How Scotland erased Guyana from its past

[jj23]

How Scotland erased Guyana from its past

The portrayal of Scots as abolitionists and liberal champions has hidden a long history of profiting from slavery in the Caribbean.

Long read, but absolutely brilliant piece. Especially well written.

Anyone with Caribbean connections should find it very educational. One interesting quote from the article -

The Slavery Abolition Act of 1833 didn’t just bring an end to chattel slavery, it also compensated Britain’s 46,000 slave owners for the loss of their “property”. As Guyana’s plantations were mostly involved in sugar-making, and sugar boilers commanded a compensation figure of £100 compared with that of £18 for an unskilled field worker, the Baillies and other plantation owners were heavily compensated for their estates in Guyana.

Consequently, the Baillies received a total of £110,000 (equivalent to around £9.2m today) compensation for the 3,100 slaves they lost, which they invested in a Monopoly board of estates across the Highlands, ensuring that they and their descendants would become one of the largest landed proprietors in the north of Scotland, largely thanks to the profits of slavery.

Also

Alston explains that there are 13 different sites in this tiny place that have connections to slave plantations – mostly in Guyana. He says: “If you lived in the Highlands in the 1800s, you would know about Demerara and Berbice [in Guyana]; people would talk about coming back ‘as rich as a Demerary man’.”

It’s hard to process that a network of Scotsmen from here and the surrounding area used Guyana as a “get-rich-quick scheme”, exploiting for profit the trafficked humans (both slaves and indentured labourers) who were my ancestors. A “gold rush” with no thought of the tragic human consequence.

As I wade through research and testimonials of the fate of slaves in Guyana, it’s difficult to suppress the anger I feel: up until 1826 (nearly two decades after the abolition of the slave trade in 1807), “the 11 o’clock flog” was administered in Berbice’s searing heat to men and women who flagged in their tasks; sexual abuse was so endemic in the same district that, in 1819, one in 50 of the enslaved population was the child or grandchild of a white European.

 

[ORDER_66]

 

[jj23]

Another quote from one of the descendants of the slave owners who traced her roots.

“I hope my ancestors were benevolent slave owners,” she writes. “I do not like to think they were inhumane, even though, as one person in Guyana said, ‘Why would you think otherwise?

Benelovent slave owners brehs

 

[Kasgoinjail]

I think pretty much only the Scandinavian European countries were exempt from. Direct slavery but even those I’m not certain

 

[jj23]

Blacks were slaves then when slavery was 'abolished' they pulled indentured servants from India.

Same con, different race.

Highlanders also have the dubious accolade of pioneering the first shiploads of Indian indentured labourers to Guyana shortly after the abolition of slavery. John Gladstone (a Guyanese planter and father of the future British prime minister, who received £106,769 in compensation, the equivalent of about £9m today) wrote to Francis Mackenzie Gillanders of Gillanders, Arbuthnot & Co in Calcutta, requesting a new source of cheap and easily controlled labour.

Gillanders had already sent Indians to Mauritius under five-year contracts and was keen to fulfil Gladstone’s request. He perceived no difficulty with the new recruits, declaring they have “few wants beyond eating, sleeping and drinking”, referring to the “hill coolies of India” as “more akin to the monkey than the man”, unaware of “the place they agree to go to or the voyage they are undertaking”.

The arrival of the ships Whitby and Hesperus in Guyana in 1838 would herald the movement of more than half a million Indians to the Caribbean to work under overseers in the sweltering plantations, until the end of the practice in 1917.

 

[ORDER_66]

And these same carribean cats was crying over ADOS getting reparations when they could have been fighting their former oppressors to make reparations for their land and people too...

 

[jj23]

And these same carribean cats was crying over ADOS getting reparations when they could have been fighting their former oppressors to make reparations for their land and people too...

We have been fighting for reparations and it has already started. I never had an issue with ADOS getting reparations. I simply felt like people who used reparations as a reason to not vote were agents, at best ignorant.

 

[ORDER_66]

We have been fighting for reparations and it has already started. I never had an issue with ADOS getting reparations. I simply felt like people who used reparations as a reason to not vote were agents, at best ignorant.

I see... but every carribean person with lineage I've seen are either for ADOS getting it or not...

Also the voting thing needed to happen we need to weaponize our votes just like the jews and asians do... its the only way democrats respect these other groups and bend the knee to them...

 

[jj23]

I see... but every carribean person with lineage I've seen are either for ADOS getting it or not...

Also the voting thing needed to happen we need to weaponize our votes just like the jews and asians do... its the only way democrats respect these other groups and bend the knee to them...

The dilemma faced there is you keep people who specifically want to hold you down in power. The GOP has simply said no and they have a proven track record of not have black people's interest at heart.

So why would you keep them in power to prove a point? Both sides aren't the same.

 

[ORDER_66]

The dilemma faced there is you keep people who specifically want to hold you down in power. The GOP has simply said no and they have a proven track record of not have black people's interest at heart.

So why would you keep them in power to prove a point? Both sides aren't the same.

Black people KNOW what the republicans are about, but I think that the democrats being the inclusive party for everyone should live up to their ideals... I think alot of ADOS is targeting them FIRST because of it... simple as that. democrats used black votes to get by in elections for years what happens when you can't get a single drop of black votes to get your victory...?

the only choice for us left is to weaponize our votes... fukk it... you gonna give the jews tangibles, gonna give the asians tangibles, now your gonna give US tangibles...

No one is keeping them in power, its you pay up or you don't get our vote...

I just wished alot of black folks woke up to this political party bullshyt early...

 

[Secure Da Bag]

I think alot of ADOS is targeting them FIRST because of it...

I would argue the Dems' reliance on the black vote and the Dems failure to directly and explicitly address black issues is why the Dems are being targeted FIRST.

 

[ORDER_66]

I would argue the Dems' reliance on the black vote and the Dems failure to directly and explicitly address black issues is why the Dems are being targeted FIRST.

Agreed... I wonder if the guyanese govt is gonna address this???

 

[jj23]

Agreed... I wonder if the guyanese govt is gonna address this???

A University in Scotland pledged 200 Mill I believe but it is uncertain when or how it is being sent or distributed.

 

[Secure Da Bag]

We have been fighting for reparations and it has already started. I never had an issue with ADOS getting reparations. I simply felt like people who used reparations as a reason to not vote were agents, at best ignorant.

I'm happy to continue this in the ADOS thread, so not to derail this thread any further. So I'll say this, regardless of how misguided people felt it was, a "few" black people sat out in the 2016 election and coincidentally Dems lost by a margin of error. Now black people are threatening to sit-out en masse and reparations is not only mainstream but a political and presidential issue in 2020.

If anything, I think black people are playing the game right.

 

[barese]

I think pretty much only the Scandinavian European countries were exempt from. Direct slavery but even those I’m not certain

Maybe in terms of African slaves, but Scandinavians were major enslavers in Northern and Eastern Europe in the middle ages (taking the slaves to Venice, Prague and Byzantium that were the major trade centers).
It's not an accident that the word slave in English derives from Greek word for Slavs, and Scandinavians played a major role in all this.