The Origins of Evil

Before the legalisation of the slave trade ‘pirates’ indulged in it. At first they bartered, but soon the European ‘traders’ wanted more in return for their weapons – human slaves. African tribes had a stark choice enslave or be enslaved. Without the ‘sophisticated’ weapons tribal leaders knew other tribes would do the deal that meant slavery for them.

The institution had changed. Slavery to Europeans was far more brutal. Their slaves were not ‘servants’ they were human commodities to be used and abused as their ‘masters’ saw fit. So while Africans were ‘complicit’ what choice did they have?

Visiting the castles (Cape Coast and Elmina) is sobering. Being in the cells even for minutes or seconds is uncomfortable. Imagine being there for days, weeks or months, in rank disease-infested conditions – no exercise or sunlight, and then add the sadistic cruelty to it. It’s horrendous just thinking about it. But Ghanaians can visit these historic sites free. They tend not to. Many wait outside looking to exploit visitors rather than learn their own history.

And that extends to the River Assin Fosu?

Cleansed

Never heard of it? It is the place the captured slaves, marched from the north of the country or even nearby countries have their last bath before entering the slave fortresses of Elmina or Cape Coast Castles, or the forts that pock-mark Ghana’a Atlantic coastline. The precise number of victims of this inhuman trade will never be known.

I took friends to Assin Fosu. Rather than pay a paltry amount for admission – I paid the taxi fare all the way there and to Accra – they preferred to wait outside and save themselves a few Cedis on top of the fares I had already saved them. Sadly this attitude is typical. Another wanted to be paid for his time to learn his own history. It typifies the problems.

Testament of Cruelty

The hypocrisy is nauseating. Westerners object to reparations. How odd they say nothing of an uncomfortable fact. Compensation has been paid for slavery on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean, but never to the slaves or their descendants. Compensation or reparations for slavery has only been paid to former slave-owners. They and their descendants, including former British Prime Minister David Cameron benefited from it yet have the chutzpah to oppose reparations for the descendants of victims of one of the worst crimes against humanity ever.

The pirates were soon out of the equation as the slave trade became official. Colonialists and their minions took over and that led to the castles becoming holding point gaols. But after the trade was outlawed the pirates returned. Occasionally British ships enforced the abolition of the trade. Excavations showed what had happened in these castles, a lasting testament to man’s cruelty to man.

The African Malaise

Africans don’t know their history – worse they don’t want to. During the WAFU Cup of Nations I was in an area steeped in history. I visited places that should be seen and believed, and then talked about. Elmina Castle overlooked the place I was staying in. As usual I was subjected to the aggressive and annoying sales pitch outside.

One wanted me to sponsor his football team, and said, ‘But I gave you the shell”, when I refused. I was annoyed, as a few metres away I met a man who had played professionally at the expense of his health, and in the nearby hotel was coaching staff of Ghana Premier League team, the Elmina Sharks. He had never even talked to them, let alone tried to work with them. Instead he hassled foreigners to support him. He wasn’t alone. Even professional players not only wanted help, they expect you to pay to do it. He at least showed some interest in his history.

I am not black in African terms – no problem – but they have a colour definition that defies logic and decency. Anyone not as black as them is seen as white, and therefore fair game for their aggressive, annoying, and actually offensive sales pitch for unwanted products. One artist in Cape Cost tried to sell his wares at the Castle. He demanded his ‘friendship’ shell back because I saw no reason to support him. No problem I didn’t want the shell, or his false friendship.
He even demanded that I spend dollars needed for other things on his unwanted art. I actually wanted specific art that I did buy from others later – that will be auctioned at forthcoming book launches for the Fitted-In Project. The sales pitch cost him, but is typical of attitudes there. Strangely, given the location, there was nothing reflecting the tragic history of that place.

In the shadow of this arrogance and ignorance is unspeakable horrors. Africans were brutalised as they were softened up for the horrors of transportation. Many died in the rank and disease-infested cells. Women who refused to give sexual favours to perverted and sadistic guards and Governors were brutally punished until they ‘consented’. Several of those who survived and passed through the Door of No Return died on the voyage to the Americas or Europe. Their bodies were cast into the ocean or seas to be devoured.

