On the matter of Reparation

by Oswald Fereira Tue Nov 05, 2013

I have been skimming some recent articles on the subject of reparation in The Searchlight. I must admit that I have not had enough time to read all the issues in detail, but from what I gleaned, the reparation cause appears to be largely related to the enslavement of our African ancestors and the genocide and forceful removal of the Carib and Black Carib populations from St Vincent. I also see that reparation is directed at the British, French and The Netherlands. I dare to say that this is a narrow view of the reparation issue and I will suggest other areas that should also be considered.{{more}}

My discourse is likely to be controversial, so let me state clearly that I am not a biased white subject bent on defending our previous colonial masters. I am Vincentian by birth, descendant from a mixture of races – Madeiran Portuguese, Scottish, African, Black Carib (my great uncle insists), and God knows what ever else my free mingling Portuguese ancestors may have brought into the mix. As a Vincentian of mixed races and mixed circumstances, I am part and parcel of the reparation debate.

The reparation debate should not ignore the plight of our East Indian brothers and sisters. They came to St Vincent and to the Caribbean under the post-slavery Indentureship program. They supposedly came of their free will as free men and women and were free to return to India – free in theory, but in reality, if they were not offered a passage back to India, they were not free to go across vast oceans that separate St Vincent and India because their meagre wages could not suffice. Rumours abound of coercion to get the East Indians to join the Indentureship programme. It is time for descendants of East Indian extract to research this topic and determine what promises were made and broken in order to make the East Indian case for reparation.

Our East Indian brothers and sisters did not fare well in St Vincent; they were completely deculturalised. They lost their language and culture, and they were deprived of their religion. The story I hear from the Park Hill area where I grew up was that the East Indians were encouraged to baptize their children in the Anglican or Roman Catholic churches and the children so baptized had to take the names of their godparents. So, in one family you had brothers and cousins carrying the names of Cabral, DaSantos and Pereira, the Catholics; and King, Harry and Theobalds, the Anglicans. About the only food of East Indian origin that survives today is Karelia and perhaps some varieties of mango. We do not have roti, chipati, doubles, kuchela, and chutney, and we have imported those from the East Indian descendants in Trinidad. We have no local East Indian music or East Indian fashions.

The Madeiran Portuguese were also part of the Indentureship program and may or may not be subject to the same broken promises to the East Indians. In time too the Portuguese lost their language and culture and apart from the use of salt fish and garlic pork, the greatest mark that the Portuguese left on the island was their prolific breeding and interbreeding among all races. The terms of these two Indentureship programs need to be ascertained to determine what claims may be realistically made for reparation for both groups.

And what of those of us of Scottish descent, mainly the population of Dorsetshire Hill and other enclaves. It was quite common for Britain to deport its Scottish and Irish prisoners and other undesirables to its colonies to provide a source of labour. Research into the circumstances of the migration of Vincentians of Scottish descent should be undertaken to determine if they are part and parcel of the reparation debate.

Most Vincentians are of mixed races and many of us are African-Portuguese-Carib-East Indian in a single package, so let our claim be all-inclusive. And let us also not forget that Spain was the first colonial power in the Caribbean and under Spain the indigenous population of the Antilles was decimated, and the first African slaves to arrive in the Caribbean were in Hispaniola in 1501 under Spanish rule. Even Denmark had colonies until those colonies, part of the Virgin Islands, were sold to the United States of America. So reparation should also be sought from Spain and Denmark. And what of Portugal? The Portuguese were heavily involved in the slave trade. By 1552, African slaves made up 10 per cent of the population of Lisbon, Portugal. There may have been many Portuguese sea captains bringing slaves to the New World. There were also Jews involved in the trans-atlantic slave trade and many slaves in Curacao, Barbados, Brazil, Suriname and Jamaica had Jewish masters.

Any reparation claim is likely to end up in some sort of international court or mediation forum. With this in mind, we have to do much research to be able to make and present a thorough, all-inclusive case and we have to be prepared for the legal arguments that may be made against any case we present. Lawyers against reparation will argue on the basis of law and they will find ways to influence decisions based on what was right in law, even it may have been morally wrong.

