السلام عليكم
Slaves at the root of the fortune that created Richard Dawkins' family estate. He has railed against the evils of religion, and lectured the world on the virtues of atheism.
"...Now Richard Dawkins, the secularist campaigner against "intolerance and suffering", must face an awkward revelation: he is descended from slave owners and his family estate was bought with a fortune partly created by forced labour.
One of his direct ancestors, Henry Dawkins, amassed such wealth that his family owned 1,013 slaves in Jamaica by the time of his death in 1744.
The Dawkins family estate, consisting of 400 acres near Chipping Norton, Oxfordshire, was bought at least in part with wealth amassed through sugar plantation and slave ownership.
Over Norton Park, inherited by Richard Dawkins's father, remains in the family, with the campaigner as a shareholder and director of the associated business.
[...]
The family's association with Jamaica began when William Dawkins, a direct ancestor of the former Oxford University professor, arrived on the island. He began relatively humbly, as an overseer, probably supervising slaves, before receiving 1,775 acres of land between 1669 and 1682.
His son Richard became a leading member of Jamaican society, serving as a colonel in the local militia.
[...]
One history records that when Richard died in 1701 he left "personal property valued at £6,659 in Jamaica currency, [including] 143 negroes 'young and old' valued at £2,784."
Richard's son Henry Dawkins (1698-1744) – another direct ancestor of the campaigner - married Elizabeth Pennant, thus forming an alliance with another one of Jamaica's most powerful planter families.
An inventory of his estate shortly after his death showed that he, his wife and children owned a total of 1,013 slaves valued at £40,736. By 1754 his three surviving sons owned 25,000 acres in Jamaica between them.
Henry's brother James bought Over Norton in 1726. After his death in 1766, the estate passed to his nephew Henry Dawkins (1728-1814), another direct ancestor, who also owned thousands of acres in Jamaica.
[...]
Three of that Henry's sons became MPs. The youngest, also called Henry, (1765-1852), was the campaigner's great-great-great grandfather.
In 1796 the oldest son James Dawkins (1760-1843) voted against Wilberforce's proposal to abolish the slave trade, helping to defeat it by just four votes.
In 1807 he was one of a small rump of die-hards opposing the provisions of Slave Trade Act, which abolished selling slaves in the British Empire.
[...]
The Anti-Slavery Reporter of June 1831 was so outraged that it listed 41 signatories including Dawkins, "By way of securing a lasting record of them. They are names which ought not to be forgotten." ..."
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/ukn...ly-estate.html
* View 'The Anti-Slavery Reporter ' at:
https://books.google.co.uk/books?red...awkins&f=false
* 'Companies House' record for 'Over Norton' showing Richard Dawkins as an Active Director :
https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/c...62071/officers
* Obituary for his father in which he happens to skip the slave-trade history of 'Over Norton':
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/o...s-2157459.html
السلام عليكم