'The Property' by C.L.R. James
'The Property'
Extract from 'Black Jacobins' by C.L.R. James
Published by Allison and Busby
The slavers scoured the coasts of Guinea. As they devastated an area they moved
westward and then south, decade after decade, past the Niger, down the Congo
coast, past Loango and Angola, round the Cape of Good Hope, and, by.1789 even as
far as Mozambique on the eastern side of Africa. Guinea remained their chief
hunting ground. From the coast they organised expeditions far into the interior.
They set the simple tribesmen fighting against each other with modern weapons
over thousands of square miles. The propagandists of the time claimed that
however cruel was the slave traffic, the African slave in America was happier
than in his own African civilisation. Ours, too, is an age of propaganda. We
excel our ancestors only in system and organisation: they lied as fluently and as
brazenly. In the sixteenth century, Central Africa was a territory of peace and
happy civilisation. Traders travelled thousands of miles from one side of the
continent to another without molestation. The tribal wars from which the European
pirates claimed to deliver the people were mere sham-fights; it was a great
battle when half-a-dozen men were killed. It was on a peasantry in many respects
superior to the serfs in large areas of Europe, that the slave-trade fell. Tribal
life was broken up and millions of detribalised Africans were let loose upon each
other. The unceasing destruction of crops led to cannibalism; the captive women
became concubines and degraded the status of the wife. Tribes had to supply
slaves or be sold as slaves themselves. Violence and ferocity became the
necessities for survival, and violence and ferocity survived. The stockades of
grinning skulls, the human sacrifices, the selling of their own children as
slaves, these horrors were the product of an intolerable pressure on the African
peoples, which became fiercer through the centuries as the demands of industry
increased and the methods of coercion were perfected. The slaves were
collected in the interior, fastened one to the other in columns, loaded with
heavy stones of 40 or 50 pounds in weight to prevent attempts at escape, and then
marched the long journey to the sea, sometimes hundreds of miles, the weakly and
sick dropping to die in the African jungle. Some were brought to the coast by
canoe, lying in the bottom of boats for days on end, their hands bound, their
faces exposed to the tropical sun and the tropical rain, their backs in the water
which was never bailed out. At the slave ports they were penned into 'trunks' for
the inspection of the buyers. Night and day thousands of human beings were packed
in these 'dens of putrefaction' so that no European could stay in them for longer
than a quarter of an hour without fainting. The Africans fainted and recovered or
fainted and died, the mortality in the 'trunks' being over 20 per cent. Outside
in the harbour, waiting to empty the 'trunks' as they filled, was the captain of
the slave-ship, with so clear a conscience that one of them, in the intervals of
waiting to enrich British capitalism with the profits of another valuable cargo,
enriched British religion by composing the hymn, 'How Sweet the Name of Jesus
sounds!'
On the ships the slaves were packed in the hold on galleries one above the other.
Each was given only four or five feet in length and two or three feet in height,
so at they could neither lie at full length nor sit upright. Contrary to the lies
that have been spread so pertinaciously about Negro docility, the revolts at the
port of embarkation and on board were incessant, so that the slaves had to be
chained, right hand to right leg, left hand to left leg, and attached in rows to
long iron bars. In this position they lived for the voyage, coming up once a day
for exercise and to allow the sailors to, 'clean the pails.' But when the cargo
was rebellious or the weather bad, then they stayed below for weeks at a time.
The close proximity of so many naked human beings, their bruised and festering
flesh, the foetid air, the prevailing dysentery, the accumulation of filth,
turned these holds into a hell. During the storms the hatches were battened down,
and in the close and loathsome darkness they were hurled from one side to another
by the heaving vessel, held in position by the chains on their bleeding flesh. No
place on earth, observed one writer of the time, concentrated so much misery as
the hold of a slave-ship.
Twice a day, at nine and at four, they received their food. To the slave-traders
they were articles of trade and no more. A captain held up by calms or adverse
winds was known to have poisoned his cargo. Another killed some of his slaves to
feed the others with the flesh. They died not only from the regime but from grief
and rage and despair They undertook vast hunger strikes; undid their chains and
hurled themselves on the crew in futile attempts at insurrection. What could
these inland tribesmen do on the open sea, in a complicated sailing vessel? To
brighten their spirits it became the custom to have them up on the deck once a
day and force them to dance Some took the opportunity to jump overboard, uttering
cries of triumph as they cleared the vessel and disappeared below the surface.
