While
making arrangements for financial support for the re-publication of the
Historical Digest, a would-be sponsor said to me, "I hope you're not putting
in a lot about French creoles."
I
was not especially surprised about at this remark. The people of French descent,
mostly of European extraction, have been held in opprobrium in Trinidad and
Tobago since the 1950s. This occurred during the politicising of the country by
Dr. Eric Williams, who declared "Massa day done" and went on to
explain in a series of public lectures that the French creoles were responsible
for the lack of progress in the fields of education, upward mobility and financial
and social progress experienced by the black masses in Trinidad.
As
a politician he conveniently overlooked the fact that most of his constituents
came from other islands. Having no revolutionary goals, there was the necessity
to find an enemy within Trinidad. Racism, which had been endemic under colonialism,
was re-invented with the independence movement. This time, instead of it being
directed from white people, both foreign and locally assembled, to everybody
who did not look like them, it was directed from the newly independent blacks
to both foreigners and to the local white community.
Like
most things that came into existence in Trinidad and Tobago during the 1950s
and 60s, what was said by Williams appeared to be cast in stone. Anti-French creole
sentiment became institutionalised to the degree that it was not seen as racism,
and, if it was, it was viewed as justified!
My
response to my sponsor when he made that remark about French creoles was
simply, "How could they be written out of history?" I went on to say
that it would be like, in as much as we presently have a government made up of
mostly Trinidadians of East Indian descent, that we started to deny the
contribution of the African presence to national life over the last 200 years.
The
extent to which the independence experience served to further segment the
society of Trinidad and Tobago has yet to be dealt with by academics, politicians,
calypsonians, trade unionists, the religious orders and of course us ourselves.
Notwithstanding
and with the sincere hope of continued sponsorship, we are going to feature the
French creoles of Trinidad. Of the very many different racial groups who have
come to this island of ours over the last 200 years, the French stand out in an
interesting manner. Their arrival in Trinidad was most consequential with
regard to our economic, cultural and social development, and as such, we will strive
to alleviate their being written out of history.
The
Question of Nobility
As
a group, they were comprised mostly of families of the French nobility. This
has been denied by various people over the years, including members of the French
creole community (the same sort of people who claim that no Brahmins came here
with the East Indian immigration). It has been said that this was sheer romance
and unsubstantiated legend. So before we go further, let us define the term
"noble".
"During
the "ancient regime" in France, a noble was one who had the sole right
to describe himself as "ecuyer" or "chevalier", to wear a
sword and to bear arms," writes Michael Pocock in his paper "Outline
of duties and privileges of ancient noblesse". He continues, "He had precedence
over all commoners and was alone qualified to use the titles of ecuyer,
chevalier, vicomte, count and marquis."
As
a class, the nobles benefited from a variety of exemptions, e.g. certain taxes,
compulsory military service, and they did not come under the jurisdiction of
the local provost. A nobleman was not compelled to contribute to local or
community economies and could claim to be tried by the "grand chambre du
parlement" (viz), which was comprised of his peers or equals and not by
civil courts.
On
the other hand, a French noble might not without demeaning himself—that is,
lose his status—engage himself in commerce, except marine commerce, nor
practice a profession, except that of a soldier, as a member of a foreign royal
court, a lawyer, a notary in Paris, a glass maker or a sword maker. He was obliged
to serve the King when called upon in any capacity. Noble family in Europe on
the whole fell into several categories. Noblesse immemorial (those which had
always been known to be noble and accepted as such without being able to trace
any King awarding nobility to them) was from the feudal nobility and be known
as such from approximately the year 900 AD. The well-known Trinidadian family
Maingot de Surgères were vicomtes of noblesse immemorial, at least since as
early as the 10th century.
During
the first decades of the 14th century, the 1310s, many families received ennoblement
to confirm their station. Some were previously noble, some were newly ennobled.
Others became "noblesse d'extraction" or "lettres patents"
or by "chargés" or function. Many of these come from common origins,
but because of brains, good luck, good looks or courage were elevated to the
nobility. A King of France ennobled his barber—it might have been as insurance
to having his throat cut.
These
titles of ecuyer or chevalier would be inherited. The particular "de",
"du", "de la", and "des" never implied nobility
necessarily, but serve to designate the land possessed or the village from
which a noble family comes. The
noble family of Jacques de Jacque, for example, comes from a fortified hill
town known as a bastide. Their illustrious ancestor was knighted on a
battlefield in the Holy Land by the King in 1214. Hence, we know Jacques de la
Bastide in Trinidad.
A
person of ordinary background could buy land and be a "seigneur" de
la whatever and still be common. Gentleman was not a title, but an attribute of
either noble or common birth, hence the saying that a king can create a noble
but not a gentleman.
