Article: Bicentenary of slavery's abolition

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Bicentenary of slavery's abolition
published: Sunday | March 25, 2007

http://www.jamaica- gleaner.com/ gleaner/20070325 /lead/lead5. Html


Verene A. Shepherd, Contributor

Why mark the bicentenary of the abolition of the
transatlantic trade in Africans? This question has
been posed over and over again by Jamaicans who feel
that we ought to ignore the bicentenary. As far as
many people are concerned, March 25, is a British
anniversary, imposed by Government fiat with no
groundswell from the people. The Abolition Act changed
very little, they maintain. The trade continued,
albeit this time deemed illegal, with 16 ships
arriving in Jamaica after March 25, 1807;
intra-regional relocation/trading in peoples
intensified and the slave system remained firmly in
place, not being abolished until over 30 years later.
This 'long postponement' of freedom is one reason that
Richard Gott in his article in the Manchester
Guardian, urged people in the U.K., "who might find
themselves caught up in the prolonged bout of
self-congratulation imposed by Government fiat to
celebrate the bicentenary in a minor, not major key."

Haitian anti-slavery politics

People supportive of this side of the debate add 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
radicalised by Haitian anti-slavery politics at that -
the slave regime became more brutal. The year 1807,
then, signified greater repression. For all these
reasons, the argument goes, 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, the
alleged return of imperialism via World Cup Cricket,
with 'creole aspects' marginalised; and the problems
of under-development.

opposite view

But the opposite view is that for so long, so much
repressed memory; somuch silence and shame have
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 seize
the occasion of the bicentenary to engage in public
education and focus on the efforts of the Africans
themselves to force Britain's hand towards abolition.
Indeed, over four decades after Guyanese historian
Elsa Goveia observed of Jamaica 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, " denial,
shame, ignorance and silence continue to surround the
human tragedy that was the trans-Atlantic trade in
Africans; and pride in the past has not replaced shame
about the past.

Anne Bailey, author of African Voices of the Atlantic
Slave Trade, in supporting this idea that silence
surrounds the history of the transatlantic 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" she was aware of a few
"whispers'.

Despite the conflicting views, a dominant perspective
has emerged insisting that Jamaica needs to celebrate
the fact that by the Abolition Act, perhaps millions
more were saved from the dehumanising Middle Passage
and slavery in the Caribbean; that even though
abolition has traditionally been presented as a
benevolent act by British humanitarians, intellectuals
and politicians, thousands of Africans and Creoles in
Jamaica participated in the long anti-slavery
struggle. They were the early political activists
intent on eradicating all forms of injustices and
creating free societies in the Americas.

increasing instability

After 1807, there was an increase in maritime
marronage, encouraged by Haiti's 1805 emancipatory
constitution, and a greater awareness of the
importance of their labour power among the enslaved,
especially females, who formed the majority of all
field gangs, and, therefore, increasing instability in
Jamaican society; for the more the British enslavers
tightened military control and made punishments for
so-called crimes even more horrific, even stepping up
deportation, the more the enslaved found ways to
resist. So effective was resistance that by 1832, and
the suppression of the Jamaica war, the writing was on
the wall. 'Full free' had to be legislated so that the
descendants of the enslaved could imagine and
actualise the freedom for which they struggled; a
freedom that they passed down to present generations,
who enjoy the rich cultural traditions of their
African ancestors.

Prof. Verene Shepherd is chair of the Jamaica National
Bicentenary Committee and also chairperson of the
Jamaica National Heritage Trust.