How Switzerland participated in and benefited from slavery – rts.ch | How Switzerland participated in and profited from slavery
https://www.rts.ch/info/suisse/2024/article/comment-la-suisse-a-participe-et-profite-de-l-esclavage-28527727.html
Posted by scarletwellyboots
2 Comments
Issues like this tend to lead to heated conversation, so I’d like to ask everyone to keep it civil in the comments, please.
I was particularly surprised – though I maybe I shouldn’t have been – to read the part where in the 1800s, the Swiss govt knew that Swiss people in Brazil held slaves, and not only saw no issue with it, but instead considered that it would be the greater wrong to deprive those Swiss slave owners of their “legitimately acquired” property (paraphrasing).
yeah, in the past we were like everybody else and the sole reason we didn’t have more slaves or colonies is because we’re small, not because we didn’t want to.
Having said that, everybody else prolly was also like everybody else and either had colonies and slaves or didn’t, not because they didn’t want to, but because they couldn’t.
It was of course terrible. We’re humans after all.
Reparations? Where do we draw the line for these? I mean, the Roman Empire enslaved most of France. The Barbaresks enslaved a million europeans and I still want the Staatsschatz back that Napoleon stole from Berne.