Society
Revolutionary threads of slavery
Published 26 March 2007
The birth of Caribbean nationalism
As you read this column, take your mind back to 25 March 1807, the day the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act passed into British law and ended the slave trade - but not slavery in the Caribbean. On this 200th anniversary, thousands of white British citizens are visiting the West Indian islands to witness and celebrate the game of cricket, as the World Cup competition proceeds apace. These tourists need not travel far from the cricketing stadiums to see the terrain on which slavery was established and on which waged slavery still continues. The landcapes of the West Indies are still covered with acres upon acres of sugar-cane estates, where the workers perform identical tasks to those of 400 years ago.
They will witness West Indian women, their faces wizened by the sun, hands coarsened by the permanent grip on the machete, as they toil from sunrise to sundown. These are the direct descendants of those who were captured on the west coast of Africa four centuries ago, imprisoned on ships in the most brutal conditions ever seen in the history of mankind. Millions of our ancestors made that dreadful journey to the Caribbean islands to be set to work on plantations, there to produce a product that generated profits to finance the industrial revolution.
We now know for certain that Africans practiced slavery at home, but Europeans introduced a new dimension - ie, only blacks were to be enslaved and no white man, whatever his limitations, could ever be a slave. Our ancestors were deemed subhuman only because they were black. Racism formed the basis of Caribbean society and it persists to this day from Kingston to Brixton, from Bridgetown to Manchester.
The production of sugar cane and the pro cesses that were required to make sugar were carried out by millions of slaves working collectively. Some worked in the fields, others were specialists, such as pan boilers; some worked in the mill, with the cauldron and the still. Unquestionably, this was the first appearance of a modern working class in human history.
African civilisation had prepared us for this advanced form of production. Before we were brought to the Caribbean, the white slave owners tried Portuguese labour, Chinese, and the indigenous Indian population - and they all failed the tests of endurance and skill. And in this production process, now mastered by West Indians, the Caribbean people and Caribbean nationalism were formed and shaped.
An English resident of Barbados described what he saw in 1650: "A little before I came thence, there was such a combination amongst them, as the like was never seen there before. Their sufferings being grown to a great height, and their daily complainings to one another being spread throughout the island, resolved to break through it, or dye in the act; and so conspired with some others of their acquaintance, resolved to draw as many of the discontented into this plot, as possible as they could; and those of this perswasion, were the greatest numbers of Servants in the Island. So that a day was appointed to fall upon their Masters, and cut all their throats, and by that means, to make themselves [not] only freemen, but Masters of the Island."
And so Caribbean nationalism was born.
On the day before the plot was executed, one of its members betrayed his fellow slaves to the master. To this day, West Indian history has continued to produce societies in which the masses are for revolutionary and radical action, and individuals from within betray them.
Nevertheless, the record shows that revolutionary insurrections and revolts included the defeat of a Spanish army of some 50,000 soldiers, a British army of 60,000 soldiers and another 60,000 Frenchmen sent by Bonaparte.
Caribbean musicality has always been a fundamental part of the revolutionary movement. A French historian of the time wrote the chant of the revolt in Santo Domingo:
Eh! Eh! Bomba! Heu! Heu!
Canga, bafio té!
Canga, moune de é!
Canga, do ki la!
Canga, li!
We swear to destroy the whites and all they possess
Let us die rather than fail to keep this vow.
That thread, which began centuries ago with racial enslavement, reappears and persists today in the United Kingdom in Brixton and in the other inner cities throughout this country where Caribbeans live.
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