Guyana Institute of Historical Research Journal. Issue 7 September 2019
Established in 2013
September 2019
|
Cover picture: City
hall of British Guiana.
The Guyana Institute
of Historical Research publishes a newsletter three times, each year and the
Guyana Institute
of Historical Research Journal is
published annually. The Institute also
holds an annual conference, at which presentations are made by historians,
academics, researchers and, prominent civil society activists. This conference is held annually on the last
Saturday in June. The DVDs of the
conference are sold for GY$5,000.00/US$20.00 per package or GY$1,500.00/
US$6.00 per panel.
Original Title:
Guyana Institute of Historical Research Journal ISSUE 7 2019.
© Copyright 2019,
Guyana Institute of Historical Research.
All rights reserved. No part of
this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or
transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission of the
Guyana Institute of Historical Research.
Cost: $1,500.00
ISSN 2078-7154
Key title: The Guyana Institute of Historical Research Journal.
Who are we?
Historical Background.
The Guyana Institute of
Historical Research was founded in 11 July, 1994. It has always operated on a budget. The
Institute was formally commissioned on 1st September, 2000, when an application
for registration under the Funeral and Burials Act was submitted. The signatories were the GIHR Director Mrs.
Hazel Woolford, Mr. Tota Mangar, Miss Arlene Munroe, Miss Cecelia McAlmont and,
Dr. Melissa Ifill.
In 2009, the Institute applied to the registry of the
Supreme Court to be registered. It was
registered on 8 February, 2010. It is
run by a Board of Directors and Management. The first Board of Directors was
Chairman- Mr. Tota Mangar
Vice-Chairperson- Ms. Cecelia
McAlmont
Legal Adviser- Mr. Gladstone Fitz Alert
GIHR Director- Mrs. Hazel Woolford
Secretary- Mrs. Moneeta Singh- Bird
Treasurer- Reverend Miss Arlene Munroe
Public Relations Officer- Mr.
Orlando Michael
Director of Outreach- Dr. Melissa Ifill.
Mission Statement
The Institute was established
to disseminate historical information, which is considered very important for
researchers, historians, civil society, politicians, the electorate and, those
persons who need to be educated about the historical background of the
politicians, political parties, as well as the local history of Guyana.
The Institute promotes higher
education for development, through research.
The objectives are fourfold:
1. Research
2. Educate
3. Disseminate
4. Publish
Table of
Contents Page
CHAPTER 1: A
reconnaissance of the terrain and a call for public history
in the digital state
Guyana.
By Vibert C. Cambridge, A.A., Ph.D. 4
CHAPTER 2: Military
migrants: From the battlefields of india
to the cane fields of Guiana
By Kumar Mahabir Ph.D 17
CHAPTER 3: Immmigration into the British West Indies
and Mauritius from emancipation to the end of indentureship,
rationale, numbers and their impact on the economy,
1834-1920.
By Mansraj Ramphal B.Sc; M.Sc.; M.A; IPM 33
CHAPTER 4: Exploitation:
Re-imagining the migrant experience 63
Migration
Jim Jones and Jonestown: A Journalist Remembers
By Mohamed Hamaludin 78
Addresses
Mrs. Hazel Woolford 86
Mr. Eric Phillips 87
Abstracts and writers 93
CHAPTER 1:
A
reconnaissance of the terrain and a call for public history in the digital
state Guyana.
By
Vibert C. Cambridge, A.A., Ph.D.
New
writings about Guyana
Since World War II, there has been an acceleration in the published
writings on the Guyanese experience.
Around the world, Guyanese academics and other public intellectuals are
locating new sources, using interdisciplinary frameworks and participatory methods
in the study of the Guyanese experience and its regional and global
connections. My books Immigration,
Diversity and Broadcasting (2005) and Musical Life in Guyana (2015)
along with my current research on the social history of “sweet drink” are in this
vein. The substance of the new scholarship is
rich and of value to the fledgling democracy where politicians play loose with
our people’s history and try to manipulate it for sectoral interests. It is a scholarship for the public
sphere—academic and formal and community and informal. It is of value for the wider society. It is essential for active citizens. This calls for innovations in studying
and dissemination of the new knowledge of the Guyanese experience that is
emerging from UG’s campuses and in other academic and scholarly institutions
around the world.
The theme for this conference offers an opportunity to
engage this opportunity to bring complex historical information to the public
discourse.
A RECEE OF THE TERRAIN
Here I draw upon family history and autobiography to explore
the theme of this year’s conference--Labor, Military, and Diaspora. Here I offer a survey of this terrain in the
long Guyanese experience. This is
complex terrain. All Guyanese have been
influenced in some form or fashion by the dynamics at the intersection of these
“big three”--Military, Labor, and Migration--in the Guyanese experience. Let start by considering the Simmons and
Cambridge families.
The Simmons and Cambridge families
The military was always in the family discourse growing up. Among my maternal grandfather’s friends was a
“shell shocked” victim from World War I.
My grandfather, a Barbadian immigrant came to British Guiana in the late
19th century. He served in
the para-military police forces of two British colonies, British Guiana in
South America and the Gold Coast, West Africa between the late 1800s to around
1922. My grandfather lived to his 90s;
and his home in Thomas Street, Cummingsburg, Georgetown was a venue where there
were constant visits from relatives, “country men,” old policemen, lodge
brothers, other retirees, the occasional civic official, aspiring politicians,
and the shell-shocked veteran.
“Mr. C” as I call him was one of the 700 British Guianese who served
in World War I and suffered a life-long disability as a result.[1] Cedric Joseph’s The British West Indies Regiment 1914 – 1918, published by Guyana’s Free Press in
2008 is a valuable contribution to our understanding of the intersection. It is a work which chronicles the abuse and
discrimination experienced by these primarily male volunteers from the British
West Indies. The publication proposes
that region’s participation in World War I had transforming consequence for the
region’s social and political order.
There were few women in that war.
As mentioned recently, my maternal grandparents were immigrants. Grandfather, William Henry Simmons came from
Barbados. My maternal grandmother came
from the island of Dominica. My mother
was born in the Gold Coast, now Ghana.
On my father’s side—the Cambridges--there are solid Guyanese East Coast
Demerara rural village roots and labour union activism. From early o’clock I realized the Guyanese
experience was bigger than British Guiana.
My interest in Guyanese experience was “formalized” at my alma
mater—Queen’s College—celebrating its 175th anniversary this
year. Among my teachers were Clement
Yansen, Mervin Claxton, Pat Dial, and Robert Moore. These masters taught us to be proud of our
creole experience. They introduced me to “bottom up history.”[2] Yansen’s Random
Remarks on Creolese was published in 1966 to coincide with Guyana’s
independence. My first history teacher
at QC was a Trinidadian, the late Mervyn Claxton. He was one of the first Elsa Gouveia-trained
historians from the University College of the West Indies. Claxton brought West Indian history to the
curriculum. It was from him we heard
about Toussaint L’Ouverture and the place of West Indian histories in the
global context. He was followed by
British-trained Pat Dial whose course in British medieval history introduced
archeology as tool. Then there was Bobby
Moore, another Elsa Gouveia-trained historian, who as teacher and broadcaster,
promoted an eloquent historiography.
These men stressed the importance of evidence and the excitement of
finding sources – the historian as detective.
I attended Queen’s College from 1955 to 1961. The school, like the nation, was in
transition. The colony was moving into
independence. During my stay at QC I met
several students who went on to become influential historians of the Guyanese
experience. These included Walter
Rodney, Winston McGowan, Alvin Thompson, Frank Birbalsingh, Tommy Payne, Rupert
Roopnaraine, Brian Moore, Ian Robertson, and Joel Benjamin. Joel played an important role in the
development of the Caribbean Research Library at the University of Guyana—an
under-resourced national treasure.
During QC experience—either 3C or L4G, my history class participated
in a grand school exhibition (ca. 1957 or 1958) to showcase the school’s new
and revised curriculum. I was part of
what we would call today an “interdisciplinary history group.” We used art and pageantry to showcase the
scope and substance of the school’s history curriculum. Michael Cox’s bust of a Neanderthal with
heavy brow, done in E.R. Burrowes’ art class, was part of the exhibition. So too was a pageant depicting the social
hierarchies of Medieval Britain. The
exhibition was open to the public. It
was an effort to make information accessible.
When I left QC in 1961, I had developed an appreciation for Guyana’s
connection to the larger context of humanity.
It has been an interest that I have sustained.
Another experience that contributed to my life-long interest in the
Guyanese experience was the contact I made with the National Museum during the
late 1950s. During one of the long
“August” holidays in the late 1950s and bitten by the “archeology” bug from Pat
Dial’s course, I “excavated” a porcelain dish in my yard in First Street,
Alberttown. The artifact was donated to
the National Museum and as a quid pro quo, I spent most of that August
holiday as an informal intern. It was
through this I got to meet Ram Singh and develop an interest in museology—the
art and science of displaying history.
It is good to be back in this venerable building with my pork knocker
friend with the “bush Clarks.”
If my history courses at QC stoked an interest in the interconnections
of history and ways of studying it, my early work in the Guyana Civil Service
provided an opportunity to experience the context to appreciate the makers of
bottom-up history. My job as a Customs
and Excise Officer during the early 1960s, took me to the Port of
Georgetown—the “waterfront”-- in the pre-container days and close encounters
with the legendary ships and stevedores of that era. Ships like the Arakaka, Artemis,
Oranjestaad, Willemstaad, Sun Brayton and Sun Rip, and the Athelbrook
and Athelbrae of the molasses trade.[3] Among the legendary stevedores were Slack
Foot Johnny, Auger man, Hard Ass, Panama Joe Gans, and Ganga Saka—all
card-carrying members of the British Guiana Labor Union—Guyana’s first trade
Union—created by Hubert Nathaniel Critihlow a century ago.
My autobiography will detail the extensive work done in the public sector
in agencies related to social security, aviation, broadcasting, national
service, and culture. Each job expanded
my appreciation of the deeply textured story of Guyanese experience. As an
officer in the Guyana National Service, one was actively engaged in a
decolonization project and in an act of sovereign assertion.[4]
Those were heady days of early independence.
A chapter in my autobiography would be dedicated to my work with the
Guyana Commemoration Commission between 1984 and 1986. In 1984 I was “seconded” to Guyana
Commemoration Commission and served as its Executive Secretary. Here the task was about application—applied
history/public history—awakening in the public discourse the significance of
the 150th anniversary of the abolition of slavery and the
consequences it has had on the making of the modern Guyanese nation. It was about working closely with a range of
stakeholders, including the History program at the University of Guyana to make
the history of slavery and the nation’s post-emancipation experience accessible
to the public. The development of a four-year work program required working
with Professor Joycelyn Loncke, Sister Noel Menezes, Joel Benjamin, and that
new generation of librarians, historians, and other scholars who were at UG. Some were locating fugitive sources on the
Guyanese experience and repatriating them to Guyana. They were generating new research related to
the peopling of Guyana and the long Guyanese experience. It was wide in scope. For example, Denis Williams’s archeology of
the pre-Columbian era transformed our appreciation of the Guyana experience.
Others were focused on special aspects of slavery experiences. The linguistics and sociology scholars were
adding texture.
The Commission sought to introduce a narrative about the consequences
of emancipation and the making of the modern Guyanese nation. The commemoration commission was challenged
to find innovative ways to make this evidence-based knowledge--accessible. This “bottom-up history” demanded community
engagement. Religious bodies, ethnic organizations, and civil society were
stakeholders in the 4-year (1984-1988) commemorative experience. From this dynamic came the national heritage
days, pageants, international symposia, shop window/showcase displays, special
radio programs, and the folk festival.
From the palm cards that are circulating, you can see that the folk
festival is still alive in Region 11—the Guyanese diaspora in New York. The proceedings of the international
symposium, edited by Professor Loncke, were published in 1985.[5]
In recent years, I have been part of the historiography that was not
only bottom up but was unapologetically interdisciplinary. It seeks to synthesize/integrate strands of
the Guyanese experience. It is an approach
that undermines the ethnic silo approach. Guyanese women Melissa Ifill, Cecilia
McAlmont, Hazel Woolford, Juanita DeBarros, and Gillian Richards-Greaves, have
been piloting this tendency.
However, the sharing of this new knowledge has been limited as the
works have been anchored to traditional platforms—the book, the journal
article, the newspaper column. I remain
convinced that a multimedia/multi-channel approach is needed to tell the
synthesizing and emancipating stories that will continue to emerge from this
new era research and scholarship on the Guyanese experience. This feature address can be seen as an
argument for the launching of public history as a specialized practice in
Guyana. It has implications for the
training of the next generation of historians at UG. This could be an element in the work that GCA
and GIHR should do together.[6] This is an act of public education aimed at
creating the engaged citizen. This is
the kind of outcome possible from the partnerships that are possible out of
this conference.
The above reveals my bias (manager, broadcaster, teacher, commitment
to collaboration, a preference for participatory research and participatory
pedagogies/active learning, and life-long learning) and the possible contours
of the collaboration between GCA and GIHR.
Let me continue to draw upon autobiography and family history to guide
further reflections on the intersection of Labor, military, and diaspora in the
Guyanese experience. Now for a return to
World War I
World War I
According to
Cedric Joseph, at least 700 British Guianese served as soldiers during World
War I. Fourteen (14) were officers and
686 were “Other Ranks.” Among them was
Captain R. J. Craig, Lance Corporal T. N. Alexander and the shell-shocked “Mr.
C.” Captain Craig, after whom the
Rupert Craig Highway is named and Lance Corporal Alexander earned medals for
bravery—Craig, the Military Cross and Alexander the Military Medal. “Mr C” returned alive but damaged—back in
those days PTSD-was not a diagnosis.
Others, including several QC alumni, died on World War I battlefields in
Europe. Their names are memorialized on plaque in the school.
John Campbell notes in his History of Policing in Guyana, that
my grandfather William Henry Simmons, who retired as Assistant Commissioner of
Police in the Gold Coast, was one of the few members of the British Guiana
Police force to earn the Imperial Police medal.[7] He was a frequent visitor to London. When in London during the Edwardian age, his
partners were members of the Guyanese diaspora, among them my great paternal
uncle Samuel Spencer Alfred Cambridge and Alexander Barbour-James.
William Henry Simmons, Alexander Barbour-James, and Samuel David
Dolphin were British Guianese who went to British colonial West African to work
in nascent police forces, postal service, and railways systems. They were a type migrant—the sojourner—a
category that must be recognized in our conversations about migration. In the process, they had “up close and
personal” experiences with colonial project.
On his return to British Guiana, my grandfather and his family settled
in Thomas Street, Cummingsburg. Three of
his sons, Welbeck, George, and Henry served in the allied Armed Forces during
WWII.
My mother, Lennie, was one William Henry and Eliza Francis’s eight
children. In 1944 she married to Cecil
Vanderbilt Cambridge. Cecil Cambridge
was born in Mahaica on November 1914.
His father John Henry Cambridge was the first station master at the
Mahaica Railway station. John Henry died
when Cecil was very young. His mother,
Madeline Cambridge (nee Vandercruize), was part Amerindian. Cecil grew up in Kitty and among the “lil
boys” in that community was L.F.S. Burnham.
Cecil attended Modern High School, a private institution founded by
Ramphal, Cameron, and Yansen in the early 1930s.
Cecil served in the British Royal Air Force (RAF) during World War
II. WWII had an impact of the colony’s
treasure and blood. Guianese contributed
funds to build aircraft, ships, and procure other military equipment for Great
Britain. Despite persistent racism in Britain’s military, Guianese men and
women served in all branches of the British Armed Forces. Cecil Vanderbilt Cambridge was one of
hundreds of British Guianese who fought for King and Country.[8]
His post-World War II life was linked to the tradition of free labor
organization which is also rooted in a long history. In his 2018 book, A People’s Political
History of Guyana 1838 – 1964, Kimani Nehusi situates this free labor
organizing tradition to the “task gangs.”[9] The experiences of
free organized labor in British Guiana since 1838 is filled with dramatic
moments of solidarity and sacrifice.
Among these are the strike of 1845, and the massacres at Ruimveldt, La
Penitence, and Leonora in 1905, 1924, and 1939 respectively. Free labor organization has a special place
in the unfolding of all aspects of the Guyanese experience across the crucial
20th century to these “now times.”
On his demobilization, Cecil return to British Guiana and was employed
as a clerk at the Transport and Harbours Department and become involved in the
Trade Union movement. I remember him
always polishing the brass buttons for his khaki uniform. I also remember his dark suited Armistice
Days leading a contingent of marching Ex-Servicemen to the Cenotaph. I also
remember his red-shirted Labour Days. In
time he became President of the T&HD Workers Union and was later elected
the President of the colony’s Trade Union Council. The victory of T&HD Workers Union victory
over Colonel Robert Teare in 1948 was a part of his discourse.[10] Like “Squibby” Critchlow, Hubert Devonish’s
dad, Cecil’s preferred mode of transportation was a bicycle. He was among the
founding members of the PPP in 1950[11].
Cecil did not “Windrush.” Two
of my uncles did and became part of the Guianese diaspora in the UK. Cecil stayed in touch with developments in
the UK through relatives and through international conferences and programs
such as the Duke of Edinburgh’s Study Conference. He also participated in several international
conference in the USA and in Latin America during the pre-independence
years. Guyanese trade unionists have
always related to the grand trends and alliances in the international trade
union scene. Some have suffered from
these connections. For example, after H.
Nathaniel Critchlow attended a conference in Moscow, he appeared to have been
dropped from the social register. Cecil
Cambridge was aware of the cold war polarization that had infiltrated the Guyanese
trade union movement leading up to independence and the early years after. He opted for Critchlow Labor College.
Like my grandfather and father, I too have a military connection. Some
40 years ago, I completed GDF’s Officer training program. I returned to the Guyana National Service after
the successful completion of the course and rose to the rank of Major.
THE MILITARY
The military in Guyana is also about employment. According to a former senior military
officer, the Guyanese military may have employed “tens of thousands” since independence.[12] But before examining the nature of that
relationship, let set the parameters for exploring the distinctly Guyanese
military experience. It would be
comfortable to begin the examination of Guyana’s military heritage from the
start of Essequibo colony in 1616. It
is, however, necessary to go to earlier times and understand the military
traditions of our indigenous ancestors in the Amazon and Caribbean
regions. Taino creation stories identify
their ancestors coming to the Caribbean islands from modern day Guyana in their
seagoing “canoes.” This suggest seaborne
strategies. There is a tendency to
privilege, the post conquest and colonization era in the study of the military
tradition in Guyana. We must note that
the conquistador and colonizer literature often refer to the indigenous people
as “war like.” War is complex. Is there anything in that tradition that
warrants a place in our understanding of the intersection of military, labor,
and migration?
Guyana’s military history during the colonial era, must include the
hardship posts of early European and West Indian regiments, 1763 Berbice
uprising, the anti-maroon expeditions, 1823 (John Murray), Angel Gabriel
suppression, etc.[13] It is said that brutality with which the 1823
uprising and the Angel Gabriel riots were suppressed resulted in bad PR for the
military. One effort to soften this
image and win “hearts and minds: was the creation of the BG Militia Band in
1856 along with a branch in New Amsterdam, Berbice.[14] I have written elsewhere about the
significant contribution the military bands have made to Guyanese musical
life. The names Rudolph Dunbar, Clem
Nichols, Rannie “Sweet Lips” Hart, Bert and Eddie Rogers, Vincent D’ABREU, the
Mootoo Bros, Warrant Officer Bennett and the late Sonny Ault are all from the
military bands. Musicians such as
Dunbar and Hart were among those contributing to the institutional completeness
of the Guyanese diaspora in the United Kingdom since the 1920s. As said earlier, altogether, in the
post-independence era, “tens of thousands” have been employed by the Guyana
Defense Force and other branches of the uniformed services.
Beyond employment, the military also had an impact on other aspects of
Guyanese life. The military in BG has
influenced style, bearing, dress and carriage, and given “swank and
swagger.” These latter attributes were
epitomized in men like Donald Barker, Nichols, Blackett who trained and
influenced the Queen’s College Cadet Corps during the 1950s and 1960s when
David Granger, Carl Morgan, and Desmond Roberts were members.
Let’s return to Guyana’s experience with World War II.
World War II
Unlike World War I which was fought primarily in Europe, WWII hit
Guianese at home. The German U Boats in
the Battle of the Atlantic curbed, for a while, the colony dependence on
imported food. Ground provisions and
other local produce replaced the repertoire of imported foodstuff inherited
from slavery and indentureship.[15]
As mentioned before, my father served in the Royal Air Force. Many returned to colony and played important
roles in transforming post-WWII Guiana.
Others stayed in Europe—part of the Windrush era—and renewed/replenished
Guyana’s oldest diaspora. In terms age,
the Guyanese diaspora in the UK can trace roots to the 18th century. A time when Dolly Thomas, the Queen of
Demerara, was celebrated in London and Glasgow.[16]
By far, the largest impact on Guianese life during World War II came
from the American presence at Atkinson Field.
The American bases in BG were established in the early 1940s under the
US/UK Lend-lease program.[17] The construction of these bases, especially
Atkinson Field, collided with emerging principles in Guianese labor
relations. Hubert Nathaniel Critichlow
challenged the practice of having two wage scales. A higher one for Americans and a lower one
for local workers. This was consistent
with practices applied during the construction of the Panama Canal. Here US workers were paid in gold coin and
West Indian workers paid in silver. This
challenge should be considered as an example of the chutzpah of the nascent
trade union movement. The American
presence in Guyana during World War II amplified the issues of race/color/and
class and it facilitated the adoption of new tastes, styles, and values.
The literature on WWII is filled with reports about the impact of
American Jim Crow praxis around the world.
The 1943 military order by the US Commander in BG prohibiting
inter-racial dating drew public condemnation.
That order laid bare Guianese practice.
American soldiers were advised to follow the colony’s racial
hierarchy—whites, then Portuguese.
The American troops created several social challenges related to race,
class, and gender. Helen Taitt’s My
Life, My Country, with an Introduction by Janet Jagan, provides a
first-person observation on the social dimension of the consequences of the
American presence.[18] According to Godfrey Chin’s autobiographical
collection Nostalgias, there were in excess of fifty (50) whore houses
in Georgetown at the height of the American presence.
Students who are seeking first person experiences of World War II
should consult the small literature by Guyanese who served during World War
II. J. R. Miggins traces his
experiences in British Other Ranks: Memories of John R. Miggins A Caribbean
Veteran of World War II.[19] CY Grant’s writings tell the story of Black
Royal Air Force Officer and a prisoner of war.
Bosquet and Douglas’s West Indian Women at War, provides a woman
perspective, including that of Guianese women.
Again, alumni and faculty from Queen’s College made the ultimate
sacrifice. Their names, like those who
died during WWI are memorialized on a plaque in the school’s assembly
hall. I still recall the tradition of
having that roll called by the youngest student during the General Assembly
that coincided with Armistice Day.
What was the Post World War II experience?
One can discern creole validation and the emergence of national
consciousness. Dunbar exerted influence
in UK musical life. Service men
returning to BG after service in various WWII theaters took up jobs in the
uniformed departments of government sector--the British Guiana Police Force,
Fire Brigade, Prison Service, Customs & Excise, Transport &Harbours
Department, and the British Guiana Volunteer Force.
From BGVF to GDF.
His Excellency, President David Granger, Joe Singh, and Carl Morgan
have written and are still writing about this transition and the GDF
experience. Because of personal
experience, I can offer a perspective on a post-independence hybrid—The Guyana
National Service.
Guyana National Service.
Theresa Heywood’s I Was
There: My stint in the Guyana National
Service provides a first-person account of a Guyana National Service
experience in 1985. For me, her book is
a bookend. I began my GNS career in
1976 and held several appointments, Education Officer, Training Officer, Center
Administrator, and at one time GSO I in GNS HQ.
Theresa Heywood’s reflections take place close to the end of the
original project.[20] I joined a GNS that was pumped up on the idea
that it was possible through combined effort to transform society from one that
is top-down and dominating to one that is just and caring. I joined in the Norman McLean era. It was a heady time. Across the post-colonial world, newly
independent states were implementing transforming policies with grand
names. In Tanzania it was the
Arusha Declaration. In Guyana, it was the Declaration of
Sophia. That declaration articulated
LFSB’s national development plan and political strategy. In this plan, the Guyana National Service had
in the parlance of the era, the critical task of creating the new Guyana
man. It was Norman McLean’s function to
get it done. He assembled personnel from
across the uniformed services and the Civil Service to create a cadre of senior
officers—the DDGs and ADGs—to administer the policy under the rigid military
code of conduct. I joined GNS in an era
when the “culture” function had presence in the militarized hierarchy of the
organization. The LP I Want To Build
is a solid encapsulation of the creativity associated with the early years of
GNS.
The post-independence military has done its job. It has defended Guyana’s territorial
integrity and has added “swank and swagger” to Guyanese style. The “squaddie” bond developed in the Guyanese
military has served as valuable asset in diaspora. As is evident in the several ex-servicemen
associations in the diaspora. These
associations warrant research interest in the future. So too is the need to explore to explore
irregular formations.[21]
The recent exploration of the military pillar, although not
exhaustive, shows the intimate connection with the other pillars, labor and
diaspora. Let me do a similar, but
abbreviated exploration for the two other pillars in the conference’s
theme—Labor and Diaspora.
LABOR
The registration of the BGLU by H. N. Critichlow on January 1, 1919
will remain as one of the significant developments in story of working people
in Guyanese history. It took place at
time when special interests, especially ethnic interests were establishing
formal associations. Critichlow chose
class. The registration of the BGLU in
1919, is as architectonic, and as significant as the emancipation of enslaved
Africans. Critchlow was also called
“Black Crosbie” because of his leadership during the 1905 agitations.
The scholarly work on this pillar is substantial. Walter Rodney’s History of the Guyanese
Working People covering the period is 1881 to 1905 is an exemplary and
pivotal work. He articulates and applies
in an engaging historiography the essence of the Elsa Gouveia’s orientation to
Caribbean history. Ashton Chase’s History
of Trade Unionism, 1900 – 1961 is another modular work. There is no shortage of work on the
experiences of the slavery eras and the significance of the rebellions.
In my recent book, I explored the place of music in the life of the
trade union movement and in the private lives of citizens. The early labor leaders recognized the power
of music. Early Labor Day parades were
led by popular music bands. The first
purchase of the BGLU was a piano. The
soldiers marched of the World War I singing songs—one of which was “What you
gone do to the Kaiser?” Those that came
back, brought jazz.
Working people contribution to Guyanese cultural life is substantial
and offers a good place to do bottom up history and develop innovative ways to
share these emancipating stories. It is
in the lives of the Guyanese working people we see the story of Guyanese
gender, taste, style, and the ongoing emendation of belief, attitudes, and
behaviors.
Throughout this presentation I have been alluding to things that need
to be done to strengthen our understanding of the intersection. A short history of Critchlow Labor College is
needed! The anticipated work on the
archives of BGLU and CLC will be a boon.
My review of the abstracts and the historians gathered here for this
conference means that over the next day, we will be situating the Guyanese
experience in regional and global contexts.
I look forward to the rich conversations.
MIGRATION
Guyana has been the site for some the most significant movements in
the history of the human species. The
retreat of the Ice Age some 12,000 years ago brought our indigenous peoples to
this part of Amazonia. Our story since
the end of the 15th century has been about new “arrivants,” both
voluntary and involuntary. It has been a
place of transformation and outward movement, a place of settlers and
sojourners.
Guyanese workers have followed global labor demand and, in the
process, established and nourished diasporas in the UK, USA, Canada, the
Caribbean, and in Latin America. As Dr.
Gillian Richard Greaves has noted elsewhere the Guyanese diasporas are
“complicated” as they are transnational, descended, and blended. In these places live the memories of the
crucial 20th century. Voices
that were muted, marginalized and sometimes repressed. These voices are perspectives should be of
interest in historical research. Not
only are there memories in the diaspora; there are the artifacts and ephemera
that are needed for doing the substantial and robust histories that Guyanese
expect in the 21st century.
Currently, in my social media bubble, there are unfortunate tensions
between the homeland and its diaspora—terms like “combackee,” and low-grade
buzing about ingratitude have tainted, what until recently had been an engaging
discourse. It is blinded by one model of
diaspora engagement and hinders emancipating scholarship.
The reuniting of immigrant families or “the Chain-link practice” has
characterized the immigration policies of the places where Guyanese have
migrated to in large numbers during the 20th century. We at GCA are deploying a range of
participatory methodologies to study this community. We refer to it as Region 11. Over the past 18 years we have supported
Rohan Sagar’s ethnomusicological mapping of Guyana, Gillian Richards Greaves
pioneering work on the place of Kw Kwe in identity formation in the NY
diaspora, advocated for Masquerade, and held annual symposium.
Since 2002, the Guyana Cultural Association of
New York, Inc. has organized an annual symposium in Brooklyn or Georgetown,
Guyana. Each symposium is typically a day-long event which focuses on some
aspect of Guyanese heritage and creativity through research reports, creative
works, performances, and dialogue. On a
few occasions, the symposium took the form of a practicum in the form of
multi-day workshops.
As Guyanese have gone abroad, so have new immigrants come to Guyana. In recent years, there have been increased in
immigrantion from China, Brazil, Haiti. The current humanitarian crises in
Venezuela has added a new dimension to life in the borderlands.[22] Oil and gas will bring new faces from foreign
place.
WHAT HAS THE SURVEY SUGGESTED
The persistence of racial superiority theory and practice.
No sector of Guyanese life; labor, military, or migration has been
immune to this ideology. It is a story
that covers all the geography of Guyana—urban, rural, and hinterland. Guyana has seen racial supremacy theory
operationally—the abuse of the human species.
World War I started with the proposition that it is improper to allow
and inferior “race” to kill as a person of a “white” race. That was the belief system that informed the
way British War Office, Colonial Office, utilized the British West Indian
Regiment during WW I.
It was a war the sucked out skilled West Indian labor and in general,
demeaned these soldiers, using them as general labor corps, with laterite duty,
or as laborers in ammunition dumps where they were always close to
shelling. This was probably the cause
“Mr. C’s” shell-shocked state.
This abuse to the spirit, this encounter with white supremacy theory
led to the formation of a short-lived association aimed at transforming the
post-World War I West Indies. Members of
that association included Captain Arthur Andrew Cipriani and Norman
Manley. Both would go on to become
active in trade unionism, formation of mass political party, the demand for
political independence, and regional integration. By the 1920s, Cipriani and others Caribbean
labor leaders were in British Guiana, in conference with Hubert Nathaniel
Critchlow. Among the topics addressed
were federation, labor rights, and democratic governance.
CONCLUSION
As I move to the conclusion, I am reminded of a post on Facebook by
Dr. Terrence Blackman, Dean of the School of Science, Health, and Technology,
Medgar Evers College, Brooklyn, New York, in which he reminded his Facebook
colleagues of Rex Nettleford’s admonition:
“If you don't find the time to document your own history, it is likely
to be forgotten, or, worse still, misrepresented.”
I hope through my reflections on the nature of the interactions of
Labor, Military, and Migration, has made the case for intensifying the
documentation, preservation, and dissemination of robust historical
information. I hope I have been obvious
in my call for a GCA and GIHR to collaborate on a project. More than anything, this address has equally
been about sharing good history. History
is special. Good history is NEW
CONSCIENTIZATION—an emancipatory praxis.
To do this effectively we have to train the replacement generation in
new skills and techniques. We must break
new ground in museology, public history, and challenge the unimaginative and
pirated programming that characterize Guyana’s media landscape.
So, what do we do?
What are the next steps?
RECOMMENDATIONS
& NEXT STEPS
On training the next generation of historians.
