Africa Speaks Reasoning Forum

Posted By: Ras Benjamin
on Rastafari Speaks Message Board

How the declaration was published

"Negro emancipation"

Saturday August 2, 1834

(http://www.rastafarispeaks.com/bp/slavery01.jpg)

Throughout the British dominions the sun no longer rises on a slave. Yesterday was the day from which the emancipation of all our slave population commences; and we trust the great change by which they are elevated to the rank of freemen will be found to have passed into effect in the manner most accordant with the benevolent spirit in which it was decreed, most consistent with the interests of those for whose benefit it was primarily intended, and most calculated to put an end to the apprehensions under which it was hardly to be expected that the planters could fail to labour as the moment of its consummation approaches. We shall await anxiously the arrivals from the West Indies that will bring advices to a date subsequent to the present time.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/fromthearchive/story/0,12269,1010045,00.html

Posted By: Ras Forever
Date: 30, July 2002

Greetings in the name of His Imperial Majesty Emperor Haile Sellassie I the First. This message marks the observance of Emancipation Day August 1st 2002 - the 164th Anniversary of the legal end to the inhumane and brutal institution of chattel plantation slavery, that for so long stained the conscience of the world.

EMANCIPATION IS A PROCESS - NOT AN ANNUAL EVENT

This Freedom Day of August 1st 1838, came after several hundred years of chattel Slavery, one of the most abominable examples of man's inhumanity to man, in this case the African man, who was violently uprooted from Africa, packed and shipped like animals to destinations all over the world. This act being perpetrated by a combination of European governments and their servants, private investors and their chosen African agents.

In the years since Freedom was said to have been achieved, the assessment of events, progress, and gains that have taken place, remains a source of contention and should be best made by individuals and groups, both in Africa and the places of their dispersal, where an accurate picture can be presented place by place, by the relevant communities or nations themselves.

The years between the Declaration of Emancipation and the present, saw several countries, groups and individuals, marking the occasion by a public holiday and other observances. Recently Ghana has joined the growing list of nations to make the date a public holiday. This after a period, where the significance and importance of Emancipation was nearly obliterated from the consciousness of the African and the world.

The Emancipation of the Africans and others in the British West Indies was followed by that of those in the French, Spanish, Dutch and American territories. It must be stated here that Freedom to the African was not exactly a gift, but came about because of a series of measures by the African themselves, to make the system of Slavery unworkable and unprofitable.This was done at a great cost to millions of Africans, whose blood, sweat, tears and lives, are responsible for whatever gains that has been achieved since those dark days that begun when the slave ships first appeared off the African coasts.

In closing this tribute, I an I pay homage and honour, to those who prayed, who bled, who suffered, who pained, who fought, who screamed, who cried and died on the altar of human greed and indifference. Many thanks to all those who stood by then an those who are still standing today in support with Rastafari and African people in the fight for peace, justice, equality and respect of all human rights, for all people, at all times.

I an I Rastafari give thanks and praises, knowing that I an I rose from the depths of oppression, despair, subjugation, exploitation, and rejection. From the humblest of the humble, from the lowliest of the low, joining in the creation of a bond with all conscious and righteous humanity to lift the level of mankind's existence to hither unattainable heights and create a bright new future under the banner of RASTAFARI, the coming together of all righteous people, a gathering of the godly, a source of spirit, inspiration, salvation, repatriation, reparation and redemption.

Rastafari shall lead the way forward, a true symbol of emancipation, a beacon of hope, a source of love.

Let Jah Rastafari be praised everytime.

A Message from a Dear departed Brother.

In this life, in this life
In this oh sweet life
We're coming in from the cold
We're coming in, coming in, coming in
We're coming in from the cold
It's life, it's life, it's life
Coming in from the cold
We're coming in, coming in, coming in
Coming in from the cold

It's you, it's you, it's you I'm talking to
Well you, it's you, it's you
It's you I'm talking to now

Bob Marley 1980

The Emancipation Bill was presented in Parliament by Thomas Buxton in 1833 and the Act came into effect on August 1, 1834. On that day it seemed as if history had been created for slaves throughout the West Indies. They would no longer be slaves, but emancipated - free to do as they pleased. However, that was not to be, as amidst the joy and celebration came the news that full freedom would not be granted immediately, but that ex-slaves would be apprenticed to their former master for a minimum of four (4) years. Thus a period of 'apprenticeship' was put in place to bridge the gap between slavery and complete freedom.