Unspeakable

This unspeakable Holocaust – bestial genocide – began in Ghana. Slavery in Africa pre-dates the trans-Atlantic trade, but it was a different institution, more like servitude than what we understand slavery to be. Captured warriors were enslaved. They had less rights – they were low in the pecking order, but had not fallen as far as chattel slavery would push them. It was no picnic, but these ‘slaves’ had ‘rights’, limited certainly, but a long way from what slavery would become.

Were Africans complicit in the slave trade? Yes they were, but it is more complex than that. African slavery changed when Europeans came. It is taught here that Trans-Atlantic slavery came from a very unlikely source, Bartolomé de las Casas – remember that name, it’s very important.

De las Casas became one of the most important voices against the brutality of slavery. He was not always so humane. In Ghana it is taught that de las Casas recommended enslaving Africans because Native Americans were susceptible to illnesses brought by Europeans and unsuited for the bestial rigours of the demands of European thugs,a andthis was the beginning of Elmina Castle for that purpose from 1492, but the dates don’t tally. At that time de las Casas was not even ten years old! It does tally with Colombus and his crimes though. It wasn’t just Francisco Pizarro González and his ilk, it was the so-called discoverer of the Americas, Christopher Colombus. De las Casas once owned Native American slaves, but he later turned against it and exposed the crimes against those people. That was in the 1520s, and these were Spanish crimes, not Portuguese.

De las Casas began his evolution as a willing participant in what he later considered terrible crimes. In 1502 he arrived in what is now Haiti and the Dominican Republic. The Spanish adopted slavery by conquest, but it was a more brutal model. Many were worked to death. De las Casas turned against it but gradually and in contradictory fashion.

Inadvertently, he provided the argument that developed into the racist system of slavery. Africans were sturdier and better suited to hard work than Native Americans. They were therefore better suited to be hard-working slaves. The idea was adopted and demand grew. The utterly bestial trade thrived, but Ghanaians say that the Spanish did more buying than transporting.

De las Casas’ views evolved. He came to oppose all slavery, but his racist ideas were adopted by others and used to justify the racist trade long after he rejected it.

Never Get Weary

One of the first records I ever bought, ‘Knockout’ by Toots and the Maytals includes what became one of my favourite songs ‘Never Get Weary’. The record was a bargain – I still have it over 30 years later. The lyrics, poignant for this article can be read here

https://play.google.com/music/preview/Tsia3dmsywwe2p6k5iwgo5zqq3mlyrics=1&utm_source=google&utm_medium=search&utm_campaign=lyrics&pcampaignid=kp-lyrics

or better still heard at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R62Sk6sBBRA but his message is far from all that has been neglected in talking about slavery.

The Americas were not discovered by Colombus, but in Ghana his crimes, utterly bestial ones, are not part of the narrative as they should be. De las Casas renounced his previous views and spent the rest of his life trying to enlighten and end the bestial treatment of the Native Americans. Meanwhile, Colombus enriched himself and facilitated unprecedented brutality and greed.

In Ghana, even the guides at Elmina Castle and Cape Coast Castle were unaware that de las Casas became an implacable opponent of slavery and is one of the most important sources on the brutality of Colombus. So why is de las Casas so important? The timing.

The Europeans coveted Africa long before the Great Scramble of the late 19th Century. Back in the 15th Century the Portuguese developed Elmina Castle for its nefarious purpose. This was the beginning of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade – well the ‘legal’ one.

It’s not all they are unaware of. At Elmina Castle, Cape Coast Castle and Assin Fosu they knew little of a pivotal event in the abolition of the slave trade, and one of the movement’s greatest but neglected figures, the Haitian Revolution and the country’s first great President, Alexandre Pétion.

