ON Monday, June 19, ‘Juneteenth’ events were celebrated across the USA in commemoration of June 19, 1865, when Slavery was officially abolished there. But ‘Juneteenth’ observances are not only for America.

Instead, it’s another important date (in the history of Trans-Atlantic Slavery) to be remembered like Emancipation Day in the former British Empire, when slavery was officially abolished on August 1, 1834 and as with April 27, 1848, when France officially abolished slavery.

Caribbean people, aut home and abroad, annually heartily follow the ‘Juneteenth’ observances in the USA, most understandably unaware their homeland may have its own equivalent ‘Juneteenth’ date of national significance.

Take Saint Lucia…

On June 18, 1795, Freedom Fighters – invariably called ‘Brigands’, ‘Maroons’, ‘Runaway Slaves’, ‘Insurgents’ and ‘Military Slaves’ — defeated a British force led by Colonel James Stewart, chasing them from their garrison at Morne Fortune to neighbouring Martinique.

The date also marked one of the first genuine revolutions in the West Indies, influenced by the French Revolution of July 14, 1789 – which had also abolished slavery in its colonies.

The French Revolution, with its motto Liberty, Fraternity and Equality, was influenced by the 1776 American independence struggle in whicht enslaved Africans and their descendants participated.

But since the French had supported the 13 American colonies demanding independence from the British, the two European states started attacking each other’s West Indian colonies (including Saint Lucia).

Britain and France had already been warring at sea over the ‘Helen of The West’ from 1605 to 1763, for its strategic military location.

But in 1794 the French ‘Republicans’, having beheaded King Louis XVI, abolished slavery in the French colonies – and supported the freed ex-slaves by arming and training them to fight — first for Liberty, then Fraternity and Equality.

The former ‘Military Slaves’ became a growing band of freedom fighters, attacking the British ‘Royalists’ and their plantations islandwide and encouraging revolts everywhere.

A significant role was played by Victor Hughes, a French revolutionary sent to fan the flames of revolt in Martinique, Guadeloupe and Saint Lucia.

Saint Lucia’s freedom fight would take a serious turn in 1791 in Soufriere, when two men and a woman were beheaded for plotting a plantation revolt, their heads mounted on pikes and displayed publicly to discourage others.

However, the Soufriere decapitation enraged the enslaved everywhere and dozens escaped to join the armed freedom fighters, whose numbers grew quicker with support from Hughes and freed French ex-slaves.

In 1793, France declared war on Britain and in 1794 a British force arrived in Barbados, from where they attacked Martinique and Saint Lucia.
But the claimed ‘capture’ of Saint Lucia never happened because the British invaders had only captured the strategic hilltop military fortification at Morne Fortune in Castries.

In 1794, Hughes dispatched Gaspar Goyrand — one of his firebrand revolutionary agents — to Saint Lucia, with soldiers and supplies from Guadeloupe and the local fighters, with new support, exacted serious blows on the British.

By 1795, Soufriere had become the stronghold of ‘Republicanism’ and the Saint Lucia hotbed exploded again after the liberationists beheaded a couple ‘Royalists’ before embarking on an island-wide military campaign against the British, using guerilla tactics in Dennery, Micoud, Vieux Fort, Choiseul, Soufriere, Canaries and Anse-la-Raye.

But the peak event took place in the shadow of The Pitons on April 22, 1795, when another British regiment landed in Vieux Fort and launched a series of lightning attacks against the freedom fighters there.

The local fighters retreated toward Soufriere, followed by the British — in a planned tactical manoeuvre that led to the Battle at Rabot, the greatest fight for Saint Lucia’s freedom from slavery: the freedom fighters, led by Goyrand, were lying in wait at Fond Doux in Soufriere and after a brief eight-hour battle, the British suffered almost 200 dead and over 100 wounded.

Colonel Stewart and his remaining troops beat a hasty retreat to Vieux Fort, pursued by the freedom fighters through Laborie and Choiseul, shamefully boarded their ships and hastily retreated by sea to their post in Castries, at Morne Fortune.

After the victory at Rabot, the liberationists took control of the entire south of the island and then proceeded north, where they joined colleagues and took the Vigie and Pigeon Island peninsula, a strategic naval location the British and French fought for many times.

By the middle of 1795, Saint Lucia was liberated and on June 18, Colonel Stewart and the remaining British troops were again forced to hastily and shamefully retreat, this time evacuating to Martinique.

Goyrand was appointed Governor of Saint Lucia and immediately declared Slavery abolished island-wide – and from then on, in short time, Saint Lucia became a revolutionary springboard from where large numbers of trained and experienced guerillas were dispatched to start and support revolts in St. Vincent and Grenada, supporting the fights led by Chatoyer and Julien Fedon, respectively.

In 1796, a major force led by Major-General Ralph Abercrombie invaded and recaptured the island for the British, ending Saint Lucia’s year-long embrace with freedom — but not before Goyrand and his revolutionaries had abolished slavery.

The 1795 Saint Lucia revolution took place nine years before the 1804 Declaration of Haitian Independence that led to the universally-recognized Abolition of Trans-Atlantic Slavery and establishment of the world’s first Black Republic.

It all started on the night of June 18, 1795 – Saint Lucia’s ‘Juneteenth’ — with the first genuine revolution by ex-slaves in Europe’s ‘West Indies’.

But not all the significant revolutions (invariably called ‘revolts’ and ‘riots’ by the British and French) happened in June.

So, while ‘Juneteenth’ is appropriate to the American reality, Caribbean equivalents also happened in different months, leaving it to each nation to identify its own.

Like all other former British colonies, Guyana observes Emancipation Day on August 1, but also has its own ‘Juneteenth’ equivalents, which didn’t necessarily happen in June. In all cases, therefore, it’s just a matter of agreeing on which date.