The island of Jamaica has been
portrayed to us as a tropical paradise. Happy, smiling black people
are allowed to sing a chorus of “White folks been awful good to
me.”;1 where they have a role in this imperial fantasy.
Xamaica, the Land of Springs, became
a Spanish colony in the sixteenth century. The native Tainos or
Arawaks spoke the same language as the Tainos on Cuba and Hispaniola.
Under Spanish Imperial Law it was forbidden to enslave the natives.
As with many things in imperialism this was propaganda and the actual
practice was very different. There are no written records of Jamaican
Tainos being rounded up and shipped to Cuba and Hispaniola; that
would have been illegal.
There may possibly be a written
record of Jamaican Tainos risking their lives to try to warn the Maya
on the mainland of the threat from imperialism. The story of a canoe
voyage from Las Islas Palizadas, on Jamaica’s south coast to the
Yucatan Peninsula is told in History of the Conquest of Mexico.2
By
1655 the Jamaican Tainos had been fully assimilated by imperialism.
Their memory had a place in history but it was more easily
accessible in the mythology of the new Jamaicans. Their language was
no longer heard in the Land of Springs. “... the end of a lang
sang.”3
Jamaica's
coat-of-arms shows fanciful representations of two Tainos;
mis-leading images enslaved by an artist's brush.
In
1655 Jamaica acquired a new owner; a benign, enlightened owner; if
you believe the propaganda. The English took over from the Spanish.
England and Greater England (Scotland and Ireland) were under the
benign and benevolent dictatorship of Oliver Cromwell. Seeking to
bring the benefits of English civilisation to the entire Spanish
Empire, Cromwell sent a large military force to the West Indies. This
expensive expedition heroically wrested Jamaica from the embrace of
the wicked Catholics. In 1655 Jamaica entered the English family of
nations; a thoroughly dysfunctional and unhappy family.
In
1657 Cromwell's man in Jamaica formally invited 'The Brethren of the
Coast' to establish their version of free-trade in Port Royal. These
unsavoury characters have a somewhat sketchy historical profile. They
were pirates to the Spanish whose shipping they preyed upon. Their
most famous leader, Henry Morgan, was described as being Welsh. In
the English of Wessex (the West Country) 'wales' means foreign. The
designation of Welsh is open to interpretation and the name of Morgan
is not unknown in the Scottish province of Buchan. Piracy was a
well-established trade in Buchan long before Cromwell's time.
The
English preferred to describe their pirates as privateers and also as
buccaneers. The origin of this latter term is uncertain. If the
Buchan free-traders had compounded the name of their province of
origin with their privateering trade they might well have called
themselves buchaneers. Deliberately mis-pronouncing every language
(especially their own) seems to be a symptom of the imperial disease.
From buchaneer to buccaneer is a linguistically simple sound-change.
The alternative explanation is more complex.
In
1707 the English state underwent a fundamental re-organisation when
it formed a federal union with the state of Scotland; henceforth to
be known as Great Britain. In Jamaica the English imperial flag was
embellished with a few patches of blue to become the Brenglish
imperial flag. On the mainland the Spanish robbed and enslaved the
Native Americans. From Port Royal Scottish pirates under an
arms-length English/Brenglish administration robbed and murdered the
Spanish. If you look closely at the spectacular ruins that are left
by empires you will find that they are stained with blood and
cemented by despair.
The
1707 Brenglish imperial flag is constitutionally related to a state
called Great Britain.
Concentration
camps are generally thought to date from the 1860s. Their invention
is credited either to the 'bad Spanish' empire in Cuba or to the
benign, enlightened “Brutish Empire” 4, under great
provocation, as a temporary measure, in Natal and Orange Free State,
during the Boer War (1899-1902). Many Jamaicans believe that the
first concentration camp was the island of Jamaica. At 100 miles by
50 miles it was also the largest.
The
first African slaves in
Jamaica were imported by the Spanish. Their descendants are the
Maroons (from Cimarrones) of Jamaica's semi-desert interior. The
English initially preferred to use people they described as
bonded-servants to do the kind of ”Carry Go Bring Come”5
tasks that are beneath the dignity of imperialists. These people were
from diverse backgrounds and anyone could volunteer for
bonded-servitude which is also known as indentured-service. In
reality bonded-servitude, a form of slavery 6, was used by
deep-soothers to thin out the Celtic over-population of the north and
west of England and other barbaric parts of 'ouwa islands'. They were
really doing them a favour as they were incapable of supporting
themselves; or so they said.
Many
bonded-servants died on the passage to their new home on the Island
of Springs. Once they arrived they were hard-working and cheap to
keep. They had a bad habit of dying from tropical diseases; probably
made more deadly by malnourishment and despair. By the end of their
seven or eleven year bonds they were thoroughly acclimatised,
addicted to rum and ready to join the pool of cheap labour in their
new home. That was true for some but many had been promised that the
bond-holder would pay for their passage home if they should survive
their period of bonded-servitude. How convenient for the bond-holders
if their servants should succumb to the effects of over-work,
brutality and mal-nourishment shortly before the period of bondage
was due to end. In this crucial detail the bonded-servants were in a
worse position than the African slaves who were to replace them as
the lowest strata of the English imperial class-system.
Although
the use of Celtic slaves had many advantages in the building of
England's tropical paradise, there were also many disadvantages. The
high mortality rate was a serious drawback, many of them didn't live
long enough to repay the cost of shipping. Wouldn't it be enlightened
and inspired if we were to breed a race of servile people who had the
meek and fatalistic qualities of the Celts combined with the
psychological toughness and resistance to tropical diseases of West
Africans?
