Continuing the Story into Emancipation Month

August 1 this year might be remembered more for the CARICOM Song and Dance festivity than for any reminiscence on Emancipation even though there were a few such activities. As I have been doing for some years, at the Daniel Cummings’ West Kingstown Fair, I made remarks

on the meaning of Emancipation and this year stressed the role of the enslaved in their own liberation.

Sometime this week I briefly overheard on radio what appeared to have been a ‘sermon’ by a minister of religion. He appeared to be highlighting the role of William Wilberforce, the missionaries, and humanitarians in the ending of slavery. He went further and seemed to have been attacking Eric Williams and others for taking positions different from those that were propagated by the Europeans who had been pushing the issue of morality and the role played by the humanitarians.

I had mentioned before Eric Williams’ view as expressed in his classic work CAPITALISM AND SLAVERY, that the debate on slave emancipation had reached a stage where the argument was that it was going to be either emancipation from above or emancipation from below. Emancipation from below meant emancipation from the slaves as had happened in Haiti in 1791. Emancipation from above meant emancipation through the King and Parliament, for after all Caribbean countries such as St Vincent were colonies of Britain.

There is absolutely no doubt that the missionaries and humanitarians played a role in the debate around England and in the British parliament. Although there were individuals who had for long been against the slave trade and slavery, this only became meaningful with the start of the abolition movement in 1787. The emphasis then was on the abolition of the slave trade. One person who had clearly expressed his opposition to slavery, John Wesley the founder of Methodism, had done so since 1774 when in his Thoughts on Slavery, he declared, “I absolutely deny all slave holding to be consistent with any degree of national justice.” Victory for them only came in 1807 with the abolition of the slave trade. Is it that there was a sudden infusion of morality in 1807?

Eric Williams did not deny the role played by the humanitarians but paid attention to changes in the economic system where he used the argument of Adam Smith in his Wealth of Nations that free labour was cheaper and more effective than slave labour. Eric Williams also looked at the role of the enslaved in their own emancipation.

Methodism entered St Vincent in January 1787 through the initiative of Dr Thomas Coke. Its first effort which was unsuccessful was with the indigenous people who resented and did not trust the British. They then turned their attention to the enslaved and had by 1817 about 2,700 members mostly among the enslaved. Barbados by the same year had only 50. Operating in a slave society was difficult for the Weslyan missionaries. Wesley’s early declaration against the slave trade and slavery might have been a factor but the planters had a deep distrust for the missionaries in all slave societies.

Slave society was completely controlled by the planters and their cronies. Permission to preach to the enslaved had to be given by the planters. The missionaries at times also depended on the finances and hospitality of the planters. The death of Coke in 1814 and their having to depend on instructions from the society in England put the missionaries under a lot of strain. But being on the ground made them see the realities between the conditions of the enslaved and what they were asked to do.

The growth of the anti-slavery movement in England and the involvement of missionaries including Weslyan missionaries led to a lot of distrust in St Vincent. In 1791 an anti-slavery mob seeing the Weslyan missionaries as subversive broke into the Methodist Church, physically damaged the building and stole a bible which they hung on the gallows. Shortly after a law was passed authorising any missionary who intended preaching to apply for a license to do so. Resident missionary Mathew Lumb refused to do that and was arrested and placed in gaol. It took the intervention of Dr Coke on his return to England to have him released, after which he left the country for England. The law was subsequently revoked in 1793.

Europeans often underestimated the people they enslaved. Even the missionaries did that, but diaries left by two missionaries who worked in St Vincent tell the story. One of them William Fidler who worked in Barrouallie, repeated word for word the utterances of some of the enslaved who praised God for giving them the strength to fight the battle. They also expressed certainty about their liberation on the ground, not waiting until they got to heaven. The missionaries were at first concerned about their preaching about equality and acceptance and the realities on the ground. But the enslaved took away different messages and had their own interpretation of the words that were preached to them.

But as I said the situation was a complex one for there were those planters who praised the work of the missionaries claiming that the enslaved who attended their services were industrious and orderly. The enslaved found satisfaction in the preachings of the Methodists and followed the religion, filling the churches on Emancipation Day, arriving to participate well before midnight when the services were to start.

But then there was the role of the enslaved which I will touch on next.

• Dr Adrian Fraser is a social commentator and historian