Mauritians talk slavery

Dr David B. Lingiah

Slavery is a bad word; nobody likes to talk about it unless to celebrate the contribution that slaves made to the economic progress of European countries. Yet, around the world people are today marking the abolition of this heinous human enterprise, and at the same time to be prepared not to be involved in all other forms of modern slavery.

 This February marks the 200 years since Parliament passed the Act to abolish the slave trade in the British Empire. According to the British Prime Minister Tony Blair this event marked “the start of a long road to abolition.” Across the United Kingdom there has been a calendar of events to mark this occasion. The Mauritian Prime Minister too was in UK, at Hull University earlier this year in June at the invitation of the Wilberforce Lecture Trust to deliver a lecture in commemoration of the abolition of slavery. Mauritius News (July 2007) noted in the introduction to the full text of his lecture these words: “Mauritius itself went through this sad experience from the very early days of its occupation by the European colonisers.”

Dr Navin Ramgoolam, the Prime Minister of Mauritius, while paying tribute to the efforts of Wilberforce, reminded his audience of distinguished people of how the slaves spent their lives: “humiliated, flogged, made to toil like beasts of burden until death.” That was the lot of the slaves in Mauritius introduced from Mozambique.

“So, Mauritius, without slaves would not have been a viable proposition. The introduction of slavery was a seminal moment in the history of the island. In Mauritius, slavery had distinctive features that made it in many ways, unique…Slaves were drawn from various regions and cultures, from Madagascar, Indonesia, India and Africa…Slavery contributed inadvertently to the rich cultural diversity of our island.”

descendants of slaves will put behind them the humiliation and rancour and make of equality a fact of daily life.”

The descendants of slaves in Mauritius have never been happy; they still feel humiliated despite what is being done to correct the situation by successive governments. In times of economic difficulties they always see their plight as being the worst of the lot. Today the Movement des Creoles is speaking for this group who feels deprived in all respects. They are demanding what they term a fair share of the cake in all areas of life and work. Thanks to the policy of equality of opportunity and empowerment of the successive governments many descendants of slaves have reached good positions in many areas of employment; many of them are well educated and able to lead their comrades and provide role-models. This is praiseworthy. Still there is a lot to be done to ensure we preserve the historical heritage of our islanders.  The lack or deficiencies identified by Teelock could be addressed by all  and sundry to  address this anomaly. We must all acknowledge our past, slave masters and owners alike.

In “Preserving the Slavery Heritage in Mauritius,” Vijaya Teelock of the Department of History,University of Mauritius noted: “ The study of slavery in Mauritius as an academic subject has only received attention in the last two decades beginning in 1985.  It was then that the Mahatma Gandhi Institute (MGI) organized a conference and other activities commemorating the 150 anniversary of the abolition of slavery.”

She went on to say:

“There is also a serious lack of technical expertise on the history of slavery in Mauritius:

·  there are  no professional oral historians to collect and  interpret  the rich oral tradition that exists among the population of Afro-Malagasy descent;

·  there are no archaeologists that could investigate slaves sites to better understand the culture and sociology of slavery and marronage;

·  there are no historical anthropologists to collect ethnographic information on musical and dance traditions, derived from slaves;

·  no economic historian exists in Mauritius to undertake a demographic study of the slave populations and their movement and demographic changes through time.”

Teelock made very pertinent remarks about Mauritian slave-owners who made it very hard to hide their connection with this human tragegy:

and hence traditional Western historiography led to the preservation of few records of the lives of the majority of Mauritians i.e., the descendants of slaves, the “non-Europeans.”

This bias needs to be redressed and a massive effort needs to be undertaken to recover and restore the memory of this past.  If the archival sources seem deficient, they need to be reviewed and given fresh perspectives.  But the sources of information we have available do not only consist of written sources but of many others.  Anthropologists, ethnographers, archaeologists and historians and other professionals need to be brought into the effort to restore this memory.”(Italics are mine).

Across UK many Mauritians joined forces with others from the Afro-Caribbean nations to mark the bicentenary abolition of slavery. In Scotland we are very much aware of the contributions slaves made to the economic development of the country. Author of “Scotland and the Abolition of Black Slavery, 1756-1838” Dr Iain Whyte, a former university chaplain at both the University of St Andrews and the University of Edinburgh, who has lived in the southern US and in West Africa, is an internationally respected campaigner on social and political issues. He observed: “ For so many years Scotland's historians harboured the illusion that our nation had little to do with the slave trade or plantation slavery. This was remarkable in the light of Glasgow's wealth coming from tobacco, sugar and cotton and "Jamaica Streets" being found in a number of Scottish towns and cities.”

A report from an exhibition at the Mitchell Library in Glasgow to mark Black History Month (October) and Slavery in the context of Glasgow’s past history with slavery said Glasgow’s merchants were connected with the slave trade through sugar plantations in Jamaica and the West Indies and the American tobacco areas, like Virginia. Glasgow was a key port and the city’s wealth benefited from the booming tobacco and sugar trade.

Dr Whyte  recognized that although  freedom for slaves came slow, yet some notable Scots were at the forefront of change. He wrote: “ …very little is known of the popular movement in Scotland for the abolition first of all of the slave trade and then of slavery itself.” Englishmen William Wilberforce and Thomas Clarkson are celebrated pioneers of abolition. Yet their work was to a large extent enabled by five London Scots - James Ramsay, William Dickson, Zachary Macaulay, James Stephen and Henry Brougham - who alongside that of countless ordinary people in churches, trades guilds, local councils and public meetings brought a unified voice to the movement, Whyte stated.