Date: Sun, 25 Dec 2005 03:57:05 +0000
From: TheBlackList-Cullection <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: The Christmas Rebellion: Remembering Sam Sharpe, Afrikan Hero

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CULLED FROM:
Jamaica Gleaner Online Email Edition for Sunday | December 25, 2005

Remembering Sam Sharpe
http://www.jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20051225/out/out2.html
published: Sunday | December 25, 2005

by Arnold Bertram

DECEMBER 27, marks the 174th anniversary of the Emancipation rebellion
organised and led by Sam Sharpe. It forced the British Parliament to
recognise that if they did not abolish slavery from above, the slaves
were determined and able to do so from below. The extent to which this
rebellion determined the timetable for the emancipation of slavery in
Jamaica and the British Empire, should make its anniversary a most
important national celebration. Equally, the life and work of Sam
Sharpe deserve a special place in the collective memory of the nation.


A NECESSARY CONTEXT


Emancipation was one of the highpoints in that period between the
American declaration of independence in 1776, and the Emancipation
proclamation by Abraham Lincoln in 1863, in which the most profound
advances in human freedom were achieved. There were four distinct but
interrelated currents, which transformed the world of plantation
slavery into the economic system of capitalism based on individual
freedom and the industrial revolution.


The first stream was the movement for self-determination which took
centre stage with the American War of Independence (1776-1783). This
was the blow which shook the British colonial empire and fuelled the
aspirations of colonial peoples worldwide.


The second was the idea that "all men are equal", which formed the
centre piece of the American Declaration of Independence, and was even
more forcefully expressed in the slogan of the French revolution of
1789 ­ "freedom, equality and fraternity"! Revolutionary France gave
impetus to the British Abolition Society led by Granville Sharp and
Thomas Clarkeson, and took the revolutionary decision of abolishing
slavery in the French colonial empire in 1794.


Third was the campaign to establish the superior productivity of free
labour over slaves, which was the theme of Adam Smith's Wealth of
Nations, published in 1776. Seven years later, James Watts' invention
of the steam engine provided the basis for the industrial revolution
in Britain and established factory production. Industrial output could
no longer be produced or consumed by slaves. Free labour and free
trade became the absolute prerequisites for the emerging world
capitalist system.


The fourth and final stream was the revolutionary movement of the
slaves to win their own freedom. Some 4,000 blacks fought in
Washington's army against the British. In 1791, Toussaint L'Ouverture,
a slave in the French colony of Saint Domingue (Haiti), led the most
successful slave revolution, which defeated in turn the local whites
and the soldiers of the French monarchy, a Spanish invasion, a British
expedition of some 60,000 men and a French expedition of similar size
under Napoleon's brother-in-law to establish the first independent
Negro state.


It was in this international movement that two Jamaican slaves rose to
prominence. The first was John Brown Russwurm, born in Portland in
1800, who in 1826 became the third black man to graduate from an
American College. The following year, along with Samuel Cornish, he
started Freedom Journal, the first black newspaper in North America
and the first organ of the black liberation movement. The second
Jamaican slave, Sam Sharpe, achieved even greater eminence and is
fittingly the subject of this essay.



THE APPROACH TO THE REBELLION


Samuel Sharpe was born the same year as Russwurm in 1800, and
consistent with the custom of the time, took the name of his master
who owned Croydon Estate, a small property near Montego Bay. Sharpe, a
literate and highly intelligent house slave, kept abreast of local and
international events by reading both the English and Jamaican
newspapers of the day, and was also a member of the Native Baptist
Church. All those who knew him were struck by his intelligence, his
powers of oratory, his commitment to freedom and his organising
genius.


In the decade preceding the Emancipation rebellion, there was a marked
increase in slave rebellions and a growing belief that the British
Parliament had granted emancipation, which was being held back by the
local Assembly of white planters. The agitation for emancipation
received a major impetus in 1829 with the publication of The Watchman
by Edward Jordan, a freed man of colour and Robert Osborn, a mulatto.
Finally in May 1830, the British Anti-Slavery Society proposed the
immediate emancipation of slaves.


