On Friday, we will observe “Emancipation Day” to commemorate that inaugural event of our country’s history: the emancipation of enslaved Africans on August 1st, 1838. I support Eric Phillips/ACDA’s call for all Guyanese to participate in the commemoration activities but with the exhortation that we appreciate the historical context.
On 28 August 1833, the Slavery Abolition Act had been given Royal Assent to come into force on August 1, 1834. It was therefore not unreasonable that in Essequibo, Damon led a rebellion of hundreds when they were told they had to continue working for another four years as “apprentices” – with wages only after 45 hours of weekly free labour. The full title of the act, however, revealed the sly caveats that made a mockery of the word “emancipation” and freedom: “An Act for the Abolition of Slavery throughout the British Colonies; for promoting the Industry of the manumitted Slaves; and for compensating the Persons hitherto entitled to the Services of such Slaves.” Ex-slaves were not compensated, and the “apprenticeship” period was hypocritically for “promoting the industry of the freed slaves.”
William Wilberforce’s ‘Anti-Slavery Society,’ formed in 1823, had explained, ‘To grant freedom to (the slaves) immediately would be to insure not only their masters’ ruin but also their own. They must (first) be trained and educated for freedom.’ This “training and education” was to be channelled through the Christian Churches that justified an acceptance of the stratification system based on its “Great Chain of Being” doctrine. It postulated a white God in Heaven, represented by his white son Jesus on Earth, followed by heavenly white angels over humans – with whites at the apex and blacks/Africans at the bottom.
The category of “race” had been created to justify the enslavement of Africans, defined as bereft of souls. Other non-white groups were placed in intermediate positions between white and Black as the European rulers arbitrarily determined. After the widespread rape of enslaved African women by whites on the plantations, a new “coloured” stratum was created and given an intermediate, buffer position above Africans. After emancipation and into the present, this stratum revelled in their conferred status, which Africans strove to achieve through “education,” “marrying up” (fairer spouses), and speaking and dressing “properly.”
Wilberforce’s “training and education for freedom” is the key point we should reflect on this Emancipation Day: the assumption by the white establishment, including the anti-slavery movement, that the formerly enslaved workers were incapable of making responsible decisions in a “cash-based” economy and had to be tutored into its ways. Never mind that during slavery, the enslaved Africans had reared livestock, cultivated provisions and vegetables, and sold them in Sunday markets. As a matter of fact, even though the status quo was supposed to remain in place post-1834, it was the manager’s killing of the workers’ pigs that pushed Damon and his colleagues over the brink to rebel.
The churches were funded by the state to first establish schools in the villages the Africans had spontaneously founded after 1838. They focused on creating “Black Englishmen” along the lines of Thomas Macaulay’s 1835 “Minute on Indian Education.” This outlined how “Brown Englishmen” – and by extension all other “natives” of the Empire – were to be created to serve the interest of the colonial power. There was nothing but superstition in “native” knowledge and culture, which was to be extirpated. Not coincidentally, Thomas Macaulay was the son of the slavery abolitionist Zachary Macaulay. Queens College, founded in 1844, which eventually accepted coloureds and Africans, epitomised “education” for transmitting the European hegemony.
Because of the brutalities they inflicted on Africans during slavery, the planters were convinced that after emancipation, retribution would become the order of the new day. The Guyana Police Force was therefore organised by 1838, but its launch was delayed for one year when it was decided to model it not on the unarmed London Metropolitan “Bobbies” but on the armed Irish Constabulary that was organised as a pacification force. Police stations were soon established near the new villages and manned by immigrant Barbadian recruits with white officers: the locals were not trusted to discipline their “matties.” Our centralised and authoritarian police culture was inculcated from the onset.
We need to appreciate Hanna Arendt’s observation: “…liberation may be the condition of freedom, but by no means leads automatically to it.” The formal and informal institutions and structures that slavery bequeathed to all Guyanese must be reformed to allow freedom to be what we can be.
