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The slave connection lingers – Patterson

Published:Thursday | December 12, 2019 | 12:25 AMChristopher Serju/Gleaner Writer
 Orlando Patterson
Orlando Patterson

The facts of Jamaica’s slave history are well known, but the lasting impact of centuries of indoctrination rooted in cruel, state-sanctioned punishment are just being understood, according to Professor Orlando Patterson.

As a Jamaican and a historical sociologist who has pondered Jamaica’s problems for most of his adult life, Patterson argues that Jamaica’s 183 years of British plantation slavery may possibly have been the most brutal and gruesome in the annals of world slavery.

Other countries suffered slavery, but even in the Caribbean there were extraordinary differences. The British spared no quarter in their extreme exploitation of the island and willingness to import Africans as slaves to work the sugar plantations, the coffee farms and the cattle pens, he explained during a recent lecture, titled ‘ Jamaica and its Postcolonial Predicament’.

For over a century, Jamaica was the most lucrative colony in the British Empire, its trade with Britain outstripping all of the North American colonies put together. It was also the most unequal place on the planet, far more so than the US south. In fact, the estimate was that the inequality was 20 times greater than the inequality between masters and slaves in the US south.

“More slaves were brought here than to all of North America. Imagine that! What happened to them?” he asked of his audience at the regional headquarters of the University of the West Indies, Mona Campus.

“They died, they were worked to death, what I referred to as slow- motion genocide. By 1710, the US slave population was reproducing; the Jamaican slave population never reproduced. Of course, the Jamaicans didn’t take it lying down. Jamaica had the largest number of slave revolts than any other slave society.

“You’ve heard of Haiti being described as the first successful slave revolt. Actually, that’s not quite accurate, and this is not to take away from the glory of the Haitian slave revolt. The first successful slave revolt was one of the first Maroon wars in 1650, when the British came very close to abandoning the island and sued for peace – the mighty British army sued for peace and came to terms, signed a treaty with what became later known as the Maroons.

Genocide and resistance

“That long near genocide and resistance was bound to have an effect on people, and the cantankerous nature, the combative individualism of the Jamaicans is rooted in this long history of extremely severe colonialism and extremely severe resistance, like no other country in the modern world or in the history of the world,” he declared.

Professor Patterson, in his comparison of Jamaica and Barbados, another former British colony, found some historical evidence rooted in its transition from a slave society which accounts for its better macroeconomic performance and stability. It has done much better since Independence, despite problems in recent year. The Barbadian trajectory has been one of extraordinary success, measured not just in terms of GDP (gross domestic production), but its overall quality of life, assessed in various ways such as the human development index – in which in it ranks higher among the advanced countries – while Jamaica stagnated, according to Professor Patterson.

He dismissed the argument that Jamaica and Barbados are very similar – despite the same history of slavery, same British Colonialism, similar post-colonial history, they became independent about the same time, and almost all their political leaders were trained at the UWI.

Fast-forward from independence half-century ago, then you get a totally different picture. Barbados per capita income is well over twice that of Jamaica, and before it got into its recent economic difficulties it was three times that of Jamaica.