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The Children of Africa in the Colonies

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The Children of Africa in the Colonies atlantic world history n ewton political disenfranchisement. While some wealthy men The Children of Africa in the Colonies hen a small group of free men of color gained political influence as a result of emanci- of color gathered in 1838 to celebrate the pation, the absence of fundamental change in the distri- Free PeoPle oF end of apprenticeship in Barbados, they The Children of Africa in the Colonies the in Africa of Children The W bution of land and wealth left most men and women of spoke of emancipation as the moment of freedom for all color with little hope of political independence or social Color in BArbados colored people, not just the former slaves. The fact that mobility. many of these men had owned slaves themselves gives Mining a rich vein of primary and secondary sources, “A clearly written, provocative, and politically sophisticated examination of a free in The Age a hollow ring to their lofty pronouncements. Yet in The Newton’s study elegantly describes how class divisions colored population and its struggles to define itself within a colonial and racist soci- Children of Africa in the Colonies, Melanie J. Newton dem- and disagreements over labor and social policy among ety before and after emancipation. Newton makes a major contribution to the under- Of emAnCipation onstrates that simply dismissing these men as hypocrites free and slave black Barbadians led to political unrest standing of free people of color in the British Caribbean, and provides a detailed and ignores the complexity of their relationship to slavery. Exploring the role of free blacks in Barbados from 1790 and devastated the hope for an entirely new social struc- nuanced discussion of the complex interplay among ‘race,’ gender, and class in one of ture and a plebeian majority in the British Caribbean. to 1860, Newton argues that the emancipation process Britain’s oldest plantation-slave colonies.” transformed social relations between Afro-Barbadians —jerome handler, and slaves and ex-slaves. author of A Guide to Source Materials for the Study of Barbados History, 1627–1834 melanie J. newton Free people of color in Barbados genuinely wanted Antislavery, Abolition, and the Atlantic World slavery to end, Newton explains, a desire motivated in R. J. M. Blackett and James Brewer Stewart, series editors part by the realization that emancipation offered them significant political advantages. As a result, free people’s “Melanie Newton argues successfully for the importance and centrality of the free goals for the civil rights struggle that began in Barbados Afro-Barbadian population during slavery and also after emancipation. This is a very in the 1790s often diverged from those of the slaves, and well-written and thoroughly researched book and will be a vital addition to the lit- the tensions that formed along class, education, and gen- melanie j. newton is an erature on the free people of color in the Americas.” der lines severely weakened the movement. While the assistant professor of Caribbean —gad heuman, populist masses viewed emancipation as an opportunity and Atlantic world history at the author of The Caribbean: Brief Histories to form a united community among all people of color, University of Toronto. wealthy free people viewed it as a chance to better their position relative to white Europeans. To this end, free people of color refashioned their identities in relationship to Africa. Prior to the 1820s, Newton reveals, they downplayed their African descent, emphasizing instead their legal status as free people and studio cabral their position as owners of property, including slaves. As the emancipation debate in the Atlantic world reached its zenith in the 1820s and 1830s and whites grew in- creasingly hostile and inflexible, elite free people allied louisiAnA State universiTy Press themselves with the politics of the working class and the Baton rouge 70808 slaves, relying for the first time on their African heritage and the association of their skin color with slavery to www.lsu.edu/lsupress louisiAnA State universiTy Press openly challenge white supremacy. Baton rouge 70808 printed in u.s.a. After emancipation, free people of color again rede- jacket illustration by philip moore, Old Gods Cannot fined themselves, now as loyal British imperial subjects, Die Young (1991) ISBN 978-0-8071-3326-2 casting themselves in the role of political protectors of > jacket design by amanda mcdonald scallan © 2008 lou isi a na state u ni v er sit y pr ess ì<(sk)k(=bddcgc< +^-Ä-U-Ä-U their ex-slave brethren in an attempt to escape social and The Children of Africa in the Colonies ANTISLAVERY, ABOLITION, AND THE ATLANTIC WORLD r. j. m. blackett and james brewer stewart Series Editors The Children of Africa in the Colonies FREE PEOPLE OF COLOR IN BARBADOS IN THE AGE OF EMANCIPATION Melanie J. Newton LOUISIANA STATE UNIVERSITY PRESS BATON ROUGE Published by Louisiana State University Press Copyright © 2008 by Louisiana State University Press All rights reserved Manufactured in the United States of America First printing designer: Amanda McDonald Scallan typeface: Whitman and AIKoch Antiqua typesetter: J. Jarrett Engineering, Inc. printer and binder: Thomson-Shore, Inc. Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data Newton, Melanie J., 1974– The children of Africa in the colonies : free people of color in Barbados in the age of emancipation / Melanie J. Newton. p. cm. — (Antislavery, abolition, and the Atlantic World) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8071-3326-2 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Free blacks— Barbados— History—19th century. 2. Slaves— Emancipation— Social aspects— Barbados. I. Title. F2041.N49 2008 972.981′00496—dc22 2007042882 The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guide- lines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources. > For keir, lily, alex, and nico CONTENTS Acknowledgments ix Abbreviations xiii Introduction 1 PART ONE slaves, subjects, and citizens: People of African Descent in Barbadian Slave Society 1. Defi ning Freedom in the Interstices of Slave Society 23 2. Race and Politics in an Age of Insurrection 57 3. Racial Segregation and Public Life during the Amelioration Era 87 4. New Publics: Afro- Barbadian Oppositional Politics 114 PART TWO ties of consanguinity, suffering, and wrong: Apprenticeship and Its Aftermath 5. Discipline and (Dis)Order: Apprenticeship and the Meaning of Freedom 141 6. Men of Property, Character, and Education: The Afro- Barbadian Bourgeois Public Sphere 174 7. Between Africa and the Empire: Diasporic Consciousness in Postemancipation Society 196 PART THREE the limits of freedom 8. The Emigration Debate and Postemancipation Politics 225 9. Hard Times and African Dreams 256 epilogue: The Living Past 283 Bibliography 291 Index 309 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Growing up in Barbados, away from the Caribbean’s major centers of radical state and social experimentation, there was no escaping the excitement of the region in the 1970s and early 1980s. The very air was charged with a sense of possibility that a more humane and people- centered socialist or social democratic path could be forged. In an echo of Grenada’s Fedon Rebellion of 1795, the Grenada Revolu- tion of 1979–1983 brought the turbulence of the age almost next door to Barba- dos. I had a children’s book extolling the virtues of the revolution, and I thought Maurice Bishop and Fidel Castro extremely handsome and swashbuckling fellows, whereas Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, Eugenia Charles, Edward Seaga, and Jean- Claude Duvalier were the devil incarnate. I remember newspaper reports of the fi nal bloody weeks of the People’s Revolutionary Government; the mass kill- ing of one faction of its leadership, including Bishop; and the humiliating U.S. in- vasion of Grenada on October 25, 1983, when about six thousand U.S. troops occu- pied a country of one hundred thousand people. Even as a child I experienced an acute sense of embarrassment at the fact that the government of Barbados— my government— provided the regional base from which the invasion was launched. The invasion seriously undermined the regional and intellectual cohesiveness of challenges to the new forms of North American and European imperialism assert- ing themselves in the era of Britain’s formal exit from much of the region. These memories of the Grenada Revolution— and the relationship of Barbados and Barbadians to it—inspired this study of the impact of the Haitian Revolution and transatlantic abolitionism on Afro- Barbadian politics and community forma- tion in the age of emancipation. This book is about Barbados, a country that still bears (somewhat uncomfortably) the nickname Little England for its perceived topographical similarities and steadfast imperial loyalty to the former metropole. Like England, Barbados has been somewhat insulated from the tides of revolu- tion that periodically have swept its neighbors. Instead, it has been an island from which imperial invasions— whether of Spanish Jamaica in 1655, Grenada in 1983, or Haiti in 1994—often have been launched. And yet I grew up with a very strong sense that Barbadians had a far more ambivalent relationship with empire than the moniker Little England would allow. The study is an effort to make sense of my country’s complicated place within the former British Empire, the Caribbean, and the Atlantic world. Questions I have always had about the social forces that x acknowledgments shape the Caribbean’s popular political movements, and the broader regional and transatlantic circuits of Afro- Caribbean radicalism out which the 1979 “Revo” was born, have shaped this book. Hopefully, the book also has something important to say about the English- speaking Caribbean as a whole, a community that, on the surface, can seem as placid as Barbados is supposed to be and yet throughout its modern history has generated popular political movements that have forcefully reminded imperial authorities and local political elites alike that they can never really feel secure in their hold on power.
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