I COINED Emancipation as the ‘Genisis of Modern Guyana’ during one of ACDA’s Emancipation festivals. I probably stand to be corrected, but I have explored aspects of its history and maintain that it was a struggle that no former enslaved person could have anticipated, which followed this Act, that they could not have foreseen the depth of malice within the community of the Plantocracy.
Malice emerged from the very manifestation of the legal ramifications of the abolition of slavery. The planters in the colony and those in the old country saw their man-made economic heaven of slave labour diminishing, and some 300 years of enslaved wealth was grinding to a close. Following the Abolition Act, the plantocracy decided that an extended period of free labour must be imposed on the Afro-plantation community, which would be masqueraded under the nonsensical title of “Apprenticeship.” Immediately, this was recognised, and Damon, a once-enslaved man on the Essequibo Coast, protested this Act by leading a protest with some 700 former slaves. He barricaded himself inside the Trinity Church yard at La Belle Alliance, raising a symbolic flag of freedom to oppose the mockery of “Apprenticeship.” For this, the presiding Governor Carmichael Smyth had Damon arrested and tried for disobeying his dictate, and he was hung on October 13, 1834, on the premises of the Public Buildings.
Abolition did not entirely emerge as an edict, exclusively of conscience. It was an economic response to changes in the development of industry and what would be expected of the British colonies. The fact, however, was that the main skills on the plantations were the very African enslaved, who managed the production also of sugar. The planters were in charge of management systems. The conclusion of this four-year “extension” of slavery in 1848 was followed by more efforts to frustrate the freed slaves from purchasing lands, while a massive plot to extract extra taxes from the Afro community was hatched on imported commodities that they used, while imports used by the planters were exempted from taxes.
The African-bought villages were suffering under the allotment of taxes that went into the interests of the planters, withheld drainage to the villages, resulting in floods, loss of crops, and sewage fluids flowing into trenches. This resulted in the loss of life, added to that of income and victuals. This latter consequence should be enquired upon to add a numerical value to posterity no less upon this loss of income and lives. The dark crusade by the plantocracy that plotted with the Portuguese indentured immigrants to circumvent their service and retail businesses in Georgetown was later to be imposed on the villages.
Portugal was not a colony of England, neither did the English see them as equals, so as far as records allow, Governor Light commented, “Of those who arrived in 1835, 236 died. The Madeirans in particular proved vulnerable,” and Governor Light admitted that “they died so fast that common humanity would not let us do it. Their importation was discontinued for a while.”
However, it was the Portuguese citizen-immigrants who were used in the Plantocracy’s plot to undermine the manumitted African small businesses in the hope that they, the African colonial subjects, would return to the plantation labour force.
“In 1847-48, the withdrawal of labour had stemmed from an even greater sense of outrage and injustice. The Afro-labourers could not escape the knowledge that immigration was financed by the taxes, that they were forced to pay, sensing that the immigrants were brought to lessen their incomes. The Planters, in a petition of January 17, 1848, noted that several fires had taken place of megas logies, whereby these costly and indispensable buildings have, with their large stock of fuel for manufacturing the products of estates, been entirely destroyed.”
It would take the struggle into the new century, with the 1905 riots and the birth of the ‘Union Movement’ to enact a semblance of social balance, but not of equitable opportunities. It would take two World Wars to diminish, but not exterminate the ghosts of the old plantocracy.
Reference to explore-see; THEMES IN African-Guyanese History -Free Press