Breaking free
Escaping slavery
BARBADOS: FROM CAPTIVITY OF THE CANE FIELDS TO A FREE LIFE
Aslender bronze sculpture representing an African couple and their child dominates a modest concrete plaza above a colorful jumble of houses in Rock Hall Freedom Village, Barbados, north of the island’s capital, Bridgetown.
A few metres away, a granite plaque records the names of 38 people who became residents of Rock Hall, the island’s first village for freed slaves after emancipation in 1834.
And an adjacent tablet commemorates the suffering of millions of Africans in slave ships and sugar plantations while celebrating the resilience of the human spirit in the face of an overwhelming evil.
“From the belly of the slave ship to a freeholder, the spirits of the African ancestors beckon the enslaved souls guiding them to the first free village,” the inscription reads.
Nearby, a series of colourful murals celebrates the progression of the African community from the captivity of the cane fields to a free life in their new village, where they are shown working peacefully, cultivating their own crops and nurturing familiar features of Barbadian culture like kite-flying and dominoes.
Rock Hall is a moving memorial to the system that dominated Barbados’ economic and social life for almost 200 years and forced an estimated half-million Africans to the island to work in the sugar cane fields there, and others in the Caribbean, until emancipation.
Like some other important remnants of the island’s slave history, the Rock Hall monument is neither easy to find nor well interpreted for visitors, yet it provides an insight into that past and the efforts to preserve it.
“It’s a difficult history but it’s one that underpins not only the history of this island but underpins the development of global capitalism for the past 500 years,” said Kevin Farmer, deputy director of the Barbados Museum and Historical Society.
He said the wealth accumulated from sugar, rice and cotton in the New World over several hundred years until the late 19th century was the result of the “blood, tears and death” of millions of enslaved Africans.
Traces of that history can be found in the museum, which celebrates the emancipation of slaves through an act of parliament in Britain – the colonial power for more than 300 years until 1966 – but also contains chilling artifacts such as a brand used to burn an owner’s initials into the skin of a slave, and an iron ball and chain that would be attached to a slave’s leg to prevent escape.
One sign of Bridgetown’s slave history can be seen in a plaque marking the Cage, where runaway slaves were kept until their owners came to reclaim them.
The enclosure, established by an act of parliament in 1688, was originally in the centre of Bridgetown but was moved to the pier head in 1818 so that the town’s image would not be hurt by the “noise and stench” of the slaves kept there, the plaque says.
Perhaps the most vivid celebration of emancipation can be seen in a statue of Bussa, a slave who led a failed revolt in 1816. He was killed by British officers in the uprising, along with many co-conspirators, but the statue shows a black man with his face tilted triumphantly to the sky and holding broken chains from his outstretched arms.
Built on a busy traffic circle on the outskirts of Bridgetown, the statue is not easy to reach. But visitors who dash across the intersection will find the base inscribed with a portion of the Abolition of Slavery Act in 1833, and a plaque unveiled by the island’s former Prime Minister Owen Arthur in 1997, saying that the monument should serve as a reminder that Barbadians must never again allow themselves to become slaves “physically or mentally.”
Another obscure historical site is the Newton Slave Burial Ground, on the edge of an industrial estate in the Christ Church Parish in the south of the island. The site, which is not marked from the nearest road, is reached via a grassy track along the side of a sugar cane field.
It is marked simply by a metal sign saying that some 570 slaves from the adjacent Newton Plantation were buried there, and that some of their belongings, such as eating utensils and jewellery, are on display in the island’s museum.
Critics say the island’s authorities have not done enough to highlight an essential part of that heritage: its history of slavery.
“Don’t shy away from the truth,” said Mighty Gabby, a prolific calypso singer and one of the island’s cultural ambassadors.
“Barbados was the first slave centre in the Western world. Geographically, we are closer to Africa than any other place in the Caribbean.
“People are anxious to find out these truths.”