Emancipation without Independence is no Emancipation at all

From Jamaica to Trinidad, from Barbados to the Bahamas, the month of August has been one of celebration of the Emancipation season in the Caribbean. It is a summer of festivities and festivals which this year will culminate in CARIFESTA, that week-long cultural gathering of the Caribbean family that starts on August 22nd in Barbados.

It is, however, also a season of reflection. We must ask ourselves what does Emancipation really mean, especially for those of us who are still colonies? What does it mean for those of us who have achieved independence decades ago? And what does it mean for those of us who are neither fish nor fowl? In which category do you think St. Martin falls?

The Emancipation Proclamations by which European slaving nations legally freed those they had enslaved for centuries did not come as a moral conversion. It was not a gift. It was in fact a surrender, even capitulation if you will, to the persistent resistance of the enslaved which found a victorious example in the success of the Haitian Revolution in 1804. The impact of this victory reverberated throughout the world and continues to be felt up till today.

Emancipation did not mean that the slaving nations relinquished the territories they had invaded, usurped and colonized. No. They did not give up the land. They did not give up control over the lives of the people who had won their freedom through their relentless struggle. Only Haiti succeeded in taking control of the land and established a sovereignty of its people over that land.

At Emancipation, the newly freed were still considered property, the loss of which their “owners” had to be compensated for financially. If they were not “property” there would have been no reason to pay their enslavers one dime. When it proclaimed the Slavery Abolition Act in 1833, almost 30 years after the victory of the Haitian Revolution, Britain took a loan of about £20 million (the equivalent of around £16.5 billion today) to pay over 40,000 slave owners, most of them in the Caribbean, for the loss of their “property.” Not a single farthing was paid to the enslaved. Why? Again because they were even at Emancipation still considered “property.”

In other words, the British government served as an insurance company, settling claims of slave owners at Emancipation, as if Emancipation was a natural disaster! Britain only finished paying off that loan in 2015! That’s a mere 10 years ago.

It got worse. Not only did the slave owners receive compensation for the loss of their “property,” the newly freed people had to go through a period of 10 years of “apprenticeship,” doing the same work they had been doing before Emancipation without remuneration. This was a “bonus” (or rather, another bonanza) for the slave owners. Emancipation was a sweet deal for them. They got paid handsomely for the “loss of their property”, retained ownership of their plantations and received an additional 10 years of free labor as apprenticeship.

The Dutch used a similar playbook in Surinam and Curacao and its dependencies (which included St. Martin). The compensation package for the Dutch slave owners at Emancipation in 1863 was 300 guilders “per head” in Surinam, 200 guilders in Curacao and 100 guilders in St. Martin because the enslaved ancestors in the Dutch half of the island were deemed “free” due to the fact that Slavery had been abolished in the French controlled half of St. Martin since 1848!

France also did the same, paying 126 million francs as compensation to slave owners at Emancipation in 1848, 44 years after Haiti defeated Napoleon Bonaparte. It paid an additional 6 million francs annually for 20 years, for a total of 246 million francs!

And it had the gall to demand that Haiti pay 150 million gold francs in 1825 as indemnity to compensate French slave owners for the “loss of their property.” The amount was eventually reduced to 90 million gold francs which Haiti only finished paying in 1947, an amount equivalent to US$560 million in today’s money.

In the US, the state paid slave owners in the District of Columbia $300 per enslaved person for their freedom. The abolition of Slavery was, in fact, the root cause of the Civil War, the effects of which are still very present with us up to this day.

Emancipation did not come with any political or economic power for the newly freed ancestors. In fact, the Emancipation Proclamation did not signify any change of heart on the part of the enslaver; in their heart of hearts, they still held on to the core belief that Blacks are inferior beings. Thus Slavery mutated into colonialism and the struggle for political independence succeeded the revolt and resistance against Slavery.

Independence came without any golden handshake. As a matter of fact, the colonizers have never really left. Their flags may have been lowered in the newly independent nations but the structures of control and the main frame of colonial institutions remained in tact, especially in the financial, judicial and educational sectors. Dismantling or rather decolonizing these institutions remains a major challenge for the new independent nations. However, the progress achieved so far would have been impossible without political independence.

For the territories still under colonial control, it can be argued that Emancipation without independence is no emancipation at all. Colonialism remains a straight jacket that constrains any meaningful political action that could free up the latent talent and creativity of the people. Not having the power over one’s own destiny is, in my opinion, Slavery 2.0. It is agreeing that a certain group of people have an inherent, God-given superiority over us.

To counter this perspective, the Dutch came up with the Kingdom Charter of 1954, declaring that the remainder of its colonies in the Caribbean were “equal partners” within the Kingdom. The reality is, of course, vastly different. The Charter was a ruse to make the rest of the world believe that it no longer had colonies and as such had no further obligations to submit periodic reports about its dependent territories to the UN. That is the constitutional status in which we find ourselves today - being neither fish nor fowl.

The confusion is deliberate. It is intended to paralyze us politically and make independence a non-issue. It is meant to prevent us from taking the next logical step after Emancipation, which is independence. It is clear therefore that the process of emancipation will continue to be incomplete and even elusive until we decide to seek independence for our beloved island.

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