A Free Hand

Baron William Grenville, succeeded William Pitt the Younger as Prime Minister in 1806. Four years earlier he played an important in securing a temporary peace with Napoléon Bonaparte’s France- the Treaty of Amiens. While some condemn Grenville over it, the Treaty of Amiens allowed Britain to rebuild after the disastrous Haiti campaign and a war that showed few signs of ending favourably.

Amiens allowed Napoléon to put his resources and efforts into regaining Saint-Domingue. Both the British and Americans were secretly informed of Napoléon’s plans and approved them at least by inaction.

Betrayed

The USA in particular benefited from Revolutionary Saint-Domingue as it provided a useful trading partner and outlet for them, but despite the contribution of Haitian Revolutionaries to US independence – the Savannah Monument acknowledges this, as the drummer-boy in the Monument is Henri Christophe, who had escaped slavery to assist – and after Toussaint Louverture became the Governor, the revolutionaries restored the economy to two-thirds of its pre-Revolution state.

Toussaint’s government provided an important trading outlet for the Americans. But there was a huge contradiction in the amerce approach. They needed an alternative trading partner, or they would be dependent on Britain or France, and Saint-Domingue was geographically more convenient too, but the US economy needed and depended on slavery.

Their War of Independence consciously chose to retain slavery. Haiti’s chose to abolish it, and that offered an example the Americans feared greatly. It speaks volumes that Britain, very recently at war with Napoléon’s France, was prepared to allow the French dictator a free hand in his efforts to restore slavery.

Given the constant battles and destructive effect they had on the country, that is remarkable. It was however, achieved with a harsh agrarian-based economy.

Scorched Earth

Napoléon had underestimated Haitians’ desire to be free. Toussaint and the Haitian revolutionaries had a potent weapon. A decade before General Winter demolished Napoléon’s plans to conquer Russia, the Haitian revolutionaries used their local weapon too. It is no coincidence that they ended hostilities with the French at the time of year they did – exactly when Yellow Fever started to bite. Instead of fighting the French, the Revolutionaries settled a few scores and left the French to do the same.

Just as Britain was beaten by a combination of guerrilla warfare and Yellow Fever, Bonaparte proved that his arrogance knew no bounds. He made the same mistake and suffered the same fate.

Toussaint was fortunate I that he had a ‘liberal’ master who allowed him to learn to read and write. He was later influenced by French Enlightenment philosophers like Jean-Jacques Rousseau. The French Revolutionaries who overthrew Louis XVI did not abolish slavery and eventually withdrew the limited rights that it gave to free Mulattos and blacks – this contributed to Saint-Domingue’s Revolution.

Toussaint was on the moderate side of the Revolution in Saint-Domingue. He did not want independence and saw no need for it. He trusted the French to act honourably, but he had miscalculated. There were hidden agendas. Louverture was arrested in May 1802 by Jean-Baptiste Brunet. It breached the agreement between Napoléon’s representative in Saint-Domingue, Charles Leclerc and Toussaint. The trigger for Louverture’s arrest was a letter to Leclerc, denouncing him for not ordering a rebel leader to lay down is arms, as was required by the ceasefire agreement – the author of that letter was Jean-Jacques Dessalines.

It gave the pretext needed. Louverture later claimed that following bad behaviour by his troops, he sought a meeting with Brunet and was arrested at it – Brunet absented himself, but Toussaint’s arrest and subsequent treatment was planned.

Years later – a prisoner himself – Napoléon was confronted over his dishonourable treatment of Toussaint. He didn’t see why he should be bothered about the treatment of ‘one wretched Negro’. Toussaint was deported to France arriving on July 2nd 1802. He was imprisoned in the mountain jail Fort-de-Joux from August 25th. He was starved in the cold, dying on April 7th 1803 from the neglect he suffered.

Louverture learned too late that Leclerc and Brunet had an agenda to execute – reversing the gains of the Revolution Louverture had led for over a decade. Prophetically, he told his captors that his comrades would not repeat his mistake. “In overthrowing me you have cut down in Saint Domingue only the trunk of the tree of liberty”, Louverture said. “It will spring up again from the roots, for they are numerous and they are deep”.

