The particular example on which he focuses is an 18th century leader of a slave revolt in Jamaica, known as Chief Takyi, aka, Tacky. He summarizes the story of the slave revolt. But he puts it into the context of official Jamaican governmental recognition of Takyi as an important historical figure.
In doing so, Brown touches on several of the ways in which history is understood: as national history, as social history, as cultural symbol, as international history. History as symbolism – whether the symbol is inspirational (as with Frederick Douglass in the US) or hateful (yes, John C. Calhoun, I’m thinking of your evil spirit) – is not the same as factual history, though the symbolism can be based on real history.
Brown also puts his reflections in the context of how Western historians approach global history. “Postcolonialism” has different meanings in different contexts. But Brown gives an example of how the current emerging view is both wider and (therefore) more realistic than history as national history:
The [Jamaican] slave rebellion [of which Chief Takyi was part] took place in the midst of Britain’s seven years’ war with France and other European rivals. [In the British North American colonies, the Seven Years War was called the French and Indian War.] While the British emerged from the war victorious, with vast new territories and resources, the disruption inspired a series of British imperial reforms that were meant to tighten the administrative control of the empire. These reforms, in the shape of new taxes, regulations and military deployments, indirectly provoked the North American rebellion of 1776. But the slave revolt also led to a burst of colonial legislation to curtail the trade in potentially dangerous African captives, and the brutal crackdown generated a wave of sympathy in some sectors, ultimately helping to turn the British public against the Atlantic slave trade, which Britain outlawed in 1807.
The full history of Atlantic slavery is scarcely taught in the US or the UK, and so it’s not surprising that few people in either country know much about Tacky’s revolt. Until recently, however, I didn’t realise that Jamaicans don’t know this history much better. I had assumed that in a country with a Black majority population, which had emerged from one of the most brutal slave societies in human history, basic education would have offered a much better understanding of slavery and its legacies than the one I had received in the US. I was wrong. [my emphasis] (1)
And in Jamaica, as in the US and elsewhere, the effects of slavery had a long sequel even after chattel slavery was abolished:
Abolition [of slavery in British Caribbean colonies] did not mean dramatic amelioration of the lives of the formerly enslaved, as they often faced an obligation to work as wage-labourers for former masters for some years and continued to suffer poverty, lack of opportunity and racist discrimination. Moreover, the end of slavery also did not mean the end of revolts by former slaves, the most dramatic the Morant Bay Rebellion in Jamaica in 1865. Slavery had been abolished in the Caribbean sugar-producing colony three decades earlier, and free men of colour had won election to the local assembly, but miserable conditions persisted. [my emphasis] (2)
Notes:
(1) Brown, Vincent (2024) A historic revolt, a forgotten hero, an empty plinth: is there a right way to remember slavery? The Guardian 03/26/2024. <https://www.theguardian.com/news/2024/mar/26/historic-revolt-forgotten-hero-empty-plinth-jamaica-slavery-chief-tacky> (Accessed: 2024-26-03).
(2) Aldrich, Robert & Stucki, Andreas (2023): The Colonial World: A History of European Empires, 1780s to the Present, 44. London: Bloomsburg Academic.
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