Ideas
of this type were not entirely good news for the Celts but they were
certainly bad news for some of the peace-loving nations of West
Africa. English domination of shipping and the West African
trading-posts allowed them to control the supply of African slaves to
their American colonies. Jamaica became a sorting-office for this
lucrative trade. The Celts still had a place in the imperial plan.
They became the plantation underseers who taught the Africans how to
be productive members of an enlightened, christian empire. The Celts
were still slaves (though one should not say so to their face) but
they had now moved up one class in the imperial plan.
The
task of turning the new recruits to the imperial plan into a
productive and profitable work-force was complex. They had to be
persuaded to give up their languages, cultural beliefs and sense of
values. In return they were given a place in the civilised world of
English-speaking imperialism; and a new name! Some Africans went
along with 'cultural assimilation' while others resisted. The more
humble and co-operative blacks tended to be considered ideal for
onward shipping to other markets, including the American colonies.
The selective-breeding programme in Jamaica, probably without
realising it, was selecting for a rebellious, culturally-confident
lower class of Jamaicans.
When,
in 1776, a small group of trouble-makers temporarily withdrew the
American colonies from the 'family of nations' the ever-patient
mother-country still controlled all the shipping and access to
foreign trade. There followed (until 1812) a period of benign and
enlightened guidance to steer the American renegades back to the
right course. The shipping of assimilated Africans from Jamaica
continued for many years. At least 160,000 Africans were thus
trans-shipped through Jamaica.7
The
moral depravity inherent in this sad tale is difficult to evaluate;
impossible to understand. The
achievements of the Nazi regime in Greater Germany lasted for 5½
years. The imperial regimes in Jamaica lasted for 400 years; “400
years of the same philosophy”8. They have left a moral
and cultural legacy that causes Jamaica to stand out among all the
small nations of the world. Jamaican contributions to world music and
track athletics are out of all proportion to the small size of the
island's population.
The
Celts, many of them Scots, who were caught up in this holocaust have
contributed to the island's rich and restless heritage. Jamaica's
flag is a saltire flag. Many Jamaicans have Scottish surnames. There
are still communities on the island who see themselves as being of
Scottish extraction9. Much of the power in the lyrics of
Jamaican popular songs comes from their understanding of the evils of
imperialism. Peter Tosh (Mackingtosh), Justin Hines (Innes), Bunny
Wailer (Livingstone) and Prince Buster (Campbell) all make worthy
attempts to describe and evaluate the imperial wasteland. The
Honourable Marcus Garvey10, Jamaica's national hero, ranks
alongside The Holy Prophet Mohammed in his contribution to shaping
African cultural identity.
"My coat is Scottish, my name is Irish but I am an African." Marcus Mosiah Garvey 1887-1940
The
problem the Scots need to overcome is that they are too close to the
trees to see the wood. The empire that tortured and tormented
26-counties-Ireland for seven hundred years has broken and ignored
the spirit and the letter of the 1707 Treaty of Union. In 1973 when
Scotland, willingly, entered the European Union our legal system was
not subordinate to a Brenglish High Court. There is no moral or legal
reason why we should accept subjugation to English Law today.
The
Empire-Loyalists who claim to be 'Unionists' will have a template for
federalism; if they ever bother to read the 1707 Treaty. They could
campaign in a positive way for the opening of The Scottish Exchequer;
a provision of the Treaty. The oral propaganda that was the context
for the signing of the 1707 Treaty is, in Scots Law, something they
could bring before the courts. True Unionists, if they were serious,
would be campaigning for the closure of the English Parliament and
the, long-delayed, opening of the British Parliament, in York.
The
talk-a-good-independence-at-election-time factions get a good press
from the imperialists. They have set themselves up to repeat the
history of the talk-a-good-socialism-at-election-time faction. If we
are to have years to wait for the next step they should be years of
planning, organising and hard work. The Americans, the Irish and the
Jamaicans all gained their independence from the same evil empire. If
you think it was easy you are not fit to live in a sovereign state.
REFERENCES
1 Harriet Beecher Stowe; Uncle
Tom's Cabin;
2 Bernal Diaz del Castillo; History
of the Conquest of Mexico; many translations; look for Yucatan
Peninsula in the index
3 “That is the end of a lang sang”,
was a contemporary comment on the 1707 Treaty of Union. I associate
it with Fletcher of Saltoun but can find no reliable confirmation of
this.
4 Stokely Carmicheal; attribution
from Mark Kurlansky; Nonviolence 25 Lessons from ...;
Random House; 2006; p. 169
5 Justin Hines (aka Justin Hinds);
Carry Go Bring Come; Island Records; 196?
6 Eric E. Williams; Capitalism and
Slavery; 1944
7 C. E. Long manuscripts; official
records of human-trafficking into and out of Jamaica from 1702 to
1787; published by, Jamaica Family Search
8 Peter Tosh; 400 Years; Blue
Mountain Music Ltd;
9 Ian Thomson; The Dead Yard;
10 Stanley Nelson; Look for me in
the Whirlwind; Firelight Media; U.S.A. 2000
Amy Jacques Garvey; Garvey and
Garveyism; 1935
Féderico
García Lorca; The King of
Harlem (Poet in New York); many translations; first published in
1940 as El Rey de Harlem
