Sugar in the Blood (28 page)

WHILE THE ISLANDERS
strove to further consolidate their sugar empire, the outside world was once again nipping at their heels. As a result of the three successive wars that would be fought between Britain and France, the constant threat of invasion that had hung over the island for the last quarter of the eighteenth century would also persist for the next twenty-five years. There were also difficulties closer to home, as the second act of the Haitian saga began.

Under the guise of restoring order, the British, always covetous of this lucrative colony, landed troops on the island in 1793. They assumed an easy ride, but were to be profoundly mistaken. The recently freed slaves realized that if they wished to maintain their freedom, they would have to fight for it. Their ferocious bravery and determination intimidated the British armed forces, just as Toussaint L’Ouverture’s sophisticated guerrilla tactics had wrong-footed their generals. The slave armies were used to fighting in the torrid, mountainous conditions of Haiti, whereas the British in their flannel underwear and red wool coats were completely unprepared. Overwhelmed by the sheer number of slaves willing to die for their liberty, the British forces were eventually demoralized. Describing the fate of the British troops, one observer remarked that they were “
like a vessel traversing the ocean—the waves yielded for the moment, but united again as the vessel passed.” The invading forces also had to cope with tropical diseases like malaria and yellow fever, while the transfer of soldiers to other conflicts in the region depleted their numbers further. By 1798 it was clear that the British army could not maintain its position and in October of that year the Union Jack was lowered and Toussaint, the “black Spartacus,” rode into the capital, Port-au-Prince, as the liberator.

In 1800, Toussaint L’Ouverture became governor of the island. Hearing of his victory, slaves in the nearby island of Jamaica sang gleefully: “
Black, white, brown, all de same!” Over the next couple of years Toussaint proved himself to be not just a formidable warrior but also a thoughtful statesman. Working with his multiracial team that included black army officers, mulatto administrators and white advisers, including Age, his white chief of staff, he managed to stimulate trade, boost agriculture and construct roads and schools. But it was the constitution promulgated in 1801 that was most extraordinary. It declared: “There cannot exist slavery in this territory, servitude is then forever abolished. All men are born, live and die free and French.” Not only had Haiti become the first slave nation in the New World to liberate itself, Toussaint had created a blueprint for a society in which freedom reigned, and access to education combined with the willingness to work hard meant that equal opportunities were open to all. It was no wonder that the slave world exulted or that the planters of the region continued to watch the events there with profound concern.

But the struggle on Haiti was not over. In 1802 Napoleon Bonaparte stepped onto the stage. His interest in the island was, according to some historians, highly personal. Apparently the family of his adored Creole wife, the “incomparable” Josephine, had a plantation on the island, and the recent events had deprived them of crucial funds. But Napoleon had reasons of his own, millions of them, to rue the loss of revenue from Saint-Domingue, since this was the number of francs that the island’s independence represented to the French national purse. Napoleon had only refrained from entering the fray earlier because he had been preoccupied by waging war against Britain, so as soon as the Peace of Amiens was made in 1802 he turned his attention to bringing the rebellious ex-colony to heel. First he attempted to reimpose slavery in Haiti, and when that proved unenforceable, he dispatched his brother-in-law General Leclerc to subdue the island.

Leclerc was supremely confident of success, with his departing ship and the flotilla of vessels that followed him full of exquisite furniture and art, as well as Toussaint’s sons, whom Napoleon had detained in France as a bargaining tool. Napoleon’s plan, which still survives in Parisian archives, was to initially appear conciliatory, threatening action only against those who revolted. But his real intention was to round up
and transport the rebel leaders to France for trial and execution. Toussaint had his own spies and was warned in advance of the fleet’s arrival, though he had no idea of the size of the forces being dispatched against him. So when, positioned on a hilltop, he saw the huge fleet for the first time, he is reputed to have cried out in alarm: “All France has come against us!”

But Toussaint, with his typical energy and strategic foresight, rallied. He bought some time by delaying a planned meeting with Leclerc, meanwhile giving certain instructions to his followers. When the French commander approached Cap François two days later, he realized that he had been completely outmanoeuvred. The city he had planned to enter so triumphantly was a pile of ash and a wall of fire was devouring the surrounding hills. There followed many months of protracted fighting which punished Napoleon’s forces as they had never been punished in Europe. What made matters worse was the outbreak of yellow fever. At its end, Napoleon’s Caribbean campaign was a bloody failure. Sixty thousand Frenchmen had died, among them Leclerc, claimed by yellow fever; and 150,000 slaves had been drowned, hanged or burned alive. The brave Toussaint, inveigled into a meeting with his French counterpart General Brunet, was kidnapped and transported to the castle Joux in France, where he died of abuse and neglect within a year.

In the following months one of his pronouncements would prove prophetic: “In overthrowing me, you have done no more than cut down the tree of black liberty in [Haiti]—it will spring back from the roots, for they are numerous and deep.” When it was finally over in 1804, after twelve years of civil war and bitter battles against the invading Napoleonic forces, a free, black state existed in the heart of the Caribbean. Renamed Haiti—an ancient Amerindian word, resurrected from the indigenous history of the region—the island was the proverbial beacon of hope for the slave population in the colonies and across the region, and a source of profound dismay for white planter families like the Ashbys. And the world was confronted with the fact that an army of barefoot black slaves had defeated both the great British Empire and the glorious French Republic.