I recall a conversation on the Facebook site University of Guyana
History Society between Dr. Melissa Ifill and a former student. It was about the factors behind the apparent
absence of a degree program in history at the University of Guyana. Frankly, I think that is an unacceptable
situation and I support President Granger’s observation that history should be
a subject in that national educational curriculum. However, there is need to be innovative in
our pedagogy. History has been
bibliocentric for too long. It must draw
upon the new technologies and train historians for new careers. Careers in
public history: museology, curation and
archives; corporate archiving; and mass media programming. It must be a curriculum that encourage
participatory research, including community research, as is required in the CXC
creative arts syllabi. We have found
that participatory approaches to the study of the Guyanese experience inspires
the building of intergenerational and interethnic trust. Trust is used here to refer to an
interpersonal and social attitude and patterns of behavior informed by a
respect for, and pride, in the commonalities in our ancestral responses to
surviving in this space. It is an
emancipatory praxis.
Maybe doing good history can help heal the nation. Further, we have found that participatory
approaches and methods contribute to the identification and accessing of unique
sources, yields richer interpretations, and encourages the use of public
history as a strategy for sharing existing and emerging scholarship on the
Guyanese experience.
Archives rescue and access
Excuse me if I sound like a worn record. Guyana archives are challenged. Some like our audio and video archives, those
held by National Cultural Center, the National Communication Network, the
National Library, and the Ministry of Education’s NCERD are endangered. In the
realm of visual archives, a powerful data source; the vast majority of films
made by the state in the post-independence era no longer exists. Lost to floods and deliberate destruction. Then, in rapid succession came VHS, DVD, and
online platforms. The volume of the
current collection is making cataloguing as important to stabilization,
preservation, digitization, and utilization.
Another data collection challenge is access to fugitive
collections. Where can one locate the
archives of the BG Labour Union and the Critichlow Labor College? Is there a strategy to collect the memories
of Guyanese at home or in diaspora?
Virtual Museum
It is time that we build partnerships to do good histories. How can we develop a learner-centered global
Guyana initiative which will enrich/provide the framework for a national
history curriculum? Could the
Guyana Cultural Association of New York and Guyana Institute for Historical
Research collaboration include be the construction of a virtual museum of the
Guyanese experience with all its regional and global connections? This
can inform and inspire the reformulation of the history degree at UG. Yes, colleagues many new careers possible
with a degree in history.
How is this to be funded?
Like the creative arts,
historical research should have access to a percentage of the oil and gas
revenues. We have depended on the
historian to assemble the knowledge of this crucial intersection and make it
accessible. This knowledge is critical
for developing the informed citizen needed in a young and fragile democracy.
On behalf of the members of the Guyana Cultural Association of New
York, I wish you a successful conference.
WORKING
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bosquet, B
and Douglas, C. West Indian Women at
War: British Racism in World War II. London:
Lawrence and Wishart, 1991.
Browne,
R. Surviving Slavery in the British
Caribbean. Pennsylvania: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017.
Cambridge,
V. Immigration, Diversity, and
Broadcasting. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2005.
Cambridge,
V. Musical Life in Guyana. History
and Politics of Controlling Creativity.
Jackson: University Press of
Mississippi, 2015.
Chase,
A. A History of Trade Unionism in
Guyana 1900 to 1961. With an Epilogue to
1964. (2006 reprint). Georgetown, Guyana, 2006.
Devonish,
H. Language
and Liberation: Creole Language Politics
in the Caribbean. London: Karia Press, 1986.
Granger,
D. Guyana’s
Military Veterans. Georgetown: Free Press, 1999.
---------------. Five-Thousand
Day War: The Struggle for Haiti’s
Independence, 1789 -1804. Georgetown: Free Press, 2004.
---------------. National
Defence: A Brief History of the Guyana
Defence Force 195 – 2005. Georgetown: Free Press, 2005.
---------------. The
Guyana National Service 1974 – 2000. Georgetown:
Free Press, 2008.
---------------. The
Guyana People’s Militia 1976 – 1997. Georgetown: Free Press, 2008.
Grant,
C. The British West Indies Regiment
1914 – 1918. Georgetown: Free Press, 2008.
Harry,
C. Hubert Nathaniel Critichlow, his main
tasks & achievements. Guyana, 1977.
Haynes,
P. Beyond Bourda Green. New York, 2011.
Heywood,
T. I
Was There: My Stint in the Guyana
National Service. Self-published,
2004.
Higman,
B. Writing West Indian Histories. London:
Macmillan Educational Ltd., 1999.
Humphrey, M
& Graham, J. Caribbean Wars Untold: A Salute
to the British West Indies. Jamaica: University of the West Indies Press, 2007.
Ishmael,
O. The Guyana Story: From earliest times to Independence. USA:
Xlibris, 2013.
Jagan,
C. Forbidden Freedom: The Story of British Guiana. 3rd edition. London:
Hansib, 1994.
Jagan,
J. Guyana National Service
Johns,
W. Biggles
Flies Again. London: Dean’s
International Publishing Co., 1985.
Liverpool,
C. Foundation of the Guyana Defence
Force: A Soldier of Valour Story. 2016.
Loncke, J.
ed. Proceedings of the International
Roundtable to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the abolition of
slavery in the Anglophone Caribbean, Georgetown, Guyana, August 4 – 5, 1984. Georgetown, Guyana: The Guyana Commemoration Commission, 1985.
Menezes,
M. How to do Better Research. Guyana:
Demerara Publishers Ltd., 1990.
Miggins, D
& Moore-Miggins, D. British Other Ranks: Memories of John R. Miggins A Caribbean
Veteran of World War II. Tobago:
The Empowerment Foundation of Tobago, 2006.
Nehusi,
K. A People’s Political History of
Guyana 1838 – 1964. London: Hansib, 2018.
Neptune,
R. Caliban and the Yankees: Trinidad and the United States Occupation. North Carolina: The University of North Carolina Press, 2007.
Taitt,
H. My Life, My Country. Guyana:
New Guyana, a. 2006.
Yansen, C. Random Remarks on Creolese (Revised edition,
Vols 1 and 2 combined). UK: Chameleon Press Ltd., 1993.
[1]
See Cedric Joseph for details on the experience.
[2]
See C.Yansen, Random
Remarks on Creolese (Revised edition, Vols 1 and 2 combined). UK:
Chameleon Press Ltd., 1993.
[3] http://www.theshipslist.com/ships/lines/athel.shtml
[4]
Forbes Burnham. GNS White Paper.
[5]
Edited by Professor Joycelyn Loncke
[6] “Review essays are critical reviews of at least 2
(usually 3 or 4) readings covered in the course. ... The purpose of these essays
is to allow students to show that they understand the arguments or main points
of several readings and can analyze them in a coherent, integrated, and
thematic fashion.” Accessed online May
25, 2019
[7]
Cite Campbell.
[8]
There is difficulty in getting an accurate count, given the variety of services
involved.
[9]
See Kimani Nehusi. A People’s
Political History of Guyana 1838 – 1964.
London: Hansib, 2018.
[10]
What does Ashton Chase say about Col. Teare?
See also, http://www.guyana.org/features/guyanastory/chapter121.html
[11]
See Cheddi Jagan’s West on Trial and Odeen Ishmael’s xxx for details.
[12]
Carl Morgan. A more comprehensive report
on this aspect of post-independence Guyana may be found in Desmond Robert’s COI
on the state of the Guyanese veteran.
[13]
See Candlin, Anna Benjamin, the Brazillian, Hicks, etc.
[14]
Double check the date.
[15] The Battle of the
Atlantic: The German U-Boat war in the
Atlantic and the impact on diet—what was breakfast in the morning? Was it flour-based? The schooner first person story off the coast
of Essequibo.
[16]
For more on Dolly Thomas see Chapter 2 “The Queen of Demerara” in Kit Candlin, The
Last Caribbean Frontier, 1795 – 1815. London:
Macmillan, 2012.
[17]
Signed September 1, 1940.
[18]
See Helen Taitt, My
Life, My Country. Guyana: New Guyana, a. 2006.
[20]
What does Joe Singh say. What does David
Granger say?
[21]
This would include political irregulars and criminals with military tactics.
[22]
See Gentian Miller is GCA White Paper, 2014.
CHAPTER 2:
MILITARY
MIGRANTS: FROM THE BATTLEFIELDS OF INDIA TO THE CANE FIELDS OF GUIANA
By
Kumar
Mahabir Ph.D
Overview of the Sepoy Revolt
The 1857
Indian Sepoy Revolt was a widespread rebellion against British rule in India,
represented by the British East India Company (BEIC). The Revolt is known by
many names, including the Sepoy Rebellion, the Revolt of 1857, the Indian
Mutiny, the Indian Insurrection, the Great Rebellion, the First War of
Independence and the Mahomedan Rebellion. Historians have used various terms
based on their respective Marxist, British, nationalist or other perspectives
of the rebellion and its significance.
However, one
factor is common. The sepoys - native/Indian soldiers or siphahi - in the employ of
the BEIC ignited the rebellion which spread across northern and central India from
Bengal to Punjab, and included all segments of the society based on class,
caste and religion (Vohra 2001). The sepoys were a large, trained, powerful and
mainly-Brahmin-and-Kshatriya-high-caste-Hindu fighting force. In 1857, there
257,000 sepoys (88%) compared to a mere 34,000 European soldiers in all of
India which then included Pakistan, Bangladesh and Myanmar (Burma) (Reddy 2003:
287).
The “brief”
(Naipaul 2010: viii) sepoy mutiny lasted
only about a year but it “struck a paralyzing blow to British power,” and ignited
a “full-scale Anglo-Indian war” (Wolpert 2000: 234) that flared into “the
greatest rising against any colonial power in the Age of Empire” (Wood 2008:
226). The mutiny is also historic because sepoys and civilians as well as Hindu
soldiers and Muslim jihadists joined forces to fight British control. Both
Hindus and Muslims also pledged loyalty to the Mughal Emperor Bahadur Shah of
Delhi as their leader. The mutiny was unsuccessful but it resulted in the
creation of a national consciousness which led to the formation of the anti-colonial
Indian National Congress Party in 1885 and Independence of India from Britain
in 1947 under the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi (Reddy 2003).
What is
relevant to this paper is the fact that (a) the 1857 rebellion took place
mainly in Uttar Pradesh where most Indian emigrants left for the faraway West
Indies/Caribbean, (b) at the same time during recruitment for indentured
labourers in the same British colonies in the Western World (1838-1917), and
(c) ex-soldiers and civilians left India for almost the same reasons.
Research questions
The research
question in both the natural and social sciences is the heart of a project,
study or review of literature. It
determines the methodology and theoretical framework, and guides all stages of
inquiry, analysis and reporting in both quantitative and qualitative research.
This project
will examine the following research questions:
What memories exist/ed, or have been
transmitted, about the presence of ex-sepoys during indentureship (1838 -1920)
in British Guiana/Guyana, Trinidad and other parts of the West
Indies/Caribbean?
Which literary text has made reference
to, or featured, these former soldiers in the West Indies?
These
research questions are accurately and clearly constructed, and indicate (a)
what the researcher wants to know most, and (b) where and what kind of material
to investigate. These are
thought-provoking
questions that require both significant investigation and evaluation (George
Mason University, 2019).
Delimitations and limitations
The objective
(scope/boundaries/delimitations) of this paper is not to discuss whether the
1857 Sepoy Mutiny was just a mere military insurrection or was nationalist or
communal in nature and outlook. The objective is also not to deliberate on the
details and consequences of the revolt against the British in India. The deliberate
intention of this paper is to examine the effects of the mutiny as they relate
to the migration of ex-soldiers as labourers to the British West Indies during
indentureship (1838-1917), and specifically, their presence in memory, oral
history and imaginative literature.
There were the expected
practical limitations of lack of funding, resources and time to pursue this
project to a satisfactory end. Some related history book chapters and books I
could not find (in time) e.g. the chapter entitled “Sepoys, Servants and Settlers:
Convict Transportation in the Indian Ocean, 1787-1945” by Clare Anderson, in
the book A History of the Prison in
Africa, Asia and Latin America edited by Frank Dikötter and Ian Brown
(2007, Pp.185-220). Although my focus was on Caribbean historical fiction, I
would have liked to read novels such The
Siege of Krishnapur by J. G. Farrell (1973) and Uller Uprising by H. Beam Piper (1952), which are based on the
Sepoy Revolt. The study took about three months to complete; I would have
preferred six. Although I had no control of these limitations, the methodology
and conclusions are valid.
Literature Review
The 1857
Sepoy Revolt is “one of the central events of the modern history of India” (Bayly
1991: 231). On this subject, there are serialised volumes (e.g. Mutiny at the Margins: New Perspectives on
the Indian Uprising of 1857. Volume IV: Military Aspects of the Indian Uprising
(2013); entire books (e.g. A Companion to
the Indian Mutiny of 1857 (1996); large sections of books (e.g. Advanced History of Modern India, Volume 2,
1857-1884); and book chapters (e.g. “The Sepoy Mutiny” in History of India: A New Approach (2003)).
The Sepoy Revolt has “produced more literature than any other single event in
modern Indian history” (Dev 2013, para 1).
However, only
three publications have focused on the presence of ex-sepoys in British
Guiana/Guyana, Trinidad and other parts of the West Indies/Caribbean during
indentureship (1838 -1920). There are the chapters entitled “The Caribbean
Consequences of the Indian Revolt of 1857” by Brinsley Samaroo in the edited
volume Indian Diaspora in the Caribbean:
History, Culture and Identity (2012), and “The Uprising, Migration and the
South Asian Diaspora” by Marina Carter and Crispin Bates in the edited volume Mutiny at the Margins cited above. There
is also the paper “The Indian Mutiny cum Revolt of 1857 and Trinidad” by J.C.
Jha in the journal, Indian Studies: Past
& Present (1972). Unlike Samaroo’s and Carter and Bates’s publications,
Jha’s research focuses exclusively on Trinidad.
On the
presence of sepoy veterans in the West Indies, Samaroo’s 22-page chapter is the
most extensive and comprehensive. However, he owes a great debt of gratitude to
Jha on whose research he builds, develops and embellishes. Samaroo often cites
the same scenes and sources e.g. a Baptist missionary’s chance encounter with
“rebel sepoys” in Arouca in Trinidad in 1860/61, first documented by Kinsley in
his travelogue, At Last: A Christmas in
the West Indies (1872: 122).
Additionally,
only about 2 of Samaroo’s 22 pages document the actual presence of Indian ex-soldiers
on the sugarcane plantations on this side of the world. Most of Samaroo’s
research provides a background to their arrival. But much to his credit, he
tapped into the memory of then-living informant, Dr James Boodhoo whose great
grandfather Anand, was indentured in the Tacarigua/ Arouca estate in Trinidad
during the later 1860s. Anand had escaped from India in the immediate aftermath
of the Revolt by serving as a girmitya [indentured].
He brought to Trinidad a sword as a memento of his early years in India; the
family remembers it … (p. 87).
Carter and
Bates as well as Jha did not use any oral history (memory) methodology. The
co-authors “take a fresh look at the Revolt of 1857 from a variety of original
and unusual perspectives, focusing in particular on neglected socially marginal
groups” (book’s blurb). It is true that they provide “new perspectives” but
they, like Jha, rely on conventional historical and archival sources. Neither
Samaroo nor Carter and Bates as well as Jha use, or make reference to,
historical fiction on the revolt. These genres (memory and literature) offer a
privileged site for historians to interrogate archival, colonial and
authoritative narratives (and vice versa). These complementary methodologies
and sources can be used to create multiple histories to challenge the grand
master narrative (Trafton, 2016).
Methodology
Social media,
personal knowledge and personal networks were used to find people with (a)
memories of the presence of ex-sepoys during indentureship (1838 -1920) in the
West Indies/Caribbean, and (b) knowledge of literary texts with references to former Indian soldiers in the West Indies.
The use of
memory in the humanities (especially oral history) and the social sciences as a
methodological tool and as an object of research is not new (Keightly 2010).
Despite its limitations, it has been found that memory is a vast potential
resource to recount and reconstruct the unwritten or barely-written past. The collection
and documentation of memory of the presence of Indian ex-soldiers during
indentureship can certainly fill the gap of un/written records on this topic.
Memory expressed as “oral history is as reliable for reconstructing the past as
documentary sources, but differently reliable. There are areas in which it
provides a fuller version of the history than a documentary source ever could,
but also vice-versa” (Essays, UK, 2018).
Literature (poems,
plays and novels) based on
historical events of epic proportions like the 1857 Sepoy Revolt bring life
from the past to the present with dramatic depictions of characters, dialogue,
costume, sets, action and plot. Historical novels are often based on documented
as well as oral (memory) sources so as to get as close as possible to the facts
of the past “as it was then.” Memory of the past is remembered and
reconstructed through the pen of the author (Deane 2009). Literary fiction
offers the historian an array of methodologies for bridging and comparing
historical fiction with historical fact.
Theoretical Framework
This project
is framed by the Margin-to-Center theory that has been established by feminist
Bell Hooks (1984). She challenged influential voices that have obscured the
involvement, leadership, and centrality of women of colour and poor women in
the movement for women’s liberation. In her seminal book, Hooks contested the
limited, one-dimensional perspective on women’s reality which excluded the
knowledge, awareness, lives and experiences of groups of other women.
This paper
seeks to shift the centrality of the discourse on (a) the 1857 Sepoy Revolt in
India, and (b) indentured immigrants in the West Indies (WI). The shift is from
the focus on Indian indentureds as mere labourers to trained ex-combatants who
sometimes were leaders in strikes and rebellions (from the battlefields of
India to the cane-fields of the WI). In
this instance, margin refers to ex-sepoys in India who voluntarily migrated or
escaped to the WI, whose lives have been invisible in the historiography of the
1857 mutiny. It is the norm to find
entire books on the revolt (e.g. Andrew Ward’s Our Bones Are Scattered: The Cawnpore Massacres and the Indian Mutiny
of 1857) with not even a single reference to, or footnote on, the
emigration and activities of thousands of mutineers to the British WI. This margin-to-center theory also underscores
the complexity and diversity of immigrants who formed part of the global
movement in the British Empire.
Ex-sepoys in the West Indies
(WI)
There was
much suspicion and some reliable evidence
that ex-soldiers had escaped among labourers destined to the WI after the
mutiny against the British in 1857 in India. Even in the sugarcane plantations
in the British WI 10,000 miles [16,000 km] away, the memory of the sepoys and
their rebellious spirits continued to drive fear and suspicion in the minds of
British authorities. “The revolt had a traumatic effect on the British rulers,
who were to suffer for several decades from mutinyphobia – the fear of the
recurrence of an armed rebellion” (Nanda 2004: 1).
It seems that
more ex-sepoys escaped to British Guiana/Guyana than to any other British
colony in the WI. Indeed, more Indian emigrants went to Guyana (238,909) than
Trinidad (143,939) or anywhere in the WI during indentureship (1838-1917). When
the Bucephalus arrived in Guyana from
Calcutta in 1858, a brief report appeared in the Guyana newspaper entitled “The
sepoys are come.” The article stated:
“Among the Coolie Immigrants recently arrived from Calcutta in the Bucephalus, are several Sepoys, who have
fled from India. They say that they were ordered to shoot their white officers,
but that rather than do so, they ran away, and emigrated” (Cited in Carter
& Bates 2010: 69). It is perhaps for these and other reasons that Guyana
became the headquarters of the 2nd West India Regiment police and was also guarded
by “the most heavily armed police in the British West Indies” (Dev 25/05/12).
There were
more revolts on sugarcane plantations in Guyana by Indian labourers than in any
other colony. For example, in Leonora (West
Coast Demerara) in 1869, 40 disgruntled labourers became violent against the Deputy
Manager. In an article entitled “Indian Militancy on Sugar Estates: The 1869
Leonora episode,” historian Basdeo Mangru (2007: para 9) wrote:
…. a detachment of police armed with a warrant
arrived on the estate and attempted to arrest Latchman, Baldea and Khodabacchus
for the assault on the Deputy Manager. They informed Bhugwansing, reported to be an ex-Sepoy, that they
only wanted the three accused. Instead, they were confronted with a crowd of
roughly 300, armed largely with hackia sticks, and refusing to surrender the
accused. When one policeman aimed his gun at the crowd and pulled the trigger
which failed to go off, the crowd responded with a fusillade of bottles and
sticks. What was significant was that the main bottle throwers were Indian
women. It was reported that the bottles were thrown in ‘volleys of fifty and
sixty at a time’ and replenished from supplies at a neighbouring Portuguese
rumshop. The police failed in their initial attempt to apprehend the accused
but soon returned with reinforcement from the Second West Indian Regiment
(emphasis added).
Subsequently,
the ringleaders were arrested, convicted and incarcerated in Mazaruni, a penal
settlement (Mangar 2014).
There were
also violent riots in Hague, Uitullught, Zeelught, Vergenoegen, Mon Repos and
Success in 1870 as well as in Devonshire Castle plantations
There was
also strong evidence of sepoy implication in the 1872 Devonshire Castle Riots
in the Essequibo, resulting in the death of five indentured workers. The Colonist [newspaper] rather dubiously
claimed that Indians rose up ‘with the avowed object of murdering the whites
and of playing on a small scale in British Guiana the part their countrymen
played in the drama at Cawnpore, sixteen years ago.’ The deposition of some of
the eyewitnesses also added a measure of credibility to reports of sepoy
involvement: ‘They were all fighting men. Some sepoys were among them’ (Stabroek News 4/06/13).
There were
also unrests in Plantations Eliza and Mary in 1873, and fierce uprisings in Non
Pareil (in East Coast Demerara) in 1896 where five protesting workers were
shot. In Leguan, Farm, Success, Skeldon and La Bonne Mere estates, there were
“principal disturbances” in 1894. Between 1886 and 1889, there were at least
100 strikes (42 in 1888 alone) initiated by Indian labourers on the plantations
(Seecharan 2001: 25). Escaping the battlefields in India to the cane-fields in
Guyana, these ex-militants turned their cutlasses into swords [talwars] against British authorities.
Just as in
Guyana, there was much suspicion and some evidence that some veteran sepoys who
had actively participated in the revolt in India in 1857 had escaped as labourers
to Trinidad. An official colonial
report documented proof of their presence in British Trinidad:
A report of
the Immigration Office of Trinidad of 3 April 1865 said that ‘the retired
Mohommedan soldier or sepoy’, considered inferior in domestic and social
relations to every grade of Hindoo, and utterly unfitted for agricultural
pursuits and anti-Christian in attitude, had not satisfied the planters, but
‘the number of sepoys is fortunately as yet too scanty to admit proof of the
latter’ (Jha 1972: 429).
The number of
sepoys was considered “too scanty” because most of them had concealed their
identity for fear of reprisal for their insurrection in India. Nevertheless,
they were the chief suspects of being instigators and ringleaders in numerous agitations,
fights, murders and onslaughts with cutlasses. Between 1882 and 1884, “strikes
of a serious nature” occurred on plantations in Naparima, El Socorro and Laurel
Hill in Tacarigua (Jha 1972: 430).
In 1884,
Hindus, Muslims and Christian Africans confronted British police who had ordered
them to stop the Hosay/Muharram procession in San Fernando. The stand-off
resulted in 16 Indians being shot and at least 100 wounded. One newspaper in
Trinidad warned of the “possibility of the atrocities of another Cawnpore
(Kanpur) being re-enacted here” (cited in Singh 1988: 9). A prominent
Presbyterian missionary, and even the Governor, expressed fear of the
recurrence of the 1857 tragic revolt in Trinidad. This “mutinyphobia” was so
intense that there was the suggestion in the local newspaper of the creation of
a special constabulary and a Rifle Corps or Arteillery for nipping the trouble
in the bud (Jha 1972: 429).
Both Jha and
Samaroo made reference to an encounter between a Baptist missionary, Edward
Bean Underhill, and some “rebel sepoys” in Arouca in Trinidad in 1860/61. One
of the veterans was a follower of the Rajput rebel, Ummar [Amar] Singh, of
Arrah in Bihar. The former soldiers were “far removed from the leanness and
obsequiousness” of the Bengali farmer, and their “demeanour and plumpness of
form” testified to their prosperous condition. “They were ready enough to talk”
about their condition in the new world.
But finding
that I know those parts of India from which they came, they quickly walked off,
apparently fearing that the discovery of their connection with the mutiny might
in some way compromise them (Underhill 1970: 37).
Memory of ex-sepoys in the West
Indies (WI)
It is nearly
impossible to find people in the WI who retain memories of a rebellion in
distant India passed on to them four generations and 162 years ago. In this
context, the fragments of generational memory that have survived constitute a
precious part of oral history. This methodology and source should be used more frequently
by researchers to retrieve and salvage vanishing historical information.
Samaroo (2012:
87) made mention of inquiries he had made among the villagers in Barrackore in
Trinidad about their memory of the rebellions in Barrackpore in India. They
told him that they had heard that Barrackpore in Trinidad was “originally
settled by former Indian sepoys from Barrackpur” in India. A historian himself,
Ken Maharaj (personal email to me, May 18, 2019),
in Trinidad, also
related a priceless piece of memory:
My great
grandfather came to Trinidad in what I reconstruct to be 1867, or not long
after. Within our older family, the tradition was passed down that as a young
boy - perhaps 10 - he observed a British army assault on his village somewhere
in Uttar Pradesh. The villagers fled on news of the approaching troops, but he
climbed a large tree in the village, and unseen there, he observed their
‘assault’, which consisted mostly of daubing the doors of their [Hindu] homes
with cow’s blood and tallow. The troops then left, and the boy remained in the
tree until, approaching in a cloud of dust, a rescuing cavalry of sepoys,
headed by his uncle, came to the village.
This and
similar incidents were considered outrageous at the time, and may have led to
my great grandfather’s decision to emigrate to Trinidad ….
Maharaj
apologised for the brevity of the recounted, graphic oral history anecdote, and
added that “it was all we had of the motherland, but it meant something to us.”
The historical literature is also soaked with images of desecration and blood
during the battle: victims butchered in cold blood, blood-botched legs, clothes
dripping in blood, rooms filled with blood, footsteps leaving trails of blood,
and “the floors were slippery with blood and the walls daubed with it” (Blunt
2000 :415).
There are
several people in the West Indies who claim sepoy ancestry. One is Mahabirsingh
in Trinidad who, in 1945, believed that he was the great grandson of
Echchowsingh “killed in action in the Indian Mutiny: (Kirpalani et al. 1945. Cited in Samaroo 2012: 88).
Another was Trinidad genealogist, Shamshu Deen (1998: 130-31), who was
searching for his relative’s family history in India:
John Munradin
knew English, Hindi and Urdu when he arrived in Trinidad at twenty-three. It
could well be that he too was a soldier and was fleeing the Great Mutiny of
1857-58. However, my searches at Delhi proved very scant on these soldier
listings. Those that we found were only for English soldiers with Christian
names.
Another
informant is Sylvia Gilharry Perez from Belize in Central America.+ Of East
Indian descent, her great grandfather emigrated from India to Jamaica as an
indentured labourer, and then to Belize after his contract expired. Budhu
Gilharry (1872-1945) was described wearing a moustache curled-up on the sides,
and military leggings with an adjustable stirrup that passed under the sole of
his shoes. Sylvia and her relatives believe that Budhu was a sepoy veteran.
There were
other people in the WI who invented, or were accorded, sepoy ancestry or
war-veteran status in order to evoke honour or fear, as was the case of this
plantation strike leader in Guyana:
The figure of
the sepoy seized the imagination of both British officials and the indentured,
for decades after actual veterans of the Indian rebellion may have arrived on
plantations. Jungli was way too young to have been one of them, but gained folk
status as a martial hero in the same broad cause (Bahadur 2014: 138).
Attempts to
glorify Indian freedom fighters of the 1857/58 Sepoy Revolt such as Mangal
Pandey and Rani Lakshmi-bai in film have seen the production of the war-movies
such as Mangal Pandey: The Rising
(2005) and Manikarnika: The Queen of
Jhansi (2019).
Ex-sepoys in the WI in
literature
The authors
of historical fiction have never intended to replace historical fact with
imagination. They merely wanted to dramatise history by using their imagination
to make the reader get a sense of feel of realism. In his historical novel, A Dip in the Sangam, Guyanese-born
Reuben Lachmansingh dramatises the fear that Shankar feels of being detected
and arrested as an ex-sepoy recruit in India now labouring in Plantation Sugar
Grove in Guiana/Guyana.
Shankar feels
that a British secret agent is stalking him to arrest and deport him to India
to face trial. He reveals to his friend, Raj, that he came from the same Nagwa
village as Mangal Pandey in the United Provinces.
Shankar
took a deep breath as though he wanted to spill it all out…. He looked around, ‘I
wanted to die besides my friends whom they strapped across the mouths of
cannons. They, however, had me clean up the bits of brains and body parts
after.’ Shankar leaned over the window and retched. After a few moments, he
continued, ‘That was the most difficult thing I ever had to do; talk about
nightmares; some say I scream in my sleep.’
Raja
tried to visualise the scene as described but the gruesomeness of it
overwhelmed him. ‘What was your punishment?’
‘They
locked me up in a dark cell in the Andaman Islands, supposedly for twenty
years.’
‘So
how did you escape?’
‘A
prison warden took pity on me. He snapped me out of my illness and disguised me
as one of the Sikhs guards who left for the mainland. Back in Calcutta, I gave
up the turban, cut my hair and chewed paan to stave off hunger. That’s when a
recruiter signed me up.’
‘Aha’
So Shankar is not your real name.’
‘Shh!’
Saliva trickled down to Shankar’s beard. ‘My real name is,’ Shankar cupped his
mouth, ‘Sagar. Sagar Singh ’ (2014: 131ff).
As “a man
trained to kill”, Shankar plans to raid the overseer quarters to seize a
stockpile of guns to launch an attack against the “spies and supporters.” In
the only known novel in the Caribbean that features an ex-sepoy, Lachmansingh’s
historical fiction accurately reflects historical fact, except for the
characterisation and dialogue. There are the realities of a Mangal Pandey,
mutineers tied to the mouths of cannons and blown to pieces, imprisonment in
the Andaman Islands, change of names, British spies in the colonies and violent
revolts in plantations in Guyana during indenturship. The scenes that refer to
the Sepoy Revolt in A Dip in the Sangam
are historically accurate. However, the story of the escape from the Andaman
Islands to India, and then to Guyana may be the use of artistic license to
convey a mythical truth.
It is rare to find historical
poems in the Caribbean, and elsewhere, when compared to historical novels. When
historical poems are found, they are usually about war, such as Trinidadian
Toodesh Ramesar’s unpublished entitled “native soldier” * based on the 1857
Sepoy Revolt in India:
From Barrackpore
in Uttar Pradesh, one Pandey
who was ignited
by the spark of a rumour,
the insult of cow
and pig’s fat
in an Enfield
cartridge he had to bite
that ended about
ten days later one sunny April day
in his hanging
until dead and to a well,
well down the
depth of hell,
the women and
children dead? Well.
He reputedly bit
the bullet that sparked the rebellion
through the
Ganges Valley, Mother’s first War
of Independence until
The Second, and another mother
and War one
hundred years later to Gandhi Village in Debe.
The irony of
separation and partition of cow
from pig fat to Bangladesh,
Pakistan.
The salt in the irony
that was common
as the wool
Gandhi wove to create the Second.
Were they her
first officially exiled exiles here, stamped
no return? These
military migrants, sepoys?
Maybe one exists,
a withered root in
exile in Penal,
without irony next door
to Gandhi
Village, born and bred
in Barrackpore?
Some relation of Pandey?