The
nobility might be described as being "grande" or "petite".
The great dukes, some of them being of the royal blood, fell into a special
category. Then, there were the "peers of the realm" (equals amongst
themselves), some bearing titles such as marquis or comte, but others, because
of the recorded age of their families, which may already have existed and
achieved significance while France was little more than a small vicinity around
the city of Paris 500-800 AD, would also fall under the category of
"grande noblesse". In Trinidad, the Pantin de la Guerre and the de
Montrichards fall under this order. So too do the de Gannes de la
Chancelleries, who were descended from a cadet (junior) branch of the
independent dukes of Britanny.
Broadly
speaking, the other French creole families in Trinidad come from the
"petite noblesse" of the provinces. Entitled to describe themselves
as ecuyer (from the Latin word "equis", horse) they were horsemen or
knights. This knightly class provided the personal aids, servants, attendants
and soldiers for the kings, the princes of the blood and the great ducal
households.
In
olden days, the nobility was basically illiterate. Education was in the hands
of the church men and women, clerics. The knightly class was also very
destructive because of the hierarchical nature of the feudal system. A knight
served his baron, who served his count, who served a marquis or duke, who
served the king. As a result, petty wars and general brigandry devastated the countryside
on a regular basis. As such, the church tended to avoid them. It was not until
the 12th century that knighthood was given a religious overtone with the
introduction of the military orders, such as the Knights Templar, the Knights
of St. John and the Teutonic Knights.
Most
of the nobles who found their way to the west came from fairly modest "chateaux",
small castles that were hardly more than fortified farms. But whether great and
illustrious or poor and uneducated, they basically all belonged to the same
class and subscribed to a belief system that instilled in them the absolute
conviction that they were of superior make. This view, founded in prehitory, came
to be supported by the church and imposed upon the peasants. They had a right
to dominate all.
This
idea of caste or class of superior people was not purely a European concept. It
existed in China, Africa, amongst tribal people living in the jungle, India,
Japan and Arabia. It seems to be a part of the human condition.
The
French come to Trinidad
From
the early 1600s, French people, led by nobles, set out for the New World. They
made their homes in the northern hemisphere in a place they called Arcadia,
later to be called Canada. Almost 200 years later, with the fall of Quebec to the
English, many of the Arcadians left to join their fellows in the southern
United States in Louisiana, which was still a French colony. By that time,
Saint Domingue (Haiti) had become a thriving slave colony, driving a massive
economy based on the production of sugar.
The
French also had established themselves on several islands in the Lesser
Antilles and from the early 17th century, the 1600s, on through to the 1790s to
the present, a strong French influence was to pervade islands such as
Guadeloupe, Martinique (still "departements" of France), St. Lucia, St
Vincent, Dominica, Grenada, Haiti of course, French Guiana, and for a short
while the French held Tobago at the end of the protracted war between England
and France at the beginning of the 19th century.
The
western hemisphere, in so far as the French influence is concerned, is as we
see it today. The 1790s were, however, the crucial time for the French. In the
Old World, the revolution had destroyed the monarchical system in France and
had removed the nobles from power. Then, to their dismay, the Revolution was transported
to the New World. From Haiti to Grenada, down the chain of islands, the French
establishment, owned and operated by the "ancient regime", was
destroyed by the revolution organised and directed by Victor Hugues. Tens of
thousands, perhaps more than 100,000 royalists, many of the aristocrats, were
slaughtered. Trinidad became a safe haven because of Roume de St. Laurent's
inspired move of ten years before, when under a Spanish government a Cedula of
Population (1783) made it easy for French-speaking Free Black people, French colonists
and others, to come to this island, the main stipulation being that they be
Catholic. And come they did.
From
far away as New Orleans and Haiti on through all the French-held islands of the
Caribbean they came, but mostly from Grenada. Some of these French were just
out of France, young adventurers from good families and a little money, seeking
to cash in on the sugar plantation business. Some were serving in the British
army. Many, perhaps the majority, were established colonists of three or four
generations in the Caribbean, long accustomed to running large plantations with
slave labour. Owning slaves meant getting more land, so too, arriving as a
family, the more members, the more land. With a strong sense of being pioneers,
with an even stronger sense of being the master of all he surveyed, but with a
degree of trepidation, the French of the Caribbean came to this island. In the
short span of 15 years, they were to create and economy and establish the basis
of a society, both of which has continued to exist.
It
has been speculated that the majority of slaves brought to Trinidad in the
1780s were "well seasoned", that is, they were not newly out of
Africa (those would come in the next few years). They had been born on plantations
in the islands and were, like their "owners", Caribbean of more than
two generations. They spoke French, which made communication easy, were to some
extent immune from tropical disease, knew how to work to establish an estate,
were Catholic and in some instances had had long and familiar relationships
with their masters, mistresses and the children on whom they were completely
dependent.
