Remember the slave trade and its abolition

Caribbean in matters is a weekly series of Daily Kos. I hope you join here every Saturday. If you are not familiar with the region, consult Matters Caribbean: Getting to know the Caribbean countries.

Given the racist and anti-historical of our current government and its concerts efforts to whiten and erase history – especially black history–I do not expect that there is official recognition of the fact that August 23 is the International Day for the Slaves of Slaves and its abolition.

I therefore collect documents here so that the members of the community can read, watch and share. We all, regardless of our artificially constructed “race” or our ancestral nationalities, have benefited and suffered from an insidious conspiracy known as transatlantic slave trafficking, which killed millions of blacks and have left millions of others in the second.

On August 23, 1791, people enslaved in what is today Haiti and the Dominican Republic clashed against French colonial domination, winning their independence in 1804. International UNESCO day for the memory of the Save trafficking and its abolition is a reminder of bravery, courage, resilience and determination of Africans who continued dignity.

A. Missouri Sherman-PeterWho died recently, was the ambassador and permanent observer of the Caribbean community to the United Nations. She wrote “The heritage of slavery in the Caribbean and the journey to justice“:

The demographic data that the economic business of the mastodon of the slave trade and slavery now represent well known, largely thanks to nearly three decades of dedicated scientific and historical research, significantly motivated by the United Nations Organization for the Scientific and Cultural Training of UNESCO) and by recent initiatives, including the United Nations Organization program on Transatlantic trade and slavery. Some 12 to 20 million Africans were enslaved in the Western hemisphere after a 6 to 10 weeks. This journey, now known as the “Middle Passage”, has consumed some 20% of its “human cargo”. Disease and death were common results in this human tragedy.

The Caribbean were at the heart of the crime against humanity induced by transatlantic trafficking and slavery. Some 40% of Africans slavery were sent to the Caribbean islands, which, in the 17th century, exceeded Portuguese Brazil as the main market in reduced labor. The sugar plantations of the region, owned and operated mainly by English, French, Dutch, Spanish and Danish settlers, consumed the dark life as quickly as it was imported.

Capitalism and black slavery were intertwined. The Atlantic economy, in all aspects, was effectively supported by African slavery.

Above all, the Caribbean was the place where the slavery of movable property took its most extreme judicial form in the instrument known as the code of slaves, which was instituted for the first time by the English in Barbados. Adopted in 1661, this complete law defined Africans as “pagans” and “brutes” who are not suitable for being governed by the same laws as Christians. The legislators have led Africans as non -human – a form of property to the property of buyers and their heirs forever. The slave code has become viral through the Caribbean and finally became the model applied to slavery in the North American English colonies that would become the United States.

A less known part of the slave trade took place on the island of Sainte-Hélène, which you may have learned in school as the place where Napoleon was sent to live and die in exile after his defeat in Waterloo. That’s all I remember learned Saint Helena; No mention of the slavery and trade of the Atlantic. Thank you to the work of the archaeologist Annina Van Neel and cultural project consultant Peggy King JordeI now have a different perspective.

Jorde wrote on this subject for the Guardian in “Resistance sites: African funeral land threatened around the world“:

For archaeologists, what defines people as humans is how we bury our dead. So imagine a society that relegates a whole community as legally inhuman, enslaved without rights. Despite slavery, African funeral terrains are tangible reminders of oppressive circumstances enslaved and free by recovering people from people by acts of memory.

When I visited the British territory abroad of St Helena in 2018 and I saw the cemetery in the Rupert valley, I was amazed by its size and its meaning. He unambiguously placed the island in the center of the middle passage – binding the British Empire to the institution of slavery in the United States, the Caribbean and the world.

During my stay on the island, I spoke to many stakeholders in the community and the government, who sometimes seemed hardly in a hurry to reconcile their feeling of “British” by recognizing their history linked to the trafficking of transatlantic slaves.

The Guardian produced a video entitled “Buried: how we choose to remember the transatlantic slave trade”:

Of Guardian video notes::

The remote island of St Helena, a British territory abroad, is best known for the tomb of Napoleon – the largest tourist attraction on the island. While supervising the construction of a long -awaited airport on the island, Annina Van Neel learns that the remains of thousands of Africans formerly enslaved have been discovered, find one of the most important traces of the trafficking of transatlantic slaves in the world. Annina decides to plead for this inheritance, initiating a debate among the islanders – many of which have shared ancestors with the slaves – on how to create an appropriate memorial. Along the way, she enlocked the help of African-American conservationist and veteran activist Peggy King Jorde, who establishes important links in their common history.

This background video is part of a documentary entitled “A History of OS”, which has been broadcast PBS POV. Here is the trailer:

Saint Helena information site To a page dedicated to the history of slavery of the island.

This story of African funeral land contains a captivating connection with the African funeral field in New York. While I was a student graduated in anthropology, I played a small role in creating the New York site. I wrote about it here.

By writing this article, I have not seen many Bluesky messages referring to this annual day of memory. Here are two:

Andrew Kahn And Jamal Bouie wrote an informative article on the slave trade against Slate in 2021 entitled “The trafficking of the slaves of the Atlantic in two minutes“:

315 years. 20,528 trips. Millions of lives.

Usually, when we say “American slavery” or “American slave trade”, we mean the American colonies or, later, the United States. But as we discussed in episode 2 of the history of American Slavery Academy, compared to the whole slave trade, North America was a bit player. Since the start of trade in the 16th^th century to its conclusion in the 19th^thSlave merchants brought the vast majority of Africans enslaved in two places: the Caribbean and Brazil. Of the more than 10 million Africans enslaved to finally reach the Western hemisphere, only 388,747 – less than 4% of the total – came for North America. This was overshadowed by the 1.3 million people brought to Spanish Central America, the 4 million boats by British, French, Dutch and Danish plane in the Caribbean, and the 4.8 million brought to Brazil.

Beckles calls universities for their “research and racing” practice, which applies to American institutions that are unleashed under pressure from the Trump administration’s anti-stand depredations. We must not only remember, but to retaliate and resist erasure.

Please publish all the commemorative events you know in the comments section below, and join me for the weekly Roundup of the Caribbean News.