Slavery, Memory and Meanings: The Caribbean and the Bicentennial of the Passing of the British Abolition of the Trans Atlantic Trade in Africans || Slavery, Shame and Pride: Debates

Slavery, Shame and Pride: Debates over the Marking of the Bicentennial of the Abolition ofthe British Trans-Atlantic Trade in Africans in 2007Author(s): VERENE A. SHEPHERDSource: Caribbean Quarterly, Vol. 56, No. 1/2, Slavery, Memory and Meanings: The Caribbeanand the Bicentennial of the Passing of the British Abolition of the Trans Atlantic Trade inAfricans (March-June, 2010), pp. 1-21Published by: University of the West Indies and Caribbean QuarterlyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40654951 .

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Slavery , Shame and Pride: Debates over the Marking of the Bicentennial of the Abolition of the British Trans-Atlantic Trade in Africans in

2007.1

VERENE A. SHEPHERD

This article focuses on the topic 'Slavery, Shame & Pride: Debates over the Commemoration of the Bicentenary of the Abolition of the British trans-Atlantic Trade in Africans' in 2007 as a way of intervening in the public debates over the relevance of the bicentennial to post-colonial societies in the Caribbean; and as a

way of understanding the longer-term meaning and legacy of abolition in the 21st

century. My choice of subject matter has not only been influenced by the controversies that emerged in the Caribbean and elsewhere during the bicentennial, but also by Elsa Go veia' s view that "Our history is not dead

knowledge. Its significance for us is vital and immediate";2 and by the need to shift the subject of slavery from text to public space.

By way of theoretical context, I would say that my project could be located within what David Scott calls the "Foucauldian exercise of writing histories of the present" - an exercise that involves engaging with "the hegemonic persistence into the postcolonial present of aspects of colonialist discourse and practice."3 This is by no means new. As Scott reminds us, "reading and writing after Michel Foucault, it is scarcely a controversial matter to assert that the investigation of the past ought to be connected to questions derived from the present. This after all is the now familiar idea of a history of the present".4

In the Caribbean, many scholars, most of them historians, from Trinidad and Tobago in the south to the Bahamas in the north were called upon in 2007 to lead National Bicentenary Committees and to involve themselves in what emerged as an on-going contemporary intellectual reflection on African enslavement and its legacies. Indeed, it was the Caribbean which influenced the United Nations to mark the bicentennial. As Tony Best reported:

The drive to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the first parliamentary step to abolish slavery in the British Empire began when Caribbean nations, strongly backed by African states encouraged the United Nations (UN) General Assembly last



2

November[2006] to commemorate the bicentenary of the passage of legislation in Britain calling for an end to the transatlantic slave trade.5

Dr Chris Hackett, Barbados' Ambassador, concurred, stating: "This is an initiative that was started by the Caribbean and we were able to secure the strong support of African member-states to get it through the UN." 6 At the March 26, 2007 commemorative event at the UN, speakers included Dr Denzil Douglas, Prime Minister of St Kitts-Nevis (who addressed the General Assembly on behalf of CARICOM), and the late Professor Rex Nettleford, a former Vice Chancellor of the University of the West Indies, and a member of the JNBC (who delivered a

keynote address before the Assembly).

But the task, with which Caribbean historians/leaders of bicentennial Committees were charged - that of showing the inside of slavery to the outside in the contemporary age when many are sceptical about history's relevance to the

present, was not an easy one. For one, few Bicentennial Committees were funded

adequately, leaving Committee Members to become fund-raisers. This was

particularly difficult because the region was then staging World Cup Cricket and

many private sector companies which might normally have contributed to cultural

initiatives, had already committed to the budget for the Cricket World Cup. The Jamaica National Bicentenary Committee was particularly financially challenged, with no direct grant from Central Government, leading former Prime Minister Edward Seaga to ask "If 14 days of cricket is worth the expenditure of US$1 00M

[or 650 times the money available to the Jamaica National Bicentenary Committee], how much more should be invested in reversing the legacy of slavery from ignorance to knowledge. . .?"7 In the meantime, of course, in an ironic twist of history, about £20 million pounds (the sum paid to the enslavers for their loss of

'property' in 1834), was made available for bicentenary activities in the United

Kingdom, to ensure that the narrative of abolition continued to perpetuate the idea that British Parliamentarians and humanitarians "set all free' in a flurry of

"Amazing Grace".

The task of Bicentennial Committees was also made challenging because, rather than being embraced as a celebratory event in the history of the trans-Atlantic World, the bicentennial was mostly mired in controversy - in so far as any attention was paid to it at all in a region that was (at least at first) caught up in the euphoria and possibilities of World Cup Cricket; or oblivious to the meaning of 1807, grappling instead with so-called 'real developmental issues'.



3

So, why were some African and African Diaspora peoples opposed to the bicentennial commemoration rather than supportive of a celebration of what many others considered to be a momentous, historic anniversary? Why was there so much controversy surrounding this bicentennial? Using Jamaica as the main example, this article seeks to provide a synopsis of the debates in the Caribbean over the bicentennial and the main bases of the internal and external controversies that surrounded it. Of course, based on research by Bridget Brereton, Marcia Burrowes, Veronica Gregg, Barry Higman and others, commemorative events in the Caribbean have always been controversial, especially when associated with the anniversaries of conquest, abolition and emancipation; and for a long time, they were mainly 'unofficial' 'folk' celebrations. Bridget Brereton tells us that because the anniversaries of emancipation were marked mainly by working class people of African descent, the celebrations were "frowned on by the elite and clergy since they almost always incorporated African or Afro-Creole elements,"8 in an environment in which there were efforts by missionaries and the state to eradicate them.

