By *Jomo Thomas
Nothing short of high praise should be showered on Drs Adrian Fraser, Cleve Scott and Garrey Michael Dennie for their dedicated scholarship found within the covers of the first in a projected three-volume definitive history of our Yurumein, the nation despoiled by former European enslavers and colonialists, rechristened St. Vincent and the Grenadines after conquest.
SVG is an intellectual wasteland, but this text, titled St. Vincent and the Grenadines: A General History to the Year 2025, will go a long way toward rousing all who read it from their slumber. The first volume, which tells our people’s story, flies under the banner of Native Peoples, Genocide and African Enslavement in St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Circa BP 5000 to 1838, was launched Friday night at the UWI Global Campus at 6 p.m.
Volume 2, expected sometime before year’s end, will cover our people’s struggle for humanisation to 1935, the year ordinary working-class Vincentians rose in righteous indignation to protest colonial neglect and higher taxes.
This authentic history of Yurumein is beyond doubt the single most patriotic act performed by nationals since political independence was attained in October 1979. In this modern era, when consciousness seems to be waning, the publication of volume 1 of our people’s history is a metaphoric shot in the arm for a nation struggling to find itself and locate its place in the world.
The authors set out to offer a more accurate representation of the past, and they delivered. This text is not an account of weak and meek Arawaks and warlike “Caribs”. From the outset, the reader is told that the book intends to “decolonise consciousness”. Where the British colonisers and enslavers saw “savages”, our ancestors are represented as proud and brave defenders of our nation’s sovereignty.
If there’s any lingering doubts as to who we are, Fraser, Scott and Dennie declared in the prelude that, “St. Vincent and the Grenadines is a small English-speaking multi-island
post-colonial Caribbean state. This small state has loomed large on the international stage in the arts, sports, sciences, and international diplomacy. Nationals of St Vincent and the Grenadines are well-talented, possessing skills and a creative imagination that have allowed them to be very competitive in the international arena.”
In recent times, the issue of reparations has been on the lips of academics, politicians and ordinary folks alike. The decision by CARICOM in 2013 to pursue the issue and to demand recompense for European savagery against indigenous and enslaved peoples finds intellectual support in this work.
We learn that our people were upright beings with a structured and organised way of life. We had a developed culture and were adept at sea and on land. Like first peoples from across the Global South, our fatal flaw might have been our tendency to be too welcoming to foreigners.
For this welcoming spirit and generosity, we paid mightily. But not without a fight. We learn that our nation had its earliest inhabitants, people who came from “down south” from the Orinoco river valley and settled here.
The arrival of Africans and their intermingling with Kalinagos resulted in a predominantly Garifuna nation that fiercely defended our patrimony against foreign interlopers. The book speaks to the first and second Garifuna wars, the leadership role and importance of Paramount Chief Joseph Chatoyer, the conquest of our nation following Chatoyer’s assassination in 1795 and the imposition of a brutal colonial slave system across our land.
Our people were no cowards. We developed the craft of war and resistance to a very high standard and were early practitioners of guerrilla warfare. Here’s proof, as recorded around 1700 by a colonial:
“They will cover themselves with leaves and branches from head to foot or hide behind a balisier leaf, only making a small hole in it for their eyes. Concealed in this manner, they wait on the side of a road hidden by trees and bushes for their enemies. When their enemies walk past, they jump out behind them and club or shoot them with their arrows. As soon as they have done this, they throw themselves flat on the ground and wriggle under bushes, where they hide themselves like hares in a thicket.”
The reader discovers in these pages that slavery was not only imposed, but it was devastating for the enslaved. And so, the authors bring to life the horror of daily existence. It tells the story of the heroic feat of Nelly Ebou, the enslaved woman forced to work on the plantation in Mayreau. Fed up with the harsh conditions of slavery and the abuse by the owners and overseers, she plotted with other slave women and killed the plantation boss. She was captured and hanged. Nelly Ebou gave her life for all of us, and we can do no less than honour her as the first female hero of our nation.
The text delves deep into the story of Ashton Warner, who wrote of life on the Penniston Plantation. Warner’s story has long been known and told, but it takes on new life through the historical lens of Fraser, Scott, and Dennie. As they retell the enslavement story, the authors conclude that, “every square inch of our country was a crime scene of genocide, robbery, murder, rape, disenfranchisement and exploitation”.
Readers who question the reparations demand for genocide, slavery and colonialism come away with a better understanding of the strength of the case against European enslavers. They have a case to answer for the continued underdevelopment of our country.
Fraser, Scott and Dennie lend support to what some of us already knew. The earliest inhabitants of our nation were fiercely committed to the trans-generational struggle legitimised by the sacrifices of their forebears, whether through moral support or fiercely engaging in battle…
Enslaved Africans were equal to the task of fighting to preserve life and the quest for their ultimate freedom. “The resolve demonstrated by the enslaved was remarkable. In St Vincent and the Grenadines, as elsewhere in the Caribbean, they never conceded defeat and continued to show that, if the end of chattel slavery did not come from above, it would come from below.”
This text is not for the mantlepiece. As Dr Henerson Carter, dean, Faculty of Humanities and Education at UWI, said on Voices last Monday, the book needs to be widely read, placed on the curriculum for students reading for CXC, CSEC, and Cape, and made available in libraries in SVG and across the region.
*Jomo Sanga Thomas is a lawyer, journalist, social commentator and a former Speaker of the House of Assembly in St. Vincent and the Grenadines.
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In my humble opinion, the entire Lesser Antilles should come together as one nation. Right now, this every-man-for-himself approach is playing right into the hands of divide and rule. Uniting would allow these small islands to secure a stronger position in the world.