Answering Warmington’s question

THE EDITOR, Madam:

Recently, Everald Warmington, in his usual provocative way, asked a question that made many people uncomfortable: If Africans sold other Africans into slavery, why does Jamaica continue to pursue Britain for reparations?

Fine. Let us talk about the sellers.

We should begin by conceding what is historically undeniable: Africans participated in the transatlantic slave trade. African rulers, merchants, and intermediaries captured, traded, and profited from the sale of other Africans. It is an uncomfortable fact, but we do our history no favours by sanitising it.

But acknowledging a fact is different from accepting the conclusion drawn from it.

Who, exactly, were these “Africans”?

Africa was never a single country or political community. During the slave trade, the continent contained numerous kingdoms, states, and societies. Some participated in the trade, some suffered from it, and some experienced both realities over time. Saying “Africans sold Africans” explains about as much as saying “Europeans enslaved Africans”.

That is where Warmington’s question becomes more interesting.

If Jamaica should pursue the sellers, whom should it approach today? Ghana? Nigeria? Benin? Descendants of specific rulers? Modern governments whose borders did not exist when these transactions occurred?

More importantly, why must responsibility be either/or?

A seller’s guilt does not create a buyer’s innocence. The transatlantic slave trade became a vast economic system because African participation intersected with European demand, capital, shipping, plantation economies, and colonial law. Britain did not merely encounter slavery; British institutions helped construct, regulate, and profit from the system that brought enslaved Africans to colonies such as Jamaica.

So Warmington has raised a question worth answering. But taking it seriously does not weaken the case for historical inquiry. It deepens it.

Perhaps Jamaica’s reparations debate needs fewer convenient histories.

That applies to both sides.

And Warmington’s intervention leaves another lingering question: If Jamaica is pursuing reparations, how well does Parliament understand the case being made in our name?

DE’MARLEY WILLIAMS