Jamaica and the Atlantic slave trade

[Little95]

http://www.jamaica-gleaner.com/glean...us/focus4.html

Jamaica and the Atlantic slave trade - Pt I
published: Sunday | March 19, 2006

IN 2007, a significant part of the international
community, led by Ghana, will observe the 200th
anniversary of the abolition of the Atlantic slave
trade. Last December the Government of Jamaica
established a national committee to plan and implement
a programme of activities consistent with the
importance of this major landmark in human freedom to
the Jamaican people.

It should not be necessary to remind Jamaicans that it
was as a result of the Atlantic slave trade that the
forebears of some 90 per cent of the population came
to the island to provide the labour for English
capital in the most dehumanising and exacting system
of plantation slavery. However, we still have to
contend with an education system that has neither
sufficiently raised cultural and information levels
nor imbued self-esteem.

It is against the background of this reality that we
must assess the response of the St. Elizabeth Parish
Council to the invitation from the national committee
to participate in the programme of activities to mark
the bicentenary. JLP councillor, Broderick Wright,
invoked the authority of National Hero, Alexander
Bustamante, in rejecting the invitation to participate
on the grounds that "we should not look back at our
shame." Councillor Winston Sinclair of the PNP spoke
with equal conviction, "I do not wish to remember that
kind of thing."

DRIVING WITHOUT A REAR-VIEW MIRROR

What is clear is that after 90 years of Marcus
Garvey's UNIA, 67 years of the National Movement and
43 years of independence, we still lack, and lack
badly as a people, a sense of history and our place in
it. These deficiencies in turn account for our
diminished self-confidence, without which Marcus
Garvey warns "you are twice defeated in the race of
life."

Self-confidence assumes a critical importance in
Jamaica's development process, given the legacy of
three centuries of British colonial rule. For during
this period, as R.C. Bodily who served as a Resident
Magistrate in Jamaica for seven years readily
admitted, "Colonial rule exists on a carefully
nurtured sense of inferiority in the governed."

We share Councillor Sinclair's sentiment that our
priority in this period must be "how to develop this
country." Where we part ways with the councillor is in
our belief that a frank admission of our weaknesses
and a fuller understanding of the roots of our present
underdevelopment is indispensable to further progress.
In short, can we drive effectively without a rear-view
mirror?

THE ROLE OF AFRICANS IN THE ATLANTIC SLAVE TRADE

The first reality with which we must contend is the
role of Africans in the Atlantic slave trade. It was
Africans who collaborated with the European slave
traders and facilitated the enslavement of fellow
Africans for the benefit of the European capitalism by
agreeing to the exchange of manufactured goods,
especially cloth, for slaves. It should be pointed out
that the slave in African society was not dehumanised
nor treated with the barbarous cruelty which
characterised plantation slavery in the Americas.
African slaves were often described as slaves in name
only "by virtue of their relative freedom and the wide
variety of employment to which they were put."

However, the fact that "The institution of slavery was
widespread in Africa and accepted in all the exporting
regions, while the capture, purchase, transport and
sale of slaves was a regular feature of African
society," (John Thornton in Africa and the Africans in
the Making of the Atlantic World) created the basis
for the expansion of this trade to supply the labour
required by the plantation economy of the Atlantic
world.

The pressure on Africa to expand slavery was virtually
irresistible. The entire European ruling class was
involved in encouraging and financing the tribal wars
which produced the slaves, and investing in the trade
which supplied them to plantations in Jamaica and the
Atlantic world. Queen Elizabeth I herself financed the
slave trader John Hawkins by providing him with a ship
which she named Jesus and giving him a knighthood.
Even if we concede the capacity of the Europeans to
create the conditions for the growth of the Atlantic
slave trade, the role of the Africans can neither be
overlooked nor excused.