Despite the fact that slavery was an abomination of history, in legal terms the case for reparation against slavery may be difficult to argue. I know that some readers may find this statement offensive but at that time in history, slavery was legal – not morally right, but legally right. Slavery was enshrined in the Code of Hammurabi, dating from 1760 B.C. Slavery was recorded in every known empire – Sumer, Ancient Egypt, Ancient China, Akkadian Empire, Assyria, Ancient India, Ancient Greece, the Roman Empire, Islamic Caliphate, and the pre-Columbian civilizations of the Americas in which most of the human sacrifices were prisoners of war or slaves. Vikings raided across Northern Europe to capture and enslave people for sale on the Byzantine Islamic markets. Many of those so enslaved were Slavs, hence “slave” and “slavery”. In similar fashion, the Moors of North Africa raided across the Mediterranean and into Spain and Portugal and enslaved people. Ukrainians were enslaved by the Turks and the Roma people of Romania were often enslaved. The children of Israel were enslaved in Egypt and were taken into captivity in Babylon. So, slavery was not an isolated event of white Europeans enslaving Africans. And slavery is not solely a human trait. It has been observed that some ants colonize and enslave worker ants from other ant colonies.

Slavery in history was hereditary, so once a slave always a slave and the supply of slaves was guaranteed. Sadly, it was a time when slavery was condoned even by the Catholic Church. In the fifth century, Pope Gelasus permitted Jews to introduce slaves from Gaul into Italy and in 1452 Pope Nicholas V issued a “Papal Bull”, Dun Diversas, granting King Alfonso of Portugal the right to reduce Saracens, pagans, and any other unbelievers to hereditary slavery. Even the rulers of the day endorsed slavery. In the eighth century, Charlemagne allowed Jews to act as intermediaries in the slave trade. I am not by any means condoning such actions, except to point out that they were the norms of the day, heinous though they were.

I cannot imagine European ship captains parading around the villages of West Africa plucking Africans from their homes or off the streets and dragging them off into slavery. The African tribesmen would have slaughtered those white Europeans. Rather, I imagine that the enslaved lot were likely captives of war and were sold into slavery to middlemen slave traders, who in turn sold them to European ship captains. For example, in Ghana, the Ashanti tribe from the south warred against other tribes in the north and captured and sold them into slavery. The Yoruba tribe in Nigeria acted in similar fashion. There may have been similar situations across many countries in West Africa, leading to a steady supply of slaves for the European traders. It is reckoned that in some African countries more than half the population were enslaved. The Kings of Dahomey sold their prisoners of war into the trans-atlantic slave trade; they would otherwise be killed in a ceremony known as the Annual Customs; so it was slavery or death. Females were captured to become brides and their male companions were often killed if they could not be sold into slavery. The trans-atlantic slave trade may have even fuelled the tribal conflicts and provided more slaves for trading. If that was the case, dare I say it, in the same manner that we seek reparation from those who bought us into slavery, should we be seeking reparation from the Africans that sold our ancestors into slavery? Furthermore, European nations may argue that although they were colonial masters, their governments were never part of the slave trade, as slavery was an activity of private citizens and European governments did in time vote to abolish slavery in their colonies. Even if we can trace the slave traders and plantation owners who kept slaves, their ancestors may not be in any economic position to pay reparation.

One might argue that it was possibly legally wrong to move the slaves across an ocean into a new land. However, the counter argument will likely be that slaves were property and moveable property could legally be moved and traded by their owners. Much has been said and established about the ill-treatment of the African slaves. They were transported across the Atlantic in horrid conditions and many did not survive that passage. Many were ill -reated, maimed, and died on the plantations. On the other hand, there must have been some benevolent slave masters. One has to realize that the whole purpose of a plantation was to bring profit to the owner and if the slave population was treated well they were likely to work and the plantation would likely be productive and profitable and healthy slaves would have healthy children to further supply the plantations with a labour force. Even so, while some slaves may have chosen to be submissive even under deplorable working conditions, simply to avoid corporal punishment, other slaves resisted enslavement and paid a high price, even an early death, for their disobedience.

The genocide and deportation of the Carib and Black Carib populations is an easier case to argue. There is no legal right to forcefully remove a people from their ancestral homeland and place them in a land far away, where they had to fend for themselves and from whence they had no means of return – it is morally wrong and legally wrong. Lawyers may argue that the Caribs were fighting against the British and as captives of war the British had some sort of right to banish them, just as Napoleon was banished into exile from France. However, the British were invaders who were taking land away from the Caribs and the Caribs should have the right of self-defence and to compensation for the taking of their homeland.

As a young student at the Boys’ Grammar School, I remember reading in a Brief History of St. Vincent by Ebenezer Duncan, that after the British-Carib wars in St Vincent, the Caribs were awarded lands in the north-east of the island and in the Greiggs area, the so called “Carib Country Estates”. I remember that the text included a map of said lands. In my childhood naivety, I kept asking myself where are the Carib Country Estates? I saw all the land north of Rabacca – Orange Hill, Waterloo, Lot Fourteen, Bamboo Range, Overland, Tourama, belonging largely to the Barnard family, they of British stock; and lands further north were owned by other white families of British descent. How did the Carib Country Estates pass back into white hands? Were the Caribs ever compensated for this land taking?