###

On August 1, 1985, Trinidad and Tobago became the first country in the world to declare a national holiday to commemorate the abolition of slavery.

Obviously, we celebrate the abolition of slavery in the British Empire in 1834. However, individual colonies in British North America (which later became the United States of America) abolished slavery, beginning with Rhode Island in 1774. The first national abolition was declared in the French Revolution of 1789, and maintained afterward only in the independent Republic of Haiti.

Slavery was abolished permanently in the French Empire in 1848, in the Spanish Empire in 1880, and in Brazil in 1888. (Brazil is central, since it received more than one-third of all Africans imported in the slave trade).

Also, while we do not often think beyond the European-Atlantic slave trade, the Middle Eastern trade in African slaves also was significant. Opposition to slavery in Africa and Asia was not as strong as it was in the Caribbean, Europe and the United States.

Saudi Arabia and Angola abolished slavery officially only in the 1960s. Although legal slavery by then had probably ceased to exist, some Berber peoples continued to own slaves until at least 1975, and in areas of Africa and Asia, authentic slavery still exists surreptitiously.

Emancipation's worldwide significance is undoubtedly vital. However, in Trinidad (as opposed to Trinidad and Tobago), we should recognise that our historical experience does not neatly fit the wider one. As Dr Eric Williams, first Prime Minister of Trinidad, noted, Trinidad in 1833, was not a plantation society; it was a society of small estates operated by a few slaves. The average slave owner had seven slaves in Trinidad, as compared to 24 in Tobago. According to Dr Williams, Trinidad had a mere 17,439 slaves at Emancipation, as opposed to Jamaica, which had 254,310, slaves, or British Guiana, which had 69,579. In addition, in Trinidad there were three domestic slaves for every 10 field slaves, as compared with a ratio of under two to 10 in Jamaica and one to 10 in British Guiana. Moreover, the British annexation of Trinidad came at a time when English opposition to slavery was winning popular approval. As a result, Trinidad was administered as a Model Colony, in respect of legislation governing the treatment of slaves.

All this is not to deny the importance or to minimise the cruelties of slavery, even in Trinidad. But it does help us place our experience in a wider global and historical perspective. In Trinidad's history (distinct from Tobago's), the episode of Emancipation was crucial in changing the character of the population of the island. For one, Trinidad became a magnet for the emancipated slaves of the other, older and more-densely populated islands, especially Grenada, St Vincent and Barbados. An estimated 10,278 of these West Indian immigrants came to Trinidad between 1839 and 1849, while between 1871 and 1911 about 65,000 immigrated. By 1897 there were about 14,000 Barbadians living in the island. The largest immigration, however, came from the importation of 143,949 Indian indentured labourers between 1845 and 1917.

But the other smaller immigrations were also socially significant: 866 French and German labourers in 1839-40; 1,309 free blacks from the US between 1839 and 1847; liberated Africans (3,383 from Sierra Leone and 3,198 from St Helena between 1841 and 1861); 1,298 Madeirans (Portuguese) beginning in 1848; 2,500 indentured Chinese labourers between 1853 and 1866; and Syrians and Lebanese at the beginning of the 20th century. The ending of slavery in Trinidad led to the colony opening itself up to wider immigration, giving rise to the population which we see here today.

It also marked the beginning of the period when the bulk of the population - immigrant and Trinidad-born - was entitled to autonomously engage in the building of a society, at least at some level. As Lloyd Best has emphasised, in the 19th century the emancipated slaves built whole sections of Port-of-Spain themselves.

In the older islands of Jamaica and Barbados, Emancipation was much more central and even traumatic. It radically broke deeply-ingrained, social relations, whose survivals are still iscernible in the present day, much more so than in Trinidad. A relatively stable population had to re-work the way its members related to each other, often with great difficulty. On some level, it is ironic that Trinidad and Tobago has been leading the world in the recognition of Emancipation, particularly led by the Emancipation Support Committee who have been campaigning throughout the Caribbean, in Canada, the United States and Africa as well.

But it may not be so much of an anomaly, when one remembers that Trinidad is the place where so many freed Africans migrated.

It does us well to understand Emancipation within our own peculiar historical experience, in addition to appreciating its world-historical significance.

http://www.hotroti.com/freedom.pdf