Not white. Penguin. See the pinned story…. And yes, I know the Portuguese were the featured villains here, but let’s not pretend they weren’t a synecdoche for ‘white Europeans’. The level of analysis through which race is discussed doesn’t differentiate between the Portuguese and the British, it’s always Black and white. Us and them. Africans and Europeans. To suddenly start pulling up nationalism as a defence is akin to saying ‘sorry, you don’t mean African slaves, you mean Mbundu, Bakongo, Fulani or Wolof.

The wider point here was that the British were already involved, but their involvement and attempts to close down trading were absent from the narrative. Why? Didn’t fit. For much the same reason the complicity of the King was also simplified to nothingness. What was required was a social justice cheer piece with a painfully simplistic premise. And given how rich and nuanced the history is, that’s a real shame.