In 1888, a contributor to the Jamaica Daily Gleaner, remarked:

"[Tjhere is a strong feeling in the West Indies generally that the celebrations [of emancipation] are to be deprecated. It is only common sense to decide that no greater obstacle could be placed in the way of the real progress of the negro than the constant reminder of his condition in the time of slavery. The true friends of the African would not encourage such reminiscences. They should look forward and not backward." 9

As Marcia Burrowes shows, this attitude was not unique to people in Jamaica. Despite the views of individuals like Theophilous M. Stuart and the proprietor of the Times, J.M. Wilkinson (who seemed to spearhead the Jubilee movement), that the 50th anniversary of emancipation was worthy of 'loud and lively' celebration; despite petitions to the Governor by 371 signatories; despite the knowledge that other Caribbean territories including Trinidad, Guyana (where a public holiday was declared by the Governor), and Dominica, were making plans for the 'Jubilee', there was no public [state-led] celebrations in Barbados in 1888 by 'those in authority', leading the editor of The Barbados Globe to comment: "Yesterday was the jubilee day of Emancipation from Slavery. There was no public celebration of the event on this island, owing to indifference of those most interested in it, which is of course influenced by those in authority. . . ."10 It was left to individuals and groups to stage 'unofficial' celebrations despite the



4

'indifference' and the views of those like of the plantocratic Agricu Itural Reporter that:

A very feeble effort is being made to have a celebration of the Jubilee of Emancipation. . . For our part, we fail to see either rhyme or reason in the movement, as by far the greater proportion of the older inhabitants of the island were but children at the time of

emancipation, whilst the large majority of the people of today were at the time unborn. But the most noteworthy part of the movement is that, none of the leading men, whom it may have been supposed would feel deeply interested in the movement, have in any way countenanced it.11

The Editor of the Jamaica Daily Gleaner wrote a more hopeful piece, a reflection that despite some opposing voices in Jamaica, the Jubilee did not go unmarked:

...So, throughout the British Colonies to-day, we celebrate the

jubilee anniversary of that grand act of National Humanity and Justice, the setting free of the hundreds of thousands of human

beings who up to the year 1838 had been considered but as beasts of burden, condemned even by the Almighty himself to eternal servitude.

Throughout the Island of Jamaica the anniversary will be kept as a

period of general rejoicing and will be celebrated by religious services of thanksgiving by all denominations of Christians, and as the ideas of men have so changed with regard to slavery within the last fifty years, so may we hope that many wrongs under which the human race suffers through ignorance, prejudice and

misunderstanding, may finally be swept away, as slavery was, by the development of knowledge, and the spread of the true

principles of morality, truth and virtue.12

The spokesman for the Jubilee Committee in British Guiana urged: "Let the

people, let us, rejoice at the Jubilee of Emancipation, disregarding the narrow views of individuals who may be ashamed to identify themselves with the Great African family, and therefore wish to ignore this... great historical fact".13 Such

differing views on celebrating anniversaries associated with conquest,



5

colonization, slavery and emancipation would resurface again and again. In a letter to the Editor of the Gleaner in 1934, one contributor wrote:

There is [a] matter worth discussing just now, namely the celebration of the Centenary of Emancipation. In my humble

opinion, it is a great mistake to do so. The sooner slavery is

forgotten the better. It is a matter that every right thinking white man is ashamed of, and I am sure that no black man desires to be reminded of it. I prophesy that the meetings are going to fall flat.

Nobody wants them.14

Much later, among the more testy issues during the Columbus

Quincentenary, appeared to have been former Prime Minister Edward Seaga's suggestion that the King and Queen of Spain be invited to pay an official visit to Jamaica and the proposal from the Bahamas National Trust and Historical Society that official Columbus commemorative dolls be created15 The return of

Emancipation Day as a public holiday in Jamaica in 1997, due to the activism of influential black activists, intellectuals and supportive members of government who had opposed its conflation into Independence Day, did not imply consensus over the issue of slavery, as 2007 demonstrated.

In the context of the 2007 bicentennial, as Larry Smith tells us, among the

responses to an article on 'Bahamas Pundit' on the abolition of the trans Atlantic trade in Africans was one which indicated that such a commemoration would only serve to inflame racial hatred:

The 200th anniversary is likely to be yet another occasion for the less developed countries of the world to bash the developed countries... no doubt with the encouragement of the UN and its NGO siblings. ..another occasion to inflame racial hatred. In this

way these countries can overlook, for a moment, the causes for their backwardness and the social and political changes needed in the fabric of their own societies.16

But, surprisingly, some of the opposition seemed mired in feelings of shame about the slavery past. In the wider social context of Jamaica, for example, the Bicentenary Committee soon became aware that it was operating within an environment in which, over four decades after Goveia observed that:

... in a country such as ours, where shame about the past too often fills the place that should be held by knowledge, knowledge of the past must play its part in our liberation from the bonds of the past,

17



6

Shame still occupied that place that should have, by 2007, been filled by knowledge. But clearly, pride about the past had still not substituted for that

feeling of shame among segments of African diasporic communities, some of whom continue to try to bleach away the evidence of that DNA connection; that

hereditary blueprint.

Evidence of the persistence of feelings of 'shame' about the slavery past surfaced in Jamaica shortly after the launch of the JNBC when the headline 'Don't Look Back at our Shame: St Elizabeth Councillors Reject Proposal to Celebrate Abolition of Slave Trade' appeared in Jamaica's Sunday Observer newspaper. This not only re-started a contested discourse on slavery but also resurrected an earlier "dominant and hegemonic discursive formation about slavery'"

18 as Ashraf

Rushdy would put it. Reporter Garfield Myers, went on to tell Jamaicans that a Resolution drawn up by the Kingston & St. Andrew Corporation urging all Parish Councils to find meaningful ways to mark the bicentennial, had been rejected by the St. Elizabeth Parish Council (hereafter SEPC).

Convinced that "slavery and the trafficking of slaves were shameful aspects of Jamaica's past," Jamaica Labour Party Councilor, Broderick Wright, claiming to be following Sir Alexander Bustamante's ideology, opposed the motion on the basis that "we should celebrate our achievements (but) we should not look back at our shame". In supporting Wright, People's National Party Councilor, Winston

Sinclair, (in a manner reminiscent of the 1888 Gleaner extract quoted above), gave as his justification, "we need to leave slavery behind and forget it. All I want to know is how to develop this country".