It is a beautiful
poem that plays upon words to evoke double meanings e.g. the Barrackpur in India and the
Barrackpore in Trinidad, leaders Mangal Pandey there and Basdeo Panday here, the
deceased Mahatma Gandhi and the living Gandhi Village in Debe in Trinidad. The
poet connects historical events that even historians of the Sepoy Revolt do not
often draw. He links the Indian Revolt of 1857 (also called the First War of
Independence) to the “Second” Struggle for Independence against the same British
Empire in 1947 – nearly 100 years later.
…
Mother’s first War
of
Independence until The Second, and another mother
and
War one hundred years later to Gandhi …
The poet also
sees a historical succession of popular Hindu Indian leadership across time and
space from Pandey to Gandhi to Panday.
The poet, Ramesar,
is really insightful to see the “irony” in the pork and beef fat taboo that
united Muslim and Hindu soldiers against the British Christians which sparked
the Sepoy Revolt. The same unifying taboo later became the bone of contention in
the separation of the predominantly Muslim (“pig” taboo) countries of Bangladesh
and Pakistan from the predominantly Hindu (“cow” reverence) India – nearly 100
years after:
The irony
separation and partition of cow
from pig fat to
Bangladesh, Pakistan.
In the second
and third stanzas, Ramesar uses the word “well” three times in various ways as
a noun (a deep hole), adjective (“well down”) and interjection (“Well.”). His repeated use invokes
the image of wells in the Sepoy Revolt: wells that were used to hide injured
and dead bodies of the Bibighar Massacre in Cawnpore. The poet also uses the
phrases “ignited by the spark” and “bit the bullet”, literally and figuratively,
in the context of war and, specifically, the Sepoy Revolt. Ramesar artfully
breaks the following lines to convey double entendre on Pandey’s “bite” of the
figurative bullet as well as the end of the greased cartridge packet that
eventually “ended” his life by hanging:
the insult of cow and pig’s fat
in an Enfield cartridge he had to bite
that ended about ten days later one
sunny April day
in his hanging until dead …
The poet craftily
plays on the verb “stamped” to mean that the fate of these ex-military men was
stomped by British officials as well as had the return overseas travel
documents of these exiles stamped CANCELLED: “Were
they her [Britain] first officially exiled exiles here, stamped/ no return?”
The poet poses five (5) profound questions for historians to ponder, including
the challenge to investigate whether a descendant of Mangal Pandey, who was
born and bred in Barrackpore in Trinidad, now lives in neighbouring Gandhi
Village. … ironically exiled here in what has become a Penal colony:
Maybe one exists,
a withered root in
exile in Penal,
without irony next door
to Gandhi
Village, born and bred
in Barrackpore?
Some relation of Pandey?
Both A Dip in the Sangam and “native soldier”
constitute historical literature which uses imagination to build on an event
that really happened. Though different in genres, this historical novel and
historical poem have been built on a solid foundation of facts which both
authors have researched like historians. Thankfully, both novel and poem are
not textbook recitations of facts and dates that read like a report or annal.
Conclusion: The mixed-methods
approach to history
More
historians need to examine memory, oral history and historical fiction as complementary
methods and sources to gain a better, nuanced understanding of the potential of
artistic works in the study of history. “If
historians want to bridge the widening chasm between public and academic
histories, they have no choice but to take relatively new forms of knowledge
like [fiction and] film seriously” (Deshpande, 2004). This paper on the Sepoy
Revolt has shown that a mixed-methods approach contributes to a better
understanding of the subject. The mixed-methods approach also provokes a deeper
interrogation of the subject and develops a larger narrative to history.
The
mixed-methods approach to studying the 1857 Sepoy Revolt (and other topics in
history) can be expanded to include an analysis of related songs, legends and
movies such as Mangal Pandey: The Rising
(2005) and Manikarnika: The Queen of
Jhansi (2019). Quite by coincidence, an art exhibition on Indian
indentureship in the West Indies is currently on display by Trinidadian David
Subran at The Frame Shop in the capital city. One of his paintings on display
is entitled “THE RANI OF JHANSI” with the description: “Following the death of
her husband, the Rajah, the queen of Jhansi amassed an army after the British
seized her palace. She was shot and killed on June 17, 1868” (Wallace 2019: 29).
Quite interestingly, the review of Subran’s exhibition is headlined “A history
lesson through art.”
FOOTNOTES
++ I have been informed that the book titled Apni Zameen [My Land] by Enayet Hussein
Edun has information that reveals that there were some Sepoys among the
indentured labourers in Mauritius.
^ “There is also an oral tradition that
indicates that some of the migrants who came as refugees [to Mauritius], or
those who run away from their homes, were given names like Bhugal, Bhuglah,
Bhugel, Bhugeloo, Bhuganee, Bhugan, Bhuglow. These surnames are still common in
Mauritius, but no research has been done on this aspect.” Assad Bhuglah (personal
email to me,
May 26, 2019).
# Bahadur (2014: 137) stated that veterans
were sent overseas either as convicts or exile labourers. Ex-sepoys who were found
guilty of murder and mutiny were ultimately sent to a penal settlement as
convicts.
* Personal email
to me dated May 18, 2019.
+ Personal WhatsApp message to me dated
APPENDICES
APPENDIX
1 – Map of Oudh, Bihar, Bengal and Calcutta
APPENDIX
2 – Map of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and West Bengal and Calcutta (Kolkata)
APPENDIX
3 – Map of Oudh, Bihar, Bengal and Calcutta
Source:
https://www.britannica.com/place/Uttar-Pradesh
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I am grateful to the following persons who
have contributed, in one way or the other, towards the completion of this
paper: Samaroo Siewah, Brinsley Samaroo, Ramphal Mansraj, Gaiutra Bahadur,
Ramona Harripersad, Toodesh Ramesar, Reuben Lachmansingh, Shalima Mohammed and
Shamshu Deen, as well as the librarians at UWI, NALIS (National Library), the
National Archives, and the Mahatma Gandhi Institute for Cultural Co-operation.
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CHAPTER 2:
MILITARY
MIGRANTS: FROM THE BATTLEFIELDS OF INDIA TO THE CANE FIELDS OF GUIANA
By
Kumar
Mahabir Ph.D
Overview of the Sepoy Revolt
The 1857
Indian Sepoy Revolt was a widespread rebellion against British rule in India,
represented by the British East India Company (BEIC). The Revolt is known by
many names, including the Sepoy Rebellion, the Revolt of 1857, the Indian
Mutiny, the Indian Insurrection, the Great Rebellion, the First War of
Independence and the Mahomedan Rebellion. Historians have used various terms
based on their respective Marxist, British, nationalist or other perspectives
of the rebellion and its significance.
However, one
factor is common. The sepoys - native/Indian soldiers or siphahi - in the employ of
the BEIC ignited the rebellion which spread across northern and central India from
Bengal to Punjab, and included all segments of the society based on class,
caste and religion (Vohra 2001). The sepoys were a large, trained, powerful and
mainly-Brahmin-and-Kshatriya-high-caste-Hindu fighting force. In 1857, there
257,000 sepoys (88%) compared to a mere 34,000 European soldiers in all of
India which then included Pakistan, Bangladesh and Myanmar (Burma) (Reddy 2003:
287).
The “brief”
(Naipaul 2010: viii) sepoy mutiny lasted
only about a year but it “struck a paralyzing blow to British power,” and ignited
a “full-scale Anglo-Indian war” (Wolpert 2000: 234) that flared into “the
greatest rising against any colonial power in the Age of Empire” (Wood 2008:
226). The mutiny is also historic because sepoys and civilians as well as Hindu
soldiers and Muslim jihadists joined forces to fight British control. Both
Hindus and Muslims also pledged loyalty to the Mughal Emperor Bahadur Shah of
Delhi as their leader. The mutiny was unsuccessful but it resulted in the
creation of a national consciousness which led to the formation of the anti-colonial
Indian National Congress Party in 1885 and Independence of India from Britain
in 1947 under the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi (Reddy 2003).
What is
relevant to this paper is the fact that (a) the 1857 rebellion took place
mainly in Uttar Pradesh where most Indian emigrants left for the faraway West
Indies/Caribbean, (b) at the same time during recruitment for indentured
labourers in the same British colonies in the Western World (1838-1917), and
(c) ex-soldiers and civilians left India for almost the same reasons.
Research questions
The research
question in both the natural and social sciences is the heart of a project,
study or review of literature. It
determines the methodology and theoretical framework, and guides all stages of
inquiry, analysis and reporting in both quantitative and qualitative research.
This project
will examine the following research questions:
What memories exist/ed, or have been
transmitted, about the presence of ex-sepoys during indentureship (1838 -1920)
in British Guiana/Guyana, Trinidad and other parts of the West
Indies/Caribbean?
Which literary text has made reference
to, or featured, these former soldiers in the West Indies?
These
research questions are accurately and clearly constructed, and indicate (a)
what the researcher wants to know most, and (b) where and what kind of material
to investigate. These are
thought-provoking
questions that require both significant investigation and evaluation (George
Mason University, 2019).
Delimitations and limitations
The objective
(scope/boundaries/delimitations) of this paper is not to discuss whether the
1857 Sepoy Mutiny was just a mere military insurrection or was nationalist or
communal in nature and outlook. The objective is also not to deliberate on the
details and consequences of the revolt against the British in India. The deliberate
intention of this paper is to examine the effects of the mutiny as they relate
to the migration of ex-soldiers as labourers to the British West Indies during
indentureship (1838-1917), and specifically, their presence in memory, oral
history and imaginative literature.
There were the expected
practical limitations of lack of funding, resources and time to pursue this
project to a satisfactory end. Some related history book chapters and books I
could not find (in time) e.g. the chapter entitled “Sepoys, Servants and Settlers:
Convict Transportation in the Indian Ocean, 1787-1945” by Clare Anderson, in
the book A History of the Prison in
Africa, Asia and Latin America edited by Frank Dikötter and Ian Brown
(2007, Pp.185-220). Although my focus was on Caribbean historical fiction, I
would have liked to read novels such The
Siege of Krishnapur by J. G. Farrell (1973) and Uller Uprising by H. Beam Piper (1952), which are based on the
Sepoy Revolt. The study took about three months to complete; I would have
preferred six. Although I had no control of these limitations, the methodology
and conclusions are valid.
Literature Review
The 1857
Sepoy Revolt is “one of the central events of the modern history of India” (Bayly
1991: 231). On this subject, there are serialised volumes (e.g. Mutiny at the Margins: New Perspectives on
the Indian Uprising of 1857. Volume IV: Military Aspects of the Indian Uprising
(2013); entire books (e.g. A Companion to
the Indian Mutiny of 1857 (1996); large sections of books (e.g. Advanced History of Modern India, Volume 2,
1857-1884); and book chapters (e.g. “The Sepoy Mutiny” in History of India: A New Approach (2003)).
The Sepoy Revolt has “produced more literature than any other single event in
modern Indian history” (Dev 2013, para 1).
However, only
three publications have focused on the presence of ex-sepoys in British
Guiana/Guyana, Trinidad and other parts of the West Indies/Caribbean during
indentureship (1838 -1920). There are the chapters entitled “The Caribbean
Consequences of the Indian Revolt of 1857” by Brinsley Samaroo in the edited
volume Indian Diaspora in the Caribbean:
History, Culture and Identity (2012), and “The Uprising, Migration and the
South Asian Diaspora” by Marina Carter and Crispin Bates in the edited volume Mutiny at the Margins cited above. There
is also the paper “The Indian Mutiny cum Revolt of 1857 and Trinidad” by J.C.
Jha in the journal, Indian Studies: Past
& Present (1972). Unlike Samaroo’s and Carter and Bates’s publications,
Jha’s research focuses exclusively on Trinidad.
On the
presence of sepoy veterans in the West Indies, Samaroo’s 22-page chapter is the
most extensive and comprehensive. However, he owes a great debt of gratitude to
Jha on whose research he builds, develops and embellishes. Samaroo often cites
the same scenes and sources e.g. a Baptist missionary’s chance encounter with
“rebel sepoys” in Arouca in Trinidad in 1860/61, first documented by Kinsley in
his travelogue, At Last: A Christmas in
the West Indies (1872: 122).
Additionally,
only about 2 of Samaroo’s 22 pages document the actual presence of Indian ex-soldiers
on the sugarcane plantations on this side of the world. Most of Samaroo’s
research provides a background to their arrival. But much to his credit, he
tapped into the memory of then-living informant, Dr James Boodhoo whose great
grandfather Anand, was indentured in the Tacarigua/ Arouca estate in Trinidad
during the later 1860s. Anand had escaped from India in the immediate aftermath
of the Revolt by serving as a girmitya [indentured].
He brought to Trinidad a sword as a memento of his early years in India; the
family remembers it … (p. 87).
Carter and
Bates as well as Jha did not use any oral history (memory) methodology. The
co-authors “take a fresh look at the Revolt of 1857 from a variety of original
and unusual perspectives, focusing in particular on neglected socially marginal
groups” (book’s blurb). It is true that they provide “new perspectives” but
they, like Jha, rely on conventional historical and archival sources. Neither
Samaroo nor Carter and Bates as well as Jha use, or make reference to,
historical fiction on the revolt. These genres (memory and literature) offer a
privileged site for historians to interrogate archival, colonial and
authoritative narratives (and vice versa). These complementary methodologies
and sources can be used to create multiple histories to challenge the grand
master narrative (Trafton, 2016).
Methodology
Social media,
personal knowledge and personal networks were used to find people with (a)
memories of the presence of ex-sepoys during indentureship (1838 -1920) in the
West Indies/Caribbean, and (b) knowledge of literary texts with references to former Indian soldiers in the West Indies.
The use of
memory in the humanities (especially oral history) and the social sciences as a
methodological tool and as an object of research is not new (Keightly 2010).
Despite its limitations, it has been found that memory is a vast potential
resource to recount and reconstruct the unwritten or barely-written past. The collection
and documentation of memory of the presence of Indian ex-soldiers during
indentureship can certainly fill the gap of un/written records on this topic.
Memory expressed as “oral history is as reliable for reconstructing the past as
documentary sources, but differently reliable. There are areas in which it
provides a fuller version of the history than a documentary source ever could,
but also vice-versa” (Essays, UK, 2018).
Literature (poems,
plays and novels) based on
historical events of epic proportions like the 1857 Sepoy Revolt bring life
from the past to the present with dramatic depictions of characters, dialogue,
costume, sets, action and plot. Historical novels are often based on documented
as well as oral (memory) sources so as to get as close as possible to the facts
of the past “as it was then.” Memory of the past is remembered and
reconstructed through the pen of the author (Deane 2009). Literary fiction
offers the historian an array of methodologies for bridging and comparing
historical fiction with historical fact.
Theoretical Framework
This project
is framed by the Margin-to-Center theory that has been established by feminist
Bell Hooks (1984). She challenged influential voices that have obscured the
involvement, leadership, and centrality of women of colour and poor women in
the movement for women’s liberation. In her seminal book, Hooks contested the
limited, one-dimensional perspective on women’s reality which excluded the
knowledge, awareness, lives and experiences of groups of other women.
This paper
seeks to shift the centrality of the discourse on (a) the 1857 Sepoy Revolt in
India, and (b) indentured immigrants in the West Indies (WI). The shift is from
the focus on Indian indentureds as mere labourers to trained ex-combatants who
sometimes were leaders in strikes and rebellions (from the battlefields of
India to the cane-fields of the WI). In
this instance, margin refers to ex-sepoys in India who voluntarily migrated or
escaped to the WI, whose lives have been invisible in the historiography of the
1857 mutiny. It is the norm to find
entire books on the revolt (e.g. Andrew Ward’s Our Bones Are Scattered: The Cawnpore Massacres and the Indian Mutiny
of 1857) with not even a single reference to, or footnote on, the
emigration and activities of thousands of mutineers to the British WI. This margin-to-center theory also underscores
the complexity and diversity of immigrants who formed part of the global
movement in the British Empire.
Ex-sepoys in the West Indies
(WI)
There was
much suspicion and some reliable evidence
that ex-soldiers had escaped among labourers destined to the WI after the
mutiny against the British in 1857 in India. Even in the sugarcane plantations
in the British WI 10,000 miles [16,000 km] away, the memory of the sepoys and
their rebellious spirits continued to drive fear and suspicion in the minds of
British authorities. “The revolt had a traumatic effect on the British rulers,
who were to suffer for several decades from mutinyphobia – the fear of the
recurrence of an armed rebellion” (Nanda 2004: 1).
It seems that
more ex-sepoys escaped to British Guiana/Guyana than to any other British
colony in the WI. Indeed, more Indian emigrants went to Guyana (238,909) than
Trinidad (143,939) or anywhere in the WI during indentureship (1838-1917). When
the Bucephalus arrived in Guyana from
Calcutta in 1858, a brief report appeared in the Guyana newspaper entitled “The
sepoys are come.” The article stated:
“Among the Coolie Immigrants recently arrived from Calcutta in the Bucephalus, are several Sepoys, who have
fled from India. They say that they were ordered to shoot their white officers,
but that rather than do so, they ran away, and emigrated” (Cited in Carter
& Bates 2010: 69). It is perhaps for these and other reasons that Guyana
became the headquarters of the 2nd West India Regiment police and was also guarded
by “the most heavily armed police in the British West Indies” (Dev 25/05/12).
There were
more revolts on sugarcane plantations in Guyana by Indian labourers than in any
other colony. For example, in Leonora (West
Coast Demerara) in 1869, 40 disgruntled labourers became violent against the Deputy
Manager. In an article entitled “Indian Militancy on Sugar Estates: The 1869
Leonora episode,” historian Basdeo Mangru (2007: para 9) wrote:
…. a detachment of police armed with a warrant
arrived on the estate and attempted to arrest Latchman, Baldea and Khodabacchus
for the assault on the Deputy Manager. They informed Bhugwansing, reported to be an ex-Sepoy, that they
only wanted the three accused. Instead, they were confronted with a crowd of
roughly 300, armed largely with hackia sticks, and refusing to surrender the
accused. When one policeman aimed his gun at the crowd and pulled the trigger
which failed to go off, the crowd responded with a fusillade of bottles and
sticks. What was significant was that the main bottle throwers were Indian
women. It was reported that the bottles were thrown in ‘volleys of fifty and
sixty at a time’ and replenished from supplies at a neighbouring Portuguese
rumshop. The police failed in their initial attempt to apprehend the accused
but soon returned with reinforcement from the Second West Indian Regiment
(emphasis added).
Subsequently,
the ringleaders were arrested, convicted and incarcerated in Mazaruni, a penal
settlement (Mangar 2014).
There were
also violent riots in Hague, Uitullught, Zeelught, Vergenoegen, Mon Repos and
Success in 1870 as well as in Devonshire Castle plantations
There was
also strong evidence of sepoy implication in the 1872 Devonshire Castle Riots
in the Essequibo, resulting in the death of five indentured workers. The Colonist [newspaper] rather dubiously
claimed that Indians rose up ‘with the avowed object of murdering the whites
and of playing on a small scale in British Guiana the part their countrymen
played in the drama at Cawnpore, sixteen years ago.’ The deposition of some of
the eyewitnesses also added a measure of credibility to reports of sepoy
involvement: ‘They were all fighting men. Some sepoys were among them’ (Stabroek News 4/06/13).
There were
also unrests in Plantations Eliza and Mary in 1873, and fierce uprisings in Non
Pareil (in East Coast Demerara) in 1896 where five protesting workers were
shot. In Leguan, Farm, Success, Skeldon and La Bonne Mere estates, there were
“principal disturbances” in 1894. Between 1886 and 1889, there were at least
100 strikes (42 in 1888 alone) initiated by Indian labourers on the plantations
(Seecharan 2001: 25). Escaping the battlefields in India to the cane-fields in
Guyana, these ex-militants turned their cutlasses into swords [talwars] against British authorities.
Just as in
Guyana, there was much suspicion and some evidence that some veteran sepoys who
had actively participated in the revolt in India in 1857 had escaped as labourers
to Trinidad. An official colonial
report documented proof of their presence in British Trinidad:
A report of
the Immigration Office of Trinidad of 3 April 1865 said that ‘the retired
Mohommedan soldier or sepoy’, considered inferior in domestic and social
relations to every grade of Hindoo, and utterly unfitted for agricultural
pursuits and anti-Christian in attitude, had not satisfied the planters, but
‘the number of sepoys is fortunately as yet too scanty to admit proof of the
latter’ (Jha 1972: 429).
The number of
sepoys was considered “too scanty” because most of them had concealed their
identity for fear of reprisal for their insurrection in India. Nevertheless,
they were the chief suspects of being instigators and ringleaders in numerous agitations,
fights, murders and onslaughts with cutlasses. Between 1882 and 1884, “strikes
of a serious nature” occurred on plantations in Naparima, El Socorro and Laurel
Hill in Tacarigua (Jha 1972: 430).
In 1884,
Hindus, Muslims and Christian Africans confronted British police who had ordered
them to stop the Hosay/Muharram procession in San Fernando. The stand-off
resulted in 16 Indians being shot and at least 100 wounded. One newspaper in
Trinidad warned of the “possibility of the atrocities of another Cawnpore
(Kanpur) being re-enacted here” (cited in Singh 1988: 9). A prominent
Presbyterian missionary, and even the Governor, expressed fear of the
recurrence of the 1857 tragic revolt in Trinidad. This “mutinyphobia” was so
intense that there was the suggestion in the local newspaper of the creation of
a special constabulary and a Rifle Corps or Arteillery for nipping the trouble
in the bud (Jha 1972: 429).
Both Jha and
Samaroo made reference to an encounter between a Baptist missionary, Edward
Bean Underhill, and some “rebel sepoys” in Arouca in Trinidad in 1860/61. One
of the veterans was a follower of the Rajput rebel, Ummar [Amar] Singh, of
Arrah in Bihar. The former soldiers were “far removed from the leanness and
obsequiousness” of the Bengali farmer, and their “demeanour and plumpness of
form” testified to their prosperous condition. “They were ready enough to talk”
about their condition in the new world.
But finding
that I know those parts of India from which they came, they quickly walked off,
apparently fearing that the discovery of their connection with the mutiny might
in some way compromise them (Underhill 1970: 37).
Memory of ex-sepoys in the West
Indies (WI)
It is nearly
impossible to find people in the WI who retain memories of a rebellion in
distant India passed on to them four generations and 162 years ago. In this
context, the fragments of generational memory that have survived constitute a
precious part of oral history. This methodology and source should be used more frequently
by researchers to retrieve and salvage vanishing historical information.
Samaroo (2012:
87) made mention of inquiries he had made among the villagers in Barrackore in
Trinidad about their memory of the rebellions in Barrackpore in India. They
told him that they had heard that Barrackpore in Trinidad was “originally
settled by former Indian sepoys from Barrackpur” in India. A historian himself,
Ken Maharaj (personal email to me, May 18, 2019),
in Trinidad, also
related a priceless piece of memory:
My great
grandfather came to Trinidad in what I reconstruct to be 1867, or not long
after. Within our older family, the tradition was passed down that as a young
boy - perhaps 10 - he observed a British army assault on his village somewhere
in Uttar Pradesh. The villagers fled on news of the approaching troops, but he
climbed a large tree in the village, and unseen there, he observed their
‘assault’, which consisted mostly of daubing the doors of their [Hindu] homes
with cow’s blood and tallow. The troops then left, and the boy remained in the
tree until, approaching in a cloud of dust, a rescuing cavalry of sepoys,
headed by his uncle, came to the village.
This and
similar incidents were considered outrageous at the time, and may have led to
my great grandfather’s decision to emigrate to Trinidad ….
Maharaj
apologised for the brevity of the recounted, graphic oral history anecdote, and
added that “it was all we had of the motherland, but it meant something to us.”
The historical literature is also soaked with images of desecration and blood
during the battle: victims butchered in cold blood, blood-botched legs, clothes
dripping in blood, rooms filled with blood, footsteps leaving trails of blood,
and “the floors were slippery with blood and the walls daubed with it” (Blunt
2000 :415).
There are
several people in the West Indies who claim sepoy ancestry. One is Mahabirsingh
in Trinidad who, in 1945, believed that he was the great grandson of
Echchowsingh “killed in action in the Indian Mutiny: (Kirpalani et al. 1945. Cited in Samaroo 2012: 88).
Another was Trinidad genealogist, Shamshu Deen (1998: 130-31), who was
searching for his relative’s family history in India:
John Munradin
knew English, Hindi and Urdu when he arrived in Trinidad at twenty-three. It
could well be that he too was a soldier and was fleeing the Great Mutiny of
1857-58. However, my searches at Delhi proved very scant on these soldier
listings. Those that we found were only for English soldiers with Christian
names.
Another
informant is Sylvia Gilharry Perez from Belize in Central America.+ Of East
Indian descent, her great grandfather emigrated from India to Jamaica as an
indentured labourer, and then to Belize after his contract expired. Budhu
Gilharry (1872-1945) was described wearing a moustache curled-up on the sides,
and military leggings with an adjustable stirrup that passed under the sole of
his shoes. Sylvia and her relatives believe that Budhu was a sepoy veteran.
There were
other people in the WI who invented, or were accorded, sepoy ancestry or
war-veteran status in order to evoke honour or fear, as was the case of this
plantation strike leader in Guyana:
The figure of
the sepoy seized the imagination of both British officials and the indentured,
for decades after actual veterans of the Indian rebellion may have arrived on
plantations. Jungli was way too young to have been one of them, but gained folk
status as a martial hero in the same broad cause (Bahadur 2014: 138).
Attempts to
glorify Indian freedom fighters of the 1857/58 Sepoy Revolt such as Mangal
Pandey and Rani Lakshmi-bai in film have seen the production of the war-movies
such as Mangal Pandey: The Rising
(2005) and Manikarnika: The Queen of
Jhansi (2019).
Ex-sepoys in the WI in
literature
The authors
of historical fiction have never intended to replace historical fact with
imagination. They merely wanted to dramatise history by using their imagination
to make the reader get a sense of feel of realism. In his historical novel, A Dip in the Sangam, Guyanese-born
Reuben Lachmansingh dramatises the fear that Shankar feels of being detected
and arrested as an ex-sepoy recruit in India now labouring in Plantation Sugar
Grove in Guiana/Guyana.
Shankar feels
that a British secret agent is stalking him to arrest and deport him to India
to face trial. He reveals to his friend, Raj, that he came from the same Nagwa
village as Mangal Pandey in the United Provinces.
Shankar
took a deep breath as though he wanted to spill it all out…. He looked around, ‘I
wanted to die besides my friends whom they strapped across the mouths of
cannons. They, however, had me clean up the bits of brains and body parts
after.’ Shankar leaned over the window and retched. After a few moments, he
continued, ‘That was the most difficult thing I ever had to do; talk about
nightmares; some say I scream in my sleep.’
Raja
tried to visualise the scene as described but the gruesomeness of it
overwhelmed him. ‘What was your punishment?’
‘They
locked me up in a dark cell in the Andaman Islands, supposedly for twenty
years.’
‘So
how did you escape?’
‘A
prison warden took pity on me. He snapped me out of my illness and disguised me
as one of the Sikhs guards who left for the mainland. Back in Calcutta, I gave
up the turban, cut my hair and chewed paan to stave off hunger. That’s when a
recruiter signed me up.’
‘Aha’
So Shankar is not your real name.’
‘Shh!’
Saliva trickled down to Shankar’s beard. ‘My real name is,’ Shankar cupped his
mouth, ‘Sagar. Sagar Singh ’ (2014: 131ff).
As “a man
trained to kill”, Shankar plans to raid the overseer quarters to seize a
stockpile of guns to launch an attack against the “spies and supporters.” In
the only known novel in the Caribbean that features an ex-sepoy, Lachmansingh’s
historical fiction accurately reflects historical fact, except for the
characterisation and dialogue. There are the realities of a Mangal Pandey,
mutineers tied to the mouths of cannons and blown to pieces, imprisonment in
the Andaman Islands, change of names, British spies in the colonies and violent
revolts in plantations in Guyana during indenturship. The scenes that refer to
the Sepoy Revolt in A Dip in the Sangam
are historically accurate. However, the story of the escape from the Andaman
Islands to India, and then to Guyana may be the use of artistic license to
convey a mythical truth.
It is rare to find historical
poems in the Caribbean, and elsewhere, when compared to historical novels. When
historical poems are found, they are usually about war, such as Trinidadian
Toodesh Ramesar’s unpublished entitled “native soldier” * based on the 1857
Sepoy Revolt in India:
From Barrackpore
in Uttar Pradesh, one Pandey
who was ignited
by the spark of a rumour,
the insult of cow
and pig’s fat
in an Enfield
cartridge he had to bite
that ended about
ten days later one sunny April day
in his hanging
until dead and to a well,
well down the
depth of hell,
the women and
children dead? Well.
He reputedly bit
the bullet that sparked the rebellion
through the
Ganges Valley, Mother’s first War
of Independence until
The Second, and another mother
and War one
hundred years later to Gandhi Village in Debe.
The irony of
separation and partition of cow
from pig fat to Bangladesh,
Pakistan.
The salt in the irony
that was common
as the wool
Gandhi wove to create the Second.
Were they her
first officially exiled exiles here, stamped
no return? These
military migrants, sepoys?
Maybe one exists,
a withered root in
exile in Penal,
without irony next door
to Gandhi
Village, born and bred
in Barrackpore?
Some relation of Pandey?
It is a beautiful
poem that plays upon words to evoke double meanings e.g. the Barrackpur in India and the
Barrackpore in Trinidad, leaders Mangal Pandey there and Basdeo Panday here, the
deceased Mahatma Gandhi and the living Gandhi Village in Debe in Trinidad. The
poet connects historical events that even historians of the Sepoy Revolt do not
often draw. He links the Indian Revolt of 1857 (also called the First War of
Independence) to the “Second” Struggle for Independence against the same British
Empire in 1947 – nearly 100 years later.
…
Mother’s first War
of
Independence until The Second, and another mother
and
War one hundred years later to Gandhi …
The poet also
sees a historical succession of popular Hindu Indian leadership across time and
space from Pandey to Gandhi to Panday.
The poet, Ramesar,
is really insightful to see the “irony” in the pork and beef fat taboo that
united Muslim and Hindu soldiers against the British Christians which sparked
the Sepoy Revolt. The same unifying taboo later became the bone of contention in
the separation of the predominantly Muslim (“pig” taboo) countries of Bangladesh
and Pakistan from the predominantly Hindu (“cow” reverence) India – nearly 100
years after:
The irony
separation and partition of cow
from pig fat to
Bangladesh, Pakistan.
In the second
and third stanzas, Ramesar uses the word “well” three times in various ways as
a noun (a deep hole), adjective (“well down”) and interjection (“Well.”). His repeated use invokes
the image of wells in the Sepoy Revolt: wells that were used to hide injured
and dead bodies of the Bibighar Massacre in Cawnpore. The poet also uses the
phrases “ignited by the spark” and “bit the bullet”, literally and figuratively,
in the context of war and, specifically, the Sepoy Revolt. Ramesar artfully
breaks the following lines to convey double entendre on Pandey’s “bite” of the
figurative bullet as well as the end of the greased cartridge packet that
eventually “ended” his life by hanging:
the insult of cow and pig’s fat
in an Enfield cartridge he had to bite
that ended about ten days later one
sunny April day
in his hanging until dead …
The poet craftily
plays on the verb “stamped” to mean that the fate of these ex-military men was
stomped by British officials as well as had the return overseas travel
documents of these exiles stamped CANCELLED: “Were
they her [Britain] first officially exiled exiles here, stamped/ no return?”
