Sugar in the Blood (22 page)

After the shock had subsided, the entire island was mobilized to clear debris, replant crops and bury the dead. The injury to the Ashbys’ property is unknown but it would have been unavoidable: one official report noted that “no one house in the island is exempt from damage.” The family therefore would have had to put up with makeshift arrangements for some time, and their finances must have been devastated by the destruction that the hurricane had wrought. They would have found that even if they could raise the money for repairs, lumber and other materials were so scarce and expensive that rebuilding could only take place slowly. To make matters worse, the colony was simultaneously ravaged by outbreaks of yellow fever and smallpox, and by ruinous new duties imposed by Britain. By the end of the American War of Independence in 1783, “
the economic position of Barbados was still poor, and a number of planters left the island rather than undertake to repair the damage done by the hurricane.”

Robert Cooper at the age of four was probably only vaguely conscious of these problems: his world extended little further than his house, his parents and the three younger siblings that would follow. Nothing remains of his childhood homestead but an inscription on an eighteenth-century map. It reads simply “Ashby,” and marked beside it is a drawing of a single windmill, signifying the estate’s limited ability to process sugar. But it was most likely typical of the majority of middling sugar plantations at that time. The nucleus of the property, the “great house,” would have been modest: a single-storey wooden construction perched on large square stones with the ubiquitous veranda around the sides and front; while the neatly kept garden would have been dominated by tropical trees like frangipani, tamarind and cedar. The planter’s house was traditionally guarded by a hedge of flowering shrubs like hibiscus, which marked it out as separate from the rest of the plantation and indicated its privileged position on the property. Beyond the compound the land was divided into cane fields, pastures for the plantation’s livestock and plots of land the slaves cultivated for their own sustenance. Dotted across this landscape was a higgledy-piggledy collection of livestock, outbuildings and slave quarters.

Here Robert Cooper and his siblings applied themselves to the job of being young. Despite some material deprivation it was a cosseted upbringing, since even relatively small plantations had a glut of domestic servants to cater to the family’s needs. Robert Cooper, who was addressed as “Massa Robert” from his earliest infancy, would have enjoyed the attentions of his own nanny, whose efforts were supplemented by other helpers who bathed and dressed, walked and coddled him. Even the slave children he played with would yield to his every whim. This indulged upbringing, argued one contemporary, explained the Creole’s volatility and lack of self-control:

The Ashby children lived almost entirely outdoors, where there were trees to climb, lizards to chase and horses to ride. On the plantation there were peaceful places: ponds shaded by trees where Robert and his companions could lie and read or chat and dream. There were thrilling places: ravines and dark, vine-draped pockets of tropical forest, which they could explore with all the attendant dangers—and excitements—of snakes, scorpions and huge hairy-limbed spiders. There were mysterious places in which to hide: nooks and crannies created by fallen trees or mudslides. Robert Cooper’s youth was one dominated by intense sensations: the warmth of sun-baked skin, the feeling of being free and unencumbered, and above all, that incomparable quality of light.

This childhood idyll was punctuated by the rhythms of sugar cultivation. Robert Cooper would learn to sleep through the sound of the bell that summoned the slaves to the fields just before sun-up, and he took for granted the sight of slave gangs working in the cane fields. The emblematic image of the colonies—women carrying bundles of cane upon their heads—was mundane to him. And like all locals, he was able to ignore the crack of the whip and the strangled cries of the slaves: a selective deafness that would amaze newcomers to the island.

Meanwhile, another storm was brewing across the Atlantic that would have a profound impact on my ancestor’s future. This was the emergence of the abolitionist movement, which had been kick-started by Granville Sharp, an ordnance clerk at the Tower of London, who championed the cause of a slave called James Somerset originally from Virginia. Hoping to prove that it was illegal to ship him from England back to the Americas, Sharp went to court. The case eventually ended up before Lord Chief Justice Mansfield in a trial that one historian described as “
high theatre.” At last, the ugly question of slavery, which was something most Britons saw as taking place on the other side of the world, was brought to their doorstep. The court was filled to overflowing when judgement was given in favour of Somerset.

The burgeoning anti-slavery movement was jubilant; Mansfield’s decision was interpreted as meaning that slavery was illegal on English soil. This was not the Lord Chief Justice’s intention: he strove only to prove that it was unlawful for the slave to be transported abroad. But whatever the legal subtleties, blacks and abolitionists exulted, and at least fifteen English slaves were freed by judges who cited Somerset as their precedent.

In 1787, the year Robert Cooper turned eleven, the British Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade was officially formed. Granville Sharp was among its leaders, along with the ex-slaver John Newton, who penned the hymn “Amazing Grace,” and the ex-Anglican priest James Ramsay, who had ministered to slaves in St. Kitts. They were joined by Cambridge scholar Thomas Clarkson, who would persuade the politician and philanthropist William Wilberforce to join the movement. Their numbers were further swelled by the founder of the Methodist movement, John Wesley, and the great Quaker potter Josiah Wedgwood, who created the symbol of the movement: a plaque which depicted a kneeling slave in chains, arms raised towards heaven, pleading “Am I Not a Man and a Brother?”

At last the gauntlet had been thrown down and the battle for abolition was truly on. It would be a long and passionate drama, replete with innumerable setbacks and victories, not least because the forces ranged against the abolitionists were truly formidable.

