EMANCIPATION DAY I greet you all on this great Emancipation Day, the most historically significant day in the lives of African people in the Americas. The horrors of the Atlantic crossing are graphically detailed in the book written by Olaudah Equiano, a Nigerian born slave who managed to secure his freedom and ended up in America and England. But I thought Id share with you this extract from my soon-to-be-published book WESTMINSTERS JEWEL, to give you an idea of the experience of slavery in the Caribbean. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The ordeal of the Atlantic crossing was but the beginning of travail for the kidnapped Africans. Their first stop was Barbados, then the clearing house for the trade in African labour in the Caribbean and the Americas. From here, many – like Equiano – were bought in auction houses and trans-shipped to other Caribbean islands and North America to begin new lives as unpaid labourers in harsh and brutal conditions. In this new dispensation they would be stripped of their humanity and treated more like property. With a legislature in place since 1639, it was to be expected that the law would become a buttress for the system of slavery, and that is exactly what happened. The earliest of a series of slave laws was passed in 1661. The Barbados Slave Code, as it was called, created the legal basis for the practice of slavery. It was in this code that the enslaved Africans were first defined as chattel or property. In its introduction the Code said its purpose was to protect them (the enslaved) as we do mens other goods and Chattel. The Code was a particularly inhuman piece of legislation that permitted the enslaving planters almost free reign to brutalise their slaves. It was a time in human society distinguished by a general propensity for brutality; but historical accounts of the treatment of enslaved African people in the Caribbean are especially gruesome, far more so than the treatment of slaves in previous dispensations. Quite apart from the merciless beatings, a slave could have his nostril slit, his limb or ear severed or even be burnt alive! It was the grave misfortune of Scotsman, James Ramsay, working on sugar plantations in the island of St Kitts, to witness this savage assault on enslaved people. Ramsay, quit his job as Ship’s Surgeon with the British Navy in September 1762 to take up holy orders. Following his ordination he elected to work with the enslaved people of St. Kitts. So moved he was by the cruelty meted out to the enslaved that he recounted it in a book called Essay on the Treatment and Conversion of African Slaves in the British Sugar Colonies (1784). The ordinary punishments of slaves, for the common crimes of neglect, absence from work, eating the sugar cane, theft, are cart whipping, beating with a stick – sometimes to the breaking of bones – the chain, an iron crook about the neck... a ring about the ankle, and confinement in the dungeon. There have been instances of slitting of ears, breaking of limbs, so as to make amputation necessary, beating out of eyes, and castration...” The Barbados code would turn out to be a model for similar legislation in Antigua, Jamaica and the American colony of Carolina. The 1661 law was replaced in 1688 by a new code. It was the view of the governing elite that stronger measures were required to deal with what was described as the “barbarous, wild and savage nature” of the enslaved Africans. Clearly, European arrogance of the day didn’t allow for any description of ‘savage’ to be applied to the inhuman treatment of the enslaved. The 1688 slave code criminalized a whole set of activities in which free people engage. It took away the right to own property, marry, attend dances and funerals without permission – it even banned the possession and beating of drums and other loud instruments. These instruments were identified as the means by which the enslaved gave “signal and notice to one another of their wicked plans and purposes.” One activity of the enslaved which proved to be the bane of the planters was itinerant vending. Contrary to the view of many, the enslaved were not unenterprising labourers whose lives were limited to plantation work; from the latter part of the 17th. Century some of them were engaged in a robust trade in food crops, fruits and domestic animals. The ruling elite was concerned about this from two perspectives: they suspected that the commodities being traded were being stolen from the plantations and there were complaints from white, small-scale commodity retailers about competition from the enslaved hucksters. And so throughout the course of the 17th. and 18th. Century the ruling elite found themselves resorting to repressive regulations to curtail the commercial enterprise of the black population. One piece of legislation passed in 1708 not only sought to curtail trading by the enslaved, but the involvement of planters and other whites in the trade. It recognised that some whites “ do daily send their negroes and other slaves to the several towns in this island to sell and dispose of all sorts of quick stock, corn, fruit and pulse and other things....” Another major piece of legislation was passed in 1733 stating emphatically: “It shall not be lawful for any Negro or other slave to plant to his use or any use other than that of his master, any cotton or ginger whatsoever, and that if any Negro shall be found with any such or exposing the same for sale, such cotton and ginger shall be deemed as stolen goods.” In 1779 yet another Act of Parliament prohibited “goods, wares and merchandises and other things from being carried from house to house or about the roads and streets in this island, to be sold or bartered or disposed of….” But five years later in 1784 the Barbados Mercury newspaper was reporting that the number of Vendors on in Bridgetown was continuing to rise. And in apparent concession that the ‘problem’ of black commerce had become overwhelming, the Judiciary advised the government to drop its opposition to slave trading and focus instead on organization. The government accepted the Court’s advice. It legalized public vending by slaves but restricted it to the Shambles, what we now know as Cheapside. Clearly, the enslaved people of Barbados were not merely hewers of wood and drawers of water; they had the capacity for industry and commerce, which, in spite of their best efforts, the authorities could not eradicate. It is impossible to resist drawing parallels between the attitude of the authorities to huckstering by the black population in pre-Emancipation Barbados and that of the current political and law enforcement authorities to street vending today. The similarities are striking. In each instance, the political elite had a negative view of the commercial enterprise of an under-class group of vendors and tried repeatedly – without success – to control, if not eradicate it. The one difference – in all its irony - is the racial make-up of the political directorate.
Posted on: Fri, 01 Aug 2014 13:34:57 +0000
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