The poet poses five (5) profound questions for historians to ponder, including
the challenge to investigate whether a descendant of Mangal Pandey, who was
born and bred in Barrackpore in Trinidad, now lives in neighbouring Gandhi
Village. … ironically exiled here in what has become a Penal colony:
Maybe one exists,
a withered root in
exile in Penal,
without irony next door
to Gandhi
Village, born and bred
in Barrackpore?
Some relation of Pandey?
Both A Dip in the Sangam and “native soldier”
constitute historical literature which uses imagination to build on an event
that really happened. Though different in genres, this historical novel and
historical poem have been built on a solid foundation of facts which both
authors have researched like historians. Thankfully, both novel and poem are
not textbook recitations of facts and dates that read like a report or annal.
Conclusion: The mixed-methods
approach to history
More
historians need to examine memory, oral history and historical fiction as complementary
methods and sources to gain a better, nuanced understanding of the potential of
artistic works in the study of history. “If
historians want to bridge the widening chasm between public and academic
histories, they have no choice but to take relatively new forms of knowledge
like [fiction and] film seriously” (Deshpande, 2004). This paper on the Sepoy
Revolt has shown that a mixed-methods approach contributes to a better
understanding of the subject. The mixed-methods approach also provokes a deeper
interrogation of the subject and develops a larger narrative to history.
The
mixed-methods approach to studying the 1857 Sepoy Revolt (and other topics in
history) can be expanded to include an analysis of related songs, legends and
movies such as Mangal Pandey: The Rising
(2005) and Manikarnika: The Queen of
Jhansi (2019). Quite by coincidence, an art exhibition on Indian
indentureship in the West Indies is currently on display by Trinidadian David
Subran at The Frame Shop in the capital city. One of his paintings on display
is entitled “THE RANI OF JHANSI” with the description: “Following the death of
her husband, the Rajah, the queen of Jhansi amassed an army after the British
seized her palace. She was shot and killed on June 17, 1868” (Wallace 2019: 29).
Quite interestingly, the review of Subran’s exhibition is headlined “A history
lesson through art.”
FOOTNOTES
++ I have been informed that the book titled Apni Zameen [My Land] by Enayet Hussein
Edun has information that reveals that there were some Sepoys among the
indentured labourers in Mauritius.
^ “There is also an oral tradition that
indicates that some of the migrants who came as refugees [to Mauritius], or
those who run away from their homes, were given names like Bhugal, Bhuglah,
Bhugel, Bhugeloo, Bhuganee, Bhugan, Bhuglow. These surnames are still common in
Mauritius, but no research has been done on this aspect.” Assad Bhuglah (personal
email to me,
May 26, 2019).
# Bahadur (2014: 137) stated that veterans
were sent overseas either as convicts or exile labourers. Ex-sepoys who were found
guilty of murder and mutiny were ultimately sent to a penal settlement as
convicts.
* Personal email
to me dated May 18, 2019.
+ Personal WhatsApp message to me dated
APPENDICES
APPENDIX
1 – Map of Oudh, Bihar, Bengal and Calcutta
APPENDIX
2 – Map of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and West Bengal and Calcutta (Kolkata)
APPENDIX
3 – Map of Oudh, Bihar, Bengal and Calcutta
Source:
https://www.britannica.com/place/Uttar-Pradesh
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I am grateful to the following persons who
have contributed, in one way or the other, towards the completion of this
paper: Samaroo Siewah, Brinsley Samaroo, Ramphal Mansraj, Gaiutra Bahadur,
Ramona Harripersad, Toodesh Ramesar, Reuben Lachmansingh, Shalima Mohammed and
Shamshu Deen, as well as the librarians at UWI, NALIS (National Library), the
National Archives, and the Mahatma Gandhi Institute for Cultural Co-operation.
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Books.
CHAPTER 3:
Immmigration into the British West Indies and Mauritius from
emancipation to the end of indentureship, rationale, numbers and their impact
on the economy, 1834-1920.
By
Mansraj Ramphal B.Sc;
M.Sc.; M.A; IPM
Lewis Bobb, of
Guyana, deceased, who joined the Department of Government, University of the
West Indies, St Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago in 1968. He possessed a deep
knowledge of his subject and was an excellent lecturer. He taught me at both
undergraduate and graduate levels at the Department of Government. A teacher,
like a parent, should be a good motivator. He was a great motivator.
Rampersaud
Tiwari, retired Public Servant of Guyana, now 87 years old. He was born in
Buxton and presently lives in Scarborough, Canada. His grandfather was one of
the leaders in the Non Pareil Strike, 1896. I met him at a Diaspora Conference
at UWI in 2010, where he presented a paper on the strike. He inspired me to
present papers at future international conferences.
Except God, I fear none.
Gye Nyame cited in Sharlow, When Gods
were Slaves.
They call here,
-Magnificent Province!
Province of Mud!
Province of Flood!
Who are the magnificent here?
Not I with this torn shirt
but they, in their white mansions
by the trench of blood!
I tell you
this is no magnificent province
no El Dorado for me
no streets paved with gold
but a bruising and battering for self preservation
-Magnificent Province!
Province of Mud!
Province of Flood!
Who are the magnificent here?
Not I with this torn shirt
but they, in their white mansions
by the trench of blood!
I tell you
this is no magnificent province
no El Dorado for me
no streets paved with gold
but a bruising and battering for self preservation
Martin Carter,
I With This Torn Shirt.
Gye Nyame is a symbol of the highly advanced Akan people of
Ghana, West Africa. It indicates the recognition of the supremacy of God over
all beings. He is the One to be feared and revered by all. We should all bear
this in mind as we seek to build a better Caribbean and a better world.
Martin Carter is widely regarded as the greatest Guyanese
poet and one of the most important poets of the Caribbean. He remained true to
his fundamental belief in the dignity of mankind.
Introduction
The Caribbean area
includes people of African, Indian, Portuguese, Chinese, Syrian, and Lebanese
descent, none of whom is indigenous to the region (Ramsaran, 3). A large number
of the earliest Europeans came as indentured servants. The earliest Africans
were captured and sold into slavery. After 1834, most immigrants came on
contracts of varying periods, usually one to five years. Irrespective of how
they entered the region, these various groups all had to adapt and make
accomodations in this new environment (3). Those native to the area, the
Arawak, Caribs, and Tainos “were essentially decimated by Christopher Columbus
and his invading interlopers”.
Every year hundreds of
slaves attempted to escape the horror and terror of slavery. Such were the
conditions in the West Indies and Mauritius where king sugar reigned. Given the
universal belief that only the harshest physical punishment, or fear of it, would
induce slaves to work, this seemed to be the only way to operate a plantation
(Whyte, 62). The threat of work stoppage was counterbalanced by the threat of
floggings or even death (Campbell, 134). In Jamaica, a severe drought occured
in 1831 and the decrease in the number of slaves meant that conditions suffered
by the remainder were worse (Whyte, 219). In that year there was a “serious
disorder” that saw the deaths of 1,000 slaves and damage approaching a million
pounds (Parker, 355). That is the year Samuel (Daddy) Sharpe asked for pay for
work performed during the three days holiday allowed for Christmas.
Men everywhere love
freedom. No one should ever be enslaved by another. As Sam Sharpe explained to
a missionary who had been sent to question him in jail in the aftermath of the
Christmas Rebellion also known as the Baptist War of 1831-32, “I have learnt by
reading my Bible that whites have no more right to hold black people in slavery
than black people have to make white people slaves” (House, 83). Why was Sam
Sharpe executed? All he had asked for was that slaves be paid for work
performed during the three day Christmas holiday. Because of the harsh social
conditions and the intransigence of the Jamaican planters, a simple labour
grievance turned into open rebellion. What was the view of the local
establishment? They believed that the slaves had been “duped” by the Baptists
and other religious denominations into believing that they will be freed after
Christmas. They vehemently objected to the amelioration laws passed by the
British Parliament and the belief of the slaves that “they could not save both
a Spiritual and a Temporal Master” (Brathwaite, 882-3). But then “(T)he planter
lived in a world of self-sustaining myth” including myths of African
degeneracy, Negro happiness and King Sugar (Lewis, 556-7). They often
complained about the danger of what they termed “agitation” or propaganda at
home. Simply raising the issue of slavery, however cautiously, would, they
argued, lead to unsettling the slaves and ultimately to rebellion (Whyte, 164).
20,000 slaves took
part in the Christmas Rebellion and 14 whites and several hundred slaves were
killed (219). The response of the Jamaican authorities was ruthless: 626 slaves
were tried, of whom 312 were executed (Whyte, 219). A further 285 were
sentenced to other punishments including flogging (House, 82). On the day of
his execution as he waited to be hung, Sam Sharpe said, “I would rather die
upon yonder gallows than live in slavery” (84). For the slaves, their “labours”
were increased, their means of support diminished and their complaints no
longer heard. Blaming the missionaries for the rebellion, the Jamaican
authorities took their “revenge”. Whites went through the towns destroying the
chapels and property of the missionary societies. One year after Sharpe’s
death, slavery was abolished in the British colonies. William Knibb, a Baptist missionary
stated, “If Sharpe had been a European man fighting for his freedom, then the
people of England would have built a memorial to him” (85).
In these
circumstances, would former slaves now stay on the estates after abolition a
mere year away? We will see below what occurred.
The
Guiana slave rising of 1823 was similar to that in Jamaica. The slaves believed
that their freedom was being withheld from them by the Governor and the
planters. On the East Coast, Quamina led the slaves in a revolt, which was
similarly ruthlessly suppressed. A few Europeans lost their lives. Several
hundred slaves were shot at Bachelor’s Adventure, and many others were
subsequently executed (Daly, 137).
African labourers on sugar estate, Mauritius, 1870. Mauritius Museum. Photo by Mansraj Ramphal.
Emancipation was
eagerly awaited by all oppressed peoples. It meant an end to the wicked, vicious
and inhumane system of slavery, memories of which, along with the displacement
and genocide of millions of Africans, would not be easily erased. Africans had
been reduced from human to nonhuman, object, and ultimately commodity and this
paved the way for the international slave trade and the subsequent amassing of
vast fortunes by the colonizers (See Louis, 275-80). Would planters give up
their “fondly cherished slavery”? What would change the attitudes of these
White men “whose moral perceptions had been blighted by the foul atmosphere of
slavery”?
Greed, horrible
ingenuity and wickedness characterized the “Sugar Barons.” Slavery “had
sacrificed human life and its most precious values to the pursuit of immediate
gain. The sugar-and-slave business had encouraged greed, hypocrisy, fear and
brutality, corrupting almost everyone it touched” (Parker, 356). Olaudah
Equiano, in his autobiography, described instances of “oppression, extortion,
and cruelty” which he witnessed. (See Edwards, 65-76). He saw slaves being
treated as “beasts of burden”, being branded, put in chains and instruments of
torture, He described the management as “human butchers” and wrote about the
planters’ “avarice, that…corrupts the milk of human kindness and turns it into
gall.” They set an example of “fraud, rapine, and cruelty”.
The planters, resident
or absentee, wished for their estates to yield as much profit as possible to
allow them a “lordly” existence (Campbell, 129). It has always been like this.
Thus Allahar writes that:
In
the Caribbean as elsewhere, capital is keen on cheapening the costs of labour,
and is compelled competitively to go where it can get the best returns on its
investments, and those capitalists who cannot do that simply die. So yesterday
it was white male labour (Irish, Scottish, Portuguese, Spanish, etc.); later it
was African slave and Indian indentured labour…all the time female labour; sometimes
even child labour; ocasionally family labour; today wage labour. (31).
The slave-estate, and
the kind of society which it bred and supported, had been shaped not with
social or political merit primarily in mind, but for profit-making (Hall, 10).
The surplus produced by slave-labour was appropriated by the planter. Lewis
writes that:
Alienated
labour…becomes an important source of wealth for capital. Capital disrupts the
relationship between the individual and the material object. The labour is
regarded as alienated, therefore, because the capitalist appropriates the
product of its efforts which are not retained by the labourer him or herself. (72).
The jobs of those
managing and supervising estates, often in the absence of the proprietor,
depended on a healthy profit being shown (Whyte, 62). Their management failed
both from racist beliefs in the inhumanity of the Africans as well as the
failing sugar economy in the latter eighteenth century (Campbell, 134). The picture of prosperity and happiness often
painted was in fact ‘a murderous system which unceasingly ground down the
people to death” (Whyte, 217).
These two opposing classes,
planters and slaves, lived side by side on the plantations one in luxury, the
other in continual poverty and misery.
The import of labour from overseas followed the abolition of
slavery in the British Empire on 24 August 1833. The Slavery Abolition Act
became law on 1 August 1834. A four year period of Apprenticeship followed in
most colonies. 800,000 slaves of the British Empire, the vast amount of whom
were in the West Indies, were free at last (Parker, 355). Contrary to the hopes
of Adam Smith, abolition failed to provide a willing and able free labour force
in the British West Indies (355). Many black former sugar workers “turned their
backs on the plantations and toil that would forever carry the stigma of
slavery. Canefields were left untended, and soon became overgrown with weeds”
(356). Some Blacks immediately abandoned the estates to work independently on
their small holdings. Others would follow over the next few years.
What is to be done?
Immediately
after emancipation there was a significant exodus from the sugar estates and a
cry from the planters for more labour. The planters had to find solutions to
the labour problems that arose. They needed a new strategy. They had to:
·
Ensure that
their profits were secure and could be maximized.
·
Resusicate
old estates, maintain and improve on existing estates and develop new ones.
·
Utilise
immigrants to work on and develop available fertile lands which were lying
waste in colonies with inadequate labour supplies.
·
Make
attempts to secure a steady supply of cheap, malleable and “disposable” labour.
·
Obtain
surplus labour to keep down wages.
·
Control
their labour through long term contracts, regulations, laws and severe
disciplinary action.
·
Allow later immigrants
to lead and motivate former slaves and liberated Africans by providing an
example of industrious work habits.
·
Allow liberated
Africans the opportunity to enjoy the benefits of a “superior civilization”.
·
Address the
Black-White imbalance in the population.
Planters
and the local administrators and the British Government worked together in
solving the “labour problem”. They had all expected their former slaves to
desert the estates.
Labour migration commences
A
new influx of migrant labour to replace the ex-slaves started immediately after
emancipation and continued well into the twentieth century (Harrison, 108). By
1916, well over 500,000 had made the journey to the Caribbean (109). Migrants were imported in large numbers initially
from other West Indian colonies, West Africa (including liberated Africans) and
Europe. A small number came from the US. At first planters sought to address
the imbalance between the races by importing Whites from Europe, particularly
Portugal and the UK. French, German and Maltese also arrived. However, this
attempt to attract Whites failed miserably. Many of those who survived the
tropical climate, the extremely hard work and alcoholism returned home. The planters
meanwhile turned naturally to the smaller West Indian islands to supply their
labour needs. When these schemes also failed to bring about the desired results
the planters turned to China and India for migrant labour, initially to
resuscitate the abandoned estates and later to expand sugar production.
Planters needed a labour force that was controlled in military fashion and
which provided a ready and “disposable” supply on-site for its field and
factory operations.
Labourers clearing
lands, Mauritius.
The
planters failed to understand the new democracy that should have been ushered
in and treated the former slaves and new immigrants with the same harshness as
they had done during slavery. They failed miserably in adjusting to the new
times. Instead they imposed a new form
of slavery.
From 1834 to 1850, the
West Indian colonies in need of labour experimented with different sources of migrant
labour from the smaller islands, including Grenada, Barbados, Antigua, St Kitts
and Nevis. Many migrated to Trinidad and British Guiana (hereafter Guiana).
Vast numbers of people came from India and China, and smaller numbers from
Europe and Africa (108). The most fruitful source of labour proved
to be India (Heuman, 105). After the mid-1840s, Trinidad and Guiana accounted
for over four-fifths of migration into the British West Indies (Engerman, 233).
In these two countries there was available land and sugar production was
revived and expanded. Guiana received about one half and Trinidad received
about 30 per cent of the immigrants (233). Through 1850, Jamaica was also an important
recipient of migrant labour, accounting for about one-fifth of the
inter-continental movement, basically, its last unsuccessful attempt to compete
in the sugar economy (232). The smaller islands also received small numbers of migrants
when required.
From August 1834 to
December 1835, fourteen ships embarked Indian emigrants in Calcutta for
Mauritius. The British West Indian colonies would follow this lead. Planters
imported 416 Indians in Demerara (Guiana) in 1838. On November 16, the Indian
Government passed Act XXI of 1844 which legalized emigration to Trinidad,
Jamaica and Demerara, though not to other islands of the Lesser Antilles. Thomas Caird was appointed Emigration Agent
for the West Indian colonies and Mauritius. A Protector of Immigrants would be
appointed in each receiving colony. The Indians would perform manual labour on
the sugar estates. They came mainly from the United Provinces (now Uttar Pradesh), Bengal and Bihar. Smaller
numbers came from the Tamil areas of Madras in the south. They would risk the
defilement in crossing the Kala Pani (Dark Water) in search of a better life
than that which they had in India.
Indian labourers on sugar estate, Mauritius, 1870. Mauritius Museum. Photo by Mansraj Ramphal
We will look mainly at
Jamaica, Trinidad and Guiana in the British West Indies and Mauritius, a former
British colony off the south east coast of Africa in the Indian Ocean. Table I
shows the number of Indian migrant labourers in selected British West Indian
territories and Mauritius during the period 1834 to 1917.
TABLE I
INDIAN MIGRANT LABOURERS IN
SELECTED BRITISH WEST INDIAN TERRITORIES AND MAURITIUS, 1834-1917
COLONY
|
NUMBER
|
PERIOD
|
REMARKS
|
Mauritius
|
453,000
|
1834-1910
|
|
British
Guiana
|
239,960
|
1838-1917
|
|
Trinidad
|
147,592
|
1845-1917
|
|
Jamaica
|
37,027
|
1845-1916
|
Irregular
supply.
|
British
Honduras
|
3,000
|
1872-1884
|
Excludes
1,000 Sepoys and their families, “transported” after the Great Indian Mutiny
in 1857-58.
|
More than 320 ships
took the Indians to Trinidad, while more than 575 ships arrived in Guiana.
Three ships were shipwrecked in the Kala Pani en route to these two colonies,
losing all aboard. In the case of the British Windward Islands, 13 ships embarked 4,561 migrants in India for St Lucia between
1859-93 and 10 ships embarked 3,437 for Grenada between 1857-85. 2,523 embarked
for St Vincent on 8 ships between 1861-80. St Kitts and Nevis in the British
Leeward Islands received one shipload of Indians each (as did the Danish colony
of St Croix).
All migrants from
different parts of the world made their contributions to their host societies.
They impacted the economies in many different ways.
Jamaica
That
there was a definite aversion, on the part of the Jamaican negro, to labouring
on sugar estates, more than was usual in the other colonies, is evident.
Memories of slavery receded more slowly than in most of the other colonies. The
exodus from the sugar estates had been
fairly complete and rapid…The negro labourer in Jamaica tended to
identify work on the sugar estates with slavery.
R.W.Beachey
Jamaican
history is characteristic of the beastliness of the true Englishman.
Karl
Marx
In
Jamaica, the largest of the British West Indian islands the exodus was rooted
in strong traditions of slave rebellion, proto-peasantry and marronage (Besson,
191). Jamaica provided the most pronounced example of post emancipation free
communities (191).
Since
1720, Jamaica had overtaken Barbados as the leading sugar exporter colony to
Britain and by 1750 she had become the largest sugar producer in the British
West Indies. There had been about 400 mills on the island in 1740; by 1786
there would be more than 1,000. Jamaica became the richest British colony and
its inhabitants the wealthiest (See Parker, 285-291). Later sugar production
slumped from a high of 100,000 tons in 1805 to 5,000 tons in 1913 (363 ).
Throughout most of the nineteenth century after 1805, Jamaica exported an
average of 20,000 tons annually. In the 60 years after 1850, the number of
sugar estates on the island shrank from over 500 to just 77.
In Jamaica
the number of field slaves at emancipation was 218,455 (Augier et al, 183). The
island accounted for 40 per cent of the slaves in the British West Indies.
According to the Emancipation song of 1833, “Now lick and lock-up done wid”.
While some former slaves worked for the sugar
and coffee planters, some worked on their provision grounds. Others worked on
developing their skills as artisans. After the end of apprenticeship many chose
to work for themselves. Since the white planters owned the flat fertile lands,
the blacks built their new homes on the hillsides, mountainsides and woodlands.
They purchased Crown lands and engaged in peasant farming. They grew many food
crops including bananas, plantains, cocoa and coffee, root crops and spices.
Some reared pigs, cows, horses, goats and chickens. Baptist missionaries helped
the blacks to buy land, often helped by British philanthropists (Heuman, 104). Other
blacks became squatters. Villages sprang up. Thomas Holt calculated that by
1845, over 20,000 freeholds of less than 10 acres had been registered,
encompassing a population of over 60,000 (101). Over 20 percent of blacks had
settled on small freeholds. They struggled fiercely to rid themselves of the
chains that had tied them to sugar (Harrison, 111).
Other colonies such as
Trinidad and British Guiana, where land was available, reported a similar significant
exodus.
The exodus of the blacks
and the fall in sugar prices led many planters to abandon their sugar estates. Meanwhile,
Blacks continued to buy land and Jamaica soon became a land of peasant farmers.
Bananas became an export crop. The labour supply which had disintegrated after
Emancipation never responded to the needs of the sugar industry during the
remainder of the century (Beachey, 104).
The cry for migrant labour was loud. European and Madeiran labourers were first brought to
address the racial imbalance (Shepherd, 24). The view was that white labourers
in the cool interior of the island would, by depriving the ex-slaves of land in
the interior, force them back on to the plains and the sugar estates (24). By
1844, 2,685 British and 1,033 Germans arrived. European labourers behaved badly
and left their employment and the “labour problem” remained unsolved. Attempts to
attract labour from the other British West islands, the Bahamas, Canada and the
US also failed. (24)
Another source of immigrants
was Africa. After Britain abolished its slave trade in 1808, mostly British
naval squadrons diverted an estimated 160,000 liberated Africans to British
dependencies as well as to Portuguese Angola; Havana, Cuba and Rio de Janeiro,
Brazil (Schuler, 134). In the British West Indies, liberated Africans were
received from Sierra Leone, West Africa and St Helena. Some were also relayed
from Rio and Havana. Those from Sierra Leone and the Kru (Kroo) coast of
Liberia were voluntary immigrants, the others were involuntary immigrants (See
Schuler 134-35).
Liberated and other
Africans were sought, but they preferred to migrate to Trinidad and Guiana for
“Kroomen no go to Jamaica, never come back” (See Shepherd, 26-27). 10,000 Africans were imported between 1841 and
1867, but they too “wandered off the estates at the end of their contracts”. It
was only after 1850 that the numbers from India and also from the Portuguese
Atlantic Ocean islands exceeded the Africans (See Engerman, 232).
Chinese coolies were
contemplated in 1806 and again in 1811. A shipment eventually arrived from the
Straits Settlements in the 1850’s. In 1911, there were 1,646 Chinese in Jamaica
(Look Lai, 302). They too left the estates.
Jamaican planters saw
the Indians as “a source of labour replacing the emancipated slave population”
(Ehrlich, 20). They looked to the Indians “to save their declining estates”
especially after the Sugar Duties Act of 1846 and the economic recession that
followed for several years. The Indians
joined the rural proletariat of unskilled labourers (24). The Blundell Hunter arrived in 1845 with 261
Indians. In 1846 and 1847, 1,890 and 2,400 arrived respectively. Immigration
was restarted in 1860 and continued irregularly up to 1916.
Beachey states that
“it is undeniable that labour was only given in a haphazard manner by the negroes
and that coolie labour was inadequate for the estate’s needs” (Beachey, 108). Indian
immigration became the most sought after scheme and by 1880, Indians had become
the largest number of immigrants (Shepherd 26). Over 36,000 Indian immigrants
came to Jamaica (Heuman, 106). 37,027 is the figure given by Shepherd (34).
However, Indian immigration In Jamaica “never proved of great value” as it had
done in British Guiana and Trinidad (Beachey, 106). In the British Windwards, the largest number
of immigrants also comprised of the Indians after the failure of metayage.
(Shepherd, 26).
In
Jamaica the number of sugar estates in operation fell from 513 in 1848 to 211
in 1877 to 77 in 1910 (Parry, Sherlock, Maingot, 214 ). The labour requirements
fell from about 30,000 workers in 1860 to about 20,000 in 1910 (Parry,
Sherlock, Maingot, 214 ). Immigration was negligible. The recruitment of Indian
labour was sporadic. Jamaica differed from most other colonies in that there
was a continual decline in sugar production after 1846. In some other colonies
it remained steady or increased. Even at the turn of the century Indian
immigration was of little use in reviving the sugar industry (Beachey, 110).
Indians were now in greater demand on banana estates, sugar exports having
dropped to seventh place on the list. By 1897, there were only 581 indentured
immigrants on Jamaican sugar estates. They too abandoned the estates and engaged
in peasant farming, including cane farming.
Thousands
of Jamaicans were attracted by higher wages on banana estates in Costa Rica and
on the railways in Puerto Rico. Also since around 1886 “a heavy exodus” of
thousands of Jamaicans took place to the Panama Canal. Between forty and fifty
thousand Jamaicans worked there at one time (Beachey, 109).
In British Guiana,
Trinidad, Barbados, and the Leeward Islands, sugar represented 75 percent of
the total value of exports in 1896, whereas in Jamaica it had fallen to 18
percent (Parry, Sherlock, Maingot, 215 ).
In Jamaica, Indians
made an impact where local supplies of labour failed completely such as in the
sugar estates in Westmoreland, Clarendon and St. Thomas in the 1870’s and on
the banana estates in St Mary and St Thomas in the 1890’s (See Eisner, 146). It
was mainly the highly mechanized estates, the estates on the plain and the
banana estates which utilized Indians (Shepherd, 37).
Mauritius
These swarthy
Orientals (Indians)…are the muscles and sinews of Mauritius…
the secret
source of all wealth, luxury and splendour with which the island abounds….
It is from the
labour of this swarthy body in the canefields that gold is extracted
more
plenteously than from the diggings of Ballarat. Respect that swarthy stranger,
for without him
Mauritius would soon be stripped of its wealth and left with scarcely
sufficient exports to produce food for its rice eating cigar smoking
inhabitants.
Reverend Beaton in Roy, Mauritius in
Transition.
These
words of Beaton in 1859 spelt out the tremendous impact of the Indian
immigrants on Mauritius. By dint of their hard labour and sacrifice the Indians
made Mauritius and other British colonies wealthy. Ramdhony also paid tribute
to the Indians in Mauritius who like “their brothers elsewhere …had to undergo
trials and tribulations before they were emancipated…”. The sugar industry
survived through the work of Indians who “With their toil and labour…welded the
country into a nation entirely dependent on the production of sugar for over a
century” (Ramdhony, 61)
By the nineteenth century sugar production had
“become inextricably linked to the institution of slavery” (Teelock, 195). In
1817, the island’s population stood at almost 100,000, of which more than
79,493 were slaves (Vivek, 41, 44). The French had brought African slaves from
Madagascar and East Africa. They had also brought 6,000 Indian slaves from the
Malabar Coast of India. By 1800, there were 6,000 Indian slaves (Vivek, 36-37).
In 1806, South Indians formed 10 per cent of the total slave population in
Mauritius.
After emancipation, most ex-slaves were unwilling to work
for their former owners (Vivek, 64). The African ex-slaves left the sugar
estates for the towns or settled in the uninhabited parts of the island (Vivek,
34-35). Within less than a decade the 30,000 apprentices at work in 1839 had
withdrawn almost completely from plantation labour (North-Coombes, 93). The
planters replaced them with Indian migrant labourers. The ex-slaves turned to
peasant farming or squatting as in Jamaica, Trinidad and Guiana.
Sugar production
fell. Some Europeans were imported to “whiten their local areas” (Vivek, 64).
Only the poorest and most desperate came and white workers considered estate
work beneath them. The problem of ex-slave dispersal from the plantation was
solved first, and most easily, on the British Indian Ocean island of Mauritius
(Engerman, 231). “Inexpensive labour” was imported from India in vast numbers.
This beginning became the basis of a widespread outflow from India to the rest
of the world in subsequent decades (Engerman, 231). During the first five years
and six months of “unregulated emigration” from 1834 to June 30, 1839, 25,468 Indian
migrants left for Mauritius. Some migrant labourers also arrived from East
Africa. In 1847, there was a total of 6,508 indentured labourers comprising of
Indians, Chinese, Africans and Creoles The combined figures for indentured
servants from Africa and India rose to 30,000 in 1851 and 60,000 in 1861.
Between 1839 and 1857, some 4,601 Malagasy migrants arrived among other
Africans (Teelock, 228).
Some Chinese also arrived prior to emancipation. Later their
numbers stood at 1,395 and 3,662 in 1840 and 1911 respectively (Vivek, 31).
Carter and Ng Foong Kwong give larger figures of 3,000 arriving between
December 1840 and July 1843 and 5,000 between July 1843 to end of 1844 (See
Miao Foh, 219-232). They came mainly from Kwangtung, Fukien and Hainam Island.
Some also came from Singapore and Penang. Several attempts to introduce Chinese
migrant workers failed as they were rebellious. When their contracts expired
these “Chinese coolies” moved to Port Louis, the capital. They integrated
completely into the town’s “community of traders.” The European traders looked
warily at this “species”of invaders and resented “the skill which they
displayed in trading with every segment of the population.” Their arrival
“contributed to a boom in the economic expansion of Mauritius in the century
that followed.”
Between 1842 and 1847, 69,024 Indians embarked for
Mauritius. The total population of Mauritius stood at 158,000. In 1855, another
8,707 Indians came, minus women and children. In 1856 yet another 12,625
arrived. In 1858 and 1859, 29,946 and 44,397 arrived respectively.
Sugar production leaped from 11,000 tons in 1825 to 21,000
tons in 1826; by 1854 production exceeded 100,000 tons (Vivek, 59). By 1850, Mauritius had reached the apex of its
importance in the world sugar market; it was Britain’s main sugar-producing
colony and produced 9.4 per cent of the world’s sugar cane between 1855 and
1859 (59). Sugar production reached 150,000 tons in 1862 (31). The annual
average in short tons was 124,906 between 1865 and 1894 (See North-Coombes, 65).
The annual average during the periods 1895-9 and 1900-1904 was 167,688 and
182,903 respectively. In 1905-9, production rose to an annual average of
220,207 tons.
Mauritius was the
major recipient of Indian labour until 1865, receiving about three-quarters of
the gross outflow (See Engerman, 231). From 1851-1861, more than 100,000 Indian
migrants arrived (Vivek, 41). In 1861, the total population of Mauritius stood
at 310,050 (44). From 1834 to 1865, sugar output on Mauritius more than
tripled, the largest increase in any of the British colonies (Engerman, 231).
By the 1860s, “Mauritius had become one huge sugar factory” (Teelock, 233). 40,000
or so had arrived each year. The Indians made a very significant impact on the
Mauritian economy. The Indians constituted 68 per cent of the population in
1871. 25 per cent was born in Mauritius. By the end of the 1870’s, however, the
peak of indentured immigration had passed and in 1880, very few immigrants
arrived (260).
Since 1851, Indian migrants were encouraged to build
villages (Vivek, 8). On expiry of their contracts they were encouraged to
accept land in lieu of return passages. They also saved some money to buy land.
By 1900, 30 per cent of the total land under cane cultivation was held by
Indians or peasant proprietors, and contributed almost 20 per cent of the
national cane production. “Upon them rested an important part of the economy of
Mauritius” (8). Indians also participated in petty trading, manufacturing and
transportation (North-Coombes, 82).