In subsequent years Haiti would be punished terribly for its audacity. The island’s freedom represented a challenge to the entire slave system, so the European powers and the United States forgot their differences
and drew together to act against the renegade nation. They refused to accept Haitian independence unless it was first recognized by France, and France would only do so if they were compensated for their loss of property during the revolution. For twenty-one years, the Haitians refused to comply, but under consistent international pressure they finally submitted in 1825. The payment of the compensation of 150 million gold francs would bleed its national treasury dry and contribute to the poverty that has continued to dog that nation up till the present day. What was just as terrible was that the bravery of the Haitian people, their resourcefulness and tenacity have been virtually written out of history; and many have little idea of how this indomitable people struggled and died to become the first free colony of the New World.

The ripples caused by Haiti’s revolution spread throughout the colonies. From Brazil to Cuba, the slave population was energized. As the only rebellion in the Americas that had succeeded in permanently abolishing slavery, the Haitian uprising was their beacon of hope. For the planters, the colony’s descent into violence and its phoenix-like rise to independence were horrifying. In Barbados, the events on the island that had once been their greatest competitor felt perilously close.

As epic and extraordinary as the events in Haiti were, they were in many ways a magnified version of the struggle that was waged on every plantation, in every slave territory. For as John Locke, the great sage of the American Revolution, wrote, any person who “
attempts to get another Man into his Absolute Power, does thereby put himself into a State of War with him.” Thus the plantation system was built upon two factions in perpetual conflict. On one side, the master desperately tried to ensure his profits by controlling his workers with an unprecedented regime of violence and intimidation; on the other, his captives each day, in every possible way, attempted to disrupt the success of his operation and escape the bonds of slavery.

The situation at Burkes was no exception. Some of the slaves’ acts of sabotage were small: throwing away cutlery, sewing garments incorrectly, planting crops in shallow soil, breaking their tools, poisoning food. At other times they let livestock loose in the fields, committed arson or, provoked beyond endurance, attacked their tormentors. They
also sometimes maimed livestock. These gestures of defiance could not undermine the wider slave system, but they were a real nuisance to the planters who had to spend time and money identifying the culprits, bringing them to justice and remedying the problems.

Understanding their own value as property, slaves also sometimes harmed themselves, irritating sores and wounds, eating dirt, and performing any number of other actions that meant they could not work. Others pretended to be ill: one planter claimed that of the forty slaves in his hospital only four were genuinely unwell. Some simply refused to labour. As one of Matthew Lewis’s slaves declared, despite enduring innumerable punishments, “he did not mean to work, and nobody could make him.”

In order to save their children from a life of slavery and to deprive their hated owners of valuable property, some slave women aborted their children. Pierre Desalles was told by a senior slave on the plantation that

(However, terminations were often a convenient excuse for spontaneous abortions brought on by poor nutrition or abuse.) One of Robert Cooper’s biggest frustrations was when slaves ran away; it challenged his authority, reduced his workforce and inspired other slaves to do the same. These flights ranged from unauthorized absences to permanent escape. Despite the island’s topography—flat and small—slaves had gone missing from the earliest days of colonization. The large areas of untamed land that existed then meant that slaves could disappear with impunity, hiding for long periods in uncleared gullies and forested areas. Later the planters passed legislation to ensure that slaves moving about the island had to carry a pass showing that he or she was on his master’s “necessary or lawful business.” And by the early eighteenth century, it was difficult to remain concealed, as one English official stationed on the island remarked: “
Barbados contains fewer hiding places for marronage [i.e.,
permanent escape] than any other West Indian colony.” The best hope of lasting liberty for slaves was to find a boat to take them off the island.

The planters also employed the services of professional “Negro-hunters” or “slave-catchers,” individuals who made their living tracking down runaways. Once recaptured, the slave was often confined in the stocks or put into the slave prison in Bridgetown known as the “cage,” which was a small, low, dirty-looking building with grated doors and windows. The penalty for absenteeism was harsh, ranging from branding or whipping even to public execution for repeat offenders; but despite the severity of these sanctions, the problem persisted, as the frequent newspaper advertisements attest. The
Barbados Mercury
posted these notices in early 1816: “
Lydia Ann, aged 13 or 14 was suspected to be harboured about Baxters Road for in that neighbourhood she has a mother named Kate Harper … and her father … Harry Evans belonging to Mrs. Thorne.” Another read: “Frank was likely to be harboured by his father … at St. Ann’s.”

All too often, however, the most potent form of disruption was taking their own lives. Many planters saw a slave’s suicide as the ultimate act of sabotage. It was a deed that simultaneously lightened their workforce and represented a substantial financial loss. In his time as a planter, Pierre Desalles lost slave after slave this way. At one point two Africans hanged themselves. He claimed to be bemused: “
nobody had done anything to them; they were having a perfectly jolly and amiable time.” On another occasion Desalles, who simply did not have the imagination to appreciate why his slaves might become despondent, noted: “Twelve have died since January and several of them are threatening to die.” And when a slave called Toussaint, who had repeatedly self-harmed, finally died, Desalles was livid:

As in the early days of the settlement, some planters responded to their slaves’ defiant or desperate acts with further barbarity, and displayed the severed heads of persistent runaways or suicides on poles by the
roadside: a sinister reminder to other slaves contemplating the same action that their fate would have repercussions in the next world too. As one planter explained to a visitor: “
They are fully persuaded they will return to Guinea after their decease, they imagine they would cut but a sorry figure to appear there without a Head.”

A miasma of fear hung over the plantations, as the planters’ casual cruelty extended from the fields to the great house. One visitor was shocked when his genial host punched in the face the young maid who was serving them because she had inadvertently slopped some tea into the saucer. Another traveller to the French slave islands was horrified to discover that just prior to dinner his charming hostess had had her cook thrown alive into the oven and watched impassively as he burned to death. His crime? He had burned a cake.