A perhaps less widely known aspect of the Black Lives Matter movement - arising in the USA - is their call for reparations for slavery, formulated as such in 2020. This was an actual concrete, tangible - and centralized - advise and guideline aimed at the US government.
One might say that it got drowned in the recent upsurge of attention for the movement, as worldwide protests were organized against racism in, mainly, the form of police violence. This became the main focus, also of the Black Lives Matter movement following George Floyd's death. That movement was essentially decentralized in character, and therefore uncoordinated, but some centralized aspects, including repatriation proposals became part of it, as said in 2020.
Of course, this is not a new theme: reparations for trans-Atlantic slavery of Africans and their decendants, knowing several national variants. The Rastafari movement in Jamaica proposed it in 2004, having calculated a sum of 129 billion dollars to be paid to African descendants in Jamaica, especially by Britain, with as more specific goals also financing with it the resettlement of 500.000 (Jamaican) Rastafarians in Africa.
This 2004 initiative was a shared initiative by all six Rastafari "houses" (sub-organizations) in Jamaica.
DEBATES AND RECOGNITION
Since then it remained an ongoing debate in Jamaica and the United Kingdom.
Yet not just there. I used to work in a scholarly library, with a large Caribbean collection in university town Leiden,in the Netherlands. Mostly, though not exclusively, focussed on former Dutch colonies in the broader Caribbean region (Suriname, Netherlands Antilles). Less known is that also what is now Guyana was for a period a Dutch colony, later taken over by Britain.
The institute was historically focussed, and was largely aimed at, historian scholars, as well as Caribbeanist (other social science) scholars. Of course, many books in the collection dealt with the history of slavery in the Caribbean (Dutch colonies or not). I worked with these books, having catalogized and described many. I even made summaries of them.
Personally, I learned a lot from all this historical knowledge about slavery and colonialism - naturally -, but I recall also from that period that the institute (KITLV) got involved in public debates about slavery, recognition of the Netherlands' slavery past, and also reparations. The particular institute - for more information, see http://www.kitlv.nl - was seen by many Afro-Surinamese activists and commentators as too White and conservative. Understandable, since it was old, and founded when slavery was actually still going on in former Dutch colony Suriname (1840s).
Historians working at the institute, including those I eventually worked under, claimed they were professional and ethical, just neutral "researchers", without public political stances on the issues they study.
This is hard to ensure, however. Corruption, biased choices,and conflicts of interests, slipped in there too, though maybe not as intensive as in the medical and health sciences, now almost under a pharmaceutical hold.
More relevant for this specific post, I remember from the debates the arguments put forth in favour or against reparations by these scientists and scholars in the Dutch context. As elsewhere the predictable argument: the descendants or directly affected are no longer alive, was used as argument against Dutch reparations for slavery.
I recall also how excuses for the Dutch slavery past also became a debate issue, as during my time there, the "slavery monument" in Amsterdam's Oosterpark was unveiled, a ceremony involving speeches, and surrounded by wider media attention. This was in 2002, and on 1 July, the date when slavery was formally abolished in Dutch colonies in 1863 (1 August, 1834/38 in British colonies).
Unfortunately, this whole ceremony was tainted, as for the "official" part only official delegates, including the Queen of the Netherlands, were admitted, while the rest of the audience and public were barred off, including many actual Surinamese and other descendants of slaves. This led to some tensions. Still a nice gesture and monument (by the meanwhile deceased artist Erwin de Vries), but it started off somewhat tense, let's say..
Anyway, I found out in that period that words by (the Netherlands') heads of state, and prime-ministers were chosen carefully for legal reasons. "Excuses" for the Dutch slavery past were never given as such, but rather "recognition" of the "regrettable" period ("spijtbetuiging" in Dutch) was the farthest politicians went. Anything closer to formal excuses would open the legal door for, well, reparations. The same - no "formal" apologies by politicians - applied to other European countries (Britain, France a.o.).
Again, this shows that the reparations for slavery are "under debate" and problematic in several countries. The 2004 proposal by the Rastafari movement (and others) in Jamaica for the mentioned sum of 129 billion dollars for African-Jamaicans, and resettlement of Jamaican Rastafari-adherents in Africa, also never materialized.
Also in the Netherlands, some proposals have been made, to no avail.
The same applies to colonies of other countries involved in the slave trade and slavery, like France, the already mentioned USA, Portugal,and other countries.
I think it will be of little use to describe here all those separate, international "initiatives by organizations and spokespersons for reparations for slavery" in detail (these can be found elsewhere), but I find it more interesting to - upon acknowledging their existence (and recent reappraisal as part of the internationalized Black Lives Matter) - to reflect upon whether this reparations claim is sensible.
Personally, I consider myself part of the Rastafari movement. I am also in favour of reparations, but after careful deliberation. I once joked with an acquiantance when discussing this theme informally that "I'm a Rastaman so I have to be in favour of those reparations for slavery". That was simplified, and I knew it, but still not totally untrue. A serious joke. Not only in light of the already mentioned 2004 proposal by the Jamaican Rastafari movement, but also seeing the history and origins of the Rastafari movement.
MARCUS GARVEY
The main prophet of the Rastafari movement, Marcus Mosiah Garvey, founded an organization called the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA). Most of his thinking, organizing and activities were aimed at just that: improvement of the position of African and Black people worldwide. Not just culturally and mentally, but including material and political aspects.
The difference with some reparations proponents elsewhere, and especially later, was his focus of liberating the African continent from colonial rule. Naming himself the provisional president of Africa, Garvey even tried during his lifetime to negotiate with European powers on an equal level to take control over parts of Africa, such as those abandoned by the Germans after losing World War I. Respectably ambitious, but as could be predicted, he and his envoys were ignored by European delegates, wanting to keep colonial control over Africa. Former German colonies in Africa went mostly to Britain, France, and Belgium.
This points at some wider problems with this reparations for slavery demand: unequal power structures in this world. The historical trajectory is crucial to consider too. When Britain and France started to abolish slavery in the 1830s and 1840s they already started to colonize most of the African continent. Africans thus remained dependent on Europe on a global scale.
COLONIZING AFRICA
The cynical truth was thus, that people with origins in Africa saw since then their original homeland and motherland being taking over by the same Europeans once enslaving them. The ambition and dream of repatriating to the motherland, certainly lived on and was cultivated in the African diaspora in the West - to differing degrees -, and Marcus Garvey worked that out most. The Rastafari movement kept and keeps that vision going, and Emperor of Ethiopia Haile Selassie - another important person for Rastafari-adherents - set some land apart for Rastafari wanting to repatriate to Africa, specifically Shasamane in central Ethiopia, in the 1960s.
African Americans also repatriated over time in part to Liberia and Sierra Leone, taking even the role of elite over indigenous ethnic groups, while also - more haphazardly - a number of Afro-Brazilians and Afro-Cubans (of Yoruba descent) were able to repatriate to countries like Nigeria, though more "blending in".
IN FAVOUR OF REPARATIONS
Arguments in favour of reparations seem in reality quite obvious to me. Slaves could not save money to give on to next generations (unlike free white, European settlers in colonies). This caused a severe and lasting economic disadvantage among Black people in the West, continuing in the present.
European countries and the US without a doubt benefitted strongly from slavery gains. This has been documented enough.
A distinction must be made maybe between the ways it enriched European countries: creating wealthy families as concentrated wealth (Spain, Portugal), or more long-term and effectively "invested" in industry (Britain, Netherlands, France).. In fact the Industrial Revolution in Britain had a worldwide impact and was largely funded by colonial and slave trade and slavery gains of the British in the Caribbean. Birmingham in England was the world's first "industrial city" as such, largely financed by colonial and slavery profits. This is not even very known widely, world wide, I think. Trinidadian scholar (and later politician) Eric Eustace Williams studied this history for his 1980 work 'Capitalism and slavery'.
In Spain, only in more industrialized Catalonia a similar industry-stimulating effect took place, as relatively many (wealthy, industrialist) Catalans invested in slavery in the Spanish Caribbean (especially Cuba) as slavery increased in Cuba in the mid-19th c., for a period. Catalonia is still one of the most wealthy and industrialized parts of Spain. The same "blood money" ended up in earlier stages more in mainly luxury spending and palaces in Portugal and Spain by early colonizers that went with Columbus, and probably even as sudden wealth of early English pirates/enslavers as John Hawkins. Eventually, though, it stimulated the wealth and economic prosperity in several European countries.
It is okay to focus on and "shame" certain banks and other companies in Western countries that were once involved in slavery, but the economic effects were much broader for Europe and the US. More and more the actual slave-owners and their families and descendants are also known, and it is even recorded well now how much and which slaves they owned. Some inhabit now - ironically - the same European cities (London, Amsterdam, Paris, Lisbon, Barcelona) as descendants of these very slaves.
The long-term, cross-generational effects of the trans-Atlantic slave trade are thus evident, and the argument that " the slaves are no longer alive" thus invalid.
MONEY AND POWER
Unfortunately, in this world we live in, you need money and power to get things done. Power and money mutually enforce each other. Also, political craftiness and privileged positions play a role. Japan and Germany up to recently are still paying reparations to several (citizens of) European and Asian countries, for the damage and deaths during World War II. Germany also paid reparations to Jews, and others affected and (decsendants of those) killed by the Nazi regime.