In 1910, Indian immigration into Mauritius came to an end.
Trinidad
After
having watched the action and effect of immigration with great anxiety and care…I
have no hesitation in saying that on it depends, under God, the welfare of the
island.
Governor
Lord Harris, British Parliamentary Papers, 1852 – 3.
It
was India’s role, within the British Empire, to furnish a supply of cheap
and disposable labour.
Hugh Tinker, A New
System of Slavery.
In Trinidad, the
former slaves abandoned the estates after emancipation just as they had done in
Jamaica and British Guiana. Very many withdrew from regular and full-time
plantation labour (La Guerre & Bissessar, 29). Those who stayed on for some time reduced their
effort at work on the estates. Despite high wages and short work hours, the
emancipated people did not work a full week. They were unwilling to work more
than three or four days per week (Tikasingh, 75). They also worked less than a full day. More
labourers were now needed to do the same amount of work that was once done by a
smaller amount of workers (77-8). Trinidad and Guiana offered the highest wages
in the British West Indies. In the 1840’s, wages in Trinidad were two shillings
one pence a day, sometimes more. In Guiana, wages ranged between one shilling
four pence and two shillings per day. After the economic crisis of 1846, wages
dropped for a few years. This had nothing to do with a supply of surplus
labour. Wages levels depend on various factors. The most important factor was
the price of sugar on the export market. In the 1870’s these two colonies set a
minimum wage for each task, but many were paid below these minimum rates. In
Trinidad in the 1890’s some labourers earned only six pence.
In 1838, only 43,265 acres were cultivated in Trindidad, 30,161 acres
being under sugar cane. This acreage fell by half to 21,700 in 1840. Sugar
production similarly declined from its high of 30,629 hogsheads in 1829 to
20,721 hogsheads in 1838 and to 16,942 hogsheads in 1840 (78).These years were
seen as “a period of gloom and despondency” when sugar estates were faced with
“heavy loss, if not absolute ruin” (78). Some estates were abandoned while
others were gobbled up by British conglomerates.
In
Trinidad, the number of field slaves at Emancipation was 13,775 (Augier et al,
183). Of these, 7,000
ex-slaves had left the estates by 1859. They bought, leased or squatted on land
becoming small farmers and establishing free villages. About 5,400 lived in
these villages and by 1847 the resident estate labour force had shrunk by 40
per cent. But labour was always in high demand on the estates and wages were
high. This abandonment of the sugar estates by former slaves forced the
planters to look overseas for migrant labour. As
in Jamaica, most estates belonged to absentee landlords.
Planters first turned to the neighbouring islands and to liberated
Africans. In 1834, the first group of 207 liberated Africans arrived. Planters
called for 5,000 “refugees”. That year, Portuguese from Fayal also arrived. As
early as 1835, Antiguan labourers arrived to share in Trinidad’s prosperity.
The island’s population rose by 2,000 between 1834 and 1835. 1,000 liberated
Africans came from Cuba. They received 6
Mexican dollars per month, along with food and living quarters. Island hopping
was quite normal in pursuit of work and higher wages. Many labourers were
smuggled by planters into the island. A group of 239 Black Americans also
arrived in 1839. During the years 1839 to 1842, immigrant arrivals in each
succeeding year were 1,006, 2,015, 1,952, and 2,872. Of the total of 7,875,
1,286 came from America and 1,086 from St Helena and Sierra Leone. Nevis,
Grenada and St Kitts supplied 1,523, 1,260 and 515 respectively. It was now
believed that Trinidad could supply England with all the sugar it needed. It
would compete with Mauritius. The island’s population now stood at 45,000. The
few French and German immigrants joined the police force.
During the latter half of the nineteenth century there was a constant
stream of immigrants from the other West Indian colonies which reached “large
dimensions” by 1873 (Beachey, 103-104). 20,000 “deckers” came from the small
islands in one year alone. 8,854 liberated Africans came to Trinidad during
1834-1867 out of a total of 39,332 for the British West Indies (Look Lai, 276).
These West Indians and liberated Africans were not “submissive” and they left
the estates at the earliest opportunity to join the peasantry in Trinidad and
Guyana. Their large numbers would have contributed to a decrease in wages on
the estates in both colonies.
Planters turned to China and India. As early as 1806, 200 Chinese were
imported into Trinidad. The experiment failed miserably (See Allen, 11-15). The Chinese population stood at 461 in 1861 and 1,400
in 1871 (Look Lai, 193). Another 4,000 Chinese were introduced by 1875. As they
did in Jamaica and Guiana, here too they abandoned the estates and set up small
retail shops. They made their impact in commerce.
In 1845, the Fatel
Rozack, first Indian immigrant ship, embarked 234 persons in Calcutta. It
appears that 9 died at sea since 225 were recorded as having arrived in the
island. By 1917, when the last ship arrived 147,592 Indians had arrived in Trinidad. They came initially to work on the
sugar and later on the cocoa and coconut estates. Man and bison were taken
across the Kala Pani to do slave work in Trinidad. Within
a decade the Indians would make a significant impact on the sugar economy. 1,958 Indians arrived by mid-1846. In
1847, the Indian population stood at 4,300. In 1849, the economic recession was
at its height and the price of sugar remained low. Planters reduced wages.
Blacks refused to work for lower wages. Immigration became an absolute
necessity. Indians were required to rescue Trinidad. By end-1855, 6,979 Indians
were imported and by end 1859 there were 13,543.
In 1852 the largest
crop of sugar was shipped. Governor Harris pointed out that sugar exports had
increased every year since Indian immigration started. He stated that in 1852
the sugar crop was “the largest ever shipped and there is every probability of
a considerable increase next year”. (British Parliamentary Papers, 1852-3,
lxvii, Harris to Pakington, Trinidad, 7 August, 1852.) Only once in the 1840’s had sugar production crossed 20,000 tons. In the
next decade it increased and in 1866 it reached 40,000 tons. In 1871 sugar
exports peaked at 53,592 tons. By 1857 all the sugar estates except one had
applied for immigrants.
In the 1860’s,
Trinidad, now with a population of 70,000 to 80,000 was at the beginning of its
prosperity. According to Parry, Sherlock and Maingot,
The period from 1860
to 1870 forms a watershed in British West Indian history. The labour shortage
in Trinidad and British Guiana was being made good; a satisfactory scheme of
immigration had been devised, and a rising tide of Indian Labour was flowing
into the two colonies. By 1870 there were 28500 Indians in Trinidad, and by
1883 the number had risen to 48000 – about one-third of the island’s
population. In the same year there were 65000 Indians in British Guiana out of
a population of a quarter of a million. This steady supply of labour enabled
the sugar estates to expand production and put the two colonies on the road to
prosperity (210).
Old estates were
resusicated and new estates were developed over time. The total acreage under cultivation
in Trinidad increased dramatically from 55,413 in 1845 to 423,600 in 1911(Look
Lai, 275). During this period the acreage under sugar and cocoa increased from
28,507 and 8,764 to 62,600 and 290,200 respectively. Sugar production increased
from 15,000 tons per annum in the period 1839-46 to 54,094 tons per annum in
the period 1877-86. Sugar production averaged 48,290 tons per annum in the
period 1907-16. The value of sugar exports rose from 409,416 pounds sterling
for 13,103 tons in 1841 to 938,000 for 53,592 tons in 1871 (273 ). By 1871, Indians
numbered 28,425 (Blue Books, 1870).The total Trinidad population was 109,638,
having increased by 25,200 in the last ten years (Blue Books, 1870). Indians had
effectively settled into Trinidadian society. They made a very significant impact on sugar
production, when sugar was the backbone of the economy.
In 1881 and 1891, the
Indian population stood at 48,820 and 70,218 respectively. By 1881, Trinidad
born Indians amounted to 26 to 27 percent of the total Indian community. There
were now opportunities for occupational mobility and land ownership. Under Governor
Arthur Gordon, the easing of restrictions on the sale of Crown lands made it
possible for all Trinidadians to purchase land. Some lands
were acquired under the land-for-return passage commutation program, under
which they were given free grants of 10 acres (later after 1873, 5 acres and 5
pounds sterling).
By 1889, a small
Indian peasantry had consolidated into a distinct and vibrant segment of
Trinidad society. A total of 3,979 land grants had been made involving about
11,933 persons. 19,055 acres were acquired, the 10 acre grants accounting for
about 61 percent of the total (Look Lai, 229). Apart from this Indians had used
their savings to purchase lands from private owners. Village settlements rose
and expanded. The Indians also made a very important contribution as peasants.
By the early 1870’s,
the majority of full-time, resident workers on the sugar estates of Trinidad
and British Guiana were Indians. The Indian labourer enabled Trinidad to expand
its sugar production from 20,000 tons in 1850 to 67,000 in 1879 (Parry,
Sherlock, Maingot, 210 and 211). Not only did the steady supply of Indian
immigrants make it possible to expand sugar production but conditions allowed
the expansion of peasant holdings (210 and 212 ). Initially the Indian
immigrants provided a profitable market for the black peasant who grew
foodstuffs. In 1868, small plots of Crown Lands were sold to peasants in both
British Guiana and Trinidad (211). 75 percent of the Indian migrants settled in
Trinidad. Migrants and settlers also impacted the cocoa and coconut industries.
Cocoa production trebled from 1850 to 1879 from about 4,000,000 pounds to
12,000,000 pounds (211).
Indian settlers in
Trinidad and Guyana constituted an important part of the peasantry after around
1870, cultivating rice, vegetables, provisions and other food crops. Cane
farming developed quickly in Trinidad and by 1902 cane farmers were producing
over half the cane in that colony (Beachey, 116). Bridget Brereton pointed out that the Indians, through dint of hard work,
solved the colony’s financial situation. They also became an essential “adjunct” to Trinidad’s economy, by
producing a substantial quantity of food as owners of livestock and as rice and
vegetable farmers on a large scale.
Most of the real expansion in the last quarter of the 19th century came
from those who purchased lands, public and private, either from their own
savings or with loans (Look Lai, 231). By 1890, the Indians owned or occupied
35,844 acres (233).Those entering cocoa cultivation were seen by Rev. Morton as
perhaps the most successful (231). They
“attacked the forest with axe and fire”. The Comins Report of 1891 also
noted that “rice growing is a most profitable business” (236). More than
9,000 Indians purchased Crown lands between 1885 and 1920. As the railways
extended into Central Trinidad, the Indians followed. After 1910, land sales slowed as Government
reserved key lands for the oil companies. More Indians had to be continually
imported to replace those who had moved off the estates.
Based on conversations with Reverend Morton, the Presbyterian missionary,
Dr. Comins provided a list of Indian occupations; usury, rum shop proprietors,
cocoa estate proprietors, provision shops, cab proprietors and carting, coconut
estate proprietors, rice cultivators, combined with cattle-rearing and milk-selling,
market gardeners, goldsmiths and silversmiths, hucksters and peddlars etc (236-7).
The economic survival and expansion of sugar in Trinidad was due in the
main to Indian migrant labour particularly during the period of 1850-70. Later
again the West India Royal Commission of 1897 revealed the success of Indian migrant
labour in the sugar industry in Trinidad. In 1895, sugar production stood at
54,622 tons as compared to 13,285 tons in 1828. Even
later in 1901, Honourable. E. Cipriani
stated that without Indian immigration “the colony would be nowhere” (Dabydeen
and Samaroo, 27). By 1900 many plantations in both Trinidad and British Guiana
employed virtually only Indians, except for casual work for Blacks especially
as cane-cutters at crop-time. As was the case in Jamaica and Guiana, some
Blacks remained on the estates and made their contribution mainly in factory
work as mechanics and technicians and also as very able shovelmen in the fields.
In 1901, the total population was 255,148 and the Indian population was
86,383 i.e 33.4 per cent of the total. Mc Neill and Lal reported also on the
free Indians (40-41). Free Indians continued working for the sugar estates.
Some were given land to plant cane. There were over 6,000 cane farmers in 1912.
Some Indians gained a livelihood as owners of carts and carriages. A daily
average of about 1,300 were employed in the Public Works Department. A few were
employed as police constables. Some hundreds found steady employment in cocoa
cultivation. Others worked for private employers as gardeners, grooms, porters,
watchmen, etc. “Many were shopkeepers, including a fair proportion of
prosperous traders.” 4,450 Indians bought 31,766 acres of Crown Land between 1902
and 1912. Furthermore, there was an average attendance of 4,542 Indian children
at school, the vast majority in the Canadian Presbyterian Mission schools,
founded by Reverends Morton and Grant.
And in 1910, the Committee on Emigration from India to the Crown Colonies
and Protectorates, sitting in London, concluded that Trinidad was largely
indebted to the system of Indian immigration, not only for its escape from a
severe crisis sixty years ago, but for the subsequent increase of its
resources. In 1913, the Trinidad barrister F.E.M. Hosein remarked in a speech
to the East Indian National Congress that “how the Indians saved the colony
might be woven into an epic.”
The final
ship to Trinidad, the Ganges, arrived
in April 1917 with 421 passengers.
British Guiana
“Give
me my heart’s desire of coolies”, was the Demerara planter’s remark to Anthony
Trollope, and “we will supply the world with sugar.”
Cited
in R.W.Beachey.
The
demands of plantation society were for a large, cheap, controllable population
of labourers (Hintzen, 9). The immediate response of the ex-slaves to
emancipation was, naturally, a mass exodus from the plantation (12). In Guiana,
as in Jamaica, the exodus was rooted in strong traditions of slave rebellion,
proto-peasantry and marronage (Besson, 193). In
Guiana the number of field slaves at Emancipation was 63,280 (Augier et al,
183). As in Trinidad and Jamaica, the ex-slaves withdrew their enthusiasm. The
small number who remained on the estates did not work for more than three and a
half days in any given week. The planters offered higher wages and other
perquisites. (See Mangru, 22-23). This did not attract the former slaves. Governor
Light addressed the former slaves in 1838 on the issues of irregular labour,
that most did not complete a quarter of their task and that they should give
the planters a “fair proportion of your labour.” Instead of adjusting to the new
conditions by negotiation, conciliation and good sense, the Governor and the
planters decided to have it their way as in the days of yore. Immigration was
their “antidote to emancipation.” “Africa provided the solution”
(Hintzen, 9). So too did the West Indies. The higher wages offered by Guianese
planters attracted migrants from the nearby islands. Guiana offered 24 and 32
cents a day while labourers in the British Leewards worked for 12 to 13 cents
per day. Meanwhile Jamaica could not attract labourers from the nearby British
Virgin Islands islands. Such labourers moved to the Danish Virgin Islands where
higher wages were offered.
The police “force” was strengthened for a new role
in labour relations.
Labour migration caused the population to grow more
than three times its size to 342,690 by 1928. See Table 2.
TABLE 2
LABOUR MIGRATION INTO BRITISH GUIANA, 1835-1928
COUNTRY/PLACE
OF ORIGIN
|
NUMBER
|
PERIOD
|
ISLANDS/NATIVE
DISTRICTS/AREAS
|
British West
Indies
|
42,562
|
1835-1928
|
Barbados-
40,656 estimated, British Windwards and Leewards.
|
Portugal
|
31,628
|
1835 -1882
|
Madeira and
Azores.
|
Africa
|
14,060
|
1841-1863
|
Sierra Leone,
West Africa, St Helena and Havana and Rio.
|
China
|
15,720
|
1853-1893
|
Canton, Amoy,
and Whampoa.
|
India
|
239,149
|
1838-1917
|
Uttar
Pradesh, Bihar, Bengal and Madras.
|
Other
|
2,249
|
1835 -1867
|
Germany,
Britain, Malta, US.
|
TOTAL
|
348,368
|
Compiled by the author.
The
former slaves tried hard to help themselves and sought their salvation in
acquiring land. In Guiana, former plantation headmen bought estates on behalf
of blacks, which were subsequently sub-divided (Heuman, 104-5). The ex-slaves pooled the savings they had
acquired during apprenticeship and sought to establish themselves as a
land-owning class (Hintzen, 12). Their salvation was to be ritually expressed
only in a complete break with their past and
through full membership in the land-owning class of his master (13). By 1848,
there was a very significant “Village Movement.” In the 20 years since emancipation,
the vast majority of former slaves had abandoned the Guianese estates. By 1852 there were some 10,000 Negro village
freeholds, and village populations rose from 16,000 to about 49,000 between
1842 and 1854 (Besson, 193). According to Raymond Smith and cited by Ramsaran
and Lewis (23), “The establishment of the free Negro villages after
emancipation is one of the most remarkable episodes in Guianese history.” Similarly,
according to Smith the great majority of Indians who later abandoned the
estates “acquired land and became farmers.” (Ramsaran and Lewis, 23). Meanwhile,
cotton and coffee planters
abandoned cultivation.
The “Village Movement” resulted in a drop in sugar
production and exports. In 1838, sugar exports stood at 54,535 hogsheads. This
fell to 38,444 in 1839, and averaged
37,160 hogsheads in the years 1840 to 1844. The planters cry was “emigration or
ruin.” The planters now sought to depress wages and increase profits. Their
solution was to import labour.
The labour migration
experience to British Guiana was similar to that in Trinidad, Jamaica and
Mauritius. The solution for the planter was to import indentured labour from
abroad (Hintzen, 13). West Indians and Africans came in large numbers. Labourers
from the nearby islands, including Barbados, were the first to arrive. However,
they were reluctant to do estate work and moved into the villages after their contracts
expired. Attempts were made to import free Blacks from the US, but only 40
came.
Planters believed that
a larger supply of labour would enable them to dominate the labour market. Schuler
observes that,
With
a population of only 98,000
at the end of slave apprenticeship in 1838, Guyana’s relative labour scarcity
and land surplus enabled well-organized plantation labourers to bargain
successfully with employers over wages and hours. Employers hoped that
immigration would give them the upper
hand (134).
Early
African immigrants would change employers “at a moment’s notice”. They
comprised less than 4 per cent of the total immigration. Like the other early
immigrants they left the estates at the first opportunity. All large groups of
migrants brought down the wages of existing labourers. Soon the Portuguese and
Chinese followed the West Indians and Africans in very large numbers also
bringing about competition for jobs and reducing wages.
Eventually the
Africans turned to education and entered professional jobs. They were pioneers
in the mining and forestry industries.
Other early labour
migrants to Guiana were the Portuguese from Madeira whose importation constituted
a desperate response by the colonial class to fears of African numerical
dominance and of a potential breakdown of order after emancipation (Hintzen,
14). The opportunity was seized to address the Black-White ratio by
establishing a buffer class, to divide the labour force and to prevent
combinations of workers. The hope was that the Blacks would emulate the
industrious ways of the Madeirans and accept “reasonable wages”. Governor Light
thought that apart from sugar, they would plant crops such as rice, corn and
indigo. In 1834 and 1835, 42 and 429 Madeirans arrived respectively. The
importation of Portuguese failed because they were deemed “unsuitable” for
plantation work. By 1851, the Portuguese had established 456 small retail
shops. They monopolized the rum shops by the 1880s. There was very high
mortality among them. They made a significant impact on the retail trade sector.
The Maltese turned to
begging and the Germans to baking. The English turned to rum drinking.
Planters turned to the Chinese until 1866. 474 arrived in 1854 (Eisner, 144).
They were imported to provide a “barrier between us (the Whites) and the negroes”
and to form a middle class. (See Lee-Loy, 17). It was hoped that they would cultivate crops
such as rice and ginger. After 1866, only three vessels of Chinese would arrive
in the British West Indies, two to Guiana and one to Jamaica (Lee-Loy, 11). Between
1853 and 1893, 15,720 Chinese arrived. Like the Portuguese, “Mr. Chin” made a
significant impact on the retail trade sector (Lee-Loy, 22). They showed the
same ambition, thrift and commercial flair as the Portuguese, and they followed
them into the retail trade, and later into other commercial ventures such as
gold prospecting and mining (Daly, 222). Only one shipload of Chinese arrived
in British Honduras. Some Barbadians also arrived.
Indians,
who had been tried as early as 1838, came to constitute the bulk of plantation
indentured labourers from the 1860’s onwards (Hintzen, 15). The planters
encouraged them to remain by offering plots of land in lieu of return passages
and helping them to develop a rice industry (16). In the 1870’s and 1880’s,
Antiguans and Barbadians arrived in larger numbers than before. In 1872-3 alone
2,793 Barbadians came (Beachey, 116). Gold
was discovered in the 1870’s and some ex-slaves moved into the goldfields.
The “Gladstone
Experiment” had its genesis in 1837, when John Gladstone an English merchant
and planter, with estates in Guiana, “advised that the dwindling African labor
should be replaced by immigrant labor from India” Ramsaran and Lewis (22). Gladstone was an absentee owner and father of
William Gladstone, future Prime Minister of England. In 1838, the first
arrivals, numbering 419, came on board the Whitby
and the Hesperus. It was hoped that
the Indians would not form combinations with Black workers and drive up wages.
The Indians died like flies. Indian immigration was halted and restarted in
1845. The Sugar Duties Act, 1846, removed the preferential duties on British
West Indian sugar. This deepened the severe commercial and financial crisis in
the sugar industry throughout the British West Indies. Immigration was again
stopped from 1847 to 1848. Only when the British government granted a loan did
Guyana and Trinidad restart immigration in 1850-51. Jamaica would restart in
1860.
By the 1870’s, there was an important
peasantry of both Blacks and Indians, cultivating rice, provisions, vegetables,
other food crops and milk. Attempts were made to establish cane farming.
However, the vast drainage system required could not be supported by small cane
growers and estates were blocked in such a manner as to leave no available
location for the independent farmer (Beachey, 116). It is estimated that
between 1872 and 1881 some 15,000 Indians settled on land off the estates, the
total number so settled being estimated in 1881 stood at 24,923 (Daly, 225).
Also, there were 540 Indian shopkeepers in 1882. By 1917, Indian peasant
farmers produced sufficient rice for domestic needs and over 32 million lbs.
for export (Daly, 228). Unreserved praise must be given to the Indians for
having developed this industry (Daly, 228). They also undertook cattle grazing
on a large scale.
The economic recovery
of Guiana was relatively late, sugar production taking about three decades to
achieve the pre-emancipation levels (Engerman, 233). By 1870, there were 44,825
Indians and all of the 128 sugar estates relied on them for labour (Beachey,
99). Indian labour throughout the second half of the century constituted the
chief labour on the estates (Beachey, 100, 103). In 1897 there were more than
105,000 Indians on the 64 sugar estates. The impact of the Indians was quite
evident. As R.W. Beachey stated,
The
availability of reliable indentured coolie labour throughout the second half of
the nineteenth century was an important factor in maintaining the superior
prosperity of British Guiana’s sugar industry compared with that of the other
sugar colonies.
As Engerman observed,
“With the continued inflow of Indian plantation workers, by the last decades of
the nineteenth century sugar production reached levels more than double those
in the last decade of slavery (233). The
West India Royal Commission of 1897 revealed the success of Indian immigration
in Guiana’s sugar industry. In 1895, sugar production stood at 101,160 tons as
compared to 40,115 tons in 1828. The Indians made a very significant
impact on the economy.
The labour inflows to
the other islands were small in amount and intermittent, and in few cases did
they provide an important basis for sugar production (Engerman, 233).
Large numbers of
migrant labourers came to the British West Indies and Mauritius during the
period 1834-1920. All migrant groups made their contributions to their host
societies. For different reasons they all made their impact on various sectors
of their economies. This they did in many different and significant ways as we
saw above. The Africans and West Indians engaged in peasant farming in the
villages they developed. They also engaged later in various occupations in the
towns and large villages. The importation the Portuguese failed initially because
they were deemed “unsuitable” for plantation work. There was very high
mortality among them, as among all Europeans. However, the Portuguese and the
Chinese established a thriving retail industry. They owned many small retail
shops, including rum shops. In Guiana, the Maltese turned to begging, the
Germans to baking and the English to rum drinking.
The Indians, the largest group of immigrants,
also made a very important contribution. Their impact was quite evident. They
saved and expanded the sugar industry in Trinidad, Guiana and Mauritius. They
bought land and engaged in peasant farming just as the Africans had done
before. They also undertook cattle grazing on a large scale. Some engaged in
shopkeeping. By 1917, Indian peasant farmers in Guiana eventually produced
sufficient rice for domestic needs and for export.
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CHAPTER 4:
Exploitation:
Re-imagining the migrant experience
By
Shalima
Mohammed
Migration is occurring throughout the world as people seek to improve
their standard of living and quality of life. The political mismanagement of
Guyana caused high levels of emigration between 1968 to 1992 resulting in human
resource depletion. The number of Guyanese emigrants as at 2017 was an
estimated 488,300 people (IOM's GMDAC, 2019) or 66% of the current population
estimated at 740,685 people (Central Intelligence Agency (U.S.), 2019).
Likewise, a political crisis in Venezuela in January 2019 has caused an
estimated four (4) million Venezuelans to emigrate. In both cases, the
political situation undermined real democracy which “…is a necessary component
of economic progress and prosperity” (Persaud, 1993).
Fiscal constraints faced by the Guyanese Government caused a low level
of growth and correspondingly, many Guyanese citizens were unable to secure
jobs, in the late 1980s. Like other migrants, in search of economic, social and
creative opportunities (World Economic Forum in collaboration with PwC, 2017),
between 10,000 to 30,000 Guyanese were emigrating annually (Roopnarine,
2011). According to Roopnarine (2011),
within the Caribbean, Guyanese have migrated to Surinam, Barbados, St. Maarten,
Antigua and Trinidad. While the exact
number of Guyanese nationals in Trinidad is unknown, there are many here, both
legally and illegally. Although, no specific
provisions were made by the Government of Trinidad and Tobago (GORTT) to
provide employment for them or to regularize their residential status, more
Guyanese nationals continue to arrive.
In contrast, from 2018, Trinidad and Tobago became host to approximately
60,000 Venezuelan nationals (Congressional Research Service, 2019) and the
GORTT has mandated registration of all Venezuelans in Trinidad, both legally
and illegally, from May 31st 2019 to June 14th 2019 (Gov.tt, 2019). Successful migrants were issued registration cards
which entitle them to work in Trinidad for one (1) year, after which their
status will be reviewed. Employers however, must still comply with the labor
laws of Trinidad and Tobago, including payment of no less than the minimum wage
of $15 per hour. Taxes apply to migrants whose incomes exceed $6000. They will also benefit from free medical
services but free education and social services are not guaranteed.
The registration of Venezuelans exclusively, is deemed unfair because
Trinidad hosts nationals from India, Cuba, China, Haiti, Dominica, Nigeria and
other countries but the vast majority stem from Guyana; none of whom have been
extended courtesies of registration cards for employment. Registration of only
one group is likely to encourage the displacement of T&T and other
nationals such as the Guyanese, by employers who will opt to hire Venezuelan
nationals who would accept low wages. Already, many professional and skilled
Venezuelans are underemployed in Trinidad, working as supermarket cashiers,
doubles vendors, bar maids and as agricultural laborers.
Despite claims by National
Security Minister Stuart Young, that registration “cards would ensure that
migrants could not be exploited by local employers,” exploitation is expected
because the supply of workers is high (Chan Tack, 2019) . Many Guyanese
migrants have reportedly been exploited, but had no protection from GORTT.
According to Delta Net, a UK based performance improvement consultancy,
migrants are common targets for labor exploitation perpetrators. Labor
exploitation may be identified by accommodation that is unsanitary, squalid and
overcrowded; employees that are forced to work long hours or double-shifts;
workers subjected to daily verbal and physical threats and regular violations
of basic human rights and workers’ rights such as low wages or wages that are
retained by the employer (Rennie, 2019).
Research on exploitation in migration has been widely undertaken and
commonalities are shown in the forms of exploitation, irrespective of migrant
nationality. Within India, migrants from
Bihar working in West Bengal are subjected to low wages and long hours of work.
Although they demand eight-hour work shifts, workers are doing 14 to 16 hours.
In order to meet deadlines, the workers on these long shifts are not even
allowed toilet and tea breaks (Goswami, 2015). Burmese migrants in Thailand
work long hours under unsafe conditions, for wages well below Thailand’s
minimum wage. They are denied the right of labor representation and live in
cramped, unsanitary dormitories despite paying the employer for room and board,
which cost more than the going rates (Arnold & Hewison, 2005).
In addition to the denial of basic human rights across geographic
boundaries, migrant workers are also denied workers’ rights. In employer-sponsored
temporary labor migration schemes in Australia, Canada and Sweden, employers
can exercise power over migrants and restrict their ability to change
employers. The workers are disenfranchised and cannot join labor unions
(Wright, Groutsis, and van den Broek, 2016).
Globally, migrant employment is now akin to human trafficking.
Exorbitant recruitment fees are compounded by routine confiscation of passports
and identity documents by sponsors, who force workers to remain in abusive
situations by threatening them with deportation and withholding their wages
(Gallagher, 2015).
While several studies categorize the forms which exploitation takes, there
is an absence of specific information on who or what perpetuates exploitation
of migrants, and why. This research will contribute to the literature by
focusing on Indo-Guyanese migrants in Trinidad, with the objective of determining
what factors predispose the exploiter to subject migrants to exploitation. It will
examine the historical antecedents of exploitation on the plantations in
British Guiana, and compare the indentured migrant experiences to those of
Indo-Guyanese migrants employed as laborers in Trinidad. I argue that economic
considerations are secondary to psychological reasons for perpetuating
exploitation of Indo-Guyanese migrants in Trinidad. This investigation has
serious implications for Guyana as a potential country of destination for
returning and new migrants.
Historical
background
Economic migration shifted the geography of
prosperity with the systems of slavery and indentureship. The introduction of
the system of indenture to the Caribbean is credited to Sir John Gladstone.
In
anticipation of a shortage of labor for his plantations in British Guiana and
Jamaica with the impending end of the Apprenticeship system in 1838, Gladstone
applied to Gillanders, Arbuthnot & Co. in Calcutta in 1836, to supply him
with indentured laborers. Gladstone’s association with India pre-dated
Indentureship. His British wealth by 1786 was attributed to trade with Calcutta,
India (UCL Department of
History, 2019)
so he strategically protected his West Indian investments which started in 1803
in sugar and cotton, by seeking labor
from India.
With the consent of the Colonial Office, Gladstone requested 100
able-bodied Indians to work on contracts spanning five (5) to seven (7) years
on his Vreed-en-Hoop
and Vried-en-Stein
estates (Mangru, 2013) . The first batch of
Indian laborers to Guiana, 396 of whom survived the voyage on Gladstone’s own
ships; the Whitby and Hesperus, landed on May 5, 1838 and were dispatched to
estates owned by Gladstone and two (2) other planters.
The Indians came as a result of a bilateral labor migration agreement. The
conditions of work shown in Table 1, were outlined in a contract entered into
by the Emigration Agent for British Guiana at Calcutta, India and the Emigrant.
It is important to note that the actual experiences of the migrants in terms of
some of the conditions, differed from what they signed to.
Table 1.
