Tales from the Slave Master

In this clip from the BBC's Empire series, we are read excerpts from British slave owner Thomas Thistlewood's (1721-1786) diary, in which he recounts with pride the obscene and degrading tortures he inflicted on enslaved Africans.

Thistlewood, the second son of a tenant farmer from Tupholme, Lincolnshire, had "failed to establish himself as a farmer in his home district” and “had resolved to seek his fortune in the wider world." In February, 1750, he set out for Jamaica. He kept a very detailed diary of his life as a plantation owner and the cruelty he meted out.

Trevor Burnard’s book 'Mastery, Tyranny, and Desire: Thomas Thistlewood and His Slaves in the Anglo-Jamaican World' extensively examines Thistlewood's diary. He writes: "Thistlewood’s slaves were trapped in a dehumanising life of exhausting labour, debilitating disease, and demeaning social relationships; they were constantly tired, frequently frightened and subject to continual flux in their living and work arrangements."

In Britain today, Jamaicans, just like all Africans, are still looked down upon by some. Those known as the 'Windrush Generation,' who came to Britain as labourers to help rebuild the nation post-WW2, are still denied equal citizenship and have been wrongfully jailed or deported. Many Brits seem to be miseducated or uneducated about the savagery and brutality of slavery and why Africans, regardless of where they come from - on the continent or elsewhere - are owed restitution by Britain. The irony is that slave owners were compensated for the abolition of slavery, while those who were enslaved were not.

Thistlewood was just one among tens of thousand of British slave owners. Grim accounts such as his put so much in context.

Video credit: @BBC