White servants in the Caribbean

When we think of emancipation, we know we are thinking of a time when human bondage was an economic reality. Driven by avarice and greed, the New World was "opened up" on the backs of those who laboured. But it was not only Africans who were brought here and sold as slaves.

The Spaniards, the first Europeans in this part of the world, tried to meet their need for labour by enslaving the native tribespeople. They needed them to clear the forest so as to establish villages, farms and ranches. They needed them to search the rivers for gold and to dive for pearls. The native tribal people, possessing no concept of work or being made to work, drifted away. They were hunted down in the forest and killed. Others, losing interest in life, sat down and died. Thousands were tricked or kidnapped and taken away to other islands or to the main. Some rose in rebellion and were wiped out. Whole villages committed suicide. Within a short space of 100 years or so, most of the Arawak population in many islands had fallen victim to genocide. The settlements could not prosper without people. Food had to be grown, fields tilled, houses built. These new settlements in St. Kitts and Nevis, Barbados, Antigua, in Virginia and New England, all tried to obtain the workers they needed from the British isles.

There were many poor folk there who wished to try their luck overseas. Some were tired of the harsh laws of tenancy which put great power into the hands of the landlords and left them little better than the slaves. Many Germans were anxious to get away from a religious war between Protestants and Catholics that had gone on for thirty years, producing terror and suffering. The New World offered a chance of betterment. It seemed well worthwhile to sign a contract and serve a master for five or seven years. At the end of that time, one would be free and have a grant of land and some cash. Between 1654 and 1685, more than 10,000 people sailed from the port of Bristol alone. This was a large number, bearing in mind that the population of England was then only around 5 million. A steady trade developed in bond servants and when the supply of willing men and women fell off, kidnapping, child stealing and the transportation of prisoners became the order of the day.

Kidnapping increased, especially the kidnapping of children. The "spirits", as the kidnappers were called, frequented the streets of the sea ports and "spirited away" people, causing that term to come into common usage.

Dr. Eric Williams, in his account of this business, describes how "the captain of a ship trading with the West Indies would visit Clarkenwell House of Correction, ply with drink the girls who had been imprisoned there as disorderly, and invite them to go to the West Indies..."

Then, there were the convicts. At that time, a man who committed a trivial offense might be sentenced to death. He could be hung for stealing a horse or sheep, or for picking of pockets. We read a petition that a wife who had been sentenced to hanging for stealing goods worth 3/4 of one penny might be transported overseas instead.

In the wake of one of England's many wars with Scotland, a judge by the name of Jeffreys sentenced hundred of innocent men and women to be transported to the islands to work in the fields. So many were sentenced to be transported to Barbados, that the phrase "to Barbados a man" came into use. To this day, there are the remnants of two classes of people of European descent on that island, the descendants of the masters and those of the servants. Hence the term "bacra".

It is said that in slavery days on that island, the masters and their wives sat in the front rows of the church on a Sunday, the white servants and overseers in the back rows, and the slaves stood around outside. As the service came to an end, the masters left the church first, and the slaves of course took off their hats in deference, but as the servants and overseers started to come out, the word went round, "Back rows, back rows," and hats were replaced...

The condition on board the ships were bad, even for the captains, and horrible in extreme for the indentured servants. Up to 100 people were packed into small compartments. The hatchway was guarded by armed men who prevented them from coming up on deck for air or easement. The water was stinking and the rations were small. Dirt, excrement and urine transformed the ship into a pest house. Smallpox, fever and the plague killed many. Others were devoured by lice until they almost died.

When the indentured white servant arrived in these islands, he or she was sold. A man by the name of Ligon, who lived in Barbados from 1647 to 1650, said that the African slaves were better treated than the white servants, because the owner knew he had a bond servant only for five or seven years, and so drove him hard during that time. Those owners who were merciful treated the bond servants well, but "if the masters be cruel, the servants have very wearisome and miserable lives... Upon the arrival of the ship that brings servants to the island, the planters go aboard. Having bought such of them as they like, they send them with a guide to the Plantation. Being home, he commands them instantly to make their cabins. The next day, they are rung out with a bell to work at 6 a.m. with a severe overseer to command them... I have seen such cruelty there done to servants as I did not think one Christian could have done to another."

So as we mark emancipation, let us remember all of those who laboured in the fields of the Caribbean. 

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History through the wrong end of the telescope

History could argue that independence in 1962, much like the emancipation of the slaves in 1834 was essentially an economic decision. Both decisions taken by Great Britain in the wake of terrible wars. In the case of the emancipation of the slaves, England had been at war with France for some 2 ears. These two empires struggles for control of the sea lanes and contested over the hegemony of the Americas and South-East Asia. The wars that had commenced during the French monarchy went right on through the revolution and culminated with exile of Napoleon Bonaparte to St. Helena, an island in the mid-Atlantic.