Contract of Emigrants to British
Guiana (adaptation)
Condition
|
Details
|
Actual experience
|
Period
of service
|
5
years from date of arrival in the colony
|
|
Work
|
That the said Emigrant, on arrival at British Guiana
shall be indentured by the Immigration Agent-general under the orders of the
Governor for a term of 5 years to any
employer of labor to perform work in connection with the cultivation of the
soil, or manufacture of the produce on any plantation
|
|
Days of work
|
Every day, except Sundays and authorized holidays
|
|
Hours of work
|
For 7 hours in the field or 10 hours in the factory
buildings
|
The rule rather than exception was labor for 12
hours or more in the fields, with a short break for meals
|
Wages
payable on Saturdays weekly
|
Able-bodied adult male emigrant > age 15 – 24
cents (= 8 annas) per day
Adult male not able-bodied or minor male of or >
age 10 – 16 cents (= 5 annas and 4 pies) per day
Children < age10: Wages proportionate to amount
of work done
Extra work – payment proportionate to every extra
hour of work
|
|
Task work instead of time-work
|
The same wages shall apply as is paid to
un-indentured laborers on neighboring plantations and such wages may be more
but shall not be less than the minimum wage payable for time-work
|
Task work was made compulsory on many estates and
workers were forced to accept it along with the terms fixed by employers,
which were so onerous that often a task could not be completed in less than 2
days. It was therefore, … “impossible for any indentured coolie to earn a
shilling per diem” (Seecharan,
1999).
|
Housing
|
Suitable dwelling will be assigned to emigrant and
family if any, under indenture, free of rent and will be kept watertight and
in good repair by the employers
|
|
Medical
|
When ill, emigrants will be provided with hospital
accommodation, medical attendance, medicines, medical comforts and food free
of charge.
|
Proof exists that sick immigrants were denied access
to the hospital by attending nurses. Bhagri reported sick but the nurse told
him nothing was wrong with him. He returned the next day when the doctor saw
and admitted him as an in-patient. On instructions from the Manager, the
nurse discharged Bhagri without the doctor’s permission and sent him back to
work. Bhagri died later that night (Reported by immigrant Bechu). (Seecharan,
1999 pg. 303).
|
Rations
|
Each emigrant and family is entitled to receive
rations from the employer from the first date of delivery to three calendar
months then next following: To each
adult of and > 15 years at a daily cost of 2 annas and 8 pies
|
|
Source:
Summarized from the Indian Emigration Act VII of 1871, sourced from Mangru
(1987)
The immigration system was shaped to suit the needs of the planters (Daly, 1974) . The Indians
throughout the period of indentureship were searching for a means of escape from
the estates. Des Voeux, a magistrate, Beaumont, the Chief Justice and Crosby,
the Immigration Agent General during the period 1860 to 1870, reportedly often
met to discuss the injustices meted out to the laboring classes but, there was
little they could do about it. According to Daly (1974), one planter boasted
that if a laborer on his estate was not in the field or the hospital, he was in
gaol (sic jail).
Immigration laws were effected to control the behavior of the
indentures. In British Guiana, breaches of the immigration laws as is shown in
Table 2, reflected the dissatisfaction of the Indians with their conditions of
work and life in general. The records testify to the
discomforts the migrants faced.
Table 2.
Record of breaches committed by
indentures
Breach
|
# of indentures convicted
|
Fine incurred
|
Between 1874 and 1895 (Immigrant population 105,205)
|
||
Desertions (absence for 3 days)
|
13,129
|
If
the employer or manager applied for a warrant for the apprehension of the
deserter – maximum fine of 5 pounds and/or maximum imprisonment of 2 months.
If
the employer or manager failed to proffer charges within 15 days after
desertion, he was subjected to a maximum fine of 5 pounds plus 1 shilling for
each day of default.
|
Offences against authority
figures (threatening language)
|
56,084
|
Maximum
penalty - 5 pounds or 2 months imprisonment
|
1913 (Mean immigrant population 9,671)
|
||
Absence from work
|
361
|
Conviction
|
Habitual idleness
|
277
|
Conviction
|
Absence from plantation without
leave
|
65
|
2
pounds for males
1
pound for females
|
Source:
Adapted from (Williams, 1983)
The philosophy underlying the indentured immigration system was that it
was free labor but, based on a mandatory seven (7) hour work day (Williams, 1983) . The Indian was also
restricted to the plantation to which he was indentured. There was no freedom
of movement unless he possessed a ticket of leave or a certificate of exemption
from labor. Failure to produce either document if found outside of the
plantation, meant he could be stopped without a warrant by the Protector of
Immigrants or a person authorized by him in writing, by a plantation policeman
or by the employer, his manager or overseer and taken to the nearest police
station. The Indian was subjected to exploitation by any of these people in
authority and, from the significant number of offences against authority
figures (56,084) seen in Table 2, we can glean the Indians retaliatory response
was controlled.
An investigation into the Vreed-en-hoop estate in Guiana revealed that
Henry Jacobs, a Eurasian interpreter-overseer, extorted money from the Indians
by threatening them with the cat-o-nine tails (Moore, 1999). From the number of
indentures who opted to accept return passage to India, we can assume the
poverty of India was preferred to life on the estates. Up to 1924, the number
of Indians who returned to India from British Guiana was 67,320 i.e. more than one
(1) out of every four (4) who had come to the country. The number of Indians
returning to India from British Guiana noted in Table 3 - mostly men since
a higher proportion of women remained after their
contracts ended (Moore, 1999) , exceeded those who
arrived reflecting their preferences to get away from estate life.
Table 3.
Comparison of arrivals and
departures of Indians indentured to British Guiana
Year
|
Departures
|
Arrivals
|
1897
|
1529
|
1194
|
1904
|
1625
|
1314
|
1905
|
2762
|
2704
|
Source: From Columbus to Castro (Williams, 1983)
So disheartened were the Indians that the colonials were forced to offer
inducements of land to get them to re-indenture. But the lands were not given
freely as Eric Williams (1983) would like us to believe, nor were they worthy
forms of exchange. The type of land offered was also a form of exploitation. In
1880, the Government purchased the abandoned Huis t’ Dieren estate, drained it,
divided it into lots and offered them for sale to the Indians (Daly V. T., 2011) . Rightfully
suspicious, the Indians declined the offer. By 1882, Sir Henry Irving sold
crown lands at ‘low cost’ or in some cases, without payment. But, the 3,883
acres sold at the high price of $16, 685 offered little sea defense and was
prone to poor drainage. The 214 Indians who purchased ultimately made a poor
financial decision. They were duped into coming to British Guiana and duped
into staying. From 1874 to 1895, only 6096 Indians chose to renew their
contracts while the number of new arrivals were 105,205. For every 100 who
came, only six(6) who had served their initial contractual term agreed to
renewal (Williams, 1983) .
Methodology
In order to compare the experiences of the indentures and those of
Indo-Guyanese migrants employed as laborers in Trinidad between 1980 to 2018, unstructured
interviews were done with two (2) people – 1. Jasmin - A Muslim Guyanese woman
of Indian descent who worked at a variety store but who has since returned to
Guyana and is now a cook at a restaurant. Her Guyanese brother, his wife and
two (2) children reside and work in Trinidad.
2. Morris - A 66-year-old Hindu man of Indian descent who migrated from
Guyana when he was 24 years old, married a Trinidadian woman within six (6)
months and lives in Trinidad with her, their two married (2) children and a
grandson.
To ascertain the Guyanese migrants experience in the workplace from the
perspective of Trinidadians, two (2) unstructured interviews were held: 1.
Shaheed - An 84-year-old Muslim
man of Indian descent, who worked some 20 years ago with two (2) Guyanese men,
Sattar and Sahadeo, of Indian descent. 2. Karen - A 44-year-old unmarried, female
atheist of Indian descent who gave an account of a situation related to her by
a then 26-year-old male law student of Indian descent, about his interaction
with a middle-aged Guyanese woman of Indian descent who worked at a local bar.
Design: Oral accounts of the participants.
Results
Exploitation of migrant workers takes different forms, and to a large
extent, has to do with one’s power relationships, value system and social
position.
On the estates of British Guiana, the atrocities faced by the Indians
were evidenced by Bechu; an immigrant indentured to Plantation Enmore who wrote
letters to the Daily Chronicle
(Seecharan, 1999). [1]
Bechu ascribed power and authority to the drivers on the estate. The following account
from 1897[2]
points to the drivers’ abuse of their authority and resultant physical and
mental exploitation of the indentures.
The coolies on Plantation Enmore are
afraid of being abused by their drivers and sometimes struck by them. Of course
these drivers have a certain number of their own men, who are always on their
side, and the coolies are afraid that the drivers will bring trumped-up charges
against them if they were to complain.
Seecharan (1999) claimed the drivers were used by estate management to
maintain docility and extract the maximum productivity from the laborers. Evidently,
the overseer depended on the driver’s report to pay wages so complaints about
the driver were dismissed by the overseer.
The driver directly perpetrated exploitive acts but perpetuation of
exploitation on the estates occurred because estate management chose to ignore
the indentures grievances. Bechu attested
to the unfair situation on April 1, 1900 when he wrote:
…during his term of indenture our
immigrant is treated so like a slave that it is next to impossible to expect
him to take kindly to sugar cultivation after the expiration of his five (5)
years. Of all the people in the world there is none so loyal and easily led as
the ‘mild Hindu’, and I am positive that estates’ Managers could safely count
on getting twice as much work out of his class of laborer if they insisted on
their overseers and drivers treating them less harshly.
Over 100 years later, some persons in the workplace to whom authority
has been delegated, continue to treat migrant descendants of the Indian
indentured immigrants, harshly. From the
following excerpt of an interview with Trinidadian Shaheed, it is evident the
employer’s son, Neil, who worked in the business[3],
was abusive, while the employer Raffick and the co-worker Shaheed, were
supportive of the two (2) Indo-Guyanese migrants, Sattar and Sahadeo.
MOHAMMED: Tell me about how the Guyanese men
worked
SHAHEED: Oh, they very hardworking.
They do what they have to do. They come to do this job and they stick to it.
And I gave them instructions because if I want this, wherever the tree is, I
say well boy, let we cut these trees, in discussion with them first, let us
take these first, then we will take those up on the hill and let it fall here
and they would do just what I ask them to do. And that bring that near relation
between us.
MOHAMMED: There
was never any conflict?
SHAHEED: Never. And Sahadeo come
here [to his home]; he make the peg wheel for me; he never charged me for
making it. But I paid him. He had refused the money. I said no, let me pay him.
MOHAMMED: Why? Why did you insist on
paying him?
SHAHEED: Because I feel he want to
better himself in where he living. He said because of his wife. And then,
Raffick son Neil, had a habit, when he come, he wants to walk through the
house, because is he father own it[4].
MOHAMMED: In an arrogant manner?
SHAHEED: In not a nice manner and
when he speak to them, sometimes he hell them, he cuss them and all ah dat and
I never used to like it. But them [Neil] is the boss right. But he [Neil] never
take the chance and speak to me so.
MOHAMMED: So he treated the Guyanese
different from the Trinidadian?
SHAHEED: Yes, he used to abuse them
and I tell them straight, I say, if I was like allyuh, he couldn’t speak to me
like that and the best thing to do is put him in his place.
MOHAMMED: Did they ever put him in
his place?
SHAHEED: Yes. He [Neil] was cursing
in front of Sattar wife, and Sattar get a piece of coffee wood and blaze him.
He hit him on my instructions.
MOHAMMED: But how you could do a
thing like that; that is the boss?
SHAHEED: Well yes, he is the boss,
but boss cyah want to kick you.
MOHAMMED: But Sattar living in their
house so what happened to Sattar eventually?
SHAHEED: When he hit him, Mr.
Raffick came, because Neil called him. When I explained to the father what Neil
had done, in front of his [Sattar] wife, Mr. Raffick said, “You have done a
thing like that! You don’t respect these people working for me? They not
working for you! You are my son, but you don’t have authority from me to do
what you did, so what he had done, you look for it.”
MOHAMMED: So Mr. Raffick used to
treat them well?
SHAHEED: Yes. Neil was no good
At this point, Shaheed started to
cry. He said, “the way Neil used to treat those people, it hurt me here”
[pointing to his heart].
SHAHEED: They talked to Mr. Raffick
and tell him because of Neil attitude and his brother attitude, they can’t stay
there anymore.
Neil assumed a position of authority in the absence of his father who
was the employer. Exploitation occurred by way of denial of human rights to
fair treatment. Shaheed also disclosed that Neil attempted to rape Sattar’s
wife but she escaped, the only evidence of his infraction being her torn
clothing and screams as she ran out of the house. While Shaheed as a co-worker
supported the migrants, in Jasmin’s case, her co-workers were the ones who made
her life difficult.
Initially 2-3 workers came to me and
would taunt me saying, ‘why yuh talkin like a Guyanese so’? They would take
over my customers and ignore my presence. Of these victimizers, 3 were elder
and 2 were slightly younger.
After that, boss (Mrs. Adams) told all employees the 3
Guyanese working there were to be treated fairly. Mrs. Adams was a good person
to me.
Eventually within 2 months’ time,
they treated me like their own. Sat together, eat, talk together, shared what I
cooked for lunch. I learned to cook from my mom. They liked my food and would
ask, “Bibi, what you bring for me for lunch?” After working for 2 months they adapted and started to
treat me better. I liked my work. Elder workers taught me what to do. When
customers were giving me a hassle, the other workers said ‘no she works here’
in support of me.
Immigration
officers disappointed her and she returned to Guyana in 2010. She overstayed,
so she couldn’t return to Trinidad for some years, but about her stay in Trinidad,
she said:
My job was
everything to me. I was taught to be a supervisor after five (5) months. That
could have never happened in Guyana. I was surprised by how much my bosses
trusted me. One of the things I liked here was that my bosses recognized me and
that is very important to a person.
The
employer’s support effectively protected Jasmin from increased forms of exploitation
by her co-workers. She was also empowered with on-the-job training and
promotion to a higher position. Her self-esteem was boosted and that made her
migrant experience a positive one. Like Sahadeo and Sattar, Jasmin was valued
by the employer. In the case of another Guyanese woman, it was the employer, however,
who facilitated exploitation rather than perpetrate it himself. Karen was a
student of law in 2013 when a friend of hers bragged about his involvement in
the exploitation of that Guyanese woman. Here is what she shared:
I’ve had
the experience where someone I know, Bryan, when he first started as a lawyer,
he used to wear a blue shirt. He went with his friends drinking in a bar on a
Friday, somewhere in Central [Trinidad]. What happened was that the young lady
who was serving them, they realized, was an immigrant and she was from Guyana.
So the friends told Bryan, check this right. They went and they began to pose
as if Bryan was an immigration officer and they want to see her papers. Bryan
went [along] with the joke. They asked for the bar owner. And they began to
take a very officious tone because they were masquerading themselves as
immigration officers. The bar owner went in the back with the young lady and
when he came back out, he said, “The girl eh have no papers and we don’t want
no trouble”. “So hear what. If allyuh want, allyuh could take her in the back
and do what allyuh want.”
They did.
They did! And Bryan did not consider it rape. As a matter of fact, he found it
so hilarious that when he was relating this to my friend Nisha and I, (we were
sitting around the Savannah after exercising on an evening) he was like ha ha
ha, yuh like mih blue shirt? People does say I look like ah immigration
officer… and that is how we ended up finding out about it.
He was
laughing and boasting. Initially he said, “Well I didn’t do anything! I went in
the back and I pretended and I watched her and I went back out. No! She was
willing!”
Incidents
like this are not uncommon. And this is somebody with a law degree. Someone who
is practicing as a lawyer and who is also now involved in politics.
The victimized migrant was undocumented according to
her employer, and therefore, was fearful of the consequences of working. She
was sexually exploited by nationals of Trinidad whose morals and ethics are
questionable. The employer did not offer her any protection; rather he exposed
her to the threat in order to save himself from the legal consequences of
hiring an undocumented immigrant.
Discussion
The results confirm that psychological factors outweighed economic considerations
in the perpetuation of exploitation of Indo-Guyanese migrants in Trinidad. Neil
had nothing to gain from verbally abusing and denigrating the men. But his
behavior was strategically designed to emasculate the men in order to get their
women to view him as a figure of authority so they might submit to his will.
Should they have left the job owing to his abuse, productivity would have
declined in the business because of loss of man hours while seeking others to
fill the vacancy. But boosting his self-esteem was more important to him than economic
returns. The exploitive co-workers and abusive customers at Jasmin’s workplace,
similarly had no thoughts about how their behavior affected the operations of
the business. Their abusive words were a personal attack on the psyche of the
migrant. It was probably a self-defense mechanism at play as they may have felt
she would replace them in time. The powerless bar-maid who succumbed to the
influence of her employer and was ultimately violated, unfortunately allowed
fear to control her actions. She failed to protect herself against people who assumed
an authoritative posture. Their act of exploitation was merely for
self-aggrandizement, not economics leverage.
Our sense of exploitation is a
moralized one because we hold the
notion that exploitation necessarily means unfairness. Exploitation
is harmful to the extent that it made the victims worse off than he or she should have been had he or she
been fairly treated.
In terms of power relationships in the workplace and among most groups,
the task leader is the person who holds a formal position of authority. The
various functions fulfilled by leaders fall into two (2) categories – (1) task achievement and, (2) group maintenance (Breckler, Olson, &
Wiggins, 2006)
. Table 1 shows evidence of the necessity for the task leader during
indentureship, whose focus was to maximize on migrant productivity. The task
achievement function involves advising, training, planning how to achieve group
goals, assigning tasks, developing policies, and monitoring and evaluating
performance. In those cases of exploitation, the task achievement function took
precedence over group maintenance.
Group maintenance is carried out by a socio-emotional leader and includes motivating workers to commit to the
job, resolving disputes between members and counseling troubled workers. The fact
that some indentures opted to stay on the estates after their contractual obligations have been fulfilled, is an
indication that the social environment may have been less exploitive for them
as opposed to those who returned to India. It is also possible that the group
on the estates was close-knitted and was preferred to the group left behind in
India.
In contemporary workplaces, there is a demand for leaders to balance
task achievement with group
maintenance. But leaders might respond adversely to migrants who are unsuited
to the task at hand, resulting in their behavior being labelled as
exploitive. If the leader’s ultimate
goal appears elusive due to the non-performance by the migrant, the leader
could become frustrated. The migrant worker’s lack of appropriate skill and
knowledge then becomes a vulnerability.
The task leader’s likely response
is to hire someone else to get the job done while the socio-emotional leader’s
likely response is to train the migrant worker. Not all behavior is the result
of rational decisions or even conscious thought (Thomas-Hope, 2002) .
The Social Representation Theory advanced by Moscovici (1981) explains
how the strange and unfamiliar become familiar over the passage of time (Farr
and Moscovici, 1984 cited in Gross, 2010). Social representations (SRs) are
used to make sense of the environment and people with which we interact.
Consequently, SRs influence how authority figures interact with each other and
migrants. Horton (1999) used the SR theory to offer a social psychological
explanation for prejudice. It explains the phenomena of active hostility
towards and persecution of outgroups.
Based on SRs, the exploiter can be called a motivated tactician, that
is, he is a “fully engaged thinker who has multiple cognitive strategies
available and chooses among them based on goals, motives and needs (Fiske and
Taylor, 1991 cited by Gross, 2010).
Psychological Considerations
Cognition - Is the exploiter motivated by his tasks, the work situation
or his abilities to create problems for the migrant? There is little
consideration for the consequences of his exploitive actions. Based on the fact
that each migrant interviewed, experienced empathy from someone else in and out
of the workplace, is it possible the exploiter has abnormal thought processes
or personality disorders?
Communication – The exploiter’s communication style is harsh. He is
assertive when in a position of authority over the migrant. However, in the
presence of his superior, he is restrained. Are his abusive words and
threatening action a reflection of an inability to express his fears of
becoming obsolete in the workplace to be replaced by the migrant?
Attitudes and Emotions – The exploiter is a part of the workforce who
may feel his employment is less secured owing to the migrants. To what extent
does he feel anxious or nervous about his future in the business? What does he
look forward to at work? Has the presence of the migrant derailed a plan or
goal to accomplish a target or position at work?
Social Cognition and Regulation – What is the exploiter’s sense of self?
Does he focus on his inadequacies or does he feel superior to the migrant? It
is possible the exploiter is confrontational and becomes verbally abusive when
challenged by migrants whom he feels is inferior to him. The exploitation
persists unless management allows him to experience the consequences of his
behavior rather than enable him. At the same time if the exploiter has made a
valuable contribution in the workplace, his employers must acknowledge his
efforts.
Emotional intelligence (EI) can help to prevent exploitation. By being
self-aware, self-disciplined and empathetic, both migrant and authority-figure can
enhance their personal and professional relationships. By using EI, authority
figures will be more compassionate rather than exploitive and migrants can make
better decisions to improve their ability to solve problems.
Increased self-awareness helps the individual to better understand their
own thoughts, feelings and actions. With self-discipline or self-management,
one can live more consciously by navigating emotions better and engaging
intrinsic motivation. In this way there is little room for motivation from
exploitation. By increasing one’s empathy he can pursue noble goals such as
actively helping migrants who need guidance or material necessities.
Implications
Guyana is endowed with significant natural resources of land, bauxite,
diamonds, gold, hardwood timber, shrimp, fish (CIA, 2019), and oil. But natural
resources do not develop of themselves. Development requires investment in the
form of capital, technology and human resources, of the right type (Persaud,
1993). If the country lacks those human resources, migrant and re-migrant labor
can fill the gap.
Exploitation can adversely affect worker productivity and human lives in
general. As Guyana is expecting an oil windfall and re-migration, policies need
to be instituted to make the situation of the migrant worker a more humane one.
To this end, employers and the Government should create a national immigrant
integration policy. Procedures should be stipulated for regular monitoring of
migrants at work in companies to define their rights as migrant workers. Undocumented
immigrant workers should have identification cards and provided with
opportunities at work to regularize their
status. Employers can reframe the perception of their personnel about migrant
workers by illustrating the benefits which the latter can bring to the company and
society.
Conclusion
While migration is driven by economics, exploitation is driven by
socio-emotional factors. Labor migration is commonly undertaken by independent actors and there is a lack of
regulation of the terms and conditions of employment in the private sector, as
well as by state agencies. The workers are, therefore, subjected to conditions in keeping with the ethical standards
and adjudged by the authority figures in the workplace. Emotional intelligence
is needed by both migrants and persons holding power over their employment in
order to avoid exploitation and maintain a positive working environment.
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[1] Bechu was an assistant driver who assisted the ‘creole driver’ with
weighing and serving out manure and superintending picking of cane-tops. Clem
Seecharan’s (1999) analysis of Bechu’s letters formed the basis for his book, Bechu: ‘Bound Coolie’ Radical in British
Guiana 1894-1901. ‘Creole’ refers to those of African descent born in
British Guiana (Seecharan, 1999 pg. 11)
[2] Referenced by Seecharan, 1999 pg. 131 Report of the West India
Royal Commission[1897], Appendix C. – Part II, section 159
[3] Sahadeo and Sattar came to work in Raffick’s sawmill and hardware.
They were power saw operators whose experience in logging from Guyana was
sought to cut down trees which Shaheed, the tractor operator, would haul to the
sawmill.
[4] Like during indentureship, Raffick who was the employer, housed
Sahadeo and Sattar with their wives, in his spare old house.
By
Mohamed Hamaludin
Introduction
Papers intended to be presented
at gatherings such as this 12th Annual Conference of the Guyana
Institute of Historical Research are probably scholarly, with exact sourcing
and coming from an expert in the particular field. This one meets none of those
criteria. It is, mostly, the recollections of a journalist who reported on the
tragedy that was Jonestown, along with information obtained from news stories
written by others. Some of the details are rather hazy in my mind because of
the passage of time but some are indelibly written in my memory.
There is a lot of information
about Jim Jones and Jonestown in the numerous books, movies and television
shows that have popped up from time to time. Perhaps the definitive book on the
topic is “Raven,” written by then San Francisco Examiner journalist Tim
Reiterman and another journalist, the late John Jacobs. Reiterman, who
accompanied a delegation led by U.S. Congressman Leo Ryan on a fact-finding
mission to Jonestown, was wounded in an attack that killed Ryan. He named his
book after a quote by Jones: “I come with the black hair of a raven/I come as
God Socialist!”
But probably the authoritative
sources on Jim Jones and Jonestown is the website “Alternative
Considerations of Jonestown & Peoples Temple,” maintained by San Diego
State University in California.
I hope that in relating my
Jonestown experiences as one of the first two journalists on the scene,
enhanced by additional details, I can help expand the body of knowledge and
kindle or rekindle interest in what was one of the greatest human tragedies at
the time not only for Guyana but also for the world.
First Contact
Jim Jones and his People’s Temple
of Love relocated from the United States of America in 1977 and the Jonestown
tragedy happened on the night of Saturday, November 18, 1978. I do not recall
when exactly I first made contact with the group but it was not long before the
tragedy and it came as a routine matter. I was then working at The Chronicle
newspaper and I was at my desk when three or four young women came up,
introduced themselves as being from The People’s Temple of Love and obviously
wanted to pitch a story. I had heard about the group and, as we talked, I asked
the visitors whether it was true that they were planning to leave Guyana
because the government was unhappy with them.
The next day or so, the women
returned, this time accompanied by an older woman who introduced herself as Marceline,
the wife of Jim Jones. She brought with her a bottle of whisky as a gift. I
told her I did not drink alcohol but she insisted on leaving it with me and the
booze ended up with a colleague of mine in the newsroom. Marceline Jones was
particularly interested in why I thought the Guyana government was unhappy with
her husband and his followers and were planning to leave Guyana. I told her it
was just something I had heard and that I was looking for confirmation.
The next time I heard about the
People’s Temple was the news that Congressman Leo Ryan of California, in whose
district the group had been based for many years, was coming to Guyana to
investigate reports that, contrary to Jones’s assertions, he was not running a
church but a cult in which followers were abused and some were being held
against their will. Ryan was bringing a delegation that would be accompanied by
a few American journalists who had been covering his activities for years. They
were planning to fly from Georgetown to Port Kaituma and then travel overland
to a site some seven miles from the airstrip where Jones and his followers had
carved out a settlement from virgin jungle that became known as Jonestown.
By then, I had left The Chronicle
to become the Guyana correspondent of the now defunct Caribbean News Agency (CANA).
I saw the Ryan trip as a good news story and I contacted his aide, Jackie
Speier, who agreed to give me the last remaining seat on the plane going to
Port Kaituma on Friday, November 17, 1978. Speier called later to say that the
Guyana government wanted a staff member of the Government Information Service
to accompany the delegation and my seat ended up going to Neville Annibourne. At
the time, I was suffering from a bad case of the flu which had me in bed with a
cough and a high fever and Ryan was no longer on my mind.
Late that Saturday night, though,
Hubert Williams, CANA’s Chief Editor, phoned to ask whether I had heard what
happened in Jonestown. I told him no and he informed me that the U.S.
Department of State had issued a press release saying that Ryan’s delegation had
been attacked at Jonestown. I would not sleep again for at least 72 hours, flu
forgotten.
Then Information Minister Shirley
Field-Ridley phoned to ask me to meet her at her home, something that had never
happened before. As I suspected, it was about Jonestown and she asked for
suggestions on how to deal with the press at a news conference she planned to hold.
I told her to be upfront with the journalists because the facts would come out
eventually. That was probably not helpful, so I was surprised when, at her press
conference, the minister picked me as one of two pool reporters to accompany a
fact-finding team to Jonestown. She selected Charles Krause, then with The
Washington Post, to represent the international media; I was chosen probably stories
I would file for CANA would be picked up by the Caribbean press, giving
regional coverage.
Jonestown
On arriving at the Port Kaituma
airstrip that Monday, we were taken by pick-up trucks to Jonestown, to a scene that
still haunts me. Bodies lay all around a wooden structure which evidently had
served as a meeting place or church, some stacked on top of one another. A man
and a woman lay face down with an arm each thrown across a child between them.
It was a moving scene but I did not pay too much attention, overwhelmed by the horror
in front of me. Other journalists who came later would point to trails in the
dirt leading to the couple’s feet indicating the couple had probably been dragged
to the spot and positioned for effect.
An oil drum cut in half stood on
a narrow pathway to the meeting place. It still contained a lot of what turned
out to be a deadly concoction of fruit drink laced with cyanide and
anti-anxiety drugs. Later reports indicated the adults first squirted the
poison into the mouths of the very young before drinking it themselves. People
magazine reported in June 2017 that defectors said Jones coaxed his followers
to drink, admitting the brew contained cyanide but adding, “It’s not going to
taste bad.” Some reports have suggested they were forced to do so at gunpoint
in a mass murder and others have said they collectively decided to commit mass
suicide.
Jones was the only one among the
dead that I saw who was shot. I had never met him but I instantly recognized
him from photos I had seen. He had a bullet hole in the temple and a handgun lay
several feet away, giving the impression that someone had shot him or that he
did so and someone moved the gun. Singer Nicky Porter raised the inevitable
question in his post-Jonestown song: “Who killed Jimmie Jones?” Near the steps
of the makeshift temple Marceline Jones lay among the dead. A short trail of
dried mucous had oozed from her nostrils and there was an expression on her
face that I thought was of sadness.
I learned from people on the
scene that a few young women -- including perhaps those who had met me at The
Chronicle -- were found dead from gunshot wounds in one of the many houses in
the settlement. I did not verify it myself. An open leather briefcase full of
American passports lay on the ground, next to then Guyana Police Crime Chief
“Skip” Roberts, who, I learned, had earlier arrived on the scene with his
detectives.
I walked among the dead for a
while and then just sat down on a tree stump and gazed in disbelief as I
pondered on what in the psyche of human beings could have lead to this horror. I
still cannot shake off the eerie silence that enveloped the scene death. The San Diego State University’s “Alternative Considerations
of Jonestown & Peoples Temple” website reports that 918 men, women and
children died at Jonestown, including eight Guyanese children. About 70 percent
were African Americans, who were known to comprise the majority of Jones’s
followers.
For the
return trip to Georgetown, the government sent a smaller plane and there was a
rush for seats. I did not join the mini-stampede and so I had to wait overnight
for another plane. Krause, the international pool reporter, did make it out. I had
not expected it to turn out the way it did but being left behind proved to be
the most significant part of my Jonestown – and journalism -- experience.
Telling The World
I spent the night at a nearby
police station, where I was allowed to use the shortwave radio to file my
story. I dictated it to my wife Enid back home in Prashad Nagar because the
radio could not reach Barbados, where CANA was based. She then phoned it to the
editors in Bridgetown. So while Krouse was still in the air, I was getting the
first worldwide byline for a story that was of global interest.
Larry Layton, a Jonestown member,
was being held in a cell just below the sleeping area at the station and he screamed
at the top of his voice the entire night, so I did not get to interview him. He
would later become the only Jonestown follower tried in the U.S. on charges of
shooting and wounding two people at the Port Kaituma airstrip, attempting to
shoot a third person and conspiring to kill a congressman, according to the San
Diego State University website. He was convicted and sentenced to 20 years in
jail and was released on parole in 2002.
In the morning, I returned to the
settlement, where I met and interviewed the only other survivors at the scene,
both elderly African Americans: a woman who told me she slept through the chaos
of the Saturday night and a man who said
while Jones was persuading his followers that death was the only way out, he slipped
away and hid in a dugout. I wrote a story on the two of them.
I also interviewed the district
medical officer, who had come to the scene. He showed me a list of powerful
drugs found in the settlement and explained that they had most likely been used
to keep the people sedated and also to make the deadly mixture in the
half-drum. That gave me material for another story originating from Jonestown.
Eyewitness Accounts
Speier, who had traveled to
Jonestown with her boss, recalled in a story in the Roll Call publication on
Nov. 18, 2015, that, while at the settlement, Ryan and his delegation were
treated to entertainment -- most likely
by the Jonestown Express, the group’s house band -- during the Friday night. The next morning, while
Jones’ followers were being interviewed, someone surreptitiously passed a note
to NBC News reporter Don Harris saying some of them wanted to leave. Later press
reports said Jones announced that anyone wanting to leave was free to do so and
the “defectors” were driven with Ryan and his team to the airstrip. They would
need two flights to take them all.
