We can recognize that it was wrong for African slave-traders to round up their own kin and sell them into slavery, but does it follow that we should now demand that modern African states like Nigeria must atone for those historic crimes? Similarly, it was wrong for Arab pirates to raid the British Isles for centuries, seizing English, Cornish, and Irish people from their homes and selling them in North African slave markets, but does this mean modern North African states like Algeria and Tunisia should pay reparations to the UK?

As an ethical matter, the claim that people today should pay for historic crimes overlooks the basic moral principle that punishment for a crime can only be meted out upon the criminal himself, not upon his descendants. As David Gordon reminds us, “moral responsibility is individual rather than collective.”