendants of all people harmed by slavery. But in order to assert the claim, Haiti first needs help reclaiming its democracy from a corrupt, repressive regime propped up by the powerful countries that prospered through slavery and overthrew the Haitian President who dared to assert his country's legal claim. This article explores Haiti's Independence Debt, and the fight for restitution of it, in the context of two centuries of continued struggle between Haitians asserting their independence and countries enriched by slavery trying to limit the power of Haiti's example. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"Decolonial Ecology: Thinking From the Caribbean World" by Malcom Ferdinand is a thought-provoking book that explores the intersection of systemic racism and ecological destruction. The author argues that these crises are rooted in colonization, imperialism, and slavery, and proposes a "decolonial ecology" that challenges dominant narratives. Ferdinand centers the Caribbean as a scene of ecological thinking and reframes understandings of ecology and colonialism. The book critiques the global environmental movement for perpetuating systems of domination and highlights the resistance and wisdom of the Maroon, who refused enslavement and offered alternative ways of inhabiting the Earth. The book concludes with proposals for new alliances and reparations for past injustices. Overall, "Decolonial Ecology" offers important insights into the connections between environmental degradation, racism, and capitalism. [Extracted from the article]

Slavery existed in pre-modern societies throughout the world. While enslaving other peoples in most civilizations was legal, only Western civilization developed a moral revulsion against it. Therefore, the United States dialogue about slavery and reparations should focus on recognizing the 4000 years of slavery that ended through the efforts of abolitionists and their allies. The American abolitionist movement was fueled by a diverse group of individuals, including Quaker abolitionists, women's rights activists, and influential figures like Olaudah Equiano, Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth, and Martin Delany. The moral and political philosophies of Kant, Mill, Nietzsche, and Hegel also influenced the abolitionist movement with ideas about the inherent worth and dignity of human beings, individual liberty, and freedom, shaping the abolitionist movement's vision of a future without slavery. This led to a Civil War which was the catalyst for ratifying a U.S. Constitutional Amendment in 1865 that eliminated slavery nationwide. In 2019, discussions resurfaced about reparations for slavery, raising questions about justice, individual responsibility, and the potential impact on social cohesion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although struggles for reparations for slavery and its legacies date back to the earliest period of US politics, they have received relatively little attention from political scientists. Focusing on reparations claims, I argue, can enhance the study of Black social movements and political thought. The recent resurgence of demands for redress for racial injustice, both in the United States and internationally, and contemporary divisions over the politics of memory suggest why reparations are an important indicator of the prospects for multiracial democracy. Because the language of reparations has been used to advance a range of political ends, I conclude by considering some of the dilemmas that remain unresolved in the literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the African dimension of the global movement for reparations and gives particular attention to the engagement of Chief M.K.O. Abiola (1937-1998). A successful Nigerian businessman, and a neglected African figure of Pan Africanism in the late 20thcentury, Abiola defended the idea that reparations for slavery and colonialism were due to Africa and its Diaspora. In his talks in the United States between 1987 and 1990, he theorized a relation of causality between Atlantic slavery and the social and economic condition of the continent and called for solidarity between African Americans and Africans. Furthermore, Chief Abiola contributed to institutionalize reparations and to place them on the international diplomatic agenda through the organization and funding of two major high-level conferences on reparations, in Lagos in 1990 and in Abuja in 1993. He also chaired the Group of Eminent Persons (GEP) founded by the Organization of African Unity (OAU) in 1992. Chief Abiola won the June 1993 presidential elections in Nigeria, which were cancelled, and was jailed following the coup d'état by General Sani Abacha, until his death in 1998. Africa's promise, namely the political commitment to work with the Diaspora towards reparations, was broken. This article is based on archival and printed sources and sheds light on the political and ideological issues at stake in reparations within the changing context of the early 1990s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Professor Janna Thompson, FASSA, FAHA died in Melbourne on 24 June 2022. Janna Thompson is best known internationally for her contributions to social and political philosophy, with important books on intergenerational justice ([8]), international justice ([1]), and reparations for historic injustice ([4], [11]). ([8], 13) Public Philosophy Alongside her more academic writing, Thompson's commitment to public philosophy led her to write many articles and reviews that brought philosophical considerations into wider public debates and discussions. First Nations peoples are nations, members of political societies, and those acting as representatives of imperial states were all acting on behalf of nations. [Extracted from the article]

The article talks about the reparation issues related to the Tulsa Race Massacre that happened on the night of May 31-June 1, 1921. Topics include a reparation lawsuit filed by the living survivors of the massacre alleging that the massacre and its aftermath are a public nuisance that continues to impact the Black communities of Greenwood and North Tulsa, Oklahoma, a brief history of the massacre, how to love Blackness through reparations, and who are eligible for the reparations.

The article presents a speech given by Professor Christopher L. Mathis at the University of Colorado Law School's 30th Annual Ira C. Rothgerber Jr. Conference. Topics discussed include the connection of higher education to slavery, the harm inflicted on the Black people by the higher education industry, the passage of laws by four states to offer reparations for their states' or state universities' involvement in Black enslavement or harm, and an explanation on the messiness of reparations.

The article focuses on the historical context and experience of the boarding schools and their impact on the Native American survivors, communities, and descendants in the U.S. Topics include the international and domestic legal landscape for reparation; Department of the Interior's current investigation and the steps advocates should take to get the best reparations result; and sovereignty of Native Americans.