Speier recalled that, as she was
getting people on board the first plane, a Guyanese child ran up to her and, as
she was trying to coax the child to leave, a tractor-trailer drove up and people
in it began shooting at close range. “People ran into the bush. I followed Ryan
under the plane and hid under one of the wheels,” Speier said. Ryan, who was shot
in the head, Harris and three others were killed. Speier herself was hit five
times, spent two months in hospital and underwent 10 surgeries. She went on to
be elected to Ryan’s seat in Congress, where she is still serving.
Other news
reports filled in the blanks. Ryan had seemed impressed with Jonestown even
after several members wanted to leave. But a Jonestown follower lunged at him
with a knife and cut him in the arm, shattering an apparently staged façade of
normalcy. Some reports said that while Ryan and his delegation and the
defectors were on the way to the airstrip, Jones summoned his flock to the
meeting place and told them he had prayed for a miracle and that Ryan’s plane
would fall out of the sky. Some reports have said a handgun had been hidden
under a seat behind the pilot and Layton reportedly was to sit there and shoot
him, causing the plane to crash. But the gun was discovered before that could
happen and Layton was apprehended.
Back at
Jonestown, Jones went into his final sermon. People magazine reported survivors
as saying he saw death as a “revolutionary” act and that, “If we can’t live in
peace, then let’s die in peace.” He dispatched a hit squad to the airport. The
People’s Temple had its official headquarters In the Georgetown, with a
continuing presence in San Francisco, and as the airport shooting was taking
place, Jones uttered a code via shortwave radio to all his followers to commit
suicide. Sharon Amos, who was at the Georgetown location, was reportedly helped
by a man, Charles Beikman, to slit the throats of her daughters while they were
held down and then he slit her throat. But others ignored Jones’ order,
including his only birth son, Stephan, who was in the capital as a member of Jonestown’s
basketball team.
Some Survivors’ Stories
Tim Carter,
then 30, and his brother Mike Carter, 20, and Mike Prokes, 31, who had been
followers of Jones, gave their perspectives on him and Jonestown during an
interview with me at a Georgetown hotel. They said a Jones aide had instructed
them to take a briefcase containing an estimated $500,000 and “two or three
notes” to the Soviet embassy in Georgetown. Apparently Jones had indeed been worried
that the Guyana government intended to ask him to leave and he had been planning
to relocate again, this time to the then Soviet Union. The Carter brothers and
Prokes eventually encountered a policeman, who took them into custody, and they
ended up at the hotel.
“I don’t know
how history would judge Jim Jones,” Tim Carter said. “What happened was
grotesque, totally unnecessary and a waste. But the story of Peoples Temple is
such a complex one, so many different variables involved, leading to this final
act of insanity.”
Mike Carter
blamed “isolation” for the tragedy, saying it was one of its main
weaknesses. Tim agreed, saying, “Jones
so isolated himself that he lost his perspective.”
Prokes maintained
that Jones had been making a genuine effort to create something worthwhile but
it failed because of “a conspiracy” to destroy him and his movement.
The three men insisted
that death had been far from the minds of Jones’ followers. “There is 60,000
board feet of lumber now lying on the Port Kaituma dock,” Tim Carter said. “You
don’t order 60,000 board feet of lumber if you are going to die.”
“You don’t spend $7 million on a project, a
model community, and then kill yourself,” Prokes added.
By the time of
the tragedy, they said, 50 cottages had been built, with seven couples living
in each, and there had been plans to construct another 150, eventually having
only two couples per house.
The Carters and
Prokes told of experiencing immeasurable grief as they got ready to carry out
their mission. Tim Carter said that when he went to say goodbye to his wife
Gloria, “She was kneeling on the ground and she was holding our son and I saw
tears flowing down her cheeks. I don’t know, I can’t imagine, what was going
through her head. I came up to her and looked down and said, ‘Our son is dead.’
I leaned over and hugged her and said, ‘I love you so much. I love you. I love
you. I love you.” Gloria then went into convulsions and fell next to their
18-month-old child, he said.
Mike Carter
said his wife Jocelyn, 20, and their 15-month-old daughter also died. So too
did the Carters’ sister Terry and Prokes’ adopted son Randy, 3.
Jonestown
finally ended for Prokes four months later in a Modesto, California, hotel.
According to the San Diego State University website, he called a press
conference, read a statement, went into the bathroom, closed the door, turned
on the faucet and shot himself in the head. A note found next to his body read:
“Don’t accept anyone’s analysis or hypothesis that this was
the result of despondency over Jonestown. I could live and cope with
despondency. Nor was it an act of a ‘disturbed’ or ‘programmed’ mind – in case
anyone tries to pass it off as that. The fact is that a person can rationally
choose to die for reasons that are just, and that’s just what I did. If my
death doesn’t prompt another look at what brought about the end of Jonestown,
then life wasn’t worth living anyway.”
But Speier said
in her Roll Call interview that there had indeed been problems at Jonestown and
that this was told to the U.S. embassy in Georgetown by Larry Layton’s sister
Debbie. The U.S. State Department should have paid more attention to the group,
Speier added.
Speier also
addressed the question of whether, as some people had speculated, the U.S. had
been involved in the tragedy, especially since Jones had planned to take his
followers to the Soviet Union, which would have been a major embarrassment.
“There were some that had suggested that the CIA (the U.S. Central Intelligence
Agency) was somehow involved and they didn’t want that to be exposed,” said Speier,
a member of a U.S. House of Representatives committee dealing with Intelligence.
She said she had asked for documents related to Jonestown, adding, “It does not
appear that that was the case. And I don’t know. But it does seem like it was
mishandled on a number of levels.”
Speier said the
State Department “could benefit from doing a case study” of Jonestown and she quoted
the Spanish philosopher George
Santayana: “If you don’t learn from your mistakes, you’re condemned to repeat
them.” At Jonestown, I saw that quote written in bold letters on a sign
nailed to the settlement’s meeting place.
Return To Jonestown
I returned to
Jonestown a week later. A produce garden which had been verdant during my first
visit was a bit less green and this time I noticed a sign which, ironically, warned
that fertilizer had been applied. A towering windmill still whirred overhead. Several
pieces of paper were strewn around on the ground with expressions of affection
for Jones from his followers, calling him “Father.”
The nearly
1,000 bodies still lay in the hot tropical sun, decomposing as the Guyanese and
American governments squabbled about responsibility for burying them, until
they were eventually taken to now Cheddi Jagan International Airport and flown
to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware for burial in the U.S. I drove to the
airport, where I saw Jones for the second time – at least his crude wooden
coffin on which was scribbled “Jimmye Jones”. The man who fled San Francisco
with his followers to escape perceived media persecution for a country he
believed safe from radiation fallout in a coming nuclear war was on the way
home.
Epilogue
I had one other direct contact
with The Peoples Temple -- in a courtroom in Georgetown. Unable to charge Jim
Jones, the authorities hauled his son Stephan into court and I covered the trial
for CANA. At an early stage of the hearing, he suddenly blurted out, “Yes, I
did it.” The outburst caused the trial to be immediately adjourned and, as
Stephan was being led away, he passed by me and I asked him, “What was that all
about?” He answered along the lines of, “I told them what they wanted to hear.”
His attorney, Rex McKay, heard about the exchange and he asked me to repeat it
in court. I obtained permission from CANA editors to do so and, when the trial
resumed, I was called to the witness stand. I do not know whether that had an impact
on the trial, since it could have been interpreted to mean that Stephan was not
really confessing, but he was acquitted.
Something else that should be
mentioned. There were reports that the Guyana government had granted Jim Jones
permission to settle with his followers in Port Kaituma for a strategic reason.
There was – and still is -- fear that Venezuela, which has an ongoing claim to
the whole of the Essequibo, might launch an invasion, as it did in 1966 when it
seized Ankoko island. The reasoning in Georgetown seemed to be that a
settlement of more than 900 Americans in their path would give the Venezuelans
cause to pause and, if they anyhow invaded and Jones and his followers were put
in danger, the United States would intervene.
Ironically, though, in death, the
Guyana government kept Jones and his followers at arm’s length, the official line
then being that they were an American problem. That, of course, would explain
why the Chronicle ignored all the stories I filed for CANA from Jonestown but which
made the front pages of newspapers all over the world. The one story which The
Chronicle did publish was my interview with the Carter brothers and Prokes.
But the fact remains that then
and now Guyana has had a responsibility to these people. It is easy to talk
about cultists when discussing Jim Jones and his followers, and perhaps they
were, but the reality is that Jonestown happened in Guyana. They came as guests
and died as guests as they followed their leader, as Dave Martin and The
Tradewinds sang shortly afterwards on “Brother Jonesie”: “When he tell them
drink, they drinkin’.” The least Guyana could have done was to erect a memorial
to the tragedy, not to lionize Jim Jones but to underline the fact that, like
the rest of the world, the Guyanese nation felt the pain of the tragedy that
took place, as The Tradewinds said, “in the jungle far away.” More than 40
years has passed but it is not too late for the government and people of Guyana
to finally honor those who lost their lives in Jonestown.
Welcome address
GIHR Registrar
Hazel Woolford
Mister Chairman, Mister
Speaker, members of the head table,
historians, representatives of the
Guyana Historical Society, librarians, archivists, exhibitors, presenters,
teachers, students, local and overseas guests, distinguished audience and
members of the press, I have the distinct honour and pleasure to welcome you to
the Twelfth Research conference. I also
thank you for your presence here today, as I know that you all have very busy
schedules in your substantive roles.
This year, marks the centenary
of the Guyana Labour Union, in 1919, as well as the establishment of the
International Labour Organization. The
role of the founder of the Guyana Labour role, is embedded in modern Guyanese
and, Caribbean Politics and the trade union movement of the Commonwealth
Caribbean.
The theme of this year’s
conference, is Labour, Migration and,
Military history. The papers that
will be presented here, will seek to provide an insight into the following
areas:
1. Intra-Regional Caribbean Migrant Labor.
2. Exploitation: Re-imagining the migrant experience
3. Military migrants: from the battlefields of India
to the cane fields of British
Guiana.
4. Military strategy of Maroon fighters in the 18th century: 1742-1750.
5. Revisiting Walter Rodney's Civil Rebellion 1979-80
6. Freedom with a
Continuum of Resistance: African
Guianese in the immediate Post-Emancipation Period.
7. The Sugar Revolution: The declining years, 1900-2019.
8. Indian immigration
into the British West Indies and Mauritius during the Indentureship period,
their numbers and impact, 1834-1920.
9. Faith Harding.
10. Politics and Problems in Guyanese History.
11. Chinese heritage.
It is a delight to welcome the
featured speakers for the 2019 research conference, Vibert Cambridge, Eric
Phillips .
Vibert Compton Cambridge (Ph.D., Ohio
University, 1989) is professor emeritus in the School of Media Arts and
Studies, Scripps College of Communication, Ohio University. Dr. Cambridge’s teaching, research, and
scholarship have focused on communication for development and social change;
entertainment-education and mass media programming; immigration, diversity and
broadcasting; and Caribbean social and cultural history. His current work focuses on the social
history of “sweet drinks” in Guyana; cultural preservation through diaspora
engagement; public services and the implementation of UN’s SDGs; and citizen
engagement in the emerging 4th Industrial Revolution (4IR).
His Musical Life in Guyana: History and Politics of Control, the first
in-depth study of Guyanese musical life, was published by the University Press
of Mississippi in June 2015 as part of its Caribbean Studies Series. Immigration, Diversity, and Broadcasting in
the United States, 1990–2001 was published by the Ohio University Press in
January 2005.
In 2016, when Guyana
celebrated the 50th anniversary of its independence, Dr. Cambridge was awarded
Guyana’s Golden Arrow of Achievement, for his contributions to the study of
Guyana’s social and cultural history. In
2013, he received the Award for Excellence in Global Engagement from Ohio
University.
He is President of the Guyana
Cultural Association of New York, Inc. He is currently Advisor/Consultant in
the Global Leadership Center, Center for International Studies, Ohio University.
ERIC M. PHILLIPS (MBA, CTP.
BSc. Eng.)
Eric Phillips , A 1990-91
White House Fellow, is currently a member of the Ministry of the
Presidency where he works as
the Special Assistant to Professor Clive Thomas, the Presidential
Advisor on Sustainable
Development. He is also a Lecturer at the University of Guyana. Eric Phillips
worked internationally in seven countries for large companies including
AT&T and has served in many diverse capacities such as Chairman of the
Board, CEO, MD, VP, COO, Program Director and Engineer. Eric was also appointed
by the President of Guyana as the Chairman of the Guyana National Reparations
Committee and sits on the CARICOM Reparations Commission.
Eric Phillips has degrees in
Chemical Engineering, Telecommunications Engineering and
Marketing/International
Business. Eric has appeared on the cover of Business Week International
Magazine and Black Engineering
Magazine when he was nominated as the US Black Engineer
of the Year. Eric has won many
awards including: the AT&T Senior VP Award (1993); the Bell
Labs Outstanding Service Award
(1990); and the Scientific Achievement Award for Apollo
Technologies in 1982.
He is the president of the
African Business Roundtable and an Executive Member of the African
Cultural & Development
Association (ACDA).
As we observe the 39th death
anniversary of Dr. Walter Rodney, I wish to inform you, that the online
programme of the Institute, has added 2 new themes, namely Walter Rodney and,
Parliamentary history of Guyana. Donald Rodney, brother of historian and
politician Dr. Walter Rodney who was assassinated back in 1980, is seeking to
appeal his 1982 conviction for possession of explosives without lawful
authority. Ms. Andaiye Williams, his
friend, colleague and, founder member of the Working People’s Alliance, died on
31 May 2019. She was a friend of the
Guyana Institute of Historical Research.
I invite you to observe one
minute silence, for the late Head of the Conference Secretariat, Mrs. Shurcina Hinds, who transitioned, in
2018. Their selfless and, tireless
work, in the Institute, laid the foundation, for their successors, to host the
twelfth conference. I would be remiss,
if I did not acknowledge the presence, of the Researchers, from the diaspora,
Suriname, USA, and Trinidad. Finally,
on behalf of the of the organizing committee of the twelfth conference, we are
extremely grateful, for the support of the following:
Donors
1. B.K. Group of Companies.
2. Guyana Geology and Mines Commission.
3. National Trust, Ministry of the P residency, Department
of Social Cohesion.
4. Ministry of Business.
5. Ministry of Public Telecommunications.
6. Mrs. Sandra Toussaint.
7. Tourism and Hospitality Association of Guyana.
May Almighty God, bless the
proceedings of today’s conference
“Cometh the Hour, Cometh the Man”
By
Eric Phillips
One hundred year ago, the
first Trade Union in the Caribbean was founded by Hubert Nathaniel Critchlow on
11 January 1919. By the end of 1919, the British Guiana Labour Union (BGLU) had
more than 7,000 financial members comprising waterfront workers, tradesmen, sea
defence and road workers, railroad workers, balata bleeders and miners, some
Government employees and hundreds of sugar estate labourers. Branches of the
union were also set up in various parts of the country.
The son of a Barbadian father
and Essequibian Guyanese woman, Hubert began his journey in November and
December 1905 when he led a strike by waterfront workers for increased wages.
The rest of course, is history
and a monument to Critchlow is most appropriately located in the grounds of the
Parliament, where interestingly enough, another great Guyanese hero, the Father
of Non-Violent protest , a man named DAMON, who protested the apprenticeship
scheme, and whom raised a “flag” as a sign of freedom and independence from the
farmers, was hanged at noon, on Monday
October 13, 1834, on a scaffold specially erected in front of the new Public
Buildings which is today’s Parliament grounds.
In British Guiana in the early
1900s working and living conditions for workers were horrendous. Those fortunate
to find work at a time of high unemployment faced a long working day for low
wages and rising cost of living. In Georgetown many people lived in shantytowns
with poor water supply, little or no drainage or garbage disposal. Disease was
rampant, infant mortality rates were high and life expectancy low. No
organization existed to make representation to employers on behalf of their
workers to secure better wages and improved working conditions.
The sheer injustices and
inhumanity meted out to workers drove them from time to time to strike out in
total desperation, to risk their livelihood and their safety, in a basic human
instinct for survival, in order to better their lot, but to no avail. When
workers protested in Georgetown and in the countryside for better pay and
working conditions, the government sided with the employers and quelled
workers’ demonstrations with military force. Some protesters were even killed.
Government did not see it as their role to have laws about income and hours of
work, or grant recognition to organised labour unions.
As I began to gather my
thoughts for this annual Guyana Institute of Historical Research event, I asked
myself a simple question:
“What would Hubert Nathaniel
Critchlow…..the father of Trade Unionism…..what would he have done if he were
faced with today’s labour situation in Guyana:
1. Oil is here signifying the requirement for a plethora of
highly skilled, high paying technical jobs.
2. Guysuco and its Union are in crisis. On one hand, for
Guysuco’s Management ……..there is a crisis of profitability and
credibility…..on the other hand, for the Guyana Agricultural and General
Workers Union (GAWU) …...there is a crisis of jobs, integrity and global
relevance.
3. For Labour unions, this is a new era of digital
technologies and knowledge age where robots driven by artificial intelligence
and automation pose the question “will labour unions survive”?
4. Guyana’s population will surge because of oil and the
competition for jobs will directly or indirectly result in the weakening of
unions, unless there is a new vision. The labour market will be very different,
have a totally different set of necessary prerequisites for success and will
lead to foreign competition for jobs.
5. Finally, Guyana’s focus on a “green” economy funded by an
“oil” sector consistent with its global commitments to the Paris Accords on
climate change and Agenda 2030, both necessitate a different “business”
culture.
Yes….if Hubert Nathaniel
Critchlow were alive today…. what type of Union would he form?
What would be the goals of
such a Union?
What type of strategy would he
have pursued to achieve his goals?
Today, there is much debate
and discussion about the “Future of Work” .
It is the topic of the day.
And typically, when this topic is discussed, there are three or four issues
embedded within it.
• First, there is the discussion around the impact of
artificial intelligence, automation on work and jobs, and whether we’ll have
enough work and jobs left after that.
• Second, there is the issue of the changing models for
work and the changing models of work structure. This involves questions around
independent work, the gig economy, and what people sometimes refer to as
fissured work—whether people work as outsourced services or not.
• Third, there is the income question. We know that most
advanced economies, over the last decade, have seen this huge stagnation of
incomes, at least wage-driven incomes for workers and households. And so that
ties into the inequality debate, and whether people work and earn enough to be
able to make a living or not.
• Fourth, and finally, there is the fundamental question:
“Will technology make that even worse as we look forward”? Then there are questions about how work will
be organized and how it will look in terms of people working alongside
machines.
All of these questions are
embedded in this big topic called “the future of work.”
Automation, the impact of
artificial-intelligence and autonomous systems; will there be enough work…. or
are we going to create enough work to make up for what we’re going to
lose…..ALL THESE QUESTIONS BECOME RELEVANT.
Before we answer the question
of what would Hubert Nathaniel Critchlow do……we need some facts
1. Unionization rates have been falling in DEVELOPING
countries for 50years…. from 34% of workers in 1960….to 17% in 2012, according
to the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD), which is
a club made up of 34 mostly rich countries.
2. Labour Unions have been in decline for decades as
evidenced by the number of wage and salaried workers belonging to a Union
dropping from about 20% in 1983 to 11% in 2014.
Part of what explains unions’
decline over the years is their inability to adapt to current dynamics around
current workforce issues, as well as a compensation environment that pushes
workers away from unions.
For instance, companies over the years have
independently adapted their pay and work conditions to ward off unions and
discourage worker involvement. He said workers today see a wage floor and
ceiling that unions bargain for, which doesn’t take into account individual,
merit-based pay packages that many modern workers receive through their
companies and that typically leave them better off than the deal a union would
likely negotiate.
Additionally, employers and
employees want more flexibility, both in regard to pay and in how and when they
work, than what unions traditionally offer. Companies, in essence, want to
discourage unionization. “The way to do that is to treat your employees well,
to pay them well and to give them good benefits, regardless of whether there’s
a union at the worksite or not.”
Then there is the fundamental
question about Unions and a country’s global competitiveness. “Do fewer Unions
make countries more competitive”?
Let us focus on Guyana. And on
Hubert Nathaniel Critchlow.
• Automation is here.
• Robotics is here.
• Digital technologies are here.
• High tech jobs are here and are coming
Moreso, Guyana has a very
visible but ignored challenge.
The Guyana Labour Force Survey
(GLFS) done for the third quarter of 2017, revealed the following structure and
composition of the labour force.
Less than 10% of the working
age population completed any degree higher than a secondary education.
• Approximately 50% only have a primary school education.
• 24.3 % have secondary education.
• 2,3 % have a Bachelor’ degree or equivalent.
• 0.3 % have a Master’s or equivalent.
The fundamental issue
reflected in these numbers is the type and quality of jobs that can be created
in Guyana. Guyana will soon produce oil. This type of workforce cannot partake
in the production of oil other than in low paying service areas.
The country is pursuing STEM,
but the focus has been more on Information Technology (IT) and Artificial
Intelligence (AI) when the real need is Science, Engineering and Mathematics.
In recent years, there has
been less than a 50% pass rate in English and Mathematics, two subjects than
underpin the ability of Guyanese to go beyond the primary school level.
There are 10 main reasons for
youth unemployment in Guyana.
1. A globally noncompetitive private sector that does not
create jobs and is delinked from the development and economic vision of the
government.
2. Guyana’s economic paradigms over the last 30 years have
not been focused on job creation.
3. Guyana’s labor force and human capital is inadequate for
sustainable job creation.
4. Guyana leads the world in migration of its tertiary
graduates (86% annually).
5. The education system is not aligned to Guyana’s economic
development strategies.
6. Widespread corruption which distorts market forces and
genuine entrepreneurship.
7. An outdated immigration policy that advantages foreign
nationals and supports their plans to create businesses that crowd out local
entrepreneurs.
8. The lack of appropriate technologies and cheap energy to
nurture local manufacturing.
9. A small local market that does not facilitate economies
of scale and therefore business competitiveness or job creation.
10. The lack of an overall strategic plan for the development
of human capital.
Guysuco also provides us with
some insights into the current behaviour of unions in Guyana.
The costs of labour is more
than 60% of total costs in producing sugar at a price that is 4 times the
global price.
Two years ago, on June 27,
2017, at this same GIHR event, Earl John presented “A brief resume of the sugar
industry”.
In that presentation, he
showed the following:
1. Guysuco employees were granted 11,000 house lots across
the industry , on which former “logie” occupants were settled in their own
homes, financed by loans from the Sugar Industry Welfare Fund (ran by JI
Ramphal, father of Sir Shridat Ramphal)…..but African who worked in the company
but lived in villages such as Ithaca, Rosignal, Hopetown , Buxton and
Plaisance, to name a few, were excluded from the same loans ..Because they had
to prove ownership of property, an impossibility at the time because of how
villages were bought communally.
2. Guysuco had one of the best medical programs in the
Caribbean. Long before the concept of a National Health Insurance Scheme was
developed the industry had been providing free medical services to its several
thousands of employees – 228,000 in the 1960s, 17,000 in 2017, to their spouses
and all unemployed children up to 18 years. Add to that 5,235 pensioners in
2017. Services are conducted by 6 EMOs and 29 para-medical staff operating in
15 Primary Health Care Centres and 2 Regional Diagnostic Centres – where
hundreds of statutory medical examinations and treatments are carried out. In
2016 the total attendance was 88,913.
3. Guysuco had one of the best Education programs in the
Caribbean. The Cadetship programme which was initiated by the private owners in
the 1950s is still viable – over the last five years alone at UG’s degree
course, and at GSA Diploma Course – all in Agriculture. Over the last five
years approximately $7M has been spent on 22 Cadets; some $30M on Management
Trainees and $36M on GSA Cadets. Over the same period the industry has funded
Bursary Awards to 1179 students, children of workers at a cost of just over
$46M.It also manages an Assistance to Study Scheme for which all employees are
eligible. Cost for the same five year period was over $4M – to which 71
employees were recipients. Then there is a Work Study Programme where we
encourage students from various schools to be engaged in short periods in the
industry. The five year cost for 75 students was over $2M
As I read the literature and
researched what countries around the world were addressing union issues. I
found the following:
CHINA
China has a comprehensive
legal framework that gives workers a range of entitlements and protects them
from exploitation by their employer. Workers have the right to be paid in full
and on time, a formal employment contract, a 40-hour working week with fixed
overtime rates, social insurance covering pensions, healthcare, unemployment,
work injuries and maternity leave, severance pay in the event of contract
termination, equal pay for equal work, and protection against workplace
discrimination.
Workers also have the right to
form an enterprise trade union (see below for more details), and the enterprise
union committee has to be consulted by management before any major changes to
workers’ pay and conditions.
SINGAPORE
Singapore, with over 70
unions, affiliated associations and related organisations, has a system of
Tripartism in which there is collaboration among Singapore unions, employers
and the government which has been practised since 1965 when NTUC and the
Singapore government signed a Charter for Industrial Progress and a
Productivity Code of Practice.
Singapore's tripartism model
offers competitive advantage for the country by promoting economic
competitiveness, harmonious labour-management relations and the overall
progress of the nation.[1]
SWEDEN
Sweden has a long tradition of
labour unions and today nearly 70% of the working population in Sweden belongs
to a union today. This makes Sweden one of the most unionised countries in the
world. Swedish unions are powerful and they regulate essential parts of the
Swedish work market. This is done by collective agreements – so called
kollektivavtal that are the result of agreements between the unions and
employers´ organisations. These agreements cover crucial matters like fair
wages, employer pensions, insurances and annual leave days.
Note: kollektivavtal apply to
all employees, even non-union-members.
GERMANY
The issue of Unionization and
global competitiveness. Germany, with the fourth-largest GDP in the world
(after the United States, China, and Japan), transformed itself from sick man
to economic superstar over the last 2 decades?Germany’s competitive position
relative to its main trading partners has persistently improved since 1995
because its wages grew at a slower pace than productivity. This is due largely
to the fact that the German economy went through an unprecedented process of
decentralization of wage bargaining during the 1990s. That is what led to a
dramatic decline in unit labor costs, and ultimately increased competitiveness.
When Germany’s government
under Chancellor Gerhard Schröder implemented the so-called Hartz reforms, in
2003, they were extremely controversial.
They reduced and capped unemployment benefits,
with the goal of spurring more people to look for jobs. They also introduced
vouchers that allowed recipients to choose job training providers. By the same
token, they turned federal and local employment agencies — bureaucratic public
institutions — into service providers. New management approaches and measures
added more efficiency and a results orientation.
JAPAN
What was happening here, was
that rather than focusing on wages and benefits, as American unions do, this
union was focusing on keeping the economy strong in order to protect the job
security of union members. “The Japanese
union believed it had a responsibility to help increase Mazda’s productivity,
and improve its competitiveness.”
(Fucini, p. 21)
“Under this philosophy, the
union and management were not adversaries, as they were in America, but
partners, each working to create a successful company.”
The difference was that all
Japanese autoworker unions are company unions; thus, their fortunes are linked
absolutely to those of the automaker.
FUNDAMENTAL QUESTION
As I approach a suggestion as
to what Hubert Nathaniel Critchlow would do, there is a fundamental question
that needs to be asked.
What do labour Unions want?
The most important challenges
unions from developing countries are facing today are high unemployment rates,
especially for the young; the legacies of globalization and international
competition; demographic changes through education deficits in their populations
due to migration; an education system misaligned with its economic development
needs; technological changes via artificial intelligence and digital innovation like automation; and the
impact of climate change on jobs and the environment.
What do Labor Unions want
today?
Today, unions continue to
serve the same purpose for which they were originally founded.
1. Increasing wages
2. Raising the standard of living for the working class.
3. Ensuring safe working conditions
4. Increasing benefits for both workers and their families
Today, Workers Need Fair
Treatment Today as Much as Ever
1. Employers are trying to shed responsibility for providing
health insurance, good pension coverage, reasonable work hours and job safety
protections.
2. Additionally, companies are making workers' jobs and
incomes less secure through downsizing, part-timing, contracting out, and
sending jobs off-shore.
SHARED VALUE
I would content that Hubert
Nathaniel Critchlow would have intuitively pursued a strategy related to shared
value.
Guysuco has shown what unions
should not do….kill the goose that lays the golden egg, because of political
and historical alliances that are not in tune with national needs,
international competition and inclusive growth.
What is shared value?
Like Japan, Germany,
Singapore, Sweden and other progressive countries, there is an enlightened
understanding that the private sector is more than the engine of growth seeking
maximum profits…but that the private sector must play an indispensable role alongside
government, civil society and communities to solve complex, global challenges
like hunger, poverty, inequality, unemployment and climate change.
In their seminal 2011 Harvard
Business Review article, “Creating Shared Value,” Michael Porter and Mark Kramer
introduced the concept of shared value: corporate policies and practices that
enhance the competitiveness of a company while simultaneously advancing social
and economic conditions in the communities in which the company sells and
operates.
Porter and Kramer argue that all profit is not
equal.
Shared value is about
expanding the total pool of economic and social value.
A good example of this difference in
perspective is the fair trade movement in purchasing. Fair trade aims to
increase the proportion of revenue that goes to poor farmers by paying them
higher prices for the same crops. Though this may be a noble sentiment, fair
trade is mostly about redistribution rather than expanding the overall amount
of value created.
The focus on holding down wage
levels, reducing benefits, and offshoring is beginning to give way to an
awareness of the positive effects that a living wage, safety, wellness,
training, and opportunities for advancement for employees have on productivity.
Many companies, for example,
traditionally sought to minimize the cost of “expensive” employee health care
coverage or even eliminate health coverage altogether. Today leading companies
have learned that because of lost workdays and diminished employee
productivity, poor health costs them more than health benefits do.
Shared value is addressing
social problems at scale while actually making a profit, so it is a business
proposition.
………………………………………………………………………………………..
Today, the world has changed
because of globalisation, liberalization and nation state bullyism.
Globalisation spurned great
inequalities, so much so that 1% of the population own more than 50% of the
world’s wealth.
Globalisation has also spurned
environmental devastation, so much so that
yesterday France had a temperature
of 45 degrees Celsius and this temperature will devastate other parts of
Europe.
The North Pole is melting and
severe climate anomalies are global and frequent.
With Donald Trump. The world
has become a fragmented economic landscape where nations will shout “America
First” or Britain First as it exits the EU.
China also has a China First
strategy called the Silk Road where it is creating a 77 nation free trade zone
that it will and can dominate at the exclusion of America and Europe…this is
the real trade war going on between the USA and China disguised as a tariff
war.
Hubert Nathaniel Critchlow,
one of Guyana’s forgotten heroes, chose methods and strategies that suited his
time.
Today, I believe, Hubert
Nathaniel would have done the same ……moved intuitively to a strategy of
tripartism and shared value.
Issues of the future of work,
automation, artificial intelligence, the changing work environment would have
been incorporated in Hubert’s intuitive solutions.
He would have pushed for a monthly CASH transfer in Guyana as I am
pushing for.
This will alleviate much
poverty and hardship in Guyana.
Sugar and bauxite workers will
get great relief…..
Youth entrepreneurs will be
able to pool their monthly cash transfers to generate seed capital instead of
being held hostage by greedy banks.
Duke University, Durham, NC
Ph.D. in Cultural
Anthropology, May 2010
Dissertation: “Virgin
Capital: Foreign Investment and Local Stratification in the U.S. Virgin
Islands”
Committee: Deborah
Thomas (chair); Charles Piot; Anne Allison; Ian Baucom; Karla Slocum
CURRENT POSITION
Associate Director, Barnard Center for Research on Women
(2014-Present)
Editor, Scholar and Feminist Online (2016-Present)
Abstract
Intra-Regional Caribbean Migrant Labor
This paper examines the
transformation of the US Virgin Islands—in particular the island of St.
