Sugar in the Blood (35 page)

So Burkes for them was home, just as it was for the Ashbys. And just like the dwellers in the great house, the slaves could appreciate the beauty of the plantation and of their island. They too enjoyed the sunrises that ushered in the day with such abruptness, and the glorious molten sunsets that signalled its end. They could watch the turquoise sea in all its varying humours, and enjoy the lulling sound of the waves as they crashed against the cliffs. They were accustomed to the ubiquitous noises of plantation life: the songs and groans of the slaves at their toil, the clangs and rumbles of the factory’s machinery, the perpetual song of the wind whistling through the canes. And at night, they too
were lulled to sleep by the melody of the Caribbean night: that wondrous chorus of tree frogs, cicadas and other insects. Yet they could never forget that alongside the beauty, there was the ugly reality of their enslavement. Burkes was also a place of humiliating squalor, onerous toil, terrible restriction and unpredictable violence; it was both familiar and threatening, a home and a prison.

By the second decade of the nineteenth century, when John Stephen grew into manhood, the tensions between these two communities had grown even more acute, as the slaves’ dreams of freedom inched ever closer to becoming reality. The abolitionist movement had profoundly altered the opinions of people across the colonies. For the first time since the inception of Atlantic slavery, the West Indian proprietors had to justify both their ideas about race and their treatment of their charges. To their slaves’ delight, the planters were now on the defensive. When the campaigner William Wilberforce was scheduled to visit a plantation, one absentee planter pleaded with his overseers “
not to let a slave be corrected in his presence,” in the hope that Wilberforce would leave the island “possessed with favourable impressions.” Elsewhere, an estate manager noted that the abolitionist movement had “led the slaves to assume an air of self-importance not known or expressed among them in former times.”

Even though the planters were far away from the machinations of the abolitionists in Britain, they were aware of the progress of their campaign. Friends in the West India lobby reported back from the metropolis, while news of the abolitionists’ latest actions were minutely recorded in the local papers. They were aware that the figure of the West Indian planter was now widely criticized and ridiculed. Cartoonists like James Gillray had earlier satirized them as bloated, red-faced drunkards who tortured their slaves. The islanders felt that they were being disavowed and dismissed by the populace of Great Britain, who were increasingly aligning themselves with the values of compassion and decency that were claimed by the abolitionists. The planters of course passionately rejected the idea that they were somehow a different sort of white person than those in England, but the charge stuck. It was felt particularly acutely in Barbados because its white citizens had
long been seen and had portrayed themselves as the empire’s most loyal subjects, as evidenced by the self-description of the island as “Little England,” which gained currency in this period.

I can have no doubt about the position of my ancestor, Robert Cooper Ashby. In an interview many years later, he admitted that for most of his life he regarded William Wilberforce as “the devil.” So it is almost inevitable that, like many of his contemporaries, Robert Cooper fervently wished that the abolitionists would be eradicated from the face of the earth and things could return to “normal.” No doubt he would have agreed with the Martinican planter Pierre Desalles, who believed the abolitionists’ entire agenda was pernicious: “
To make the negro think about all these ideas for improvement is to expose the colonies to the most baneful disorders.” He added that “to touch the internal system designed to regulate the work and discipline of individual plantations is to promote revolt and compromise the livelihood of the whites.” To improve conditions on one plantation but not on another, he continued, “will say to the negroes of the latter, ‘Go and obtain by force what your masters will not give us voluntarily.’ ”

After the abolition of the slave trade in 1807 the disquiet among the slave population only intensified. Their hostility to their masters manifested itself in numerous ways, from insolence and escape to open rebellion. During a House of Assembly debate on 10 December 1810, it was noted that “the abolitionist activities of Mr. Wilberforce” had provoked “the increase of arrogance and vice among the slaves.” This refractory mood prompted the government into serious discussions about the state of the internal defence system and the effects that it produced among the slaves. Robert Haynes, a planter-assemblyman, warned that there was “
something brewing up in their minds,” and it was decided to tighten police control on the island.

The slaves had two options when it came to pursuing their freedom. They could press for further ameliorative measures or they could organize armed revolt. The more moderate choice was quashed in 1811–12 when the Barbadian planters once again rejected requests by the free people of colour for further civil rights. In the face of such intransigence, many slaves felt the only option was to take direct action. This feeling was exacerbated by the Slave Registration bill that had recently been proposed, which was designed to prevent illegal slave trading by
keeping track of every slave on each individual plantation. The planters believed that it would diminish the value of their property and destabilize the region. When the bill was passed, John Pinney wrote: “
I consider my property reduced in value upwards of 50,000 pounds, and all this by Wilberforce!” The jubilant slaves saw the passing of the bill as a prelude to complete emancipation and became ever more restless and unmanageable. As the historian Hilary Beckles concluded: “
Ideologically, the colony was in deepening crisis, and it was within this context of diminishing planter hegemony that slaves organized for their overthrow by violent means.”

THE TINDERBOX THAT
was Barbadian slave society exploded on 14 April 1816, when half the island went up in flames. Curiously, it had been a prosperous year. The Barbadian House of Assembly later commented that it “
was remarkable for having yielded the most abundant returns with which Providence had ever rewarded the labours of the Inhabitants of this Island.” This was particularly true of the parish of St. Philip, which was the flashpoint of the revolt, where a plentiful harvest meant that bellies were full. The slaves therefore rebelled not because they were in material distress but because they desired a different social order.

The rebellion that one army officer evocatively described as “a hell-broth” was led by a slave known as Bussa. Today a statue widely believed to be a model of him is sited on one of the island’s most prominent roundabouts. Positioned like a triumphant boxer, the figure stands cast in bronze, his face turned to the skies, clenched fist raised at right angles to his head, with broken shackles dangling from his wrists.

