Sugar in the Blood (37 page)

The yearly returns “of Robert Cooper Ashby of Slaves, his own property,” as submitted to the authorities of the parish of Christ Church, divide the information into seven columns. The first, entitled “Causes of Increase or Decrease,” is clearly optional as Robert Cooper did not bother to fill it in, preferring to note deaths, births and manumissions at the end of each return. The following column is “Sex,” then “Name,” “Age,” “Colour,” “Country” (whether the slave was born in Africa or Barbados) and finally “Employment,” which notes whether the slave worked as a domestic or a labourer. The names on the returns include
the double-barrelled, traditionally English designations that Robert Cooper preferred for his own offspring such as “Robert Henry” or “William Thomas,” as well as whimsical ones such as “Juddy Christmas” or “Mimba Rose.” The register also reflects the fashions of the day: the classical craze that resulted in “Scipio” or “Roman”; and names that commemorated English culture and history such as “Hamlet,” “Prince William” or “Nelson.”

It was here on the 1817 return, three-quarters of the way down its opening page, that I found the first mention of my great-great-great-grandfather, John Stephen. The first sight of his name took my breath away: “John Stephen,” aged “14,” “coloured,” “Barbadian”-born, “Labourer.” With each successive year I watched his age climb, wondering how he was faring and trying to imagine how he felt. I know that the group of people listed on this return alongside him represented his closest community, and that some of the names must denote his best friends and worst enemies. These returns were one of the only ways to track my ancestor, a typical fate for a man who was a slave for the first half of his life: it was almost impossible to find a trace of him that didn’t list him as a piece of property.

Burkes was at its most extensive sixteen years later, when John Stephen was thirty years of age. The returns for that year provide a fascinating snapshot of life on a plantation, its social make-up and its day-to-day running. By this time, its land comprised 330 acres and its slave population had swollen to 223. Around a quarter of its slave population was either too young (below the age of twelve) or too old (sixty and above) to do intensive labour. Of the working population, of around 163 slaves, around twenty-three were domestics. (This represented around 14 per cent, which is a relatively modest percentage in comparison with many plantation households.) Only three of these domestics were male, so the great house was a very feminine environment—and, considering what we know of Robert Cooper’s sexual peccadilloes, this probably made for a somewhat charged atmosphere.

Nine babies had been born that year, and two slaves had died. Women outnumbered men slightly on the plantation, many of them working in the fields. Only seven slaves were African-born, which represents around 3 per cent of the plantation’s population; so the vast majority of Burkes’ enslaved population were born and bred on the island and
would have described themselves patriotically as neither African nor Creole but “true Barbadian.” They were also “true Burkeans” too, as many of them had spent all their lives on Robert Cooper’s plantation.

Twenty-two of the slaves at Burkes were described as “coloured,” which represents just under 10 per cent of its total slave population. Of these, more than half are linked to Robert Cooper Ashby directly, either as mistresses or offspring. The rest, we can assume, are the children of other white men working on the plantation, such as overseers and bookkeepers.

Given the size of Robert Cooper’s holdings, the Ashbys were now one of only 120 families who dominated the island’s political, financial and military institutions. Reflecting this social and economic prominence, Robert Cooper had also been appointed a colonial magistrate. This local official, often referred to as a justice of the peace or simply “judge,” was not a professional lawmaker but usually a religious, social or political leader who had a good reputation in the parish. He dealt mostly with petty cases that arose in the local area, covering local, criminal, civil, domestic and juvenile matters. He was empowered, without consulting either a jury or lawyers, to sentence those he convicted of robbery, vandalism or breaches of the peace, to fines, flogging or imprisonment. The longer terms were usually served in the “cage,” that infamous building in the centre of Bridgetown through whose slatted bars passers-by could observe the prisoners in their squalor and suffering.

