Reparations For Slavery In International Law

"The debate over reparations for transatlantic enslavement is not new. The movement for redress has a pedigree predating legal emancipation to the years of enslavement. It finds voice at the grassroots and filters up. It speaks through Belinda's 1783 petition to the Massachusetts legislature for an annual pension from the estate of her ex-captor. It underlies the thousands of signatures penned by previously enslaved persons on petitions demanding pensions for their years of unfree labour. It is written in André Rebouças' 1875 Democracia Rural Brazileira and in Brazil's 1884 Dantas Bill (No 48) calling for the granting of land to freed populations. It suffuses the continuing history of the transatlantic system of chattel enslavement from its inception. It is a persistent struggle championed by the subaltern against mainstream denials"--