Tea at Trianon: Portugal and the Slave Trade

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Wednesday, May 5, 2021

Portugal and the Slave Trade

Some of our ancestors may have had slaves but our ancestors also abolished slavery. We need to focus on abolishing the slavery that exists today. From DW:

"Portugal has long swept the history of slaves from Africa under the carpet," said Evalina Dias, president of the Lisbon-based association of Afro-descendants, Djass. A native of Portugal with ancestors from Guinea-Bissau, she is now demanding that Portugal finally face up to its historical responsibilities and thoroughly reevaluate its role in the story.

"We know that the structural discrimination of African people today is also the result of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, which was largely introduced by the Portuguese starting in the 15th century," Dias told DW.

The Portuguese have always covered up this stain on its history, she said. In Portugal, it is always said that slavery was not an invention of the Portuguese or the Europeans and that there always were slaves, even before the 15th century. (Read more.)