With this victory came the birth of the British Empire as we knew it. The islands in the Caribbean sea were ultimately portioned out between the great powers, and Trinidad and Tobago became by the turn of the 19th century British possessions under separate administrations. Tobago was a old slave economy, strategic in terms of transatlantic sailing routes, but with Pax Britannica firmly in place not so vital as it once was. Trinidad was different. Only just in its first phase of development, with only 17 or 18 years at the time of the conquest in 1797 as an island whose economy depended on slave labour. But the economic realities of maintaining slave economics were swiftly passing and there was a pressure in England from the  more enlightened to free the slaves.

In any event, in the case of the islands taken from Spain and France in the Caribbean, the best agricultural lands already developed and owned by, as far as the English were concerned, foreigners: the French planters. So why not free the slaves and get the land cheap?

The period of Crown Colony Rule in these islands extended from the 1800s to the 1960s. It was, despite various economic and social vicissitudes, and incubatory experience. Along protracted twilight seen today like looking through the wrong end of a telescope. Trinidad described as and experimental colony, experienced several waves of emigration. the old Afro-French culture grew at a certain pace, syncretically absorbing the good, the bad and the ugly elements of each other's historical experience. The relatively newly arriving Indians, from 1845 were in a sense apartheided n the cane estates and viewed, if they were remarked upon at all, as transients.

The shock of two apocalyptic world wars in quick succession rearranged this protracted slumber, and in the awakening dawn of the post-war period. Great Britain, victorious in a war that had threatened to end western civilization as we know it, was literally bled white. The flower of two generations had died on Flanders' fields, Verdun and in the trenches of France, and then 20 years later in North Africa, Burma and in the skies over London. England could not afford an empire, even if there were sufficient men to run it.

By the late 1940s and early 1950s, the Kikuyu in Kenya were killing white farmers. In India, the Mahatma Gandhi was leading millions to the sea to make salt and Archbishop Makarios was fighting a war for the independence of Crete.

With the cold war icing up great Britain was no longer a world power to be reckoned with.

The islands in the Caribbean were not a problem. They were essentially an expense. There was too, a moral issue, in much the same way that the possession of slaves in the early 19th century was something of an embarrassment, so too the possession of colonies by the mid-20th century was perceived as a thing of the past.

In Trinidad and Tobago, largely as the result of the multi-ethnic nature of the society, quite unique in the Caribbean, the various segments had tended to develop somewhat separately. The remnants of the French plantocracy had evolved in business. By and large, the people of African descent who worked in the civil service as clerks or administrators on the lower levels, became teachers or lawyers and doctors. The Indians were mostly still in cane cultivation and agriculture. Other ethnic segments fitted in and did their best.

A reaction to colonial rule had long since played a role in the body politic of the island. A few individuals of European descent joined by coloured professionals and intellectuals had agitated for social justice in various ways. Urban upheavals from the 1840s on through to the 1930s virtually from generation to generation, had challenged Crown Colony Rule only to be put down with force. Out of this quite genuine struggle had emerged institutions such as the Workingmen's Association, the cooperative Bank, the building and loan association. They liked to see themselves as reformists, being soundly middle class they could not imagine themselves as revolutionaries.

From Philip Rostant to Mzumbo Lazare, to Cipriani, Uriah Butler and Albert Gomes: for close to 100 years the reform movement of this country produced civil rights leaders. As the Indians began to emerge in the 1900s, men such as Saaran Teelucksingh, Ajodhasingh and Badase Sagan Maharaj joined the ranks, calling for social justice and just rights for 'a fair day's pay for a fair day's work'. It was against this backdrop and in this post-war period, that a new political dynamic emerged which arranged itself around one man. Independence of Trinidad and Tobago will always be association with Dr. Eric Williams, who made his commitment clear when he said:

"I was born here and here I stay, with the people of Trinidad and Tobago who educated me free of charge for nine years at Queen's Royal College, and for five years at Oxford, who have made me whatever I am ... I am going to let down my bucket where I am, now right here with you."

This was Williams' entry into the political arena of 1955. In many ways, he was the inheritor of the 19th century reform movements, but he was also a man of the moment. Williams was the hopes and dreams of every mother come true, at least amongst the descendants of the Afro-Creole population. He was sufficiently arrogant to deal with the British administrators and politically powerful to put the French Creoles in their place.