19 The Councillors also opposed what they interpreted as a call to 'celebrate' the bicentennial; and vowed that under no circumstances would they be persuaded to celebrate the activities of white

abolitionists, or build monuments to them. The Resolution had called on the Jamaica National Heritage Trust to oversee the construction of monuments to the black and white abolitionists; but, according to Councillor Wright, in particular, he knew of no black abolitionists. This reflected a reluctance to number the black

anti-slavery activists among the 'abolitionists'.

The Councillors' objection to the use of the word 'celebrate' in the KSAC Resolution stimulated a side battle over the language of representation reminiscent of the public debates over the Columbus Quincentenary, when the Caribbean seemed unable to decide whether it was 'celebrating', 'commemorating', 'observing' or 'marking' a milestone event that had such devastating impact on the

indigenous peoples. Jamaica's then Minister of Education, Burchell Whiteman

eventually had to make peace with the anti-celebration voices of 1992-94 by



7

insisting that Jamaica was 'marking' and 'observing', not 'celebrating,' a historic

anniversary. Interestingly enough, history repeated itself during the bicentennial in 2007. While 'observe' or 'mark' appeared to have been the preferred terminology among intellectuals, with 'commemorate' cropping up from time to

time, there were those in the region who insisted that not to 'celebrate' was to deny the role of the anti-slavery activists in forcing Britain's hand towards passing the Abolition Act. A similar linguistic battle had been observed in the French Caribbean during their 150th emancipation anniversary. Then, Ina Césaire had constructed an opinion typological matrix for Martinique and found that eight different opinions ranging from the 'native response' to the 'outsider response' were revealed. What dominated that matrix though was the opinion that "In our

country, there are many people who wish to make this anniversary a commemoration and not a celebration".20

The objection to the uses of 'commemorate' or 'celebrate' was not confined to the Caribbean but was noted in the United Kingdom. In her message to the chair of the JNBC dated December 6, 2006, Deborah Gabriel, editor of Colourful Network, appeared to be quite outraged at the idea of Jamaica 'commemorating' the bicentenary. She wrote:

"....I would like to know why the word 'commemorate' is being used particularly in reference to the choice of date - March 25th, which does not represent African resistance to enslavement but a white-washed version of history which purports a parliamentarian by the name of William Wilberforce to be the person associated with the ending of slavery It's quite astonishing to see Jamaica

leading the Caribbean in colluding with what can only be described as a major attempt to use 2007 to absolve itself (and this is where she loses me) for its past crimes against the humanity of African

people.... Why is Jamaica not leading the call for reparation instead of getting ready to celebrate the African holocaust?"

Of course, a JNBC member had to swiftly educate Ms. Gabriel about just what Jamaica set out to do with 2007 - not celebrate or commemorate so-called 'British benevolence', but celebrate African resistance that led to the passage of the Abolition Act, honour the ancestors through sites of memory, and intensify the call for reparation. Had the island and the region generally not decided to take this approach, Caribbean people would have been inundated with greater "Wilberforcemania", a project that was tried through the local screening of



8

Amazing Grace, which the JNBC had refused to endorse, despite a request for it to do so.

But to return to the SEPC; both PNP and JLP Councillors, without

submitting the Resolution to a debate or a vote, and in the absence of the Mayor, took the decision not to support the Resolution. In the days and weeks that

followed, public response was swift, with the nation divided between those who condemned and those who supported the SEPC's position.21 The Editor of the Observer was the first to attack the SEPC, followed by letters to the editors of the various newspapers and opinion pieces by well-known and not so well-known

Jamaicans, at home and abroad, among them22 Prof. Rex Nettleford, opposition spokesman on Education (now Minister of Education), Andrew Holness and

journalist Claude Robinson.23 Operating from the standpoint that "ignoring history is not the answer", the Observer Editor lamented the position taken by people who were political leaders, pointing out that

.... it is exceedingly worrying that parish councillors who are not

just political representatives but community leaders in a highly Holiness position to shape public opinion, should hold such views on an issue that is perhaps the most fundamental aspect of our

history.24

Les Francis maintained that " These politicians and anyone else who wants to deny our history should be the ones ashamed of themselves".25 Andrew Holiness responded with an informed, historical piece titled 'Do not deny our

history' in which he chided, encouraged, and educated, stressing that

...the abolition of the Slave trade is a pivotal milestone that marked the formation of the modern Jamaican state. . . the abolition of the Slave trade should be acknowledged as the first victory of black political activism.... While the work of abolitionists, like Wilberforce and Pitt, deservefs] attention in history, so too does the resistance of slaves and freed blacks. 26

But as far as many other people were concerned, March 25, 2007 was a British anniversary, imposed by Government fiat with no groundswell from the

people, who should, therefore, ignore it. After all, the Abolition Act changed very little. The trade continued, albeit this time deemed illegal, intra-regional relocation/trading in peoples intensified and the Slave system remained firmly in

place; not being abolished until over 30 years later.27 This 'long postponement' of freedom was one reason that Richard Gott in his article in the UK Guardian, urged people in the UK, "who might find themselves caught up in the prolonged bout of



9

self-congratulation imposed by government fiat to celebrate the bicentenary in a

minor, not major key."28 One 'Fuddy-Duddy' was quick to inform him that

"ordinary citizens would largely ignore this anniversary".

People on this side of the debate also added that, faced with the prospect of

carrying on the productive processes of the sugar economy with a diminishing supply of labour after 1807- and a labour supply radicalized by Haitian

anti-slavery politics at that - the Slave regime became more brutal. The year 1 807, then, signified greater repression. For all these reasons, the arguments went, Caribbean governments should focus not on a celebratory event, not even on the

pain of slavery, but on urging current political regimes to eradicate the

contemporary legacies of slavery, like the prevailing pigmentocracy; and the

problems of development.