In light of the interrelation between trans-Atlantic slavery, European colonialism, and European dominance over Africa for so long, I think a global approach to these reparations is needed, more than in national cases of reparations (former national dictatorships or human rights abuses), or even wars between some nations.
The degrading and dehumanization of Africans has been global and worldwide for over 500 years now, pepetrated mainly by Europeans, but also Arabs, and and in the wider Islamic world. This resulted over time in an unequal power relation, and much higher poverty rates of African(-descended) people, and a disadvantage of both Africa as continent and the African Diaspora vis-a-vis Europe. History teaches us that this is no coincidence.
This inequality needs "repairing" both culturally/mentally, and materially. Garvey's focus on Africa has not become the mainstream of the Black Power movement, time has shown. The Nation of Islam chose to focus on (sepatration from Whites within) the USA, and became over time much more influential than Garveyism, or its offshoot the Rastafari movement. Other movements, including the Black Lives Matter one, are also mostly locally, nationally oriented.
BLACK
Even the normalized term "Black" for African-descended people shows that. I have mixed feelings about that term Black as replacement of African (originated), especially since the cultural connection got somewhat ignored in it, due to a lost connection - largely - with the African origins. Furthermore, it simply does not seem terribly intelligent to name a people or supposed culture after something visual and superficial.
Very relevant with all this, is that Africa has moreover never become a superpower (like now China, US, EU, and Russia) the world has to consider as equal and respect, as Marcus Garvey once envisioned and worked for. In the present, certainly not. Instead Black people in the African Diaspora try to integrate for better and worse in White-dominated countries.
I know, the culturally genocidal loss of languages and last names of Africans that came with trans-Atlantic slavery, makes that these Africans are not so much to blame for this, and make an integration and equality aim in "white man countries" to a degree understandable. Unlike Chinese in e.g. California they learn no languages of their motherland at home with their parents, and neither know their original families surnames. Unlike other migrants, even semi-forced ones like contract labourers, the Africans transported to the Americas, after all even lost their family names, and their languages. These African-descended people instead grew up with (partly Africanized variants of) European languages, some (mixed) retentions of African cultures, and formalized European slave names (Johnson, Williams, Condé, De Souza, Ferrer, Ronde, Seedorf, etcetera, etcetera).
This still shows the global power inequality Africa as continent, and its children, continue to suffer in the present.
With this massive, structural global inequality, reparations are therefore needed all the more, but also, and with a sad irony, harder to achieve.
As Jamaican music became international over time, for obvious reasons Great Britain became the first hub of this internationalization, especially with regards to Europe.
True, “Bredda Bob” (Marley) and his popularity ended up doing a lot for Reggae’s international, worldwide spread since the mid-1970s. Jamaican music, however, came at least a decade before that, the 1960s, already to parts of Britain with Jamaican migrants to Britain, including also Reggae’s musical 1960s precursors Ska and Rocksteady.
It did however not remain a cultural heritage closed to outsiders: it influenced and reached British popular culture and White Britons, especially youth movements, already in the later 1960s.
Not unlike how earlier Black culture of the Jazz age in the US became seen as a “cool” model to follow for some hip White people, or how Rock & Roll followed out of African American Rhythm & Blues, Black culture became cool and “hip” among some young, white subgroups in parts of Britain: first Jazz and R&B, later Caribbean music, like Ska.
TROJAN RECORDS
In all this, the Trojan record label had a crucial role. I recently read a book about this British label – founded in 1968 - focussed on Reggae, with the title ‘Young, Gifted, and Black : the story of Trojan Records’ (Omnibus Press, 2018), after the UK hit of Bob (Andy) and Marcia (Griffiths) of that title (cover of a Nina Simone song). This song reached number 5 in the UK national chart, in 1970. This book was written by Michael de Koningh & Laurence Cane-Honeysett.
The book itself was readable and interesting, if somewhat chaotic and lacking of direction and structure. I have been used to scholarly works, with sometimes “too much direction and structure”, but the other extreme proved here neither to be very nice and stimulating to read. The timeframe is followed, a structure somehow there, but further many details are given, specific anecdotes told, about how the label started , people involved etcetera.. I often thought, however: “why is this told?”.. I did not think: “who cares?”: - that would be too harsh -, but did find difficulty sometimes to fit stories and facts in the book in the wider whole.
Overall, however, the book did give an interesting view on Jamaican music’s early spread in Britain.
Trojan was actually in its origins and finance connected to Chris Blackwell’s Island record label, and likewise White (and Indian) people were in charge in Trojan records too, using the talents of Black Jamaican people for selling records. Definitely skewed, of course, but common.
Lyrically strongly Rastafari-influenced Roots Reggae arose in Jamaica especially after 1972, and this book deals with also the period before that: earlier Jamaican Ska and Rocksteady or Reggae since the 1960s, with mostly love and party – sometimes social - lyrics, but with a Jamaican touch.
EARLY REGGAE
Early Reggae, arising around 1968, was relatively faster than later Reggae, and even often faster when compared to earlier Rocksteady. It had a certain energy, of course connected to new dances. Songs by Toots & The Maytals like Pressure Drop, Reggae Got Soul, or Do The Reggae are examples of Early Reggae, if Gospel-influenced. Other Early Reggae, such as by the Ethiopians, showed other, rural/folk (Mento) influences, but Early Reggae had a specific organ shuffle, higher-notes bass lines, and semi-fast rhythmic structures, among its recurring elements.
This Early Reggae seemed to be a specialty of Trojan Records, managing to release Ska, Rocksteady, and Early Reggae songs that became hits in Britain, and not just among Jamaican migrants there, by the likes of Prince Buster, Laurel Aitken, Ken Boothe, Dandy Livingstone, Desmond Dekker, the already mentioned Toots & the Maytals, the Pioneers, Lee Perry’s Upsetters, and some other artists. Most of these were Jamaican, but some of them settled in Britain.
As a “Reggae scene” is more than just fans of a genre, it should also include own artists, and those soon arose too, but not at first: mostly Jamaicans recorded songs for Trojan records to sell and produce.
To reach the White market, the original Jamaican sound needed to be adapted to European and British tastes. The addition of strings, also to Bob & Marcia’s Young Gifted And Black, being an example of this. This consisted of an Europeanization, apparently, although violins were known in some Jamaican folk music . Further adaptations were also made at Trojan Records in order to reach different groups, and widen the market.
Some of the public groups Trojan was aimed at, consisted of new youth movements among White Britons, fads or fashions – or scenes -, such as the Mods in the 1950s and 1960s, and the Skinheads after them. The Mods were fashion-conscious, semi-intellectual and hip Jazz, R&B, and other Black music lovers (including Ska), but with expensive tastes.
The latter explaining perhaps the rise of another youth movement a bit later in Britain, since the late 1960s, partly an offshoot of those “Mods”, but more labour class: the “Skinheads”. These had often a preference for Jamaican and other Black music, including Ska, Rocksteady, and Early Reggae.
SKINHEAD REGGAE
This even gave rise to a subcategory within Reggae, some recognize and some not, known as “Skinhead Reggae”. Some authors – “Reggae historians” - just describe it as Early, faster Reggae lyrically aimed at skinheads. Some describe it musically as a phase between Rocksteady and Early Reggae. I myself still don’t know quite how to define it, although I know some examples of songs popular with Skinheads (Toots & the Maytals’ Pressure Drop, or the Ethiopians’ super-catchy What A Fire, for instance).
The connection to Jamaican music stayed a while among these skinheads, but the increased influence of Rastafari and Black nationalism on reggae and its messages after 1972, created a distancing of most white skinheads from what would be Roots Reggae. The song Selassie, by the Upsetters/Reggae boys, was one of the few songs musically in the Skinhead Reggae vein, but lyrically about Rastafari, that was popular among the skinheads. Another one was Laurel Aitken’s Haile Selassie.
Yet, as Rastafari-influenced Roots Reggae began to arise and dominate Jamaican music, a part of the skinheads lost interest.
Trojan records did not bet on this one horse, however, and sought like other companies to broaden its market, for more monetary gain, during the following decades , including Roots-focussed compilation albums, that however always maintained one foot in the preceding Early Reggae phase.
I know some of these compilations, such as A Place Called Africa, with songs about the African motherland, showing how even artists once popular with skinheads (like Desmond Dekker), lyrically could still be conscious and true to themselves, while also including songs of Roots icons (Dennis Brown, Junior Byles, Sugar Minott) Trojan also released..
EARLY INTERNATIONALIZATION
In reality, this was the earliest phase of Jamaican music’s internationalization. Jamaican migrants sometimes mingled with White Britons in some youth scenes: there were even Black skinheads, such as in bigger cities like London and Birmingham. This influenced the tastes of some white British youth. This would remain in later scenes in the 1970s and 1980s, such as the Punk movement, with bands like the Clash clearly borrowing from Reggae.
