By Faith Greene
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On this day, 185 years ago, thousands of African people from Guyana and other Caribbean nations gained their freedom from the physical chains of slavery, that had kept them bound for centuries.

They were finally free to determine what was suitable for them and what was not, all within certain limits of course.
The then-enslaved Africans were victims of what some historians described as one of the world’s largest crimes committed against a group of people.
The Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) in a recent publication titled The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade (2022), labelled this crime as one of abduction and abuse that has altered the global landscape and created a legacy of suffering and bigotry, all of which still exists today.

The 1400s

Trekking back to the tales of centuries ago, the Europeans in search of wealth sent several ships, and armed militia to exploit new lands, many of which had already been occupied by Indigenous peoples.
These lands or territories were known then as ‘the Americas’ and the home to extraordinary natural resources which provided great opportunities to gain power and influence for Portugal, Spain, Great Britain, France, Italy, Germany, and Scandinavian nations.

History tells us that these lands produced an abundance of gold, sugar and tobacco all of which were sought after by the Europeans to generate wealth.
They first attempted to enslave the Indigenous peoples and they were met with much resistance, but in their determination to extract wealth from these distant lands, they sought labour from Africa, launching a tragic period of kidnapping, abduction, and trafficking that resulted in the genocide and enslavement of millions of African people.

THE SOCIAL PYRAMID
According to the Guyana Chronicle’s archives slave societies in the Americas were formed according to power, prestige, privilege, and colour. At the top were the Whites, which comprised government officials, plantation owners, managers, merchants, clergies, small shopkeepers, craftsmen, and indentured servants.
At the middle were Blacks and free Coloureds, who were classified as Mulatto, Quadroon, and Sambo. This was a sandwich group that served as a social lubricant between the highest and lowest layer of Guyana’s slave society.

And at the lowest layer were the enslaved Africans, who were further stratified into the fields, house, skilled and urban slaves.
Each layer of stratification was hierarchically organised along firm boundaries. The structure of slave society was shaped like a social pyramid.
David Lambert’s, ‘An Introduction to the Caribbean, Empire and Slavery’ published in 2017, states that the Europeans came to the Caribbean in search of wealth. The Spanish had started out looking for gold and silver, but there was little to be found. Instead, they tried growing different crops to be sold back home.

After several unsuccessful experiments with growing tobacco, the English colonists tried growing sugarcane in the Caribbean. This was not a local plant; however, it grew well after being introduced. According to Lambert, several people in Europe wanted the products of sugarcane, and as a result, those ‘planters’ who grew it became very wealthy.
Lambert, a Caribbean History Professor at the University of Warwick, in the United Kingdom penned that the spread of sugar plantations in the Caribbean created a need for workers. Planters turned to buying enslaved men, women and children, brought from Africa.
It is believed that five million enslaved Africans were taken to the Caribbean.

“As planters became more reliant on enslaved workers, the populations of the Caribbean colonies changed, so that people born in Africa, or their descendants, came to form the majority. Their harsh and inhumane treatment was justified by the idea that they were part of an inferior ‘race’. Indeed, complicated ways of categorizing race emerged in the Caribbean colonies that placed ‘white’ people at the top, ‘black’ people at the bottom and different ‘mixed’ groups in between. Invented by white people, this was a way of trying to excuse the brutality of slavery.”

THE UPRISING OF REBELLIONS IN GUYANA
In Guyana the Dutch European established the settlement, British Guiana in order to trade with the Indigenous people, however, due to the competition with other European countries to gain territory, it soon became a commercialized base and by the 1660s, more than 2000 slaves had been brought to the Dutch territory to work on plantations.
According to the textbook, Social Studies Made Easy, they had lured Africans from several countries in Africa and brought them to then British Guiana to work on sugar plantation as slaves, much like what happened in several Caribbean Countries during that Period.

By 1763 a slave revolt began on two plantations on the Canje River in Berbice by a West African Slave named, Cuffy. This was due to the harsh treatment of slaves by the Europeans which additionally caused many slaves to commit suicide, runaway, and eventually give rise to several rebellions.
Other persons involved in this rebellion were Akara, Atta, Accabre and Gousarri. Unfortunately, this rebellion failed because of disunity among the Africans. Cuffy committed suicide, and the other leaders were defeated. Another rebellion arose on Plantation Le Ressouvenir in 1823.
According to the textbook, Quamina and his son Jack Gladstone were held responsible for this uprising, which proved to be unsuccessful after the leaders had discouraged the Africans from being violent.

Quamina was shot, and Gladstone was sentenced to deportation and taken to St. Lucia where he was sold into slavery.
Rebellions continued across the Caribbean with uprisings in Barbados, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago and other territories.
Emancipation however came years later on August 1, 1838, after people like Thomas Buxton, Thomas Clarkson, Granville Sharp, George Canning, James Ramsay and William Wilberforce campaigned to abolish slavery. While slavery was abolished in 1834, slaves still had to work on plantations, but were paid small wages for their labour.
Some Africans, like Damon, refused to work and in 1834, he started a protest which resulted in him being hanged.

After their Emancipation, the Africans began to buy plantations. The first plantation bought by the freed slaves was plantation Northbrook, which was later renamed Victoria. The Africans earned a living by practicing peasant farming of crops such as rice for example, and trade work (masonry, carpentry, plumbing and handcraft).