Others maintained that for so long, so much repressed memory; so much silence had surrounded the topic of the trade in Africans via the Atlantic, the facts of the abolition campaign and the experiences of African peoples, that one should not blame those who responded like the St. Elizabeth Councillors; that many African diasporic peoples do embrace the psychology of victim-hood; do believe that slavery is a shameful family secret because the dominant knowledge system has projected African complicity - the brother-selling - brother syndrome. Many expound the view that "the fate of the black person in modernity is not solely the result of the 'Other's' tyrannical will and cruelty" without looking at the fact that the temporalities of servitude and suffering were not the same on both sides of the Atlantic.29

Anne Bailey, author of African Voices of the Atlantic Slave Trade, in

supporting this idea that silence surrounds the history of the trans Atlantic trade in Africans on all sides of the Atlantic, elaborated: "Growing up in Jamaica, I was

engulfed by this silence. Slavery and the Slave trade were not exactly taboo subjects, but they were not subjects that many Jamaicans readily discussed", although she was aware of a few "whispers'.

30

With very few exceptions, those who attacked the Councillors accused them of being misguided, mis/uninformed and ignorant of their history; a history that had long uncovered the agency of black people in the abolitionist campaign, within an era when "the new social history [had] carved out a space for the emphasis on subaltern studies or the history from below approach that could be translated into the celebration and commemoration of heroic events and episodes in the experiences of such groups of subaltern peoples." They argued that commemoration of important historical moments often provides people with an



10

opportunity to vent their emotions, leading to healing and catharsis, even reconciliation.31 As Higman noted, such commemoration "is central to the popular representation of the past, offering opportunities for ... the public expression of

pride and apology, regret and nostalgia offering opportunities for the state to lead a cathartic movement."32 In reinforcing this rationale, Nicolette Bethel, who took over the leadership of the bicentennial activities in the Bahamas after the unfortunate passing of Winston Saunders, asked the question: "So why should we commemorate Abolition?" Her answer, "For our culture and our language, at the

very least. And of course, for all the ancestors who were changed by it, and who by that change changed us - African, Creole, White, liberated, slaves, and free."33

By April 30, 2006, most of the St. Elizabeth Parish Councillors, armed with more information from JNBC members in the south-western part of the island about the nature of Jamaica's calendar of events (which did not centre solely on March 25), had 'back-pedalled' on their March position and agreed to support the Resolution when it came back on the table for voting in September 2006, (and they honoured their promise, as the same diligent Observer reporter noted in October 2006 in 2 headline articles, viz: 'St. Elizabeth PC Makes New Gesture on Slavery: Councillors Want To Help Plan Abolition Celebration'34 and "The St. Elizabeth Parish Council Backpedals on Slavery").

The JNBC duly breathed a sigh of relief and proceeded to secure good bi-partisan support for the planned events, without any obvious tension between central and local government. Certainly, people from all sections of the political spectrum supported the opening event at Emancipation Park in Kingston on

January 2, 2007, Haiti's Ancestors' Day. The choice ofthat day was in recognition of Haiti's fundamental role in the regional anti-slavery campaign; for Jamaica was determined not to focus on March 25, 1807 alone but on a programme of educational activities that would restore greater balance to the story of abolition.

In the UK, on the other hand, there was some tension between Central Government and cities like London, judging by statements attributed to Ken

Livingstone, mayor of London, who believed that the National Government was anxious to move the celebrations away from London to far-flung Liverpool, Bristol and Hull - as if London had nothing to do with the trans Atlantic trade in Africans. The Mayor was quoted as saying "I will do everything in my power to

keep this commemoration as a key element in London's calendar this year"; [for] "...London's involvement [in the Slave trade] was both longer and deeper than

any other British city". His charge that £200,000 set aside in his budget for the commemoration was under threat from the majority Conservative group in the



//

London Assembly, was described as a 'shameless lie' by leader of the Conservative group, Angie Bray, whose view, nevertheless, was that 'a better way of commemorating yesterday's slavery would have been to put the money towards

tackling today's slavery which sadly still carries on in London today".

But I wish now to return to the questions brought sharply into focus by the

example of the St. Elizabeth Parish Councilors' original position. The questions are: why, so long after Goveia made her observation in 1959, do people still feel such shame over the question of slavery and what can we do about it in the 21st

century ?

I can only speculate about the answers; and this might even be dangerous ground for a historian. But first we have to interrogate the literature on 'shame' to understand how deep-seated are its origins and impact; for as many experts have

argued, shame is not an emotion that is easily dislodged. In Shame and the

Origins of Self-Esteem, Mario Jacoby tells us that "shame has many . . . causes and effects including feelings of inferiority, embarrassment and humiliation": that "a lack of self-confidence and self-esteem is the root cause of a susceptibility to shame." 35 That shame can arise from "Membership in a certain race [which] can . . . provoke a sense of inferiority, because of the internalization of negative attitudes to one's race developed by others; the knowledge of the humiliation meted out to ancestors and in a class society the fear of association with slavery ancestors."36 Of course, while Jacoby locates the origins of shame in childhood

experiences and modern-day psychological factors, Ron Eyerman and many Caribbean historians focus more explicitly on the trauma of the slavery experience.37

There has been no shortage of suggestions about how African pride, self- worth and pride in the historical past can be fostered among African diasporic peoples. There is a strong view that a combination of empowering knowledge about the past, show-casing pride in the achievements of one's ancestors (especially those denigrated and negatively stereotyped in traditional knowledge systems) and iconographie decolonization - removing the iconic stamp of the colonizer from the landscape and substituting local icons; insisting on reparation38; and eliminating the victim psychology, could all be helpful strategies. The rationale for most of these suggestions is that in a region where there are still lingering problems of black identity as well as shame and guilt about the past, instilling pride in the past may help to address a culture of negative self image manifested in violence, bleaching etc39