But Robert Cooper’s role extended beyond the strictly legal. Like other successful planters in the slave colonies, he was expected to be one of the arbiters of local stability and order—that is, to ensure that the conventions and customs of slave society were respected and enforced. Slaves from other plantations could come to him if they had problems with their masters: for example, if a slave had run away, they might approach Robert Cooper and ask him to beg for leniency on their behalf. He would also be expected to intervene between other landowners who, in this materialist and touchy society, were perpetually in conflict over property, slaves and politics.

During these years Robert Cooper was most frequently in the news as a result of his military activities. In
The Barbadian
newspaper in
March 1827 a notice was placed that read: “A court martial to be held at Town Hall on 14 inst. At 8 o’clock for trial of prisoners.” Presiding over the event were “Colonel Thomas Pierrepont of Life Guards, President; Lt. Col. William Oxley of Royal Regt.; Lt. Robert Cooper Ashby of Christ Church Battalion.” A few years later, in a list of the militia published on 8 March 1831, he had progressed further up the ranks and “Colonel Robert C. Ashby” is listed as the most senior member of the Christ Church militia, in command of twenty-seven men, including a lieutenant colonel, a major, and numerous captains, as well as a surgeon and a quartermaster. In his capacity as one of the most senior members of the parish militia he had numerous official duties, from military matters to the opening of new buildings.

Robert Cooper’s dominance of the Vestry, the organization that controlled local affairs, made him one of the most powerful men in the parish. For much of the first half of the nineteenth century, his elegant autograph is at the top of the list of signatures that ratified its documents. It was an elected appointment voted for by existing members, and he would hold it almost continuously for around thirty years. At its regular meeting the Vestry handled matters as varied as repairing the highways and regulating local hucksters, as well as dispensing funds for the burial of indigents. It levied funds from the local planters, who had to contribute 20 pence per acre for “
fees for the relief of the poor and other parish charges.” In addition to these more routine matters, the Vestry also responded to local emergencies such as hurricanes, earthquakes and war. One of Robert Cooper’s most significant achievements as a vestryman was his involvement in launching Foundation School. Established in 1809 for the poor children of the parish, the school had been financed at least in part by subscription, that is, from funds raised by wealthy local contributors.

It had taken five generations, but the Ashby family had finally managed to elevate themselves from the bottom of this society to near the top. As a result of good luck, hard graft and more than a splash of ruthlessness, Robert Cooper Ashby was now firmly ensconced in the island’s plantocracy. Appropriately, it was during these years that he commissioned the single surviving portrait of himself. It was a common if extravagant gesture among the island’s social elite: a way to capture themselves at the peak of their wealth and prestige. His decision to pose
in his colonel’s uniform was unusual. It is a good indication of how important his military status was to his self-image, and reveals how he wished others to view him.

Looking at his portrait, I see a man of immense authority, discipline and self-assurance; but I am also struck by his cold, rather flinty eyes and the uncompromising quality of his stare. If one can draw any conclusions about what kind of man he was from this picture, it seems reasonable to conclude that Robert Cooper had been hardened by his many years as a planter. Although he probably would not have realized it, the most corrupting aspect of his life was the twenty-something years he had spent at Burkes holding sway over his slaves. Worse than the demise of his father and brothers, worse even than revolution and the perpetual alarums of living in this period, was the soul-corroding effect of absolute power. This despotic position, with its terrible temptations and its inevitable spiritual degradation, as well as the loneliness that this power carried with it, had made Robert Cooper the man he was.

His role as planter allowed—demanded—that he deny the humanity of the black people around him, that he participate in a culture of breathtaking cruelty, that he abuse women and children and justify that abuse as the will of God and his privilege as a gentleman. It endorsed rape, torture and the separation of mothers from children.

Of course, Robert Cooper did not think of himself as a bad man. He believed that he was doing what was necessary to keep order in his society and maintain the social order designed by God. In a clear illustration of the banality of evil, he played his part as willing helper to one of history’s great genocides in complacent denial that he was doing anything other than his duty or exercising his rights.