One moral problem, though, is that the Skinhead movement later got in a bad light, as Extreme Right and White Nationalists groups co-opted it partly, making many skinheads synonymous with anti-foreigner stances in Britain. This was not movement-wide, but did cause mistrust. The hooliganism from early on by some violent skinheads neither did help. There seem to have been, though, many non-racist skinheads, with just their own cultural interests and labour-class affiliations, some in to Black music, like Reggae. Perhaps predictably: some would become Punks.
The skinhead-aimed reggae hits released by Trojan, became British hits, at least in clubs or underground, and on occasion reached the national charts. Some reached outside Britain to become small hits in countries like the Netherlands, Belgium, or Germany, but not often.
Reggae’s much wider internationalization, of course came with Marley’s rising popularity during the 1970s, spreading reggae throughout the world, far beyond just Britain or even the US. It also put Jamaica on the map, outside of Britain.
Jamaica, a small island that the British captured in the 17th century, soon became a plantation-driven island, with the use of imported enslaved Africans, making today that over 90% of Jamaicans are of mostly sub-Saharan African descent. Jamaica remained a British colony until the 1962 independence, but ties remained, also due to migrations.
Racism in Britain was rife, and the arrival of West Indian migrants in the 1950s to a “White Man Country” like Britain, caused some hostility, even violence, against new Black residents.
The interesting thing about someone like Linton Kwesi Johnson is that this is a theme in his lyrics: the acceptance of Black people in British society over time, persisting, subtle or less-subtle racism and discrimination etcetera. Songs like Inglan Is A Bitch, It Noh Funny, and several others relate this.
CONCLUSION
This early popularity of Jamaican music on which Trojan records partly capitalized with 1960s and 1970s hits, among multiracial groups, even going to multiracial clubs, must of course not be idealized as “one big racial harmony”. Rather, it can be seen as a hopeful sign of people coming together through culture and music, beyond race, in an otherwise racist, pro-White British society that it was.
That many White skinheads or other more trendy Reggae fans lost interest with rising Rastafari influence is less positive, though.
Rastafari is after all a Jamaican cultural and spiritual movement, focused on Africa, related to Black people’s own history and identity. As Reggae it is a part of Jamaican culture.
A pity that the open mind seemed not so open for an own expression and culture, other than their own. Maybe some more White people would have learned early on this way about the history of slavery, or larger history, but such lyrics distracted them apparently from their want of dynamic “pumping” Reggae grooves in line with their white skinhead lifestyle. A bit in the same disrespectful vein as those men joking about their women, saying: “I like to have sex with her, but she likes to talk too much about her problems..”.
Some white Reggae fans in Britain may have indeed opened their mind with Reggae lyrics, even in this early wave, or perhaps even through having Black friends.
A later stage of Reggae’s internationalization, the 1970s, with Bob Marley’s and other Roots Reggae artists’ fame (Dennis Brown, Culture, a.o.) was in another cultural context (hippy movement and social criticism), while some anti-authority lyrics in Reggae - in fact quite common – appealed to some in the following, 1980s Punk movement, with their own purposes and interpretations, but hey.. Late 1970s Roots Reggae songs, like Junior Murvin’s Police and Thieves, and Culture’s Two Sevens Clash were hits among Black Britons, but also among many Punks.
Reggae never “sold out”, due to the “honesty” of Rastafari-influenced and socially critical lyrics. Even Bob Marley, while commercially promoted by Island Records, kept true to these lyrics and messages against oppression of Black people.
Musically, Chris Blackwell cum suis, made some adaptations to the Wailers’ original Jamaican Reggae sound, to suit supposed “White tastes”, of Rock fans, this time.
At Trojan records, this occurred too, as the book ‘Young, Gifted, and Black’ relates. This included adding of strings in Britain to early, “rougher”, Reggae songs, while the changes by Island and Blackwell to Bob’s sound are also known and by now well-documented. I wrote about this on this blog too. Not much use, therefore, repeating it all here..
In short, production, mixing, and adding of instruments to suit White tastes occurred. The added instruments were now not strings or violins. In fact, I do not know of any Bob Marley song with violins. I think some electric guitar solos were added with a White (“Rock”) audience in mind, though there are also “quality” solos between them (like on the song Heathen), irrespective of the race it is aimed at.
All this helped Reggae to crossover, and eventually (by the late 1970s), once “crossed over” to other races and cultures, it became respected also by many White fans “on its own terms”, listening to the lyrics, and many White people started to consider themselves Rastafari, even though it essentially started as Black Power movement. Many even respectful, and not for fashion-sake, with proper knowledge to back it up.
This scepsis about “White Rastas” is all-too understandable, as White people throughout history more than once “copied to take over” what is not theirs. Yet, if respectful and sincere, it is another sign of hope of people coming together, joining as one, irrespective of racial or other background, against injustice. The surrounding British society is in the present (2010s) a bit more democratic and multicultural, but still in many ways racist, and pro-White (Britons). The whole Brexit issue showed that too.
The period on which the book , ‘Young, Gifted, and Black’ centers, the 1960s and 1970s, was in that sense harsher, though young White and Black Britons hesitantly came together in clubs, became friends, through music.
This was still exceptional, as it was also common that the first mixed-raced (black-white) couples in British streets in the 1960s were insulted, and often even chased or even beaten up by White men and youths. The demeaning entry signs on many pubs and other locales throughout Britain, “No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs”, have really existed, and were no invention, as some said. Historical photos have been taken and films shot of these discriminatory texts at entrances.
In such a context, this early reach of reggae of white markets, by Trojan Records, can be deemed as remarkable and innovative.
This quite recent (2018) work: ‘Young, Gifted, and Black : the story of Trojan Records’ gives some of these social glimpses and insights, but is overall more for the practical mind, than for the sociologically or scholarly interested. Many facts or events are described in business terms, how to gain profit, reach markets, business plans, legal rights, managerial choices.. Even music and the songs themselves get relatively little attention, and all the more whether it sold.
Their choice, but I personally do not find that interesting or pleasant reading material. I am more interested in culture than in business, more in humanity and life than in money.
The book is well-documented, on the other hand, including for a large part comprehensive lists of all Trojan releases, possibly of interest to record collectors.
The 1st of August is known as Emancipation Day in former British (Caribbean and American) colonies. This refers to the fact that slavery was officially abolished by Britain, more or less, on that date in 1834. It is therefore celebrated as a national holiday in several British colonies, such as in the Caribbean. In reality, at first only slaves below the age of 6 were freed on the 1st of August 1834; enslaved workers older than that were still required to work for their masters (40 hours a week, with no pay), by law up to 1838, when “full emancipation” was finally achieved. These enslaved workers in British Caribbean colonies were mostly Africans, or Caribbean-born Africans.
Of course, other colonizers (France, Netherlands, Spain, Portugal etc.) had other dates and years for this abolition. Britain was one of the earliest colonizing states to abolish slavery, and even prides itself with that in hindsight. In that sense it seemed more progressive than other nations in Europe.
It is not a s simple as that, though. Not many may know that during the French Revolution, in 1794, slavery was already abolished in French colonies, yet this was restored again under Napoleon in 1802.
Moreover, one of those French colonies in the Caribbean, Haiti, managed to abolish slavery itself in 1804, during the Haitian Revolution. Enslaved Haitians did not wait for a “benevolent” European state, but fought for their rights to be free themselves. Likewise, the seeming benevolence and sudden humanitarianism of Britain abolishing slavery in 1834 was viewed skeptically, and not without reason.
ERIC WILLIAMS
The many slave rebellions in several British colonies, such as Jamaica, along with changed economic conditions in Britain, simply made slavery overall no longer profitable enough for Britain by 1834. Trinidadian scholar Eric Eustace Williams even argues in his 1944 work ‘Capitalism and slavery’, that slavery helped finance the Industrial Revolution in Britain, thus having served its function, one might say.
Williams’ line of reasoning is thus that Britain’s abolition of slavery had more economic than humanitarian reasons, for the “powers that be”: it enabled the British Industrial Revolution. This in turn placed Britain in an economically prominent position within Europe and the Western world, as the first industrializing nation, later followed by other parts of Europe, of course, some later than others, some only partly. This first industrialization in the world – in Britain - had thus global economic impact, financed by the blood, sweat, and tears – and many deaths – of enslaved Africans.
In this post I will focus on slavery in British history, compared to slavery in other parts of the world. Precisely because Britain boasts about a relatively early abolition, and because of its contribution to the Industrial Revolution in England. What set slavery in the British Empire apart from those of other colonizing nations around that time, and from slavery throughout history in various civilizations? Comparing (historical) slavery systems is quite common even in academic circles, and can be – I argue – quite educational.
NARDIA THOMAS
An interesting book I read, besides the mentioned book by Eric Eustace Williams, in this regard is also ‘The intellectual roots of slavery in the British West Indies: slavery in the British West Indies: a study of the intellectual roots, from the Late Classical period to AD 1850”, by Nardia Thomas. She is also a Trinidadian scholar, like Eric Williams. This book is however quite recent, being published in 2010.