The response of the local planters to the resolution took the form of
parish meetings conducted in the full view and hearing of the slaves,
which denounced the British Parliament and the Abolition movement. The
resolution from the parish of St. Ann expressed the sentiment of
planters islandwide who declared, "When we see ourselves scorned,
betrayed, devoted to ruin and slaughter... we consider that we are
bound by every principle, human and divine, to resist". The parish
meeting in Trelawny went even further to petition the King, "that we
may be absolved from our allegiance and allowed to seek that
protection from another nation, which is so unjustly and cruelly
withheld from us by our own".


It was in this context that Sam Sharpe came to the inevitability of
revolution and started organising. The Baptist Church, with its
established decentralised corps of class leaders, who exerted real
power and authority, provided the ideal vehicle for Sharpe's plan.
Riding horseback at nights for as much as 26 miles, he converted the
class leaders in the five western parishes to his cause and organised
them for revolutionary action.


THE REBELLION


Sharpe's plan was to call a general strike immediately after the
Christmas holidays, and to refuse to do any further work on the
plantations until a system of wage payments was agreed on. It was the
refusal of the planters to yield to this demand and the
counter-revolutionary violence of the white militias, led by General
Sir Willoughby Cotton, the officer commanding the British troops in
Jamaica, which escalated the conflict.


The signal for the start of the rebellion on the night of December 27
was the torching of Kensington Pen in the parish of St. James by an
enslaved man, John Dunbar. The razing of this property was perfectly
suited for sending a clear signal to rebels on the other properties to
join the protest. The fighting lasted until the end of January 1832,
and involved close to 60,000 men and women. It not only engulfed the
parish of St. James, but also spread to the other four western
parishes as well as to Manchester, and even as far away as Portland
and St. Thomas. It is significant that Sharpe's army also included a
number of freedmen and one white man, a Mr. Ellery.


The suppression was brutal. Six hundred and nineteen rebels were
killed, of which 312 were executed by the slave courts and Courts
Marshall. In contrast only 14 whites were killed and another 12
wounded. Sharpe himself was executed in the square at Montego Bay. The
Methodist minister, Henry Bleby provides us with a moving account of
how he met his death. "He marched to the spot where so many had been
sacrificed to the demon of slavery with a firm and even dignified
step, clothed in a suit of new white clothes?..He seemed to be
entirely unmoved by the near approach of death and addressed the
assembled multitude at some length in a clear unfaltering voice".


The following year the British Parliament abolished slavery. While
many factors contributed, there is no doubt that Sam Sharpe and the
Emancipation rebellion forced the timetable. It is to Sam Sharpe's
merit that the Emancipation rebellion was the first to demand freedom
for all. All previous rebellions, including the Maroon wars, had
limited their demand for freedom to those who fought.


THE WEAKNESS OF OUR INTELLECTUAL TRADITION


In 1978 the administration of Michael Manley declared Sam Sharpe a
National Hero. The justification written by the eminent sociologist,
Edward Braithwaite, provided invaluable insights into Sharpe. However,
the first major study on Sharpe had been undertaken as early as 1954
by Richard Hart, but only published in 1980. Hart, a Jamaican born in
the upper classes of Jamaican society, has devoted his considerable
intellect and energy to the struggles of the poor. Since Hart's study,
there has only been a monograph by the Baptist minister, Sam Reid. The
noted historian Verene Shepherd is to be commended for publishing an
essay, which for the first time brings to light the other leaders who
assisted Sharpe in the planning and execution of the rebellion.


Despite these efforts, Jamaicans by and large remain ignorant of the
immense contribution of Sam Sharpe. As we again ignore his anniversary
this year, the question we must ask is whether Jamaica can really move
forward with the self confidence and sense of pride, without making
its most fundamental achievements a part of the national
consciousness.


Arnold Bertram is a former Member of Parliament.


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