While Robert Cooper was consolidating his fortunes, however, doctrines he considered dangerous were growing in influence. (Inevitably his slave offspring found them thrilling.) As was so often the way, when the official abolitionist movement was dormant, the grass-roots anti-slavery movement continued to flourish. And the Haitian torch continued to light a series of new fires, this time in Spanish America.

Just before the Bussa Rebellion in 1816, the Venezuelan military and political commander Simón Bolívar had approached the president of
the Republic of Haiti, Alexandre Pétion, for help in his struggle to free the Spanish territories of South America from the Spanish Empire. Pétion agreed to help Bolívar on condition he freed the slaves in any land he liberated. Bolívar enthusiastically agreed; not only was he profoundly anti-slavery, but the move would provide him with a much larger pool of potential followers and warriors. The force he gathered in Haiti landed in Venezuela in 1817, and he went on to take the city of Angostura and then Venezuela itself. In subsequent years, Bolívar, internationally known as El Libertador (The Liberator), managed to unshackle other Spanish colonies including Colombia, Panama and Ecuador. His escapades as he swept across South America entranced the world, both free and enslaved. And multitudes were attracted to his cause, including thousands of Britons, among them Lord Cochrane, the naval officer and radical politician who had shot to fame during the sea battles against Napoleon.

Though Bolívar’s dream of establishing an American-style federation of these newly independent republics didn’t ultimately come to fruition, he was nonetheless successful in achieving independence for them and freeing many slaves in the process. In addition to his military victories, he established and forged political institutions for a new organization for all of Hispanic America. By the time of his premature death from tuberculosis nine years later, the new states of Spanish America, with the curious exception of Paraguay, possessed more advanced anti-slavery legislation than any in the remaining European New World.

The success of the South American republics in doing away with the institution of slavery in turn inspired the British abolition movement to get back in the fray. In this reinvigorated movement women were the undisputed leaders. As one prominent male activist later acknowledged:

In a slew of pamphlets, articles and lectures these women dismissed “gradualism,” the idea that the conditions of slavery should slowly be ameliorated instead of abolished. Instead, they made explicit the links between the sufferings of the slave and the consumption of sugar and called for the nation to once again stop purchasing it. “
By buying sugar we participate in the crime,” one female activist declared. “The laws of our country may hold the sugar-cane to our lips, steeped in the blood of our fellow creatures; but they cannot compel us to drink the loathsome potion.”

And then in 1823 another rebellion broke out in the British West Indies. This time it was in the British colony of Demerara, part of what is now called Guyana, where slaves had been emboldened by rumours that the British Parliament had directed the colonial powers to improve their conditions. Confronted by a crowd of slaves armed with pikes, machetes and fowling hooks, the governor asked them what they wanted, and they replied succinctly: “Our rights.” The governor refused, and the plantations were soon ablaze. As always, the retaliation was much more terrible than the rebellion. More than a hundred slaves were killed in the conflict and many were brutally flogged or executed immediately after.

As well as all these external problems, these were difficult years personally for Robert Cooper. In 1821 John Burke, his only legitimate child and heir, died. One assumes that this was a source of profound grief for Robert Cooper, even if, as family lore has intimated, John Burke was a sickly young man whose end had been anticipated. It also had practical implications: traditionally Burkes would have gone to his son, but now Robert Cooper would have to rethink his legacy.

Then in 1824, the Ashby family was embroiled in a murderous scandal that captivated the entire island. It was a drama that would prove profoundly revelatory about the nature of a slave society, exposing its illogic and inhumanity and the terrible price that all its members paid—even the white ones—to sustain it. In that year Robert Cooper’s cousin, Susanna, was murdered and her husband, Michael D’Egville, was charged with the crime. D’Egville was the son of the ballet master
at London’s Royal Opera House, and his family had achieved great celebrity in fashionable circles in the metropolis as dance teachers. He had arrived in Barbados in 1794 with the ambition to open an academy of dance on the island. It proved successful and he eventually made enough money to settle down and marry Susanna Ashby.