The major impetus, however, for the expansion of the
Atlantic slave trade came from the large-scale
extended tribal war between 1660 and 1775 in the
region which now comprises Ghana, Nigeria and Benin.
This conflict added considerably to the availability
of slaves for export, since the defeated automatically
became the property of the victors. It was the Ashanti
who emerged the victors and the supreme military power
among the Akan-speaking people of the Gold Coast and
Ivory Coast, and as a consequence the controlling
force in the slave trade from where most of Jamaica's
slaves came. Whereas before tribal wars were the
principal source of accumulating slaves, kidnapping
was now added as a major strategy, and as a
consequence slaves bought in the markets of the north
and interior were obtained by raiding as well as
warfare.

The lesson we need to learn is that it was the enmity
and division among African people which was promoted
and exploited by European capitalism, which sustained
the process by which Africa was bled of its finest
sons and daughters for over two centuries. The tragedy
is that there is no evidence that we have learnt this
lesson as yet. We are still susceptible to
manipulation and remain a most fractious society.

In 1943 the British Governor was able to capitalise on
the sectarianism of the PNP by manipulating Bustamante
into splitting the National Movement. As a result,
between 1943 and 1949 we had our own tribal war with
the two tribes fighting under the banner of their
respective political parties. In 1963 these wars
resumed with even greater intensity, and the gun had
become the weapon of choice in 1980 when the country
was reduced to a virtual civil war. We have not yet
recovered.

CROSSING THE ATLANTIC

The slaves were brought in chains from Africa's
interior, linked three or four together and kept in
this condition in trading centres until the
opportunity for sale presented itself. They were then
loaded, men and women on the ship and sometimes kept
on the ship for as much as 14 days until they were
ready to sail.

On the "middle passage" as the voyage to the Caribbean
was called, slaves were allocated a space 2 ft by 5 ft
and chained. In this position, they remained for the
entire voyage which lasted anywhere between six and
twelve weeks, coming up once a day for exercise and to
clean the pails. "But when the cargo was rebellious or
the weather bad, then they stayed below for weeks at a
time. The close proximity of so many naked human
beings, their bruised and festering flesh, the fetid
air, the prevailing dysentery, the accumulation of
filth, turned these holds into a hell."

Arriving in Jamaica, the standard practice was for the
slaves to be "placed altogether in a large yard
belonging to the merchants to whom the ship was
consigned ... as the hour agreed on arrived the doors
of the yard were thrown open and in rushed the
purchasers with all the ferocity of brutes."

WHO WERE THESE SLAVES?

They included the cream of African artisans,
blacksmiths, millwrights, coopers, wheelwrights,
masons, plumbers, carpenters, coppersmiths and
engineers who could hold their own with their
counterparts in any part of the world.

One particular slave, Ancass, was a 12-year-old
African prince, born about the year 1799 in the
country of the Iboes. He was kidnapped and sold into
slavery, ending up on the Krepp Estate in
Westmoreland. From early he showed leadership
qualities becoming an elder of the Moravian Church and
buying his freedom one year before emancipation. Today
he is remembered, perhaps only by his descendants as
the patriarch of two outstanding Jamaican families the
Lloyds and the Monteiths. Both families have served
Jamaica well providing modern Jamaica with three
parliamentarians and an impressive cadre of
professionals.

The Atlantic slave trade sustained the institution of
plantation slavery in Jamaica, which still exerts a
most powerful influence on the outlook, attitudes and
values of Jamaicans. It is my view that this subject
requires continued study and analysis if the
development of which Councillor Sinclair speaks is to
be realised and sustained.

INFORMATION SOURCES:

Africa and the Africans in the Making of the Atlantic
World by John Thornton

The story of the Jamaica People by Phillip Sherlock
and Hazel Bennett.

How Europe Underdeveloped Africa by Walter Rodney.

Slaves who abolished slavery. Vol.1. by Richard Hart.

Arnold Bertram, historian and former parliamentarian,
is current chairman of Research and Product
Development Ltd. E-mail redev@cwjamaica.com.

[MsLioness]

This is some good reading..
it really was open to all the truths.
Well appreciated!