John—from a small farming island to a tourist destination in the 1950s. With
the advent of this new source of income in the tourist sector, questions around
labor and the benefit of this industry for Virgin Islanders arose, as workers
from surrounding islands (particularly the neighboring British Virgin Islands)
came to St. John to find work in the newly-established tourist market. This
importation of labor began largely as a result of the dissatisfaction of St.
Johnians who complained about substandard pay, miserable working conditions, and
no route to upward mobility within the industry. The arrival of workers to fill
these employment slots contributed to simmering tensions and economic
competition between Virgin Islanders and those who had their roots in other
Caribbean islands who were often referred with derogatory labels such as
“garrot” (or garrotte) and “gasso.” These divisions spilled over into the
realms of both law and education, with a segregated education system that
barred “alien” children from attending public schools in the territory as well
as mass deportations as noted by Akia Gore (2009). Both these tensions around
labor and the centrality of the tourist market continue in the current moment,
as employment in this industry—which has historically been found on St. John at
Caneel Bay Resort and the few other hotels that dot the tiny island, by taxi
driving, or by selling handicrafts to vacationers—remains a vital source of
income for St. Johnians today. This reliance on tourism brings with it
questions of access and mobility (as North Americans and Europeans frequently
visit the territory for leisure, but not the reverse), but also of race and
gender. Much important work has been done on the gendered implications of
tourism, particularly on sex work in the Caribbean (see, for instance, Kempadoo
1999 and Roland 2011). Beyond this, however, there is the gendered framework at
the very heart of the tourist industry in which virginal islands and their
servile inhabitants (including, frequently, island women working as
chambermaids in hotels) are sold to monied visitors. Angelique Nixon (2015) has
written powerfully on this sale of the feminized region, and the complex
responses of Caribbean residents to this set of exchanges. Yet, while there are
important aspects of gender and race at work in this industry that build on the
history of Black bodies at work in the region, it is vital to note the
ambivalence with which many in the Caribbean regard tourism, as island residents
and their families are often entirely dependent on the income they earn in this
sector for their survival.
Dr Kumar
Mahabir
Retrenched Assistant Professor, University of Trinidad
and Tobago (UTT)
Ph.D. Anthropology, University of Florida
B.A., M.Phil., Literatures in English, University of the
West Indies
2011 National Award (Silver) Recipient for Education
Former Organization of American States (OAS) Fellow
WORK EXPERIENCE
2007 - 2018 - University of Trinidad and Tobago (UTT).
Corinth Campus.
Assistant Professor in the School for Education
Programmes
1990 - Present. Chakra Publishing House Ltd. San Juan.
▪ Chairman of Publishing Company.
2000 - Present. Indo-Caribbean Cultural Centre Co. Ltd.
San Juan.
▪ Editor and Publisher of Magazines.
2000. UNESCO Division, Ministry Of Education.
Port-of-Spain.
▪ Reviewer for the School Textbook Evaluation Committee.
Abstract
Military
migrants: from the battlefields of India to the cane fields of British
Guiana
Abstract - The Indian Mutiny
was a widespread but unsuccessful rebellion against British rule in India in
1857-58. Also called the Sepoy
Rebellion and/or the First War of Independence, the uprising began with
a mutiny of Sepoys [Indian
soldiers] of the British army which erupted into other mutinies and civilian
upheavals chiefly in the upper
Gangetic plain and central India. The mutiny took place in the middle of
Indian indentured emigration
to the West Indies (1838-1917) and in the same places where most of the
emigrants left for other parts
of the British Empire.
The paper/presentation
examines the following questions: (1) Did some of these ex-soldiers
legitimately
migrate or secretly escape to
flee persecution for insurgency? (2) Were some of them deported as a means of
punishment for mutiny? (3) Were there reports that they were rebellious or
instigated revolts in the depot, on the ships and in the estates in Guiana? (4)
Did the British take any precaution to prevent similar uprisings of indentured
labourers in its colonies in the West Indies? and (5) Did the Mutiny
inadvertently provide a much-needed surplus of migrant labourers to British
Guiana/Guyana and other parts of the West Indies/Caribbean?
Dr. Aubrey
Thompson
Professor Aubrey Thompson is professor of Caribbean and
Black studies at Morgan State University.
Abstract
Freedom with a
Continuum of Resistance: African Guianese in the immediate Post-Emancipation
Period: A Continuum in the Quest for Freedom
Sometime before 1838,
thousands of African-Guianese workers began a new phase in their lives. They
were now regarded as freed
persons in the British controlled colonial society. While not entirely free of
planter influence and control,
an impediment that had dominated their social, economic and political life during
slavery and subsequently in the colonies, a majority of workers now believed
that, finally, they were in a guaranteed position to make positive decisions
concerning their future. After attaining freedom, these workers immediately set
upon the task of rebuilding their lives, improving their community and attempting
to protect their gains. However, they soon discovered that an end to the
harassment that had repeatedly dogged them throughout the periods of enslavement
and apprenticeship did not easily fade away. In addition, they were confronted
with new and formidable tasks and challenges to face and overcome.
The immediate social, economic
and political issues faced by the newly freed African Guianese workers
informed them that the quest
for freedom did not end with emancipation.
The search for personal and
community fulfillment requires some of the very tactics they had used to
secure their freedom. Once
again, they needed to come together to overcome an old nemesis - the power
and the influence of the
plantation owners. New challenges also had to be dealt with, including the
increased presence of
immigrant laborers, reduced wages, competition for jobs and failing estates.
The
quest for freedom was destined
to become an ongoing phenomenon, a continuum, part of a historic
movement that their
predecessors had undertaken years earlier.
In 1840, the outlook of the
African Guianese workers towards attaining the goal of social and economic
independence still prevailed.
As the decades unfolded, the goals of self sufficiency and independence from
planter control became
elusive.
Mansraj
Ramphal
Mansraj Ramphal retired in
2014 in the position of Business Support Consultant at the Petroleum Company of
Trinidad and Tobago Limited. He spent 34 years at that company which he joined
in 1980, in
the position of Personnel
Officer, Industrial Relations.
He attended the University of
the West Indies where he obtained the B.Sc. in Government (1975)
and the M.Sc. in Government
(1981). In 1987 he proceeded to Warwick University, Coventry, United
Kingdom where he obtained the
M.A. Industrial Relations (1988). He is presently pursuing the Doctor of
Philosophy in Cultural Studies
at the University of Trinidad and Tobago. His dissertation is enitled “Helots
of Empire: Indian Indentured
Labour in Trinidad and Mauritius, 1834 – 1917.”
From 1996 to 2002 he held the
position of Human Resources Manager at Trinmar Limited. His
responsibilities included
Human Resource Policies, Job Evaluation, Performance Management,
Negotiations, Grievance
Handling, Public Relations, Medical, Employee Assistance Programme and
Security.
In 2002, he was appointed
Business Support Consultant. His duties included Community Outreach
Programmes including Education
and Training, Youth Development and Industrial Skills Training,
Fisherman Skills Training,
Career Guidance Programme in Secondary Schools, support and advice and the
development of Health Safety
and Environment Action Plans for issue to the Ministry of Energy and Energy
Affairs and the Occupational
Safety and Health Agency.
He has held several social,
community and educational positions including Chairman, Point Fortin
College School Board, Director
of Vocational Training, Rotary Club of Point Fortin and Public Relations
Officer, Southwest Chamber of
Industry and Commerce.
Since 2010, he has presented
papers at International Diaspora Conferences in St. Vincent,
Suriname, Mauritius (2),
Grenada, Belize, Fiji and Trinidad and Tobago.
Abstract
Indian immigration into the
British West Indies and Mauritius during the indentureship period, their
numbers and impact, 1834-1920.
The export of Indian
indentured labour overseas followed the abolition of slavery in the British
Empire in
1834. From August 1834 to
December 1835 fourteen ships embarked Indian emigrants in Calcutta for Mauritius.
Starting with British Guiana (Demerara), the British West Indian colonies
followed this lead. An exodus of gigantic proportions would take place from
India to various parts of the British Empire. On November 16 the Indian
Government passed Act XXI of 1844 which legalized emigration to Trinidad, Jamaica
and Demerara, though not yet to other islands of the Lesser Antilles. The Act
made regulations for the transportation of the immigrants.
An Emigration Agent was
appointed for the British West Indian colonies and Mauritius. A Protector of Emigrants
would be appointed in each port of embarkation and a Protector of Immigrants
would be appointed in each receiving colony. Numbers embarking in India and
arriving in the colonies were recorded. 147,592 Indians embarked at Madras
(6.3%) and Calcutta (93.7%) on more than 320 ships bound for Trinidad during
the period 1845 to 1917.Here the Indians were recruited to work on the sugar
estates and later on cocoa and
coconut estates. The recruits here as elsewhere came mainly from the North-western
Provinces and Oudh, (later United Provinces), Bihar and Bengal. They would risk
the defilement in crossing the Kala Pani in search of a better life than that
which they had in India. Mauritius
received 451,776 Indian
emigrants. This was the largest number emigrating from India to other parts of the
British Empire. 238,909 immigrated to British Guiana. Jamaica received
approximately 37,000. Smaller numbers embarked for the smaller British West
Indian islands and British Honduras: Grenada (3,529), St. Vincent (2,523), St.
Lucia (4,568), St. Kitts (361), Nevis (342) and British Honduras (3,000). The
Indian immigrants who survived the ordeal of the journey across two oceans and
the extremely hard life of the plantations made a gigantic contribution to the
sugar economies. They saved the sugar plantations from extinction and indeed
allowed the vast expansion of this industry, particularly in British Guiana, Trinidad
and Mauritius. They developed a rice industry and contributed to the cocoa
industry in Trinidad and Grenada. In all the colonies they engaged in peasant
farming, including cane farming, cattle rearing and milk production. As the
colonies developed, passengers (i.e. those who paid their own passages) added to
the Indian population bringing specific skills and setting up retail
institutions, peasant farms and jewellery making.
Some also came as teachers,
priests and pundits. Indians added colour and vitality to the already existing multi-cultural
setting by bringing their ancient eastern culture with them. Their cuisine also
made a significant impact.
Volda Morris-Williams
Volda Morris is an independent Researcher. She holds the
B.A. (History); Dip. Ed.
Abstract
The Sugar Revolution: The
declining years, 1900-2019
The time frame of this
presentation, on the sugar revolution, is from 1900-2019. According to Alan H.
Adamson’s Sugar without
slaves: The Political Economy of British Guiana, 1838-1904, the number of
operating sugar plantations,
fell from 105 in 1888 to 84, in 1890, and 46 in 1904.
This period covered the
abolition of slavery in 1833, and the duration of the indentureship era. Firstly, the paper targets the sugar
industries from 1900 to 1940, when workers fought for hikes in payment, shorter
working hours on the sugar plantations and, on the docks.
There were strikes and riots,
protesting the poor working conditions of the workers on the sugar states, as
well as the exploitation of the stevedores. In 1919, Hubert Nathaniel
Critchlow, established the British Guiana Labour Union. By 1924, sugar estate
workers linked with the stevedores, in the 1924 riots. During the period 1940 to 1960, the sugar
belt, influenced the emergence of trade unions, such as Guyana Industrial
Workers Union, Guyana Agricultural Workers Union, Man Power Citizens
Association,
and National Association of
Agricultural, Commercial and Industrial Employees; political parties, such as
the British Guiana Labour
Party, and the People Progressive Party, and personalities, such as Hubert
Nathaniel Critchlow, Ayube
Edun, Jane Phillips-Gay, Joseph Paryag Latchmansingh, Cheddi Jagan, Janet
Jagan, Ashton Chase, Eusi
Kwayana and, Forbes Burnham.
The Enmore strike of 1948,
contributed to the militancy of the sugar workers, and the quest of the Young
British Guianese politicians, to represent the British Guianese workers in the planter/commercial
dominated legislature. The tortuous journey, for political representation of
the workers, began in 1953, when the PPP won the April 1953 elections. However,
their first foray into political power, was short lived. They were ousted from
political office, in October 1953. Four years later, in 1957, the PPP, which
had its base in the sugar belt, returned to power, and remained in office,
until 1964.
The European markets still
exercised enormous control on the sugar industry. After political independence,
in 1966, the PNC/UF Coalition Government assumed control of the sugar industry.
There
was diversification, which led
to refined sugar, molasses and, rum. The intra-regional trade in the CARICOM
market, became crucial. Bauxite, gold, rice and coconuts, became viable revenue
foreign
currency earners.
When the sugar industry was
nationalized between 1975 and 1976, there were 11 sugar plantations
countrywide. The 11 estates were located at Leonora, Uitvlugt, Wales, Diamond,
Enmore, La Bonne Intention, Ogle, Albion, Blairmont, Rose Hall and Skeldon. .
Years later, this was reduced to six.
Finally, from the 1980s to
2018, there was a substantial decline in the sugar industry. The Economic
Historians, as politicians claimed that the sugar industry, was overly
subsidized.
During the administration of
President David Granger, of six estates, only three will remain open. The
three factories are
Albion/Rose Hall, Blairmont and Uitvlugt/Wales. The Minister of Agricuture,
Noel
Holder said that, ‘the
proposed course of action is to merge Wales Estate with Uitvlugt Estate and
reassign its cane to the
Uitvlugt factory, “since the estate (Wales) is operating at 50 percent
capacity; 60
percent of its drainage and
irrigation infrastructure is in a dilapidated condition…”’.
Sugar was and is still a part
of Guyanese society. The development of the multiethnic society is tracked to
the emergence and growth of the sugar industry in Guyana. Although
substantially reduced, sugar will continue to contribute to the revenue of this
country.
Mohamed Hamaludin
Mohamed Hamaludin was born in Wakenaam Island on July 4,
1942, grew up in Middlesex Village,
Essequibo Coast, and attended Huist’Dieren Church of
Scotland School (later primary school) and Edwin
E. Burnett’s Normal Educational Institute at Vergenoegen,
East Bank Essequibo.
He started his working life helping Mr. Burnett establish
a branch of his school at Airy Hall, Essequibo
Coast, and a few months later was hired as a teacher at
Anna Regina Government Primary School and,
later then Anna Regina Government Secondary School. While
teaching, he took GCE Advanced Level
classes through the correspondence school Wolsey Hall,
Oxford, in England. H also took in-service training for a Teacher’s
Certificate.
Hamaludin entered journalism after winning short story
competitions sponsored by the Sunday
Chronicle for its Christmas Annual, under Charles Chichester, who hired him
in 1969 as a features writer and Berbice representative. The government bought
the Daily Chronicle and absorbed it
in its Guyana Printers Ltd.
The new company started publishing a daily newspaper as
well, with Carl Blackman as editor-in-chief.
Hamaludin was appointed Senior Political Reporter and
covered national politics and economics, as well
as writing features for the Sunday edition. He was
subsequently promoted to Chief Reporter, responsible for covering all major
news, particularly politics and related issues, regional and international
affairs, economics and finance, and also deputizing for the News Editor as
needed. During this time, at the invitation of James Sydney of Radio Demerara,
he also gave a weekly five-minute monologue on topics of his choice on the
station, named “In Perspective.” Hamaludin
was selected for the U.S. State Department’s Foreign Journalist Project,
spending approximately three months in the United States on the
work-study-travel program intended to familiarize journalists from developing
countries with American life and culture.
He served as Guyana correspondent for several foreign
media, including the now defunct Caribbean News Agency (CANA), which was a news
service sponsored by regional media and was based in Barbados, as well as The Financial Times and The Economist and the now defunct Gemini News Service, all based in London.
He has worked as a journalist in the Cayman Islands and
the Turks & Caicos Islands, as well as the United
States, and he traveled to several other countries on
assignment, including Canada, Cuba, Egypt, England, India, Ivory Coast,
Jamaica, Liberia, Nigeria, St. Kitts & Nevis, St. Lucia, Sierra Leone,
Somalia, Sri Lanka, Suriname and Trinidad & Tobago.
In the U.S., he worked with two African American
weeklies, The Miami Times and South Florida Times (for which he still
writes a weekly column) and The Miami
Herald. For several years, he was a panelist on “Issues and the Media,” a
weekly program on a Miami public television station. He is now retired from active
journalism.
Abstract
Jim Jones and Jonestown: A
Journalist Remembers
Mohamed Hamaludin
Papers intended to be
presented at gatherings such as this 12th Annual Conference of the Guyana
Institute of Historical Research are probably scholarly, with exact sourcing
and coming from an expert in the particular field. This one meets none of those
criteria. It is, mostly, the recollections of a journalist who reported on the
tragedy that was Jonestown, along with information obtained from news stories
written by others. Some of the details are rather hazy in my mind because of
the passage of time but some are indelibly written in my memory.
There is a lot of information
about Jim Jones and Jonestown in the numerous books, movies and television shows
that have popped up from time to time. Perhaps the definitive book on the topic
is “Raven,” written by then San Francisco Examiner journalist Tim Reiterman and
another journalist, the late John Jacobs.
Reiterman, who accompanied a delegation led by U.S. Congressman Leo Ryan
on a fact-finding mission to Jonestown, was wounded in an attack that killed
Ryan. He named his book after a quote by Jones: “I come with the black hair of
a raven/I come as God Socialist!”
But probably the authoritative
sources on Jim Jones and Jonestown is the website “Alternative Considerations
of Jonestown & Peoples Temple,” maintained by San Diego State University in
California.
I hope that in relating my
Jonestown experiences as one of the first two journalists on the scene, enhanced
by additional details, I can help expand the body of knowledge and kindle or
rekindle interest in what was one of the greatest human tragedies at the time
not only for Guyana but also for the world.
Shalima Mohammed
Shalima Mohammed is a Business Psychologist with
experience in banking and education. She has a strong preference for using
one’s innate humour and spirituality to empower him or her to develop
leadership qualities and self-esteem. She holds a MSc. Degree in Business
Psychology (Franklin University, Ohio, USA); BSc. Degree in Psychology (Cum
Laude (COSTAATT, Trinidad & Tobago) and a Diploma in Business Management
(San F’do Technical Institute, now UTT, Trinidad & Tobago).
She is currently employed as a teacher with the Ministry
of Education in Trinidad. Her main research
interests are the application of emotional intelligence,
positive psychology, and religious teachings in the
workplace, family and among minority groups.
Book Chapters
1. The Use of Protective Talismans by Indentured Indians
and their Descendants, with Reference to
enslaved Africans. The Legacy of Indian Indenture:
Historical and Contemporary Aspects of Migration and
Diaspora. Maurits S. Hassankhan, Lomarsh Roopnarine, Hans
Ramsoedh, eds. pp. 259-289. New Delhi,
India: Manohar Publishers and Distributors, 2016.
Conference Presentations
1. “Fasting practices of religiously mixed families in
Trinidad: Evaluation of the social-psychological impact” at the Conference on
Slavery, Indentured Labour, Migration, Diaspora and Identity Formation. Anton
de Kom University, Suriname. June 19-23, 2018
2. “Grenadian ‘Indianness’: Clues from Indo-Grenadians in
Trinidad” at The International Conference on The Indian Diaspora in Grenada and
the Wider Caribbean. St. George’s University, Grenada. April 29 –May 1st, 2016.
3. “Fasting among religiously-mixed families in Trinidad
and Tobago: An archetype for Cultural
Nationalism” at the International Symposium on Cultural
Nationalism: Possibilities and Challenges-India
and the Caribbean World. Centre for Language Learning
(CLL), University of the West Indies, St Augustine, Trinidad. February 26th,
2016.
4. “Fasting among religiously-mixed families in Trinidad
and Tobago” at the Turning Tides
International Conference: Caribbean Intersections in the
Americas and Beyond. University of the
West Indies, St Augustine, Trinidad. February 18th -20th,
2016.
5. “Fasting among religiously-mixed families in Trinidad
and Tobago (West Indies/Caribbean)”
at the 3rd International Dharma-Dhamma Conference on
Harmony of Religions – Welfare of
Humankind. Sanchi University of Buddhist-Indic Studies,
Indore, Madhya Pradesh State, India.
October 24th – 26th, 2015.
6. “The Use of Protective Talismans by Indentured Indians
and their Descendants, with
Reference to Enslaved Africans” at the Conference on
Bonded Labour, Migration, Diaspora and
Identity Formation in Historical and Contemporary
Context. Paramaribo, Surinam. June 6th –
10th, 2013.
Abstract
Exploitation: Re-imagining
the migrant experience
Ms. Shalima Mohammed,
Abstract – According to Anne
T. Gallagher (2015), there is likely no effective solution to migration-related
exploitation.
Problem Statement - There is
an absence of specific information on who perpetuates exploitation
of migrants, and why.
(i) Objective: This paper will
fill that gap by focusing on Indo-Guyanese migrants to Trinidad, with the
objective of determining what
factors predispose the exploiter to take undue advantage of migrants. I
argue that economic considerations
are secondary to psychological factors in exploitation behaviour.
(ii). Design &
Methods: The academic literature was reviewed for historical antecedents of
exploitation of indentured
immigrants on the plantations in British Guiana. Comparisons were drawn
between the experiences of the
indentures and those of Indo-Guyanese migrants employed as labourers
in Trinidad between 1980 to
2018. To obtain personal experiences, interviews were conducted with two
(2) Indo-Guyanese migrants and
two (2) Indo-Trinidadians.
(iii). Results: Migrant
workers were viewed as exploitable and were therefore, oppressed, abused and
demoralized by workplace
authority figures, co-workers, state officials and nationals. But they were
also
succoured, supported and
befriended by different people of the same categories who exploited them.
(iv). Conclusion: Factors which influence
exploitation of migrants are the exploiter’s value system, social
position and economic power.
The exploiter is a motivated tactician whose goals, motives and needs take precedence
over those of the migrant. This investigation has serious implications for
Guyana as a potential receiving country of returning and new migrants in search
of opportunities expected with the country’s anticipated economic turnaround
from the discovery of oil.
Keywords – Exploitation,
migrant, workplace, psychology, Indo-Guyanese, Trinidad and Tobago.
Ms. Melissa Dow-Richardson
Abstract
The landscape of Guyanese history is populated by
circumstances and occurrences which, when looked
at independently or complied, represent human
experiences.
The pre-Colombian presence, post-Columbus expressions of
conquest and settlement, devolutions into
enslaved labour to commercial enterprise, machinations
which produced the village movement and
indentureship systems, worker-rights protests and the
emergence of labour unions, independence
struggles, nationalism ventures, multi-ethnicity, turn of
the century phenomena and 21st century realities all combine to present the
“Human Experience” of what is Guyana, the land of many waters, the Cooperative
Republic.
Throughout, and compounding, the “human experience” in
Guyana has been politics, and problems. With a legacy of rebellion, revolt,
protest and activism, Guyana in the second decade of the 21st century is poised
– to transition into premiere functionalism based on shrewd fiscal management
of a resource rich economy where investment transforms the infrastructural and
societal fabric of the nation, or repeat a cycle of missed opportunities,
excuses, stagnation and delayed development, which fundamentally will further
retard the growth and prosperity of Guyana and the Guyanese people.
In a “developed” region with competition rife for
international prestige and partnerships, the challenge
in Guyana remains one where ethnic division is mitigated,
respect for the rule of law returned, education for nursery to tertiary
accessible and catchments exist to address social ills which emerge, regardless
of circumstance.
Mildred Hellen Caprino
Education
2009 Master class in History and culture, University of
Nanchang , China
2008 University of Maastricht, Faculty of Arts and Social
Sciences, Master of Arts
2005 Certificate of Cito International (the Netherlands),
Programme Theory and Practice of
Educational Test Construction.
1992 Degree MOB in History / Advanced Training Institute,
Paramaribo,(IOL)
1982 Auxiliar de Etnologo, Universidad de Panama
1980 Degree MOA in History/Advanced Training Institute,
Paramaribo, (IOL)
Professional experience
2000 - present full-time Senior lecturer at the Advanced
Teaching Institute in Paramaribo, Suriname
1986 -2000 Curriculum writer at department of Education
in Paramaribo.
Abstract Military history
Eighteen Century Maroon
Fighting Strategy (1740-1760)
After the succumb of the
courageous natives against forced labor and mass death by the newly brought
diseases of the whites,
enslaved Africans were introduced to fill in the vacancies at the plantations
to
guaranty continuation of the
production process. Provoked by exploitation and whipped by maltreatment some
of these enslaved Africans chose the freedom offered by the surrounding and
inviting rainforest.
For these people who escaped
slavery to create independent groups and communities the term maroons is used.
Grand marronage, the topic here, refers to people who removed themselves from
their plantations permanently. Defying the challenges of the unknown, but more
so the chase expeditions led by the plantation owners’ militias and later by
the government mercenary armies, Maroons were perceived as constituting a
danger to the colonies’ economy. Therefore they had to be tracked down, brought
back to their ‘owners’ or killed. The Maroons fought back using a guerilla
strategy.
This paper will deal with
fighting strategies employed by the Maroons against the militias and or
mercenaries. The period
1740-1760 was focused on because the guerilla fighting was intensifies between 1740
and 1755. By 1760 parties were exploring possibilities toward a peace treaty.
The paper reviews written sources of researchers who had dealt with the
phenomenon marronage mentioning clashing without however dissecting these
encounters militarily and strategically: what fighting strategic methods did
these guerrillas employed against the militias and colonial armies is the
question for which an answer will be offered.
Bibliography
Dew,Edward 1996 The difficult flowering of
Suriame.Etnecity and politics in a plural society.
Paramaribo: Vaco NV(First edition, 1978 The
Hague:Martinus Nijhoff).
Dragtenstein,R. F, 2009, Alles voor de vrede. De brieven
van Bosten Band tussen 1757 en 1763,
NiNsee /Amrit Amsterdan /Den Haag.
Dragtenstein,R. F,2002, De ondragelijke stoutheid der
wegloopers. Marronage en koloniaal
beleid in Suriname 1667-1768, Utrecht ,CCLAS/IBS.
Essed , H.1984 De binnenlandse oorlog in Suriname
1613-1793 Paramaribo, Anton de Kom
Universiteit van Suriname.
Hira,S,1983, Van Priary tot en met De Kom.De geschiedenis
van het verzet in Suriname 1630-
1940.Futile.
Jagdew, E. R ,Vrede te midden van oorlog in Suriname
Inheemsen, Europeanen,Marrons en
vredesverdagen 1667 -1863,Anton de Kom Universiteit van
Suriname, Paramaribo,Suriname.
Lier, R.A.J. Van Samenleving in een grensgebied Een sociaaal
historische studie van Suriname
1977 S. Emmering Amsterdam) )(Thirth edition).
Lier, R.A.J Van: Frontier Society. A Social Analysis of
the History of Surinam (KITLV Press-Martinus
Nijhoff,The Hague 1970).
Stedman,J 1799, reizen naar Suriname. Deel I, Amsterdam.
Vibert Cambridge
Vibert Compton Cambridge
(Ph.D., Ohio University, 1989) is professor emeritus in the School of Media
Arts and Studies, Scripps College of Communication, Ohio University
Dr. Cambridge’s teaching, research, and scholarship
have focused on communication for development and social change;
entertainment-education and mass media programming; immigration, diversity and
broadcasting; and Caribbean social and cultural history. His current work focuses on the social
history of “sweet drinks” in Guyana; cultural preservation through diaspora
engagement; public services and the implementation of UN’s SDGs; and citizen
engagement in the emerging 4th Industrial Revolution (4IR).
His Musical Life in Guyana: History and Politics of Control, the first
in-depth study of Guyanese musical life, was published by the University Press
of Mississippi in June 2015 as part of its Caribbean Studies Series. Immigration, Diversity, and Broadcasting in
the United States, 1990–2001 was published by the Ohio University Press in
January 2005.
In 2016, when Guyana
celebrated the 50th anniversary of its independence, Dr. Cambridge was awarded
Guyana’s Golden Arrow of Achievement, for his contributions to the study of
Guyana’s social and cultural history. In
2013, he received the Award for Excellence in Global Engagement from Ohio
University.
He is President of the Guyana
Cultural Association of New York, Inc. He is currently Advisor/Consultant in
the Global Leadership Center, Center for International Studies, Ohio
University.
Abstract
I bring you greetings from the
Guyana Cultural Association of New York, Inc., the organizers of the annual
Guyana Folk Festival in Brooklyn, New York.
We applaud the Guyana Institute for Historical Research on this your
12th annual conference and the timeliness of this year’s theme – “Labor,
Military, and Migration.”
SIMILARITY OF MISSION
Our two organizations have
similar missions. We both seek to
mobilize robust historical information about the Guyana experience and make it
accessible--to inform citizen engagement and public policy. We are aware of the growing body of new
scholarship on the Guyanese experience that needs to be shared with the wider
community. We are both engaged in an
emancipatory praxis. We should think about
working together to generate more inclusive histories. Our two organizations have similar missions
regarding historical information. We
encourage bottom up histories.
Over the past 18 years, GCA’s
mission has been to examine, document, showcase and celebrate the multiple
roots and manifestations of Guyanese folk heritage and creativity. At GCA we organize around significant
anniversaries or other aspects of our cultural heritage. Through our annual Literary Hang and
Symposium series, GCA has facilitated day-long multidisciplinary reflections on
topics such as Guyanese dance, masquerade, language, music, and more complex
terrains such as creolization, imagining Guyana beyond the politics of race,
and finding solidarity—ma’iupe -- in our festival arts tradition.
Eric Phillips
ERIC M. PHILLIPS (MBA, CTP.
BSc. Eng.)
Eric Phillips , A 1990-91
White House Fellow, is currently a member of the Ministry of the
Presidency where he works as
the Special Assistant to Professor Clive Thomas, the Presidential
Advisor on Sustainable
Development. He is also a Lecturer at the University of Guyana. Eric Phillips
worked internationally in seven countries for large companies including
AT&T and has served in many diverse capacities such as Chairman of the
Board, CEO, MD, VP, COO, Program Director and Engineer. Eric was also appointed
by the President of Guyana as the Chairman of the Guyana National Reparations
Committee and sits on the CARICOM Reparations Commission.
Eric Phillips has degrees in
Chemical Engineering, Telecommunications Engineering and
Marketing/International
Business. Eric has appeared on the cover of Business Week International
Magazine and Black Engineering
Magazine when he was nominated as the US Black Engineer
of the Year. Eric has won many
awards including: the AT&T Senior VP Award (1993); the Bell
Labs Outstanding Service Award
(1990); and the Scientific Achievement Award for Apollo
Technologies in 1982.
He is the president of the
African Business Roundtable and an Executive Member of the African
Cultural & Development
Association (ACDA).
Abstract
“Cometh the Hour,
Cometh the Man”
By
Eric Phillips
One hundred year ago, the first Trade Union in the
Caribbean was founded by Hubert Nathaniel Critchlow on 11 January 1919. By the
end of 1919, the British Guiana Labour Union (BGLU) had more than 7,000
financial members comprising waterfront workers, tradesmen, sea defence and
road workers, railroad workers, balata bleeders and miners, some Government
employees and hundreds of sugar estate labourers. Branches of the union were
also set up in various parts of the country.
The son of a Barbadian father and Essequibian Guyanese
woman, Hubert began his journey in November and December 1905 when he led a
strike by waterfront workers for increased wages.
The rest of course, is history and a monument to
Critchlow is most appropriately located in the grounds of the Parliament, where
interestingly enough, another great Guyanese hero, the Father of Non-Violent
protest , a man named DAMON, who protested the apprenticeship scheme, and whom
raised a “flag” as a sign of freedom and independence from the farmers, was
hanged at noon, on Monday October 13,
1834, on a scaffold specially erected in front of the new Public Buildings
which is today’s Parliament grounds.
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