Elon Musk used references to the Bible to defend the British Empire’s role in the slave trade in his latest wide-of-the-mark tweet.
The Tesla CEO provoked controversy on social media after coming into bat for the Empire, saying that, contrary to popular opinion, it was the “driving force” behind ending slavery.
He said: “Not many people these days know that the British Empire was the driving force behind ending the vast majority of global slavery.
“Slavery or de facto slavery was standard practice throughout the world from the dawn of civilization until a few hundred years ago.
“It is even discussed at length in the Bible, for example.”
Musk also shared posts from a separate social media account claiming the British Empire “did a lot of good”.
Britain’s involvement in the slave trade began in 1562, with the UK emerging as the world’s biggest slave-trading nation by the 1730s.
Many cities across the country continue to grapple with legacies centred around the transatlantic slave trade.
India, for example, went from being the world’s largest GDP to the world’s poorest country under British rule, with millions of people dying of starvation during that period.
In fact, by some standards, British colonialism is estimated to have killed 100 million Indians in 40 years, which is more than all famines in the Soviet Union, Maoist China and North Korea combined.
The slave trade, meanwhile, has been described as the greatest manmade human calamity of all time by Afua Hirsch.
Between 1662 and 1807 British and British colonial ships purchased an estimated 3,415,500 Africans. Of this number, 2,964,800 survived the ‘middle passage’ and were sold into slavery in the Americas.
Related: GB News says British Empire was ‘most progressive in history’