The Divide: Global Inequality from Conquest to Free Markets

by Jason Hickel

How much did Western states gain from this enormous quantity of free labour? It is estimated that the United States alone benefited from a total of 222,505,049 hours of forced labour between 1619 and the abolition of slavery in 1865. Valued at the US minimum wage, with a modest rate of interest, that is worth $97 trillion today. And that’s just the United States. Right now, fourteen Caribbean nations – represented by the law firm Leigh Day – are in the process of suing Britain for slavery reparations. They have not disclosed how much they seek in damages, but they have pointed out that when Britain abolished slavery in 1834 it paid its slave owners compensation of £20 million for loss of property (paying no compensation to the slaves themselves), which would be the equivalent of $300 billion today. It is worth noting that this figure reflects only the price of the slaves, and tells us nothing of the total value they produced during their lifetimes, nor of the trauma they endured, nor of the hundreds of thousands of