Thomas discusses slavery throughout history, pointing at common elements making human beings vulnerable to enslavement. She mentions specifically the crucial roles of the concept of the “cultural other” - a conquered or captured “outsider” - being more vulnerable to become slave in a certain society, and the concept of “alienation”. The latter term also includes people expelled within their own society. That “cultural other” can refer to another culture, geographical area, race, or religion, often several aspects at once. The accents differ throughout time period, though.
“Race” might in the beginning not be the only factor triggering enslavement of “others” – though still a factor - , but in time race became a quite dominant one, as also being of another religion – or infidels -, such as with the conquests of the Islam: non-Muslims were allowed to be enslaved, and were so in large numbers, especially Africans, pointing at a combination with racial and cultural motives. The same applied to Christianity, of course. All this was framed also within economic motivations, as applied to both Arab enslavers, as soon after Christian colonizers like Portugal and Spain, claiming hypocritically to “convert” or “save” the heathen, by enslaving them.
Nardia Thomas in her book departs from a broad, global approach, discussing also historical slavery in Ancient Greece and the Roman Empire, within India and Hinduism, intertwined within the unequal caste system, and further also discussed forms of slavery known historically in China and Africa. Thomas’s work is in that sense more or less comparative. Along those ”comparative” lines I continue with this post, but with my own accents.
These own accents relate to my own interests in culture and music, definitely also within the African Diaspora, as I discuss regularly within my – this – blog. I am a Reggae fan, am interested in Rastafari, and in related musical genres and movements. I am also a percussionist, and percussion has a strong African and Afro-American influence. Africa is known as the most “percussive continent”.
DIFFERENCES
What differentiated the slavery systems between European and other powers, and how has this impacted upon social and cultural developments? I might have touched aspects of this topic partly in previous posts on this blog. I compared – for instance – the enslaved Africans in Jamaica and Cuba with regard to maintenance of African culture. There were similarities in cultural deracination and destruction, but also differences: such as somewhat greater possibilities in Cuba to maintain original African cultures (Yoruba, Congo etcetera) within own organizations among (free and enlaved) Africans, called “cabildos” in Cuba.
This way musical traditions could be maintained, more and more directly than in Jamaica or other British colonies, where even a total ban on “drumming” for Africans was for a long time upheld. In Spanish and Portuguese colonies, and to a degree also in French ones, enslaved Africans were often under conditions allowed to play the drums, and other limited degrees of cultural expressions. There were occasional also bans on drumming – or strong discouragement – in Spanish colonies, like Cuba, too, by the way, but less total.
Why this difference? The Protestant emphasis on both rigidity and sobriety of British colonizers – versus Catholic flexibility of Spanish or French colonizers - is often cited as explanation, and this might well be partly true. It seems plausible to me as partial explanation, though it could have combined with other reasons (role in communication rebellious messages by these drums among slaves in British colonies, for instance).
SPAIN AND PORTUGAL
Christopher Columbus, born in Genoa (later part of Italy), and having become a Portuguese citizen later, started ironically the colonial history of Spain by pleading with its new monarchs (Ferdinand and Isabella, who combined their kingdoms Aragón and Castile) to finance his trips to what would be known as ‘the Americas’, in 1492. The disaster then began. The arrival of Spaniards and other Europeans had genocidal effects in parts of the Americas on the Amerindian population.
Already around 1505 a first shipment of enslaved Africans went to Santo Domingo (Hispaniola). These first Black slaves were then, however, living in Spain. With the aid of the Portuguese, who had gained more grounds in the African continent and already experience with enslaving and trading in Africans, however, Spain could in time also import Africans directly from Africa as slaves for its American colonies.
SYSTEMATIC PLANTATION SLAVERY
Britain and other European nations followed with this dehumanizing practice of transporting enslaved Africans to the Americas not long after that. Countries like Britain and the Netherlands even modernized and intensified this slavery and slave trade, when compared to Portuguese and Spanish slavery systems. Modernizations by the Dutch in Brazil (1630-1654), further influenced in part those followed by the British in Barbados, became models for a more intensive – and more productive - “plantation slavery” in the Caribbean and Americas.
Simply said: (the Dutch and) British made slavery more efficient and could therefore transport more enslaved Africans in less time when compared to the Spanish, by the 18th c. This made plantations and the sugar industry more profitable in British and Dutch colonies, than in Spanish colonies, where Africans had more varied roles. Some historians describe the difference as such: Cuba was mostly a “colony with slaves”, while Jamaica, Haiti, St Lucia, Barbados, and other colonies, were rather “slave colonies”.
A cynical modernization, as it resulted in the enslavement of more (millions of) Africans, under harsher work conditions, even worse than the earlier enslavement under the Spanish and Portuguese. It increased the dehumanization, as with this plantation slavery, slaves became treated like “animals” and “things” (with no rights), with even less regard for their lives than under the Spanish. Enslaved Africans in the Caribbean, especially on sugar plantations, generally died young, at an average of within 8 years after arrival from Africa (as was the case in Jamaica). The dehumanization was of course there also with the earlier Portuguese and Spanish slave trade and slavery, but this increased it.
In tandem with this dehumanization, the racialization of slavery also became the norm in American colonies. The cynical fact in most colonies was: if you were Black/African, you are supposed to be slave, unless you were freed, or could buy your freedom. In some colonies, the possibilities of becoming free, were bigger than in others. French St Domingue – later Haiti - had, especially in urban areas, at one point quite some free Africans living, as also Cuban cities like Havana, alongside enslaved populations. This made racial relations a bit more flexible in these “Latin” colonies. The lesser and later focus on plantation slavery in Cuba, and a larger white population, also attributed to social and cultural differences with British Caribbean colonies, like Jamaica.
AFRICAN ORIGINS
When Spain began its colonial adventure, it did not have much access to the African continent. Its neighbour Portugal already had, though, having established trade relations in various parts of Africa, including in what is now the areas of Guinea, in Congo, Angola, and Cameroon. It was setting up several trading posts in Angola. The Spanish therefore at first depended on those Portuguese, when they brought enslaved Africans to the West.
The Dutch, French, and British (and even Danes, Brandenburg Germans, and Swedes) were more assertive, and established trading posts along the African coasts, when they also engaged in colonialism and slave trade. These were set up in various parts, partly in areas where the Portuguese were less present, but also close to them. Ghana is one such place where the North Europeans could establish posts, explaining why many slaves from the Ghana area ended up in British and Dutch colonies. The Dutch also had a trading post in what is now Angola, however.
It is too simple to conclude, therefore, that the different European colonizers obtained their slaves from different parts of Africa. All these European colonizers obtained slaves where they could, in various parts of Africa, often collaborating temporarily with other nations. Spain – still with relatively limited access to Africa – worked for its slave trade mostly with Asientos – trade contracts – with British, Dutch, and Portuguese slavers. These latter had more of a maritime tradition and industry than Spain. Britain could get and transport the enslaved Africans with their own ships, while the Spanish were mostly dependent for the shipping on other nations, also because it had not many African territories and footholds, unlike Portugal, Britain, France etcetera.
This is historically significant, as it formed the basis for the later colonies of Portugal, France, and Britain in the African continent, in fact consisting of most of the continent , while Spain at the end only had one small colony in sub-Saharan Africa, namely Equatorial Guinea. It contributed to the current fact – perhaps ironic – that in this day and age most “Francophone” speakers live in Africa, even more than in France and Eastern Canada combined. Studying this is educational, as it shows how industrialization, slave trade, and colonialism in Africa all interrelate.
SPAIN
Spain never industrialized as much as Britain, only much later and mainly in certain regions (Catalonia and the Basque country). The “blood money” that Spain obtained from its colonialism and slavery, just like Britain and the Netherlands had, therefore fed less into a burgeoning industry benefiting the whole Spanish economy, unlike in Britain. It mostly stayed within a few elite families. Only when more systematic plantation slavery had increased in Cuba (later than in British colonies), in the 19th c., its gains went into an industry in Spain, notably in the Barcelona and Catalonia area, where an industry by then had developed.
Many Catalans also invested in the African slave trade and slavery, despite it not bordering the Atlantic. Quite some Catalans (and Basques) migrated to Cuba then, and there were well-known affluent slave owners among them. A large slave owner in Cuba, Julián Zulueta, was a Basque from Northern Spain. Today, many Afro-Cubans therefore have that formal surname (Zulueta), having been owned by that family. I also met some Black Cubans with that surname, when I was in Cuba, as well as with Catalan surnames (and of course also other Spanish surnames).
The Bacardí family was Catalan (later active in the sugar-derived rum industry), and there were also other several Catalan slave owners. Present-day surnames by Afro-Cubans of Catalan origins, like Ferrer, Más, Formell, etcetera, remind of this.
Unfortunately for those who sympathize more with Catalans than with the Spanish, in relation to the recent Catalan independence demands, also what is now Catalonia profited from Spain’s colonial and slavery pasts, even if the first Spanish colonization started from ports like Seville, belonging to Castile (now Andalusia). Studies show several Barcelonese and Catalan elite, industrial families were involved in the slave trade from Africa to the Caribbean, as well as in Caribbean plantations, up to the later 19th c..
An interesting fact in this regard: the pro-independence Catalonian politician Artur Más – a precursor in this sense to Carles Puigdemont – had among his forefathers Catalans involved in the African slave trade. I can only hope that he does not consider this something to be proud of.