Plantation
society during the period of slavery was complex. It was, however, not
unfamiliar to the French in the sense that as an aristocracy they were
accustomed to command. Soldiering was part of their inheritance. Believing that
they were superior came naturally. Discipline was fundamental and was
instituted through fear, intimidation and violence. Again, none of the above
was strange to the French slave owners in that perhaps in a slightly different
or modified from this was exactly
what was dished out to the European peasantry that toiled on their
fathers' farms somewhere in the Bourbonnais in central France.
The
French creoles during and after slavery
Gustave
Borde, the historian of Trinidad in the 19th century, says that the planter
lived much like the seigneur of France, combining rough justice with
generosity. There was much rough justice, floggings, branding, being locked up
in stocks, balls chained to the feet of slaves, iron collards, iron masks, all
sorts of cruelties. Most cruel was the absolute ownership and total control of
master over slave in every personal detail.
In
Trinidad, there were laws that governed the punishment of slaves, called the
"Code Noir" (black code), which was enforced to a degree. Trinidad was
not a slave colony for centuries as say, Jamaica, Barbados or Grenada. Slavery
existed on a large scale in Trinidad from the 1780s to 1834, just 50 years. The
violence of slavery on the scale of other islands was not our experience.
Slaves were also very valuable in monetary terms, costing, in some instnaces, a
couple hundred dollars a head, and slaves were not easily killed or made infirm
any more than a farmer would destroy a tractor just because it won't start on a
morning.
After
Emancipation came immigration from other islands with longer memories of
slavery, which have become our memories [the memories of the French creoles] as
well.
With
Emancipation, the plantation society folded. Some have speculated that the
freeing of the slaves had to do with the destroying of the West Indian planter
interest, many of whom were French in the newly captured islands, in favour of
new sugar interest in India and West Africa, where the land mass was greater
and the labour present.
The
ruined French planters of Trinidad had in any event nowhere to go. The France
they knew didn't exist any more, and that country was no longer home. Their
relatives had been decapitated by the million. Property had been confiscated.
They had not choice but to become Trinidadians and make the best of it with
their traditional enemy England now the owner of the island.
The
retention of French culture in Trinidad
The
challenge was to remain French, retain the cultural identity, religion and a
sense of who they once were in terms of class. The retention of French as a
language was not too difficult in that although the island was English after
1797, everything else was French, and was to remain so for almost 100 years.
The vast majority of the people,
black, white and mixed, spoke French, the newspapers were in French, and the
courts of law, all spoke French. Patois or creole was the common tongue as
English is today.
French
was the style of cuisine, the style of dress, French culture in music, song and
dance impressed itself upon the society of Trinidad indelibly up until this
time.
Carnival
and its product calypso are French children. The Afro-French culture of this
island, despite it being an English colony, was enormous and was to remain that
way for some 170 years.
French
culture, emanating from no more than perhaps 1,300 people, at any point in time
defined this island, making it different from Barbados or Tobago. This French
creole culture withstood the arrival of thousands of immigrants from
English/Protestant islands, absorbing them and creolising them.
The
quality of life as lived by the French planters coming, as they did, from the
old aristocracy of Europe, was remarked upon by visitors to Trinidad. L. M. Fraser
wrote:
"Families
belonging to the old noblesse formed the nucleus of that refined society for
which the island has always been celebrated and which constitutes one of its
most distinctive features."
Throughout
the 19th and 20th century, Trinidad possessed a high upper class of white
people that was not matched with ease either in the United States, the islands
of the Caribbean or South America. High class, that is, in that so long as
European mores were used as a yardstick to define stations in life and
accepting the concept of an aristocracy at the top. High class in the sense of
more than just good manners, but courtly behaviour, gentlemanly and ladylike
attitudes in terms of the virtues, a generosity of spirit beyond mere
hospitality. The French noble families imported to all a sense of "noblesse
oblige" [- not for nothing is that sentence usually used in its original
French pronunciation!], which made this island remarkable. They gave it style.
They also gave it an economy, first sugar, built upon slavery, until emancipation
in 1834, then cocoa, from the 1870s on through to its ruin in the 1960s.
Economics
of the French creole families
The
cocoa economy generated wealth on all levels of society and served to
re-establish the fallen fortunes of the earlier French colonists. It revived
aristocratic dreams and pretensions, and breathed new life into illusions of
grandeur that were on the point of becoming lost.
