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THE AFRICAN INFLUENCE ON BARBADIAN CULTURE
by Trevor G. Marshall
PAGE 11
There is also a notion that whites were enslaved here. The Amerindians were enslaved and friars like Montesinos and Las Casas complained about the forced working in the mines for Spaniards to bring up increasingly decreasing quantities of gold and silver, all the bullion was dug to make Spain wealthy was done by Amerindian hands. Soldiers lived off of that and each had an area of land and all of the Indians living there were his to utilise and work in what area he wanted. Amerindians were killed, they were shot down like birds or like frogs, as a kind of prelude to Hitler experiments were carried out on them by Europeans, and the main thing is that they were overworked and thus they died of overwork, and exposure to European diseases such as influenza to which they had no immunity, not just syphilis and smallpox but influenza, so they definitely were enslaved and there is no doubt about that and they went from about a million to about 30,000 in about 50 years and that is genocide.
Barbados was totally uninhabited when the Europeans came here. Barbados is 90 miles to the east of St. Vincent which still has Amerindians, so-called Caribs. At the time of Columbus, Barbados had none. We historians keep wondering what happened because the first Europeans to write about Barbados is Pedro a Campos, a Portuguese in 1536, who gave the name to the island "Los or Las Barbados" which means "the island of the bearded figs" or "the island of the bearded men". Even about the name we are not conclusive. Were there bearded men whom he saw or bearded trees? Certainly the island has a lot of bearded fig trees. He came here in 1536 and left a set of wild hogs to provide food for future visits but he never came back and the island remained untenanted for another 89 years. It was only in 1625 when the Englishmen came and the first permanent European settlement did not happen until 2 years later, 17 February 1627, so Barbados remained a conundrum, an enigma within the rest of the Caribbean.
To go back to the question of whites as slaves, English law after 1475 prohibited slavery among Englishmen. The nearest the English had to slavery was a form of servitude called "villeinage", very close to "villain", only "e" substitutes for an "a". A villein was the lowest level of person within a medieval situation living in baronial lands. He was permanently a renter and was obliged to give service in work and military service to the lord of the manor. He transferred that status of villein to his children and his children's children. He was a permanent underclass person. That was abolished in 1475 by Henry VII and consequently any Britons among you know that your alternative national anthem is "Rule Britannia, Britannia Rules the Waves, Britons never never never shall be slaves" and that comes from the 1475 dictate of Henry VII. Englishmen could not be slaves but they could be "Christian servants" which is a subterfuge, a euphemism. Those first few Englishmen and women who came here, as I said, were young and restless teenagers; they were made into bond servants. You find in the literature evidence that they were sold for 1500 pounds of sugar or for some other element in barter, but that term 'sold' has to be examined carefully. It was their labour that was sold, they were indentured persons, they were contract labour, they were immigrant labour and, as you know, a contract labourer loses his rights temporarily for the purpose of his residence and his work. He becomes a non-person, more or less a slave. Now the indentured servant, the "white slave", if you call him that, in Barbados served for 5 years in the first instance. He could serve for another 5 years, by the end of which, he was a free person, and he actually did not transfer that status to his children and I think the most famous indentured servant of all was a Welshman called Sir Henry Morgan who came to Barbados as an indentured person, served here, did his time, moved on to Jamaica and became a gentleman farmer there, but found it slow going and became a pirate. He made his pile there and resumed his legitimacy so much so that he entered politics and became Lieutenant Governor of Jamaica. So much for an indentured labourer.
There is still some controversy about the status of the first whites in Barbados and elsewhere and people argue on it. In Barbados we still have a white underclass. Up to four months ago a philanthropic lady discovered that they were in my parish, St. John, which is the home of the Poor Whites, families of whites who did not more than 3 times per week eat cooked meals, and these are descended from those initial groups of poor whites who came here three and a half centuries ago. The term "Redlegs" applies to them.
-- © Trevor G Marshall, 2000. This document is the property of the author. Quotation or reproduction without the permission of the author is expressly prohibited. |