In summary, the British made the slave trade and plantation slavery more efficient and used its gains more effectively economically and strategically than the Spanish, toward industrialization. When Spain lost its final colonies in the Americas, by 1900, Spain therefore soon impoverished again, certainly when compared to Britain or Northern Europe.
DUBIOUS CLAIM
This also makes the claim that Britain was more “humanitarian” in abolishing slavery and the slave trade in abolishing them much earlier than the Spanish and others, at the very least a morally “dubious” claim. The official abolition date was indeed earlier than the ones by the Netherlands, France, or Spain. Yet, history also shows that around and after this abolition in the 1830s, Britain secured and expanded its hold on the African continent into several large colonies, remaining colonies up to the late 20th c.
For all these reasons, Britain and the British influenced Africans at home and abroad much more strongly, overall, than the Spanish. This is however due to a dehumanizing past.
CULTURAL IMPACT
This influence is also cultural, although shared African cultural characteristics can be found throughout the African Diaspora. I find that a very fascinating theme, as shows on my (this) blog. Especially enslaved Africans from the Congo area, ended up relatively evenly in colonies of different European colonizers. Later studies calculated that probably a bit over 20% of the African slaves brought to Jamaica were from the Congo/Angola area, with a similar percentage applicable to Haiti or the US. Still less than about 40% from Congo/Angola, for Cuba, but still numerous.
There is a specific Congo/Bantu influence among Afro-Jamaicans, as well as among black Americans, and in Haitian Vodou, in Guadeloupe, and also in former Dutch colonies like Suriname and Curaçao, discernible in music and other cultural expressions, mixed or not. This is more prominently present in the African retentions in Cuba and Brazil, but certainly also present in former British, French, or Dutch colonies. Some trace for instance the “heart beat” drumming in Rastafari Nyahbingi drumming to Congo influences, even if played with Kete drums, originating in the Ghana area, where relatively more Africans (about 45%) in Jamaica were taken from.
Despite this, there are several shared African cultural continuities and values among Africans from the Ghana, Nigeria, and Congo areas, such as polyrhythmic music, musical-spiritual connections, social structures, call-and-response etcetera. These values are mostly shared throughout sub-Saharan Africa, to differing degrees, and came with slaves to the West.
I have studied such differences and historical comparisons in slavery in the Americas before.
BRITISH LEGACIES
The similarities – and differences -within the African Diaspora regarding the African part are very interesting; its variety as well. How did the fact that the enslavers were British impact these differences?
Well, certain parts of Africa were more easily accessible for the British than for other Europeans, for instance Ghana. This became therefore an important source for Britain for slave workers. The British also got slaves from other parts, having relatively more access to other parts too, notably Southeast Nigeria, and the Igbo area, parts of Cameroun, and in Gambia and the Sierra Leone area. The British had posts elsewhere too, such as the Congo region, but this “relative access” shows in part in the slave populations in the Americas.
As said, almost 50% of the Africans brought as slaves to Jamaica probably came from the Ghana region, while to Barbados, relatively many (also about 50%) came from the Igbo area. Igboes were also quite present among the enslaved population in Jamaica (a bit over 20%).
Afro-Trinidadian culture has a strong Yoruba influence (just like in Cuba and parts of Brazil). The Yoruba lands, in Southwest Nigeria and Benin, were at first less accessible for the British, but more to the Spanish, and Portuguese. Trinidad only became later a British colony, in 1797, and before that was a Spanish colony, with many slave owners being French. This also explains cultural differences with other British Caribbean islands.
PROTESTANTISM
A main legacy – on the European side – is of course British, Anglo-Saxon culture, including Protestantism. Noted should be also that about 30% of all slave-owners in the British Caribbean were Scottish, though also Protestant, and most of the rest from various parts of England, Anglicized Irishmen, or Wales. Jamaican surnames nowadays (former slave names after slave-owners as is well-known) like Barrett, Smith, Rodney, Henry, McGregor, Llewellyn, Hylton, Matthews, Johnson, Shaw, Holt, and so forth, say enough.
Reggae artist Peter Tosh (from McIntosh) once stated that his European name is just a “handle”, and does not define him. This is of course true.
There is also a British cultural legacy, that affecting and influenced Afro-Jamaicans. The English language, but deeper than that also Protestantism. Various Protestant churches set up base in the British Caribbean, converting many former slaves. These had at points different interpretations of Protestantism from each other and the more elite (and White) Anglican state church of England. Some were more Evangelical, others influenced by Calvinism. They however all shared a focus on Bible texts, combined with a puritan rigidity. Despite this rigidity, among Afro-Caribbean followers, African cultural traits were mixed with this, in religious practice.
At the end of the day, nonetheless, Protestant and Anglo-Saxon interpretations of the Bible became quite normative and culturally influential in, for instance, Jamaica and among Black Jamaicans. This has remained so up to today.
RASTAFARI
As the African consciousness increase, resulting mainly in the rise of the Rastafari movement in Jamaica, in the 1930s, this “White” interpretation of the Bible became questioned. The starting point was still the Bible, though, but with that also certain implicit values from Anglo-Saxon Protestantism, that still shaped opinions, even when the Rastafari wanted to abandon and refute the British, colonial legacy.
An example? Well the views on African spirit religions (comparable to Vodou, Santería, Winti etcetera) that survived here and there in Jamaica. Also the early Rastas criticized this as “backward” and "devilish”, though a few of the early Rastas, such as Archibald Dunkley, seemed a bit more open to such African Spirit influences. Vodou and Obeah (an Afro-Jamaican magic/spirit cult) became words with negative connotations for many Rastafari, even noticeable in some current-day reggae lyrics.
The irony is that the White, “colonial” and slave-owning Protestants before them, had a similar disdain and rejection of such Vodou-like faiths.
The own African interpretation of the Bible that Rastafari also upholds, makes more sense, as the Bible is no more European than African, and has been certainly misused for own gain by Europeans.
More recently, however, there is also a movement within Rastafari – with artist, presenter, and intellectual Mutabaruka as a spokesperson – that is more critical of the – in the end - European-shaped - Bible and Christian derivative dominance within Rastafari, preferring more attention to Africa itself, and nature.
MUSIC
Jamaica has a rich musical history, as do certain other British Caribbean islands. England not so much, haha. Of course, there were British musical traditions, like the Quadrille (French-influenced, though), and seaman chants that British colonizers brough with them. Also, Irish immigrants to Jamaica (often closer to the slave population in social position, than the British) brought their Celtic musical traditions. Some attribute the early use of the “fiddle” in Jamaican folk music (also by Afro-Jamaicans) to the Irish. British song and chord structures influenced several Jamaican genres, whereas on the rhythmic part the influences were mostly African.
African music traditionally has no “chords” as such, so that part was based on European models. Also this was given a strong African interpretation, such as with call-and-response, and flexible vocal styles. The meager rhythms of English folk songs were soon expanded with several rhythmic additions, and sang with own lyrics and own singing style. This gave birth to the Mento genre in rural Jamaica in the early 20th c.
An interesting difference with, e.g., Cuba: the Spanish guitar or variants thereof were found less in Jamaica. Exactly because it is, well, originally a Spanish guitar from Southern Spain, commonly used in Spanish music genres that Spanish colonizers brought with them to the West. Spanish guitars were however sometimes used in Jamaica Mento, by the early 20th c, however.
Another Spanish musical and cultural influence found in Latin America, is also hardly found in former British colonies. These stem mostly from Spain’s particular Moorish/Islamic past, which left also certain vocal and instrumental traditions. Vocally , the high-pitched, “tense” singing as common in Arabic and North African music, clearly left its mark in several Spanish folk music genres, notably Flamenco, and other genres in Central and Southern Spain (and Portugal).
This influenced genres that developed in Latin America as well, even if it mixed with Amerindian and African influences. The singing style in Mexican, Cuban and other areas – high-pitched, among other characteristics – relates to this. This is found e.g. in both much Salsa, rural Cuban styles like Punto, and in Mexican genres like Son and Mariachi music. Also, the Arab-influenced “melismatic” singing – simply said: syllables spread over several tones – aimed at hypnotizing effect, also reached Latin America.
It must be said – though – that the melismatic singing also influenced Arab-influenced parts of Africa, notably the Guinee, Senegambia and Mali area, where also slaves came from, although these ended up relatively more in what is now the US. It influenced the “swing” characteristic in jazz and blues, by the way. High-pitched, melismatic singing –however – was more associated with Spanish colonies. It is less found in British Caribbean folk music, where Mento or calypso tend to have “relaxed”, or at least ‘syllabic” (one note per syllable) singing styles, more related to other, “forest” parts of sub-Saharan Africa, and perhaps some British and Irish Celtic influences.
This all impacted to degrees on how Jamaican and other British Caribbean music developed. Spanish influences still came indirectly (later Cuban music, for instance) to Ska in Jamaica and Calypso for instance, but the first European music heard by slaves in Jamaica mostly came from Britain.
BROADER CULTURE
It is probably further already known, that also popular “cricket” in the British Caribbean is an evident British legacy, as certain other traditions and activities still found in the British Caribbean, including the “sober” architecture.