Fear of their cargo bred a savage cruelty in the crew. One captain, to
strike terror into the rest, killed a slave and dividing heart, liver and
entrails into 300 pieces made each of the slaves eat one, threatening those who
refused with the same torture. Such incidents were not rare. Given the
circumstances such things were (and are) inevitable. Nor did the system spare the
slavers. Every year one-fifth of all who took part in the African trade died.
All America and the West Indies took slaves. When.the ship reached the harbour,
the cargo came up on deck to be bought. The purchasers examined them for defects,
looked at the teeth, pinched the skin, sometimes tasted the perspiration to see
if the slaveÕs blood was pure and his health as good as his appearance. Some of
the women affected a curiosity, the indulgence of which, with a horse, would have
caused them to be kicked 20 yards across the deck. But the slave had to stand it.
Then in order to restore the dignity which might have been lost by too intimate
an examination, the purchaser spat in the face of the slave. Having become the
property of his owner, he was branded on both sides of the breast with a hot
iron. His duties we explained to him by an interpreter, and a priest instructed
him in the first principles of Christianity.
The stranger in San Domingo was awakened by the cracks of the whip, the stifled
cries, and the heavy groans of the Negroes who saw the sun rise only to curse it
for its renewal of their labours and their pains. Their work began at day-break:
at eight they stopped for a short breakfast and worked again till midday. 'They
began again at two oÕclock and worked until evening, sometimes until ten or
eleven. A Swiss traveller has left a famous description of a gang of slaves at
work. 'They were about a hundred men and women of different ages, all occupied in
digging ditches in a cane-field, the majority of them naked or covered with rags.
The sun shone down with full force on their heads. Sweat rolled from all parts of
their bodies. Their limbs, weighed down by the heat, fatigued with the weight of
their picks and by the resistance of the clayey soil baked hard enough to break
their implements, strained themselves to overcome every obstacle. A mournful
silence reigned. Exhaustion was stamped on every face, but the hour of rest had
not yet come. The pitiless eye of the Manager patrolled the gang and several
foremen armed with long whips moved periodically between them, giving stinging
blows to all who, worn out by fatigue, were compelled to take a rest - men or
women young or old'. This was no isolated picture. The sugar plantations demanded
an exacting and ceaseless labour. The tropical earth is baked hard by the sun.
Round every 'carry' of land intended for cane it was necessary to dig a large
ditch to ensure circulation of air. Young canes required attention for the first
three or four months and grew to maturity in 14 or 18 months Cane could be
planted and would grow at any time of the year, and the reaping of one crop was
the signal for the immediate digging of ditches and the planting of another. Once
cut they had to be rushed to the mill lest the juice became acid by fermentation.
The extraction of the juice and manufacture of the raw sugar went on for three
weeks a month, 16 or 18 hours a day, for seven or eight months in the year.
Worked like animals, the slaves were housed like animals, in huts built around a
square planted with provisions and fruits These huts were about 20 to 25 feet
long,12 feet wide and about 5 feet in height, divided by partitions into two or
three rooms. They were windowless and light entered only by the door. The floor
was beaten earth; the bed was of straw, hides or a rude contrivance of cords tied
on posts. On these slept indiscriminately mother, father and children.
Defenceless against their masters, they struggled with overwork and its usual
complementÑunderfeeding. The Negro Code, Louis XIV's attempt to ensure them
humane treatment, ordered that they should be given, every week, two pots and a
half of manioc, three cassavas, two pounds of salt beef or three pounds of salted
fishÑabout food enough to last a healthy man for three days. Instead their
masters gave them half-a-dozen pints of coarse flour, rice, or pease, and
half-a-dozen herrings Worn out by their labours all through the day and far in
the night, many neglected to cook and ate the food raw The ration was so small
and given to them so irregularly that often the last half of the week found them
nothing.
Even he two hours they were given in the middle of the day, and the holidays on
Sundays and feast-days, were not for rest, but in order that they might cultivate
a small piece of land to supplement their regular rations. Hard working slaves
cultivated vegetables and raised chickens to sell in the towns to make a little
in order to buy rum and tobacco; and here and there a Napoleon of finance,by luck
and industry, could make enough to purchase his freedom. Their masters encouraged
them in this practice of cultivation, for in years of scarcity the Negroes died
thousands, epidemics broke out, the slaves fled into the woods and plantations
were ruined.
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