12

The failure of Europeans countries involved in the trade in Africans to

apologise for their participation, indeed the apparent strengthening of their 2001 Durban position, noises from then British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, Andrew

Hawkins, the Anglican, Baptist, Catholic and Methodist Churches, and Peter

Hain, notwithstanding, intensified the call for reparation among African diasporic peoples, who believed it was the only cause worth fighting during the bicentennial

year and the only solution to the present fractured state of global relations. Indeed, as Larry Smith noted, "international plans for the abolition bicentenary [was] tied to a raging debate over whether the descendents of Slave Africans are entitled to

reparations and official apologies."40 Peter Hain, outspoken Northern Island and Wales Secretary came under fire for seeming to go where Blair feared to tread and

issuing an apology for the roles that Northern Ireland and Wales played in the trade in Africans41. Blair, on the contrary, steadfastly refused to call the trade in Africans a crime against humanity, only admitting that: "It is hard to believe that what would now be a crime against humanity was legal at the time". Baroness Amos, leader of the House of Lords made things worse by her comments that: "in

reflecting on the past and looking to the future (England's official logo), it is

important to address three contemporary issues of relevance to the bicentenary: the

challenges facing Africa today; the discrimination, inequality and racism that still exist in our society and the modern forms of slavery like people trafficking and child labour that persist today".

Lee Jasper, race advisor to London's mayor, predicted correctly that Blair's failure to issue an outright apology would "infuriate the descendants of enslaved Africans who want and deserve a full and unfettered apology for what is one of the

greatest crimes in human history. . .". Richard Gott's sympathetic suggestion that "the demand for reparations is a serious proposition, similar to the claims put forward by the families of holocaust survivors for the return of property stolen by the Nazis" set off a spate of angry internet responses. Someone identifying as "marketsaremonsters" said somewhat sarcastically: "I think I agree [with Gott's rationale for Black people's claim for reparation] and look forward to launching my own claim for the lands and property stolen from MY ancestors during the

enclosures, and by the Monarch and his barons". There were many other such

responses.

On this side of the Atlantic pro-reparation voices became louder, demanding that Bicentenary Committees place the matter high on their agendas - which

Antigua, Jamaica and St. Vincent did. Dorbrene O'Marde of the Antiguan Bicentenary Committee went to great lengths to stress that "one of the legacies we



13

hope to establish for the commemoration is a strong movement calling for

reparation". Among the other authoritative voices were Venezuelan President

Hugo Chavez, Prime Minister Ralph Gonzalves of St. Vincent and the Grenadines

(in his 2006 speech to the UN General Assembly); and politicians in Jamaica, who, led by Minister Mike Henry, debated the matter in the House of Parliament, attracting support but also ridicule in what was also an election year.

The strong historical justification, of course, was that the forced transportation of over 1 5 million enslaved Africans to the Caribbean and the wider Americas, the permanent dislocation of over 30 million in communities across the continent, and the mutilation and murder of millions unknown, constituted modernity's greatest crime against humanity. Western European culture, while aggressively championing the cause of human liberty, political freedom, and the public accountability of government, promoted and globalize for near 400 years racialized black chattel slavery; and have so far failed to repair the economic and psychological damage done by slavery and the trade.

While there is no guarantee that intensifying the call for reparation- even winning reparation- or any of the other strategies mentioned earlier will instill pride - for we may well be way off in our diagnosis of the problem anyway, there is a tendency for this question of 'pride' to be raised on each occasion that anniversaries related to slavery are observed in the Caribbean; and the bicentenary was no exception.

Finding evidence of 'pride' in the past from the historical records is not hard, especially evidence from the period of slavery and the abolitionists' campaign. This was clearly evident in the UK where 'Wilberforcemania' was rife in 2007; and where the people of Belfast, in rejecting Peter Hain's apology, put forward a less damning image, insisting that "there was a very, very, strong pro-abolition and anti-slavery movement in Belfast which chimed with the kind of reception of the French Revolution". They trotted out names like Mary Ann McCraken and Thomas Macabe to remind Hain about the proud anti-slavery stance of the Irish - in Ireland (if not in Montserrat).

In the case of the Caribbean, since the appearance of Go veia' s 1950s work on Slave society and CLR James' magnificent narrative on Haitian agency, Caribbean revisionist historiography on slavery has proceeded at breakneck speed. Despite one view that: ".... surely, given the paucity of resources to finance the university and the urgent need to generate wealth in and across Caribbean societies, the UWI cannot continue to afford expenditure on subject



14

matters such as slavery", 42 scholars, among them those at the UWI, continue to

study slavery from every conceivable angle.

The objective of many of these works is not simply to add new empirical data to this most rapidly expanding field. When I did my study on the non-sugar sector in Jamaica's Slave system, my intention was much broader than telling people what they already knew: that Caribbean economy was diversified and self-sufficient in certain commodities. My larger project was to intervene in the dominati ve - even canonical theories of monoculture and the staple thesis; agency and intra-Caribbean relationships under slavery, showing the relationship between

occupation and agency and proving that Caribbean inter-connectedness was not a

complete casualty of colonization and the monopolistic tendencies of empire.43 The point is that the research on enslavement and the trade in African has been located within a wider political project: that of producing a more liberating narrative of self.

Indeed, since the period of modernity, Caribbean people have sought to eradicate and dismantle historical representations of the Caribbean in text and

image that mostly reflected European colonial subjectivity and authority".44 The

production of alternative knowledge was a particularly critical aspect of what Bill Ashcroft et al refer to as the counter-colonial resistance45; for the Caribbean has been affected by a historically constructed image that still influences

self-knowledge as well as global attitudes towards its citizens. This image, paraded as 'truth' and ' knowledge,' was the product of the minds and pens of

generations of writers from the North Atlantic System, who appropriated the

project of producing knowledge on the Caribbean for overseas consumption. The

knowledge produced had a discrete political purpose: to support European imperialism and "dislodge and disorient" the Caribbean in the same manner that it did Africa and the Orients, following Dani Nabudere's and Edward Said's formulations.46 Caribbean scholars were forced to engage in a project of

reconstruction, constructing indigenous interpretations of the Caribbean

experience, fashioned by explicit formulations and theoretical constructs and

offering the antithesis to the imperialist view of the Caribbean world.

