March 14, 2007
From the Desk of Verene A. Shepherd Professor of Social History & Chair of the Jamaica National Bicentenary Committee The JNBPC Secretariat C/o The Department of History & Archaeology University of the West Indies Mona, Kingston 7 , Jamaica “Our Freedom Journey…. Honouring our Ancestors” (1807-2007) In 1807, almost 200 years ago, the horrendous trade in Africans via the Middle Passage conducted by England to her then colonies in the Caribbean, was abolished. Although many European nations were involved in slave trading, the English and the Portuguese are said to have accounted for 7 out of every 10 ships that traded in enslaved people between Africa and the British Caribbean in the 18th century. The Act to abolish this trade followed on the 1805 Order-in-Council that had already started the phased abolition of the trade to Trinidad, Tobago, Guyana and St. Lucia. The slave system and the trade to the French, Dutch and Spanish Caribbean remained firmly in place, of course; and illicit trading in captives still continued to places like Jamaica. Nevertheless, that moment of 1807 was a defining one for Caribbean people who now occupy the Commonwealth Caribbean. Conscious of the importance of the anniversary of that moment when that Act to abolish the trading in Africans to Jamaica was passed, the Most Honourable P.J. Patterson established, and launched in December 2005, a broad-based, non-partisan National Planning Committee to initiate activities for the bicentennial in 2007 – also a year of World Cup Cricket. The history of the trans-Atlantic trade in enslaved Africans and the experiences of Africans across the Middle passage are unambiguously the history of the majority of Jamaicans. Indeed, Jamaica was a primordial site of the slave system, importing 1 million Africans mainly from present-day Ghana and Nigeria, between the 15th and the early 19th century. Among the British colonized Caribbean territories, Jamaica accounted for the majority of the estimated 15 million relocated in the Americas. Estimates indicate that within what was then the British Caribbean, Jamaica and Barbados received the majority of captives. David Eltis has shown that for the period 1519-1867, Jamaica and Barbados received 11.2% and 5.1% of the trade respectively, compared to 4.2% for the Guianas and 3.2% for the British Windward Islands and Trinidad combined. Slavery took its toll on the enslaved population, deaths exceeding births for most of the period of the trade; and of course, many died on the march to the African coast and on the Middle Passage. The struggle to end the trade was a long-drawn out affair. It involved the enslaved themselves; British humanitarians (since the late 18th century); and Haitian anti-slavery rulers after 1804. While not ignoring the complex and multidimensional struggle for abolition, especially on the part of British humanitarians, the aim of the various educational institutions and cultural agencies in the country should be to reinforce the agency on the part of enslaved Africans and their descendants in the ending of the TST, thereby destabilizing the “Queen Victoria set us free” myth. The messages to be communicated to the Caribbean citizenry are messages that empower, uplift and enlighten; messages that can give hope to those who despair and convey a sense of self-worth to those who may feel worthless. We should also understand that even those who are not descended directly from enslaved ancestors were touched by slavery. For example, many Jamaicans who trace their ancestry to Asia are descended from people relocated to the island to replace former enslaved people and suffered the consequences of the slave relations of production. Plantation and other records demonstrate that other ethnicities benefited from the income generated by the African ancestors and can trace the start of their successful businesses to the slavery era. It is no secret that the forced relocation of Africans to the Americas and the productive output of such Africans and their descendants, helped to transform the Atlantic into a complex trading area, turning it into the centre of the international economy. Franklin Knight has observed that “without [enslaved] Africans and the trans-Atlantic slave trade, the potential economic value of the Americas could never have been achieved”; and Eric Williams has long shown the impact that commodities from Africa and the Americas had on British industrial development (1944). But the economic transformation of Britain and other European countries that resulted from their exploitation of the Americas and Africa, took its toll on the enslaved populations and on the continent of Africa itself. Walter Rodney makes the point that from the 15th century, and continuing for four and a half centuries, the conduct of this Trade contributed to the development of Western Europe to the same degree that it contributed to the underdevelopment of Africa. Let me hasten to point out that the focus of the bicentennial will not be solely on the atrocities of the Middle Passage and the negative legacies of enslavement, although we must tell that story and even press the reparation claim; but we also wish to focus on the triumph over that brutal past, while honouring those who fought to achieve the freedom that we enjoy today. To this end, the slogan for next year will be “Our Freedom Journey: Honouring Our Ancestors”. Many Jamaicans can relate to an experience captured in this slogan. The process leading up to a phased abolition, as well as those moments in history which deemed the Trade officially abolished by the British (its illegal continuation thereafter notwithstanding), deserve to be observed and commemorated by the descendants of its victims everywhere. We owe it to our forebears, to our own children and to future generations. If we who are in positions of power and influence; if we who are privileged to know and understand this history and its continuing legacies fail to observe this period in history for the benefit our own, who then will do it? Failure to act will be to embrace the shame and silence still characteristic of the relationship with this history elsewhere. The year 2007 will provide a space for the Caribbean to reflect on and explore openly its historical relationship to the TST and slavery- that brutal form of human bondage. All sectors of the society, not just Government agencies and educational institutions should become active participants in this project to establish for all Caribbean people the tangible interconnections between the past, the present and the future, and through this effort to seek to construct, in the minds of all of our people, a future imbued with understandings conducive to pride and self-assurance, even as we embrace the unknown and the uncertain. The JNBC has eight subcommittees
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