That is one thing I noticed when I visited both Cuba and Jamaica in 2006 and 2008: the grand, ornamental, “baroque” architecture and building style in much of Cuba, is largely absent in Jamaica. Stern, linear “White House”-style grandeur is what at most can be found, or otherwise small, “industrial” practical “row” houses for the poorer classes, with only occasional pastel colours as extra decoration.
BACK TO NARDIA THOMAS
In the final, concluding chapter of the aforementioned book by Trinidadian scholar Nardia Thomas – on the intellectual history of slavery -, Thomas locates British slavery within wider history. She points at shared, universal aspects throughout time and cultures, like the enslavement of “cultural others”, dehumanization and lacking rights of slaves, and that the slaves were “property” of masters. She also, however, discusses differences, and peculiarities of British slavery in the Americas.
One of these is the “racialization”, as the “cultural” other became almost synonymous to the “racial” other, in this case of course enslaved Africans. Racism underpinned British slavery systems, that further expanded racism also after slavery. Culture, race and “colour”, and religion thus became intertwined in treating Africans as inferior.
This structural racism, along with the systematic, “industrial” nature of plantation slavery in several British Caribbean colonies, and Protestant values, helps explain why the repression and destruction of African culture was stronger in British than in Spanish colonies.
It is true, that this racism and repression was also found among the Portuguese and Spanish, although most historians conclude that “race relations” were more flexible in “Latin” colonies, and African cultural expressions a bit more allowed or tolerated (under conditions). Less rigid and separated, perhaps due to Portugal’s and Spain’s multicultural past just prior to 1492 (when Columbus set sail to the Americas).
Racist views on Black Africans certainly also shaped the Arab slave trade and slavery of Africans, also combined with religious and cultural prejudices. Certain derogatory views on “dark-skinned” people are still quite common throughout North Africa and the Middle East, among self-proclaimed Arabs, even more so for non-Muslim Black Africans.
CONCLUDING
After the Portuguese, the British were the European colonizers who enslaved the highest number (millions of) Africans and brought them forcibly to the West. This was in a more economic and systematic way than the Iberian colonizers overall did, enabling at the end the first industrialization in Britain, and British colonialism in Africa.
This history of African enslavement by Britain in the centuries up to 1838, thus interrelates with the industrializaton of economies, shaping the present-day dominance of what is called the First World (the industrialized world) today, still dominating and exploiting the Third World (including Africa).
It is cynical but true that that is a main legacy of the British Atlantic slave trade, and slavery in the Americas.
In this light, the emphasis of Britain’s later role in championing the ending of the slave trade by other nations, European ones and others, and congratulating itself as helping the end of the slave trade and slavery, in the Americas, Africa and elsewhere – notably after 1806, when Britain officially ended the slave trade (illegal practices continued), is not without hypocrisy. There is some merit to it, but also hypocrisy. Britain clearly profited from the Atlantic slave trade and slavery in the Americas, even if it abolished it relatively early.
Recently – that is May 2013 - I went for a few days to Birmingham, United Kingdom. It was a city in England I had not visited before. I have been to London a few times, to Bristol, and I visited not long ago Bath and Cardiff as well. Yet Birmingham, in size the second city of all England with over a million inhabitants, was still new for me.
BIRMINGHAM HISTORICALLY
Birmingham is a city with an industrial past; it is even said that it is historically the first manufacturing (or: industrial) city in the world, developed as such in the 18th c. Birmingham’s history thus reflects the historical forerunner role of Britain in the Industrial Revolution, that would have international consequences.
ERIC WILLIAMS
In the 18th c. and afterward the British Empire was at its height. Eric Williams (1911-1981), the scholar and later prime minister, from Trinidad and Tobago, explained in his 1943 study ‘Capitalism and Slavery’ how this is not a coincidence. He came with the at the time controversial argument that Britain’s famed Industrial Revolution was in fact largely financed through Britain’s slave trade and slavery activities in the Caribbean region. Of course, such an opinion was not liked by self-congratulating Britons, who more or less manipulated the writing of history, subtly but insistently popularizing a supposed humanitarian character of the British Empire, emphasizing that Britain abolished the slave trade and slavery before other European states, and before the practice became outlawed in other parts of the world.
That the Industrial Revolution shaping England was financed through slavery was however not mentioned and obscured..
The latter manipulating of historiography is already hypocritical, but it became even worse when the British also explained their colonization of large territories of Africa, in the later 19th c. (when slavery in the British Caribbean was abolished), as part of this further quest, a “white man’s burden”, to civilize the world, in part by also stopping practices like slavery there. In reality the main - and probably only - reason for Britain to colonize African territories was to gain wealth and to exploit. Obvious as this may seem, I found that some historiographers (especially European ones, and even an occasional “lost” non-European one) read and write history in line with this pro-British humanitarian purpose attributed to British colonialism.
I think Marcus Garvey (1887-1940), the Jamaican thinker and activist, saw it more clearly, before Eric Williams. Garvey had a sharp eye for geopolitics and international relations. His expression “Free Africans at home and abroad”, and other statements by Garvey like “The world is my province until Africa is free”, can be seen as Garvey’s response to British colonialism: finishing legally slavery of Africans in the Caribbean, but then colonizing the place of origin of those same Africans.
Birmingham is not a port town, unlike Bristol (which I visited not long ago), London, or Liverpool. So a direct role in the slave trade and slavery is less obvious in Birmingham than in Bristol and Liverpool. From these latter cities ships destined to trade in slaves sailed out to Africa and then the Caribbean, and the gains thus made entered these port cities directly; many buildings in Bristol, Liverpool, and partly also London, were financed with slave trade money (“blood money” you might say).
In line with Eric Williams’ economic reasoning, Birmingham as “the world’s first industrial/manufacturing city” profited from the slave trade and slavery as well. Only more indirectly. According to Williams the slave trade and slavery gains financed the whole Industrial Revolution that would shape Birmingham, and the different industries there. More specifically, Birmingham was the British centre of the metallurgical industry since the 17th c. and through the 18th c., including gun manufacturing, while Birmingham factories also made the weaponry used in slave trading activities in Africa, sugar plantation equipment, and chains used in slavery. Birmingham industries even delivered machinery and chains to slave-laboured plantations in non-British colonies like Brazil and Cuba.
Williams in fact pays quite some attention to Birmingham in his work ‘Capitalism & Slavery’ (1943): to its above mentioned role in the colonial economy (guns, metal and otherwise), as well as, more positively, to the rise of an abolition (of slavery) movement in the city in a later stage.
EXPOSITION
When I recently visited Birmingham (in May 2013), we went to an exposition within the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery (pictured below), which gave an overview of the city’s history: from past to present.
The city was more or less established from about 1100 (AD). The city name is of Anglo-Saxon/Germanic origin. From those Anglo-Saxon days the historical time line was followed. From industrialization to further developments and migrations. Interestingly, the Irish were the early migrating (and more or less discriminated) “outsider” labourer group. Later, especially since the 1950s, followed by Jamaican and Caribbean migrants that would become also discriminated. The exposition continued up to modern times with different cultures and ethnicities in the city, and to pop culture like UB40, Duran Duran (who were I found out here from Birmingham). Also Rastafari-adhering poet of Jamaican descent Benjamin Zephaniah was mentioned, as well as a carnival designer/artist of Caribbean descent who went under the name of Professor Black.
In between, Birmingham’s roles and interests in slavery, metals, and gun trade for the slave trade, were not ignored or denied, but explained adequately. Also the famous Birmingham abolitionist campaigner (against slavery) in the early 19th c., Joseph Sturge, got attention.
All in all I found it an interesting and well structured exposition.
BIRMINGHAM NOW
Birmingham was modern and globally focussed then, and when I recently visited I still noticed that it strives to modernity and the global, albeit in a different way. Until not too long ago the city’s focus was still on manufacturing and industry, although in recent decades a shift toward a “service economy” has taken place, similar to elsewhere in the Western world.
High-rise, new buildings are a superficial sign of urban modernity, of course, and current Birmingham has more or less a sky-line – unlike e.g. Bristol -, although high or modern buildings are interchanged with older and lower ones.. Some of the higher building were hotels, aimed mainly at the business market.
The remnants of the industrial past are however here and there present. The many canals flowing through the city and surrounding Midlands date mostly from the 18th c. onward, and had primarily economic, industrial functions. The same as the canals in Amsterdam (the Netherlands), they were laid out primarily for transporting goods for factories, not for ordinary citizens’ recreation or travel.
I noticed that in the present the canals in Birmingham no longer seem to have that industrial function. Now they are used by boats for tourism (thus recreational) purposes. Touristic boats are also to be found on the canals of Amsterdam, but there is a difference: I did not see private citizens having boats on the canals as on the Amsterdam canals. Maybe that is outlawed in Birmingham, I don’t know..