Another case for reparation is the fact that the agricultural produce of St Vincent and the Grenadines – sugar, molasses, rum, copra, cotton, contributed to the development of wealth in the British Midlands and St Vincent and the Grenadines may not have received its proportionate share of this wealth in order to develop a supporting physical, social and economic infrastructure. It is reckoned that at the time of the Industrial Revolution in Britain, profits from the slave trade to plantations in the British West Indies made up 50 per cent of the British economy. Unfortunately, we may see a counter argument along the lines that when St Vincent and the Grenadines accepted the terms for Independence, the Government of the day relieved Britain of all its financial obligations. Britain has surely acted that way because the development of our post- Independence infrastructure had been largely with aid from the Canadian government – CIDA. Britain may argue that it opened up its doors to Vincentian and Caribbean immigration, allowing our citizens a door to economic opportunities in Britain and allowing money to be repatriated, thereby contributing to economic development.

I remember as a child I was quite enthusiastic about an independent West Indies. However, once the Federation failed, I was not enthusiastic about independence for the small islands. What is the point of being independent in law, but dependent economically, with an agriculture system being largely a monoculture of bananas, the price of which was determined in England and a monoculture that eventually failed? Unfortunately, it was a time when there was a race to accept independence in order to enshrine a name in history as being the first Prime Minister at any cost. Unfortunately, if one political party did not accept independence, the other political party would do so as soon as it gained power at the polls. It was a process of one upmanship. At the risk of being classified a traitor, we should have hung on to colonial status and demanded the physical, social and economic infrastructure necessary to lead us into independence – an international airport, roads to our resources, schools, clinics, playing fields, community centres, performing arts centres, concert halls, university training for our students, etc. Even today we lack our adequate share of such infrastructure. For example, how many of our schools have a gymnasium or proper science laboratories? Our governments go begging, cap in hand, around the globe for funds to build an airport. Very few of our towns and villages have community centres or a gathering place for residents. Our post-Indepen­dence economy has depended largely on monies repatriated from our citizens who have migrated and work abroad and without this we may be in worse shape.

Lawyers against reparation may require that we establish a case that we are worse off as descendants of slaves and indentured labourers in a country foreign to our ancestors. This will be a daunting task. I have often wondered what my life would be like if my Portuguese ancestors had remained in Madeira. Unless we are able to trace our ancestry and find our relatives in Africa, Madeira, and India we will not be able to make the necessary economic comparisons. And if we were able to establish these comparisons, what if we ended up being better off? Where does that leave the reparation issue? And for those of us of the diaspora who have migrated abroad and have made lives and begat descendants overseas, are we still part and parcel of the reparation debate?

In some respects, slavery, indentureship, genocide and deportation are all unfortunate facts of history. Our ancestors who endured them were terribly wronged, but no amount of reparation could reverse history or heal the pain they endured. History is not a place that we can visit and correct wrongs. Most acts of reparation have been symbolic or mere apologies and have no monetary value or compensation aspects. They were done at times when it was the “politically correct” thing to do and probably brought more sympathy to the politicians who made them rather than to those who were wronged. In other words, we are being used yet again.

History is part fact and part story, we are at the mercy of the biases of those who write history and our task is to clearly separate the facts from the stories. Also, we cannot judge acts in history, atrocious though they may be, by the mores, values and legal standards of today. History has to be judged in its proper context. The fact remains that we, the descendants of slaves and indentured labourers, have been given opportunities and many of us have done remarkably well. We have taken our place on the world stage as equals in almost every field of endeavour and that in itself is reparation. We have accomplished self-reparation!

History is full of atrocities and slavery is but one. The feudal system in Britain was slavery of sorts. The numerous wars of history have resulted in homelands and property being lost and people left in exile and as refugees in foreign lands. Even today, there is genocide in Syria and child labour camps in many countries. Many people do not have a homeland. If all these affected peoples were to fight the reparation battles, there will not be enough money to compensate us all. What is the time limitation on these reparation battles? How far in history can we go back with claims for reparation? At some point in time we have to forget the atrocities of history and stop being slaves to the slavery and indentured labourers enigmas. Let us cease putting prices on the heads of our ancestors. But, I believe that we can and should establish strong cases to improve our physical, social and economic infrastructure if only in recognition that the colonies contributed immensely to the economic foundations of Europe during colonial times; and seek justice for the genocide and deportation and exile of our Carib brothers and sisters. I want no part of token apologies for slavery and the Indentureship programs.