The abolitionists employed many strategies to counter their enemies, some of the most powerful of which were religious, reflecting the fact that many of the abolitionists’ intellectual ideas were underpinned by profound spiritual convictions. Their vigorous mobilization of Christian ethics to justify the abolitionist cause was a complete departure from the past, when the Bible, in particular the story of Ham, had been exploited to support the cause of enslavement and the church had expressed very little concern about the institution of slavery. In Barbados, for example, the Anglican church saw no contradiction between its religious ethics and slave ownership, particularly when it was left
two lucrative estates in the will of the planter Christopher Codrington. The church ran these plantations, which had over 700 slaves, for several decades. They branded their charges with their own custom-designed mark, and treated them with no greater compassion than many other slave owners. Most of the early missionaries preached that slavery was ordained by God, and even the island’s Quakers frequently owned slaves, justifying their slave ownership with the argument that it provided black pagans with exposure to Christianity’s civilizing influence.

Now, however, Granville Sharp remarked, “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thy self … this is the sum and essence of the whole law of God.” The movement attracted a diverse range of followers. There were blacks—both slaves and free—philosophers and artists, Quakers and missionaries, the white working class, women, even free-traders. So it was hard initially to decide on a plan of action, but in the end they decided that their first goal should be the abolition of the trade in slaves, which would at least eliminate the horrors of the Middle Passage. They also wondered how best to present the slaves to the public so as to elicit the most support. They chose to downplay the slaves’ own efforts to gain their freedom and instead presented them as long-suffering victims in need of rescue. After prolonged debate, they evolved a strategy of such sophistication that it would provide the model for citizens’ rights movements up to the present day.

When it came to making the most compelling case, the abolitionists carried out widespread research into the iniquities of the trade. They collected now-famous images, such as that of the slave ship
Brookes
with the captives crammed like cod beneath deck, and the sketch of a ship’s captain whipping a naked female slave, suspended upside down, while three black women wept abjectly in the background. To persuade the uncommitted, Clarkson travelled the country with a grisly collection of slave paraphernalia, including handcuffs, shackles and iron masks designed to prevent starving slaves from eating cane. The movement also produced an endless stream of advertisements, articles and pamphlets; indeed the pamphleteers were the bloggers of their day and their writings most accurately reflect the intellectual passions of the era.

Another potent weapon was slave testimonials. The most famous of these,
The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African
, was published in 1789. The story of Equiano’s
capture as a child in Africa and subsequent travails as a slave captured the public’s imagination. The erstwhile slave promoted his seven-shilling pamphlet with such panache that the historian Adam Hochschild has described it as “
the first great political book tour.” The abolitionist movement quickly began to gather momentum and in 1792 alone, 519 petitions on slavery were handed in to the House of Commons.

Inevitably, the Society of West India Planters and Merchants fought back, mobilizing their considerable economic power to wangle seats in the English Parliament. They also discharged their own salvos in the propaganda war. One pro-slavery tract, composed by a Barbadian curate, was published in 1788 in the hope of dispelling “
the prejudices which had been hastily taken up” against the West Indians. He felt that outsiders were “totally unacquainted with the customs and manners of these distant colonies” and argued that slave labour was essential to their economic survival. It offered a relentlessly sunny representation of slavery, and suggested that those in England had no understanding of “the real and actual condition of the black race.” He claimed slaves were “Well fed and clothed” and that their daily work “was not so laborious as hath been represented.” Slavery, he also argued, provided an opportunity to Christianize the heathen slaves. Indeed, he concluded the slaves in the West Indies “may be said to enjoy more of the sweets of life than many of the whites themselves.”

But the times were against him, and within a few years the abolitionists were ready to make their assault on Parliament. William Pitt’s speech on the Proposed Abolition of the Slave Trade 1792, in which the ailing parliamentarian spoke late into the night, was a turning point in the fortunes of the abolitionist movement. Pitt’s views on what to do about “the barbarous traffic in slaves” were unequivocal: “I trust we are now likely to be delivered from the greatest practical evil that has ever afflicted the human race, from the severest and most extensive calamity recorded in the history of the world.”

While debate raged and public sympathies shifted in Britain, visiting merchants and other travellers brought reports of the abolitionist campaigns to the Caribbean, and this news naturally filtered down to the slave community. The excited slaves pieced together the fragments
of information they gleaned from dockside conversations and careless table talk, and surreptitiously read newspapers and discussed them feverishly. It was no surprise if they sometimes put together this mosaic inaccurately, or that they believed that emancipation would take place sooner than it really did. But whatever the facts, they were nonetheless emboldened and optimistic. For the first time in centuries, there appeared to be a chink in the armour of the mighty slave system and a tiny ember of hope began to glow in their collective hearts. By the early 1790s colonial whites had begun complaining that Caribbean blacks exhibited a “
new temper and ideas,” or were “no longer the same people.”

And so it proved: the greatest coup of the abolition movement was the one carried out by the slaves themselves. Unfolding over twelve years, the revolution in the French Caribbean colony Saint-Domingue would be a roller-coaster ride of blood and tears, glory and desolation. At one time or another all three of the great powers that dominated the region—France, Spain and England—would become embroiled in the conflict. And it would produce not just one but a whole series of leaders, some now forgotten, others immortalized, who would defy the ideas promulgated by the racist societies of the Atlantic world, and would display a bravery, intelligence and military brilliance that would surprise and captivate the world.