Now, even a cursory survey of the historiography of slavery and the trans Atlantic trade in Africans, of decolonization and the emergence of modern Caribbean societies, from Elsa Goveia to the contemporary crop of researchers, will indicate that there is abundant evidence that can be used to convince Caribbean people of the achievements of their ancestors.47 I have no intention of

detailing that research here; but suffice it to say, in summary, that we no longer



15

have to look too hard to prove the glorious and free African origins of African-Caribbean people; of the role of enslaved people's agency in opposing the Middle Passage48 and in destabilizing the slave system; to find the political role of enslaved communities of men and women in the Caribbean, who in the context of the wider Atlantic dimensions of the trade in Africans, were its fiercest foes. We do not have to dig too deeply to find evidence of the search for self- worth and economic identity; in fostering a sense of self-reliance; of cultural survival.

Caribbean historians have told the other side of the abolition story, centring the role of Black activists in the campaign; and every reference to the erosion of male masculinity, family, love relationships among the enslaved and Caribbean domestic economies can be met with research that proves the existence of nuclear

families, caring black parents, love and intra-regional trade - which incidentally was not a total casualty of the mercantilist dictates of empire. There was economic

marronage and a certain creolization of Caribbean economy according to a meaning of creolization that is more closely aligned to the perspective offered by René Depestre of a historical process resulting from 'maroon activity' outside of the plantation system that "engendered new modes of thinking, of acting, of feeling, of imagining."49

We have no shortage of writers telling us about our ancestors' attempts to create an Atlantic world citizen out of the culture inequality in a world of partners that were not really partners. We can produce evidence from Eric Williams, Joseph Inikori, Selwyn Carrington and most recently Robert Beckford in his

documentary 'The Empire Pays Back' and even in Prime Minister Blair's

non-apology, and notwithstanding, Seymour Drescher, that our African ancestors were fundamental to the industrial development of Europe. By his own admission, Blair stated in 2007 that: "Britain played an active role in the trans Atlantic trade, which had a profound impact on Africa and the Caribbean; and acknowledged that Britain's present-day economic prosperity and rise to global pre-eminence was due partially to its participation in the trade."50

Whether reflected in the research on colonial, post-colonial or postmodern Caribbean societies, our scholars have intervened in and destabilized the dominant discourse that used to argue that the Caribbean was a place devoid of ideas and intellectual thought. Political ideology and concepts of human rights were already sophisticated in the political philosophies and ideologies of black abolitionists 51

long before the emergence of the philosophical teachings of Marcus Garvey, Aimé Césaire, Franz Fanon, Bob Marley, Peter Tosh, Burning Spear, Chalkdust, Rudder and Anthony 'B'.



16

Sadly, while Caribbean historians were trying to provide a more nuanced view of the abolition campaign in 2007, the abolition story was still very much

following the traditional line in the UK, leading to complaints from the Black

community that Britain plans to "eradicate African freedom fighters from the

bicentenary . . . celebrations". It was within this context that some frowned on the

presence of the Prime Minister of Barbados, the Right Hon, Owen Arthur, at the official re-opening of Wilberforce House Museum in Hull to mark the bicentenary of the passing of the Slave Trade Abolition Act.52 Toyin Agbetu, member of a coalition of pan- African organizations in the UK expressed fear that "Africans in Britain are subjected to the prospect of a culturally humiliating experience where the education curriculum of the UK is to potentially incorporate 'slavery lessons' and 'black history' where the story of Africans begins at enslavement and ends with British abolition".

Still, despite the fact that Caribbean historians have spent the last 50 or so

years writing a more empowering history; and UNESCO has, since 1998, embarked on an elaborate project to break the silence and address the issues of shame and guilt surrounding the trans Atlantic trade and African enslavement, especially among vulnerable children, ignorance and shame about the past persist. New knowledge has not resulted in the transformation of our societies in

ideological, philosophical and psychological terms, small steps along the way notwithstanding. From what Anne Bailey found in her investigation into Jamaican

public history in 2001 and 2002, when she tried "to determine how Jamaicans remembered slavery in a contemporary context," knowledge about the past does not appear to have to have transcended text and inhabited the public space.53 And

despite the evidence provided by slavery scholars about the brutality of the

enslavers, the feelings of ' shame' continue to be attached firmly to the descendants

of enslaved people - to the victims of the system rather than to the perpetrators.

The question for Caribbean historians now is: Can we really move the

history of slavery from text to public space more effectively than we have been

doing for the past 5-6 decades, especially in view of the belief that Caribbean

people are still trapped in the effects of cultural trauma as cultural process, in Ron

Eyerman's formulation? Cultural trauma refers to a dramatic loss of identity and

meaning; an event that has become ingrained in national consciousness and collective memory; "a tear in the social fabric"54 As cultural process, trauma is mediated through various forms of representation and linked to the reformation of collective identity and the reworking of collective memory. Though not

experienced directly by today's African-descended people, the trauma of



17

enslavement has come to be central in our attempts to forge a collective identity out of its remembrance. As reflective process, trauma links past to present through representations and imaginations.55

Conditions like psychological trauma require medical treatment, say some. Others believe that there is complementary, non-medical treatment, including re-voicing the African experience through providing the descendants of enslaved ancestors with tangible sites of memory as part of a larger project of iconographie decolonization; if you will, with a way of inscribing the images of African people on the cultural landscape especially within a region where an expanding tourist culture is threatening to efface their black faces and keep their black bodies away from tourist spaces - or as 2007 reflected, from ICC controlled spaces. Some may scoff at the idea as not being monumental enough a solution to a monumental

problem; but for those who claim that the trauma of slavery affects collective

memory and thus identity, some action is required; since for such individuals the

past becomes the present through their embodied reactions as they carry out their

daily lives.