Photo underneath: me in central Birmingham (close to the Mailbox building) with the historical canals in the back
Like before, as I already said, current Birmingham continues to strive to the modern and global – or as one can say: cosmopolitan – in for instance the modern architecture, including high-rise, modern “mall”-like shopping centres (US influence?), while the city is also definitely multicultural. Multicultural regarding its population, as well as in restaurants and bars, and stores, representative of the different cultures in the city, brought by migrants since especially the 1950s: Indian, Pakistani, Jamaican, Chinese, African, even Latin American and other ethnicities. Birmingham is even one of the cities in Britain with the highest percentage of non-British migrant inhabitants: about 42% of Birrmingham is at present non-British of origin, many of these non-European.
BLACK POPULATION
Birmingham is also the place (with the surrounding West Midlands area) in Britain with - after London - the highest percentage of inhabitants with a Caribbean, especially Jamaican, background. A 2007 survey estimated the total number of Jamaican British in Birmingham at about 35.000 persons (compared to about 250.000 in much larger London), which would be about 3,5 % of the about a million people that inhabit Birmingham. This is the highest number outside of London.
The total “Black” population (including other Caribbeans and Africans) in Birmingham is estimated at about 6,4% of the city’s total. Also one of the higher percentages in Britain. Like elsewhere the Jamaican and Black population is relatively concentrated more in certain districts of the city, for instance the districts Handsworth and Aston. You can guess that these are not the most affluent districts, but rather working class areas. “A so it go”..
An interesting comparison would be with Amsterdam, in the Netherlands, where in about the same period (2006) about 69.000 people were of Surinamese background, that is over 9% of Amsterdam’s then about 750.000 inhabitants. The figure of “Black” inhabitants would differ somewhat because Suriname is more equally multiracial than Jamaica (including 45% Indians/Hindustani, or Javanese Indonesians). Furthermore, Antilleans and sub-Saharan Africans (quite present as well in Amsterdam), should then be included. Yet, since most Surinamers in Amsterdam tend to be of African origin, the figure of Black inhabitants of Amsterdam would most probably turn out to be about 9%: higher than the around 6,3% of Birmingham.
Bristol (about 450.000 inhabitants), to compare further within Britain, has an estimated 20.000 persons of Jamaican background, while Manchester (somewhat larger than Bristol) about 10.000 (about 2%). Maybe these demographic differences explain why I’ve heard about internationally known reggae bands with members of Jamaican backgrounds from London (Misty In Roots, Linton Kwesi Johnson, Aswad and others), Birmingham (e.g. Steel Pulse, partly UB40, also dub poet Benjamin Zephaniah), Bristol (e.g. Black Roots, Joshua Moses), even Wolverhampton (Macka B), but not from Manchester. But maybe that’s coincidence, and there are some reggae artists from there as well. Researching I found out that Trevor Roots (which I have heard of) comes from Manchester, as well as the Nucleus Roots I heard of.
Back to Birmingham, and my recent visit to it.. I liked the overall “vibe” in the city, and saw indeed how Birmingham was multicultural: regarding its habitants and in other aspects, such as cultural venues and restaurants. There even seemed some mixture of races. I write “even”, because this is throughout Europe and North America still not so common: multiculturalism tends to mean: different cultures separate from each other, not mixing.
We ate a good, delicious meal at a Jamaican restaurant (Caribana) in the south of Birmingham’s city centre. I’ve been to Jamaica for some weeks, and ate Jamaican food almost daily then, so it was not totally new for me, but I enjoyed it nonetheless. What’s pleasant to the senses will remain as such.
Photo underneath: view of central Birmingham, from Bristol Street. Close to a Jamaican restaurant (Caribana) where we ate. On the left you see (the black building) a part of the music venue 0 2 Academy (formerly Birmingham Academy and Hummingbird)
BIRMINGHAM AND REGGAE
That brings me to another aspect of Jamaican culture and its relation to Birmingham: music, specifically reggae. I knew vaguely the connection of bands UB40 and Steel Pulse to Birmingham. I was never the biggest fan in the world of UB40, save for some nice songs – especially their earlier work and some nice, later original songs. I did not like most of their covers of Jamaican originals: not as good as the Jamaican originals, in my opinion. I liked Steel Pulse more, although also differing per album.
STEEL PULSE
Some of my favourite Steel Pulse songs are ‘Stepping Out’, ‘Rally Round’, and (from an earlier album) ‘Babylon Makes The Rules’. Their song ‘Klu Klux Klan’ is also among their better work, I think. I heard especially the more recent songs ‘Stepping Out’ and ‘Rally Round’ being played recently in reggae clubs in my hometown Amsterdam. Some people like the Steel Pulse tune ‘Roller Skates’ as one of their best songs. It has - as I write this - over two million hits on YouTube! I however find that song ‘Roller Skates’ a bit overrated. ‘Babylon Makes The Rules’ is in my opinion a better song and has “only” 288.000 hits, as I write this. The song ‘Klu Klux Klan’ - also relatively better in my opinion - does “not even” reach the 200.000 hits at present. This does not necessarily mean much, but it shows how tastes can differ among listeners.
Two million Youtube hits seems much in reggae, considering that great, classic Jamaican reggae songs like the Mighty Diamonds’ ‘I Need A Roof’, and Don Carlos’ ‘Just A Passing Glance’ – both big hits in Jamaica itself and internationally popular among reggae fans – do not reach even the 500.000 hits on YouTube at this moment.
Mark H. Harris, who for a time had a Reggae Reviews website, pointed out that Steel Pulse “cursed itself” as they began strong with their debut album Handsworth Revolution (1978), which he finds a classic. He opines that consequent albums of Steel Pulse were comparably less in quality than their strong debut, with weaker songs, and even amateurish here and there, or too commercial in some cases, though he says they would regain their form on later stronger albums. Here you can read his opinions on Steel Pulse albums. I partly, but not entirely, agree with him, though to be honest I haven’t heard all Steel Pulse albums or songs he mentions.
My favourite British-based reggae act, however, would overall be Misty In Roots, and they were/are London-based. But, more than this: my love for reggae was – from the beginning – mainly focussed on Jamaican reggae. I heard about other reggae fans getting into reggae through British reggae or ska (UB40, Steel Pulse, Aswad, Selecter, Specials a.o.). This was not the case with me: it started and stayed with reggae from Jamaica itself. In time, however, I listened to British-based reggae as well, which at times I liked.
This later and secondary interest for British-based reggae might show in the fact that beyond “mainstream” UB40, and more “rootical” - though still with some “mainstream” feel sometimes - Steel Pulse, I knew relatively little about Birmingham reggae acts. I have heard about Dub Poet Benjamin Zephaniah, but did not really realize he was originally from Handsworth, Birmingham. Zephaniah said the atmosphere in Handsworth was dominantly Jamaican when he grew up in that district of Birmingham. He even called Handsworth “the capital of Jamaica in Europe”.
To be honest, I did at first not even know that Handsworth – as in the good Steel Pulse song ‘Handsworth Revolution’ – referred to a specific Birmingham quarter, not far north of the city centre, and with relatively many Jamaican inhabitants. I did know more about the geography of Kingston, Jamaica (which I have also actually visited much earlier than Birmingham), ironically much farther away from my hometown Amsterdam than Birmingham...
After some research, I found that Ruby Turner (that I know a bit from) was also from Birmingham, as well as toasters Pato Banton, and Apache Indian (of ‘Boom Shack-A-Lack’ fame), but I never really got into these latter artists. Also Beshara was a reggae band with some popularity from Birmingham (lovers rock, but also some roots and Rastafari-inspired lyrics). I have, I admit, until recently never heard of Beshara. What I recently heard from Beshara on YouTube sounded good to me.
I have heard, however, from the Musical Youth, having an international hit as young children with a remake of the Mighty Diamonds’ ’Pass the Kutchie’, under the name ‘Pass the Dutchie' (that is: replacing the ganja reference with a reference to a type of cooking pot). Musical Youth were also from Birmingham. I did not really know that. I live and I learn..
But besides my personal, partly limited knowledge, - which says most about me and my own preferences -, many do point out that Birmingham has since long a quite vibrant reggae scene, since the 1970s, and up to the present. There are presently, in 2013, in Birmingham reggae-minded studios and production houses active, that are connected with the Jamaican reggae scene, and that are successful with their reggae productions.
This post on the Birmingham reggae scene of another blogger is interesting in this regard:
Steel Pulse is also still active by the way, though band members have changed over time.
After doing more research and seeing a few documentaries I found out more about the Birmingham reggae scene since the 1970s. I found out that Birmingham’s popular culture and subcultures reflect the multicultural character of Birmingham’s population. This is perhaps predictable. Somewhat more special is that from this multiculturalism also developed mixtures of the different cultures. Even some globally relatively rare mixtures. Not only that many white British youths got into ska and reggae and were influenced by Jamaican or Black culture (including skinheads and Punks)….that is quite well-known by now. But also some black youth from Birmingham were influenced by the Punk subculture, apparently. Also, the Bhangra music genre – based on Punjabi/Indian/Pakistani traditional music, and then modernized - was influenced by Black music genres like reggae and funk in Birmingham. Birmingham is known by the way as the hotbed of this hybrid Bhangra music genre.
Examples of cultures “mixing” beyond just coexisting as a further dimension of multiculturalism, and which can have good, or at least innovative, effects..
