Slavery was not legal in the UK itself but was part of the trade permitted in the empire. That’s what was abolished in 1833. It’s not quite correct to say the abolition was “painless” - the slave traders didn’t like it, the French didn’t like it, and the Americans were also unconvinced. But for most British people it was like someone flipped a switch and they all suddenly thought “Slaves? What the hell were we thinking?”
None of this, of course, means Britain was a true, modern democracy back then - it clearly was not. But it seems unconvincing to to argue that, in 1776 (or 1783, pick a date) the UK was not a democracy because only rich people could vote, but the USA was a democracy because only white people could vote.
OK. But Pjen’s point about “bloodlessly” simply moves the point to… well, you guys had your civil war over something else. There was plenty of blood spilled in England and GB over the years, not to mention the whole Northern Ireland “troubles”.
I really don’t get this game of one-upmanship. Both countries had bad times and great achievements.
I think the issue relates back to the thread title - “The Oldest Constitutional Democracy”. Now I’m gonna let better people than me argue about “constitutional”; what I and others have been saying is focused on “democracy”.
I agree, both countries had bad times and great achievements. But neither, really, was democratic in any meaningful way. And the claim usually heard is that the UK was not democratic because only wealthy people could vote. When we say “Eh, slavery?” the response is normally “Ah, that doesn’t count.”
In modern terms, I don’t count a country as democratic until it has universal suffrage. Which, I believe, makes New Zealand the world’s oldest democracy. Corrections to my history knowledge always (and gratefully) accepted.
In the USA at any rate, a used car salesman will exaggerate and omit things to put the car he is trying to sell you into the best light.
Slavery was illegal in the British Isles, but not in the West Indies plantations. So Britains (Britons?) (sp) could own slaves in the West Indies and be just as “guilty” of slavery as plantations owners in the United States, or citizens of Delaware, Kentucky and Maryland. There were laws in the USA about how one could treat slaves. I have not researched whether slaves in the West Indies were protected by laws or not.
No one has universal suffrage. Criminals are disenfranchised. And don’t forget the children. No one lets them vote. Voting rights have always been qualified and adult nonfelon suffrage is ultimately no less arbitrary than white manhood suffrage. (Though far preferable by our standards to be sure.)
For that matter no country lets all its residents, including legal residents vote. Moreover, not all countries have comparable citizenship requirements. For example many European countries make it difficult for those born in their countries to become citizens if their parents weren’t citizens.
Nor are they alone. Many if the Gulf states have laws requiring a person be descended from someone who was a resident from decades ago(in the case of Kuwait IIRC it was 1925) to prevent the descendants of Palestinians fleeing Israel or the children of guest workers becoming citizens.
Building on what 2sense and Ibn Warraq have said, I think the problem with this debate is that we have assumed that democracy is an on/off switch, and we’re debating who switched it on first. Perhaps it would be more helpful to see it as a sliding scale and countries simply became more democratic and less aristocratic/authoritarian as time went by. I know this would certainly be true of Britain, and I would wager of the US as well.
So they have both gradually become more democratic in different ways at different times, but attained ‘modern’ democracy - full adult, non-felon suffrage, as 2sense describes it - roughly simultaneously.
We are talking, though, about whether each country was democratic, not whether each country was guilty of atrocities. In point of fact, slavery in the West Indies was universally considered to be worse than slavery in the US, as in harsher.
The fact that English people in the West Indies could own slaves has little bearing on whether, at that moment, England itself was democratic. Those people who were owned as slaves in the West Indies were not potential citizens and voters, even when they were (eventially) freed, because they did not live in England. The West Indies were colonies, not part of the UK itself. The freed slaves became citizens and voters in places like Jamaca.
In contrast, in the US, people were owned as slaves who could, and did, become citizens and voters (eventually!) when freed, in the states where they happened to live.
In short, slavery was an atrocity burdening the concience of both the UK and the US, but only in the US was it a barrier to democracy because only in the US were the slaves potential voters.
I specified British possessions, but you are incorrect here. Slavery of Africans was legal in Britain until Somersett’s Case in 1772. See Butts v. Peny, for example (3 Keb 785). Even then, it’s worth noting that Lord Mansfield didn’t say slavery was not legal. He decided that the presumption should be that it was not, because Parliament had not affirmatively acted to allow it.
It was more complicated than that. There was a “Sugar Interest” in Parliament. The West Indian Grandees bought up some “rotten boroughs” by bribing the handful of voters living there into choosing their candidates. Thus the economic power from West Indian slaves translated into representation in Parliament to serve the interests of their masters.
Considering the underlying quote that is the subject of this thread, talking in modern terms seems rather pointless. In modern terms, Athens was not a democracy, but it would be silly to say that Athens was not the world’s first democracy (assuming it was; I’m sure recent research has unearthed some city-state somewhere with a representative legislature).
Doesn’t change the analysis any - lobbying and outright bribery by wealthy interest groups is endemic to democratic systems (it is not unknown today ). It doesn’t matter, for purposes of determining how democratic the system is, what the source of that wealth is. Parliamentary Reform, as in cleaning up the “rotten boroughs”, is a process totally independent of the slavery question.
As I’ve said a few times now, I was dealing with the situation regarding the USA vs the UK at or around the time of the Revolution. I guess it was a sideline to the main discussion, but when talking about democracies, the US and the UK do come up quite often - at least on a board mainly populated with Anglophones.
). It doesn’t matter, for purposes of determining how democratic the system is, what the source of that wealth is. Parliamentary Reform, as in cleaning up the “rotten boroughs”, is a process totally independent of the slavery question.