This belief has inspired many countries in the region to build sites of

memory in honour of the enslaved Africans; and that project continued during the bicentennial year. Many see monuments as a cathartic way to deal with the cultural trauma that was slavery; as part of the process of completing that self-conscious

project of iconic decolonization started by post-colonial regimes in the first years after independence, continuing to find agency in the lives and experiences of our ancestors, and seeing the social transformative dimensions of their struggles. The research on slavery has provided us with the data we need to create such liminal

spaces; with tangible proof of the existence of the people about whom Goveia and other slavery scholars wrote: of their biography, history and proof of existence. These could form prominent landmarks of the trans Atlantic trade in Africans; spatial vocabulary to express the great drama between enslaver and enslaved.56

It was such data on slavery (specifically the names on the punishment list from the 1831/32 Sam Sharpe-led emancipation war), that allowed the Jamaica National Heritage Trust, starting from the standpoint that the tangible sites of memory that have been showcased traditionally continue the silencing of the voices of the African and Taino ancestors, to build and unveil a 'Freedom Monument' in St. James to honour those anti- slavery activists whose names have been previously buried in the Archives. The Monument reflects the brutality of slavery and the horrors of its superstructure; but is also showcases the names of the heroes and heroines whose agency should inspire us, make us feel proud. In



18

Barbados, a plaque was unveiled on March 25, 2007 during their bicentennial observance at the Bay Street Esplanade. The plaque, to be shifted to the

Bridgetown wharf area where there used to be a Slave market, was said by Dame Billie Miller to be "a tribute in honour and recognition of the efforts of those who

fought in the cause of the abolition of the Slave trade". It read, in part "as a tribute to the strength and resilience of those African enslaved persons who were

transported across the Atlantic Ocean and . . . were sold as slaves to Barbadian Slave masters"57. The 'Golden Stool" Administrative Building on the Cave Hill

campus will be yet another symbol of honour for the enslaved African ancestors.

As Go veia once remarked all those years ago in her reflective process:

The West Indians of today cannot justly deny their debt to these rebels against the old subjection, though it might best be repaid in works rather than in words.' "For their unwearied efforts first created the possibility of a new, free and equal society in the West Indies."58 "...there is much to be learnt from the experiences of those who took part in these struggles for reform who centred what ought to have been seen as universal tenets of liberty and

equality and raised the fundamental question then ... as to whether the rights of man should be recognised and respected in the West Indies. 59

NOTES 1 . An earlier version of this essay was presented as the 24th Elsa Goveia Memorial Lecture at the Cave Hill Campus of the University of the West Indies, on Tuesday, February 27, 2007. Modified versions were presented as "Bicentennial Blues: at York

University, England, April 2007; at Warwick University in July 2007 as "Bicentennial Blues", and at the 10th SOCARE/JNBC Bicentennial Conference in December 2007 as "The Bicentennial Commemoration in Jamaica: Conflict or Consensus?"

2. Elsa Goveia, Introduction to the Federation Exhibition, 1959, Quoted in Woodville Marshall, "Foreword', in Hilary Beckles, ed., Inside Slavery: Process and Legacy in the Caribbean Experience (Canoe Press, Kingston, 1996), vii.

3. David Scott, "The Government of Freedom", in Brian Meeks and Folke Lindhal, eds., New Caribbean Thought: A Reader ( Kingston: The Press, UWI, 2001), 429

4. Ibid., 428

5. Barbados Nation Newspaper, March 25, 2007

6. Tony Best, Barbados Nation Newspaper, March 25, 2007

7. Edward Seaga, "Some Shameful Sins of Slavery, ' Sunday Gleaner, February 4,

2006, G3 and G6



19

8. Bridget Brereton, "A Social History of Emancipation Day in the British Caribbean: The First Fifty Years", in Hilary Beckles, ed., Inside Slavery, 90

9. Daily Gleaner, 1888. 1 am grateful to Veronica Gregg, for bringing this extract to my attention.

10. See Marcia Burrowes, "Despite Indifference: An Analysis of the Ideological Tug-of-War Surrounding the Commemoration of the Jubilee of Emancipation in Barbados", The Arts Journal vol. 3 numbers 1&2 (March 2007), 203-204. Guest ed., Rita Pemberton.

11. Quoted in Brereton, "A Social History", in Beckles, ed., Inside Slavery, 93.

12. I thank Veronica Gregg for sending me this extract.

13. Brereton, "A Social History", in Hilary Beckles, ed., Inside Slavery, 93

14. I thank Veronica Gregg for this reference

15. Barry Higman, Writing West Indian Histories, (London: Macmillan Education, 1999), 205. Years later, during Black History Month in 2009, the JLP Government would host the King and Queen of Spain in the island. There was some degree of outrage to this visit, based on the impact of Spanish colonization on the indigenous Tainos and the failure of the government of Spain to pay reparation.

16. Larry Smith, Slavery and the Struggle to End It, TrackBack URL for this entry http://www.typepad.com/services/trackback/6a00d8341c3cad53ef00d83501b7f269e2 17. Quoted in the Foreword of Beckles, ed., Inside Slavery, vii; see also Go veia, 'An Introduction to the Federation Day Exhibition", 42

18. Quoted in Ashraf Rushdy, Neo-Slave Narratives: Studies in the Social Logic of a Literary Form ( New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 13

19. Claude Robinson, Sunday Observer, March 19, 2006, 6

20. Ina Césaire," To Each His Commemoration", in Gert Oostindie, ed, Facing up to the Past (Kingston: Ian Rändle Publishers, 2001), 57

21. Observer Editorial, March 13. 2006; Rex Nettleford, Letter to the Observer Editor, March 14, 2006; Letter to the editor by Les Francis, "Do Not Deny Our History', Daily Gleaner, March 27, 2006, A7, and Claude Robinson, Sunday Observer, March 19, 2006, 6