In 1816, Bussa was chief ranger on the Bayleys plantation in St. Philip. Later to be dubbed “General” by his followers, he was probably somewhere between thirty and forty years old and was an African-born slave. This was significant, since “saltwater” slaves, with their memories of a free life, were traditionally regarded as the most refractory and prone to revolt. It is likely that he was a member of the Bussa nation
(hence his nickname), a faction of the powerful Mande people, who had spread over much of West Africa during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries as conquerors and traders in gold and kola nuts. Their commercial and political prominence emerged particularly in the context of their dealings with the Portuguese at Elmina, the infamous slave fort. If Bussa was by inclination rebellious, he also had more prosaic reasons to resist his enslavement. The plantation on which he laboured had recently changed hands and its relaxed, liberal owner Joseph Bayley had been replaced by a new manager, Mr. Thomas, a hard man who had a reputation as a “
severe disciplinarian.”

Bussa had been plotting the uprising for over a year, along with a number of co-conspirators, who were also elite slaves. Among them was Jackey, a head driver at Simmons plantation; Johnny the Cooper, who also worked at Bayleys, and a free man of colour called Joseph Franklyn. One of the most radical of the plotters was a woman called Nanny Grigg, who called for armed struggle long before her male counterparts were ready to take that extreme step. As skilled slaves, their privileged positions meant that while they had less material need to rebel, they were the kind of people who found the indignities of enslavement most difficult to bear. As John Vaughan, a manager of the Codrington plantation, acknowledged long before the rebellion: “[It]
is those slaves who are our chiefest favourites and such that we put most confidence in that are generally the first and greatest conspirators.”

Their special status meant that this coterie of slaves was allowed to travel and thus plot unnoticed, while their superior standing in the slave community gave their opinions great credence. In a sophisticated propaganda campaign that fed on the hopes that had been raised by the abolitionist movement in England, they spread the idea that the British government had actually granted slaves their freedom and that local planters were resisting this development. It was the slaves’ patriotic duty, they argued, to rebel and implement the will of His Majesty’s Parliament. As the island’s House of Assembly concluded later, the “
insurrection was entirely owing to these hopes, so originating and so fostered, and that the slaves were led to attempt by force that which they mainly expected as an original gift from England.”

The conspirators’ overall objective was to overthrow the planter class and free all black Barbadians from slavery. The plan was to unfold
over successive days. The first evening would begin with a surprise attack when rebels would emerge from the thick vegetation and set fire to the canes and plantations. That night the whites, watching their investment burn, were to cry “Water!” The next night armed combat would begin and the planters were to cry “Blood!” Each of the plantations involved had its own leader, who had worked out battle plans with those above them. They used a series of messengers to communicate with the high command as and when they needed advice on how to proceed. The final evening of planning took place under the cover of a dance at River plantation on Good Friday, 12 April. It was decided that if victory were achieved, Joseph Franklyn would be appointed as governor of the island.

The timing of the rebellion was carefully chosen. The rebels hoped that the Easter celebrations would distract the white community and make them more vulnerable to assault. It was also the height of the harvest, so the mature sugar canes would provide good cover for both their ambushes and their flight, while the burning of the canes would mean that the planters would lose their most valuable asset. Finally the choice of Easter had great symbolic value for the slaves: according to their understanding of Christianity, it was the start of a “new life,” so it seemed an unusually auspicious time to launch their final emancipation. All in all it was not a bad plan. But the slaves had an Achilles heel: their inability to get access to arms. It was to be their downfall.

The outbreak of arson that precipitated the rebellion began in St. Philip at around 8:30 p.m. on 14 April. From there it spread throughout the adjacent parishes, including Christ Church, where Burkes plantation was situated. Robert Cooper and his slaves would have watched as fire swept across the cane fields in the distance, section by section. All around them was the noise of the crackling and burning cane, the sound swelling and growing as the conflagration spread from the produce fields to the pastures. As the flames moved nearer to Burkes the sky began to rain cane ash and the night air was ripe with the cloying smell of scorched sugar.

The rumours spread as swiftly as the flames. Was this just an accident, a “burn” that had got out of hand, or a real rebellion, the first on the island for over a hundred years? At first the colonists were reluctant to believe anything was wrong: there were whispers of revolts all the
time but none in living memory had ever come to anything. And it seemed barely credible that the slaves could hope to resist the combination of local militia and the British troops stationed on the island. But the gravity of the situation became clear when a rider galloped up to the plantation to fetch Robert Cooper for militia duty: a revolt was indeed occurring. In an interview many years later Robert Cooper recalled that night. Forced to leave the plantation hurriedly, he realized en route that the plantation’s “float”—worth about U.S. $5,000—had been left unguarded. The only thing he could do was to send the slave who had accompanied him back to the plantation to take care of it. It was the dilemma that confronted virtually every Caribbean planter: his slaves may have been his enemies but they were also often the only people on whom he could rely.

Burkes’ slave community was also in an invidious position. It is likely that many of them were sympathetic to the rebels but the reality was that in over two centuries of Atlantic slavery only one rebellion—that in Haiti—had been unequivocally successful. Thus to become actively involved, or even to be known to passively support the conspirators, was in effect a death sentence. The slaves feared for their own lives but also for family and friends. Most of them also had some material investment in the slave system, be it a small stash of money, a plot of land or even just a change of clothes, that they wished to protect and retain. They knew that if they got involved in the revolution they would almost inevitably lose everything. Slaves like John Stephen who were the offspring of white men felt particularly vulnerable: if the insurgency was successful would they be penalized for their parentage?