The interesting recently appeared documentary ‘Made in Birmingham: Reggae Punk Bhangra’ (2010) – entirely on YouTube - pays quite some attention to the important Birmingham reggae scene since the 1970s, as well as to other genres and subcultures with which it intermixed. It shows how reggae was influential within the whole popular music scene of Birmingham, influencing also Punk, and discusses the said cultural mixtures.
A (historical) compilation album of “Birmingham reggae” songs by various artists, along the lines of the compilation album on the ‘Bristol Reggae Explosion’ - which I mentioned on my blog post on Bristol of June 2011 - seems therefore an excellent idea.
For the first time in my life I recently went to Bristol, the biggest city in south western England. I visited Bristol - and surroundings – mainly out of a sort of curiosity. Of England I mainly visited London (a few times) and parts of Kent, and I wanted to see also other cities and parts. Plus, near to Bristol was Bath where Haile Selassie I lived when forced in exile after Mussolini’s invasion of Ethiopia.
I combined this trip further with a trip to Cardiff, neither too far from Bristol. Again out of curiosity.
Combined with a somewhat vague curiosity for an English harbour city there was the music scene that I heard of, including not always uninteresting (I know, a moderate complement) acts like Massive Attack and Tricky.
A variety of reasons, you might say. Regarding my favorite musical genre, reggae, - readers of this blog may have noticed this - I knew of the good song Juvenile Delinquent by Bristol-based roots reggae band Black Roots. Worth checking out! Like other British cities, Bristol has a Caribbean (mainly Jamaican) migrant population, I also knew.
As a quite typical port town Bristol of course had a lot of water, canals, bridges, and boats, set in a general North-Western European cultural context and atmosphere. This atmosphere is present in the weather, but also in the architecture and darker colours grey or brown for buildings and streets (or sometimes even interiors). The cultural context is present in its Protestant history, (historically tainted) Germanic/Teutonic traits (in England called Anglo-Saxon or Saxon), and in, for instance, the importance of beer. It is on the other hand also internationally influenced, partly because it is a port.
Water/river view in central Bristol
Some vague similarities were therefore certainly there with similar historical port cities in the Netherlands (where I live), such as Amsterdam or Rotterdam. There were also differences. In architecture, more accidented streets, and socioculturally. I went as said with a general curiosity: it was not - not specifically at least - a “reggae trip” or something like that. Yet still I naturally paid attention to reggae: in clubs, stores, people etcetera, as I went along.
Like other places in former colonizing countries, Bristol’s history is tainted. There is a burden of shame, as since the late 17th c. and especially in the 18th c. the Bristol port was strongly involved in the slave trade. Ships sailed from Bristol to Africa to “load up” Africans as slaves, and carry them to British colonies in the Caribbean. This was part of the so-called triangular trade. For a period Bristol was the main port of England in this slave trade, along with London. Later this role was taken over by Liverpool. African human-beings were treated largely as chattel. Before this whites, especially undesirable ones, were also shipped as servants from Bristol to British colonies in not too good conditions, as Eric Williams describes chronologically in his seminal work ‘Capitalism and Slavery’.
With this past in mind I, while striving for my own mental health to rationality, felt there were bad, demonic spirits hanging over tainted Bristol somehow. Ultimately this could depress me. This feeling did not become too dominant though. Mainly because Bristol is a modern, international, and multicultural city characterized by variety in several ways. It seems even to a degree a hospitable place, open to visitors. It is less touristic – in numbers – than my hometown Amsterdam, yet seemed to accomodate some tourism, or maybe it seemed so because it had a cosmopolitan air.
(Upper) Park street, another (western) part of central Bristol
DEMOGRAPHICS AND RACE
Bristol is multicultural, including an Indian and Pakistani population, relatively many Somali immigrants, West Africans, relatively many from the Yoruba parts of Nigeria, as well as a historically somewhat older West Indian/Afro-Caribbean population. Jamaican and other Caribbean migrants especially came to Britain already since the 1950s.
I found out, e.g. by reading in the Bristol central library, that the West Indian/Caribbean population of Bristol is substantial (slightly above the British national average), though small compared with other British cities. The total of Bristolians called black or black British (including later African migrants, I suppose) is 2,9 % of its (the city) around 433.000 inhabitants. The black population was relatively concentrated in the city’s central St Paul area.
By comparison, Birmingam has a population of 6,7 % black or black British inhabitants. More than double. Manchester about 5,2%. Also the Dutch capital Amsterdam has a relatively high proportion of black (defined as of sub-Saharan origin) inhabitants – including Creole Surinamese, West African immigrants and others - even surpassing proportionally London or Paris.
Despite these figures, Bristol has a relatively important place in black British history. Not only due to the slave trade history, but also in relation to more recent racial tensions and struggles. One of the earliest riots in Britain in the 1980s against racial discrimination by blacks was in Bristol, as well as other protests and appeals against racial discrimination that was quite present in Bristol, such as in housing and job-hiring practices.
On a side note, also the Welsh capital Cardiff, which I also visited one day, has a quite substantial black population. It has even one of the oldest black communities of Britain, also – as in English cities - with historical discrimination and segregation problems.
This background seemed relevant to me as I focussed also on the reggae scene. Reggae “gone international” and to a degree multiracial and multiracial – of course – but is still relatively more popular among blacks in general and maybe more so among people of Jamaican and Caribbean descent. For obvious reasons, you may say. It is and remains Afro-Caribbean music.
BRISTOL AND REGGAE
The focus was further stimulated by a music album I came across and purchased in Bristol, based on the Bristol roots reggae scene: ‘The Bristol reggae explosion : 1978-1983’, a compilation released in 2011. Apparently there had been such an “explosion”, with several recording and performing musical groups of black Bristolians – or racially mixed groups - and an active reggae scene in Bristol itself. According to the sleeve notes that scene diminished after the covered 1978-1983 period. Of the 3 “reggae-minded” clubs in Bristol in that period, for instance, only one presently remains. The period of the album’s songs was by the way one with racial tensions, giving it a social dimension.
I already mentioned the group Black Roots: it is justly included in this compilation, including the song Juvenile Delinquent. This great song seems to me an adequate “calling card” for Bristol-based roots reggae. Other artists and bands include Talisman – quite well-known (also by me) -, Joshua Moses, Restriction and others.
Reggae outside Jamaica, or specifically in Britain, is in my opinion a hit-or-miss affair. My favourite British-based reggae band has always been the roots band Misty In Roots, as I like most of their work, whereas of Aswad and Steel Pulse I only like some of their work. Linton Kwesi Johnson and Mad Professor are further both interesting in their own way. Other British reggae, however, I often find too cross-over or inauthentic to my taste, though not always.
In this light, how do I review this Bristol (roots) reggae compilation? It has a distinctive sound that seems to tipify British reggae (as opposed to Jamaican reggae), but if the songs are good that shouldn’t determine all. The opener Bristol Rock by Black Roots has that sound and a seeming similarity to the “brethren” Steel Pulse from Birmingham. At the same time it does sound to a degree authentically “rootsy” as far as reggae is concerned, and not too bland. The same can be said of the other Black Roots songs on this compilation, which are also catchy and “kept real”.
Joshua Moses sounds quite rootsy as well, ressembling Jamaican roots songs, and having catchy songs. I don’t know if Joshua Moses is still musically active (or alive) after all these years, but he shows talent in his catchy songs on this compilation.
Talisman sounds somewhat more “British”, especially in instrumentation, with songs that seem less catchy and chaotic. It is more difficult to judge as most their included songs are live versions.
Restriction has a British-Jamaican style of toasting vocals that is a matter of taste. It is not too bad, but neither seems too impressive or original (now?).
More “mellow” (lovers rock-ish) songs by the female singer Sharon Bengamin and by Buggs Durrant are not bad and quite catchy.
In fact, almost all songs on this compilation are at least okay, making it not a bad album. Some songs stand out, some I find nice, or just okay, not inaudible, but neither always very spectacular or impressive.
On a side note, I would consider a similar compilation on the Amsterdam reggae scene (also already longer active), historical or present, also very interesting to hear. I know of several Amsterdam-based (roots) reggae artists and bands that are/were active. You never know, maybe it will appear some day...
TRACK LIST:
1. Bristol Rock (Black Roots)
2. Africa (Is Our Land) (Joshua Moses)
3. Run Come Girl (Live) (Talisman)
4. Four Point Plan (Restriction)
5. Tribal War (12'' Mix) (Black Roots)
6. Restriction (Restriction)
7. Pretty Girl (Joshua Moses)
8. Wicked Dem (Live) (Talisman)
9. Nights of Passion (The Radicals)
10. Mr Guy (Sharon Bengamin)
11. Juvenile Delinquent (Black Roots)
12. Baby Come Back (Buggs Durrant)
13. Riot (3-D Production)
14. Dole Age (12'' Mix) (Talisman)
Varied. Related to my interests (including reggae, Rastafari, society, international relations, culture a.o.), this blog can contain essays, reviews, travel accounts, commentaries, don't know yet...
I aim to comment on and discuss several topics and phenomena I'm interested or specialized in (see underneath for more information). Languages I use will probably be variably English and Dutch.