The French intentions were demonstrated clearly, as not only was Louverture deported, but Mulatto leader André Rigaud too. Rigaud was imprisoned in the same jail. It became clear later that year that the French intended to restore slavery in Saint-Domingue – they did that in Guadeloupe on July 16th 1802, just two weeks after Louverture was deported. The threat of that in Saint-Domingue was the final straw for the Revolutionaries, black and Mulatto. Pétion and Dessalines met secretly and switched sides in October 1803. The following month under Dessalines’ leadership they attacked the fort of Vertières – the final battle of the Haitian Revolution.

Boukman

Men of Colour (Mulatto) leaders, Vincent Ogé and Jean-Baptiste Chavannes, had been martyred in February 1791, but rather than crush expectations of equality and political rights, it united blacks and Mulattos. Seething resentment festered in both. It took just six months to boil over, but it came from a thoroughly unexpected source.

‘Dutty’ Boukman – his real name is lost to history in favour of this derogatory name that loosely means ‘Dirty Muslim’ – was a Voodoo Priest and slave. His origins are unclear – some claiming that he was a Muslim, Jamaican, or Maroon who was sold by his British owner in Jamaica to a Frenchman in Haiti – a frequently used measure for ‘hard to manage’ slaves. Others say his origins were in Haiti, pointing to others with the name Bouqueman – hardly conclusive proof.

The Revolution Begins

However, it matters not – his importance came in his actions in Haiti. On August 14th 1791 Boukman officiated at a Voodoo ceremony at Bois Caïman – that makes it most unlikely that he was a Muslim. Slaves aired their grievances, sacrifice was made and the Haitian Revolution against slavery began. But important though Boukman was to the revolution, he was not alone in issuing the call to revolt for freedom.

Cécile Fatiman – a Mulatto slave as was her mother – also played a leading role in the ceremony and in stoking the anti-slavery flames. She organised and presided over the ceremony with Boukman. Her role is often forgotten or minimised. It should not be. Her role was equally important. She is the Mother of the Haitian Revolution, as Boukman was its Father, and ultimately she was a far more successful leader than Boukman.

Contradictions

Fatiman illustrates the hypocrisy of Ogé’s position – it wasn’t even equality for Mulattos. It was equality for freed Mulattos. Where would that leave Mulatto slaves like Fatiman? The contradiction required the Revolution to resolve, and a leader of the quality and integrity of Alexandre Pétion. Unlike Ogé, Pétion, despite his privilege and support of Mulatto rights, would not support slavery.

Pétion had fought against the revolutionaries twice, but his fight was for Mulattos, not to restore slavery. He would prove this later, as he deserted Napoléon Bonaparte’s invasion force, taking his followers over to the side of the Revolution, and later funding and supporting anti-slavery and independence movements. Pétion became a giant of liberation movements.

With the ceremony at Bois Caïman the revolution against slavery that would lead to the first independent black nation in the modern world had begun.

The Baton is Passed

Boukman’s leadership didn’t last long. In November 1791 he was captured and beheaded. His head was displayed to cow resistance, but the revolution had begun and would continue without Boukman. Toussaint Breda was an educated slave, but he was not subject to the savage regime that ultimately bred its own destruction. He was an unlikely leader, but proved to be a gifted one.

The Haitian regime was brutal. It consumed the lives of slaves quickly – Haiti was incredibly productive, but that depended on squeezing every drop from the slaves. It devoured them, requiring constant replacements. This is an important issue. It explains British hypocrisy over slavery – The Great Betrayal will be published soon. He joined the revolution and became its leader, but Toussaint would eventually be devoured by the revolution, as it outgrew his limits. Cécile Fatiman, meanwhile, would live a long life – over a hundred years – and she would become Haiti’s First Lady, due to her marriage to the Mulatto General of the Revolution Jean-Louis Michel Pierrot, who became Haiti’s 7th President in 1845. It was a short Presidency, but Fatiman had established herself as one of Haiti’s greatest children.