22. George McKenzie, Sunday Observer, April 2, 2006, 15:

23. See Andrew Holness' in Observer, Sunday March 19, 2006

24. Daily Observer, Monday March 13, 2006.

25. Les Francis, Daily Gleaner, March 27, 2006, A7

26. Holness, Observer, Sunday March 19, 2006, 7

27. For a support of this idea see Claudius Fergus "Real Date of Abolition", Daily Express, January 1, 2008, 13



20

28. Richard Gott, "Britain's Vote to End its Slave Trade was a Precursor to Today's Liberal Imperialism", Guardian, Wednesday Jany 17, 2007. Internet responses to his article appeared on January 17, 2007

29. Achille Mbembe, 'The Subject of the World", in Gert Oostindie, ed, Facing up to the Past, 26

30. Anne C. Bailey, Voices of the trans Atlantic Slave Trade (Kingston: Ian Rändle Publishers, 2007), 3

3 1 . Many of these views were expressed by callers to radio programmes such as 'Running African', a pan- African programme on Irie FM, hosted by Andrea Williams.

32. Higman, Writing West Indian Histories, (London: Macmillan Education, 1999),203

33. Nicolette Bethell, Slavery and the Struggle to End it, (Bahama Pundit, 2006)

34. Observer of Sunday October 22, 2006. It read in part, "Seven months after

rubbishing a proposal for the celebration of next year's 200th anniversary of the abolition of the British trans Atlantic Slave trade, the St Elizabeth Parish Council has agreed to be

part of a planning committee to mark (not celebrate, they were quick to add), this event'.

35. Mario Jacoby, Shame and the Origins of Self-Esteem (London & New York:

Routledge, 1994), viii

36. Ihid.. 1-2

37. Ron Eyerman, Cultural Trauma: Slavery and the Formation of African American

identity, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001)

38. February 6, 2006. Private member's motion (by Mike Henry).

39. The diverse responses to the idea of remembering and commemorating slavery are not confined to Jamaica. Ina Cesaire identifies at least 8 responses in a typological matrix reflecting the opinions in Martinique about anniversary of the abolition of slavery (Oostinde, ed., Facing, pp 56-57), from the 'naïve response' to the 'outsider response'/

40. Larry Smith, "Bahamas Commemoration of the trans Atlantic Slave Trade", (Bahama Pundit, November 29, 2006) [http ://www.bahamapundit.com/2006/ 1 1 /commemorating_t.html#more]

41. See Guardian Unlimited, February 15, 2007 and Belfast Telegraph, February 16, 2007

42. Daily Gleaner, February 3, 2004

43. See Verene Shepherd, "Roots of Routes:, in Shepherd, / Want to Disturb My Neighbour (Kingston: Ian Rändle, 2007), 54-72

44. Petrina Dacres, "Monument and Meaning", Small Axe, No. 16 (September 2004), 149. See also in the same volume, Carolyn Cooper, "Slave in Stereotype: Race and Representation in Post-Independence Jamaica", 154-169

45. Bill Ashcroft, et. al, eds., The Post-Colonial Studies Reader, (London& New York: Routledge, 1995), 1



21

46. This was discussed in Dani Nabudere, "Development Theories, Knowledge Production and Emancipatory Practices", 50th Anniversary Conference Reviewing the First Decade of Development and Democracy in South Africa, Durban, October 2004. See also, Edward Said, Orientalism (London: Penguin, 1992)

47. Elsa V. Goveia, A Study on the Historiography of the British West Indies to the end nfthp 1Qth r.p.nturv fMexim* Tntitiito Panamerirann de. Genprafía e Historia IQSfi)

48. See Bailey, African Voices of the Atlantic Slave Trade

49. See Depestre's discussion in Kathleen Balutansky & Marie-Agnès Sourieau, eds., Caribbean Creolization: Reflections on the Cultural Dynamics of Language, Literature and Identity (Gainsville: University Press of Florida, 1998) as well as the editors' summary; and "Les Aventures de la criolite", in Ralph Ludwig, ed., Ecrire la parole le la nuit: La nouvelle littérature antillaise (Paris: Gallimard, 1994).

50. Bicentennial Watch, #1 Sunday Herald, January 7, 2007

51. See for example, Denis Benn, The Caribbean: An Intellectual History, 1 774-2003 (Kingston: Ian Rändle Publishers, 2004); O. Nigel Bolland, The Birth of Caribbean Civilisation: A Century of Ideas about Culture Jdentity, Nation and Society (Kingston: Ian Rändle Publishers & Oxford: James Currey, 2004); Meeks and Lindhal, eds., New Caribbean Thought; Veronica Marie Gregg, Caribbean Women: An Anthology of Non-fiction Writing, 1890-1980 (Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 2005)

52. In fact, after officially re-opening the Museum, Mr. Owen Arthur delivered a Wilberforce Lecture at Holy Trinity church, where William Wilberforce was baptised. http://www.bbc.co.uk/humber/content/articles/2007/04/02/wforce_ho_upd_feature.shtml 53. Bailey, African Voices of the A tlanticns lave Trade, 6

54. Eyerman, Cultural Trauma, 2

55. Ibid, 1

56. See David G. Nicholls, "African Americana in Dakar's Liminal Space", in Joanne Braxton & Maria I. Diedrich, eds., Monuments of the Black Atlantic: Slavery and Memory (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2004J, 1 4 1 - 1 50 - for how the house of slaves on Goree island has provided such a space for others.

57. Trevor Yearwood , "No More", Barbados Nation, March 26, 2007

58. Goveia, A Study on the Historiography of the British West Indies, 338

59. Ibid



Documents

Slavery, Memory and Meanings: The Caribbean and the Bicentennial of the Passing of the British Abolition of the Trans Atlantic Trade in Africans || Slavery, Shame and Pride: Debates