Cocoa
made money for the French families and allowed for education. The white people
of French descent could not hope to get the topmost jobs in British colonial
Trinidad, which were for the British expatriates, but they manned the upper
levels of the civil service. They were administrators, wardens, justices of the
peace. They were top doctors, lawyers and surveyors. They owned the
export-import businesses to some considerable extent, and sat on the nominated
benches of the Legislative Council. In some families, they supported reform of
colonial rule, such as the Rostants and Ciprianis. Most of all, they were cocoa
estate proprietors.
Some
of these families were civil servants virtually from one generation to the
next, as well as cocoa planters. There was a time when you could find a de
Verteuil in every government department, from the top to the mail room. The de
Verteuils were also priests and nuns, teachers and medical doctors (they still
are). Of all the French creoles, one could say that although they were not of
the "grande noblesse" of France, this family came to be regarded as
the epitome of the community in Trinidad. Their illustrious ancestor came as a soldier with the British army in
1797. They first appear in recorded history in 1080.
Others,
like the Ganteaume de Monteau family, ennobled in the 14th century, were washed
ashore on the east coast of Trinidad by a ferocious storm. Their founder
married twice, producing some 23 children. As such, just about every French
creole family is related to them. They were to some considerable extent
responsible for the proliferation of coconuts in Mayaro. The nuts, too, had
been washed shore in a previous century.
The
Valleton de Boissière were Protestant and, although of the nobility, supported
the more humane elements of the revolution. They were also moneylenders and by
the 1820s were the owners of Champs Elysées estate in Maraval. They produced
legislators, writers, social commentators and politicians. They first appeared
in records in 1036 and were ennobled in 1336.
Others,
like the Rostant, Leotaud, Quesnel, Pasea, Vessigny, Lefer, Lange, Besson,
Sellier, Pollonais, Pampelonne, de la Bastide, de la Peyrouse, d'Abadie, La
Cardre, Aché, André, Giraud, Blanc, Gransaull, Anduze, de Verteuil, La Barnet,
de Boissière, Cornillac, de Meillac, de Crenu, de Deshayes, de Loudré, Roger,
de Belloquet, together with the Corsican Agostini, Giuseppi, Cipriani,
Gianetti, and the Spanish Sorzano, Basanta, Gomez, Llanos and Garcia and many
others, some whose names have died out in Trinidad, are all essentially of the "petite
noblesse" of the ecuyer or chevalier class. There were other French people
who came to Trinidad, tradesmen, republicans, sailors, artisans, various. They
would be regarded as peasants and, like the Portuguese, were not "socially
white" or of the upper classes. Notwithstanding, they were amongst the
French families, such as the Tardier, Begorrat, Didier, Ambard, Jaffon,
Conpariolle, Rigaud and others who were of the middle classes. Over time, these
married into the French creole matrix. In fact, French creoles could marry
Irish, German, English and Corsican, as long as they were to "the
manor" born, had money, owned land, were white and Catholic. This is why
there are so many people in Trinidad who are called French creoles and have
names that denote other European nationalities. One could become a French
creole by assimilation. A French creole could be called Devenish, O'Connor,
Kenny, O'Brian, Cipriani, Agostini or Gianetti, Boos, Urich, Wupperman,
Herrera, Garcia or Gomez.
The French creoles were mostly royalists—a handful are to the present—although
there were a few who subscribed to the views of the enlightenment and supported
certain aspects of the revolution. The majority were loyal to the House of
Bourbon for several generations, even after it had ceased to exist in France.
Victims
of tribalism
The
basic criteria for membership to the community were, first of all, ethnicity.
The possession of African ancestors, no matter how remote, would mean
disbarment. Marriage to a coloured person meant expulsion. Kinship also played
a role, that is, to be known to belong to certain extended families by marriage
or by birth. People had to know who you are, not just in the Caribbean but back
in France. It was easy to assume the poses of gentility, however, out here in
the bush, it was very rare to possess courtly manners. thus, it was not
difficult to spot the bounders. The result of all this meant that only a
limited number of families could fit the bill. As a result , familial incest
became increasingly common, even seen as a virtue. The extent of intermarriage
between the fifteen or twenty families made all French creoles, born after the
1880s, related to each other.
It
is important to bear in mind that the French creole community in Trinidad are
not Europeans living in the tropics anymore than the "Syrians" in
Trinidad are Syriatics living out here, or that the "Africans" in
Trinidad are surgeoning on this island, or are somehow more Trinidadian than
the "Indians". We are all Trinidadians. Racial segmentation is a
curse, it is, in fact, where the process that took us into independence failed
us totally.
The
term "tribalism" is a negative, insidious remark, used by some for
their own personal gain. French creoles may have the physical characteristics
of the "white race", but in sociological terms they are marginal, not
to their own Trinidad society, but to European society. The same applies to Trinidadians
and Tobagonians of African, Indian or other descent. It is high time that
French creoles of European descent come "out of the cold", which they
must do for themselves.
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