It Takes a Brit

It takes a Brit, perhaps, to give us an unvarnished view of the evils of slavery in the United States, known throughout the antebellum South as "the peculiar institution." (I am not counting the uproariously entertaining Django Unchained of Quentin Tarantino, which matched the levels of preposterousness of his previous film, Inglorious Basterds.)

There are very few heroes in British Director Steve McQueen's 12 Years a Slave, a fact-based account of the abduction of a free Negro, Solomon Northup, in Washington, D.C., and his forcible deportation to Louisiana in the 1840s. There is the first plantation owner, played by Benedict Cumberbatch, who helps the violin playing Solomon (in a beautifully nuanced performance by Chiwetel Ejiofor), and a liberal-minded Canadian, played by Brad Pitt, who turns to the law to achieve the release of the protagonist.

Otherwise, in this masterful (and long) film, the white oppressors, from the second plantation owner (Michael Fassbender) on down, display an unremitting cruelty, separating a mother from her children, flogging a teenage black girl, and hanging from a tree two black youths, apparent runaways, etc., etc.

We look back on this period in a sort of shocked wonder at how such a system—slavery—could have established itself in our country, except that it was a sign of the times and that others practiced it, including France, Britain, and the Arabs. But Britain and then France outlawed it well before the American Civil War.

In recent days, there has been a demand from a group of Caribbean nations for reparations from the former colonial powers in the region. Such a demand, in my view, is invalid in the case of the United States, where the "reparations" have been paid in the blood of Union soldiers.

Statements and views expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author and do not imply endorsement by Harvard University, the Harvard Kennedy School, or the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.