Official files on slavery have revealed that thousands of modern-day Brits are related to owners who received compensation when the evil trade was abolished.
Prime Minister David Cameron and his wife Samantha as well as actors Benedict Cumberbatch and Ben Affleck have all been revealed as having ancestors linked to the slave trade.
And now after a five-year project by University College London, a database has been compiled showing the names of the 46,000 Britons who owned slaves, mainly in the West Indies, when slavery was abolished in 1833.
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Official files on slavery have revealed that thousands of modern-day Brits are related to owners who received compensation when the evil trade was abolished
The records from the Slave Compensation Commission, show that 800,000 Africans were freed after being kept as legal property of British slave owners with many working on sugar plantations in the Caribbean.
When slavery was abolished, the commission was set up and paid out £20million in compensation to the UK's 46,000 owners.
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