Peter Espeut | Owning our history, heritage

The first task of historians is to “tell it like it is”. This present generation of Jamaicans needs to know the facts – with the gory details – of our past as a nation, for positive or negative, that is our heritage.

The men and women who populate the pages of Jamaican history – saints and sinners – are made of the same stuff as contemporary humanity, socialised by the values and mores of their times, but yet seeking to reach beyond them; crossing new frontiers of human achievement, but possessed of flawed human nature; embodying the tensions of serving self and the common good; with bouts of sheer brilliance mingled with ego, self-interest, and vanity.

We social animals seek to lionise high achievers as heroes, and we often put them on pedestals, sometimes literally. Any student of the past seeking to find flaws, failings and imperfections in historical (or contemporary) public figures will certainly find them, and exposure of these is the very stuff of historical enquiry.

Some persons may be celebrated for a particular achievement, but vilified for some character flaw or personal belief. Some iconoclasts posing as moralist historians seek to vilify anyone guilty of unsaintly behaviour. Who could survive? Even officially canonised saints had their known flaws.

Despite his navigational achievements, iconoclasts call for the toppling of statues of Christopher Columbus because of his enslavement and mistreatment of Tainos, and his inauguration of an age of exploitation, slavery and imperialism. Undoubtedly guilty as charged, is there no reason to remember him and his exploits, even his negative ones?

WHAT OF JAMAICA’S ICONS?

Statues of Norman Manley and Alexander Bustamante adorn the central parade in downtown Kingston. These cousins founded Jamaica’s two main political parties which together have inaugurated an age of tribalism, corruption, garrisonisation and underdevelopment which has hijacked Jamaica’s political independence. Are not the iconoclasts outraged at the rape of Jamaica by the sons of Manley and Bustamante? Why are they not calling for their statues in Parade to be toppled?

Robert Nesta Marley may have put Jamaica on the world map more effectively than the Jamaica Tourist Board, and there are regular calls for him to be declared a Jamaican national hero. But with 11 acknowledged children with six babymothers in addition to his wife, is he a role model for responsible family life? Should his several statues be toppled?

October in Jamaica is dubbed Heritage Month because of the events of October 1865 some call the ‘Morant Bay Rebellion’. Edward John Eyre, governor of Jamaica at that time, was a polarising figure; guilty of brutally putting down the rebellion with extreme state violence (assisted by the Hayfield Maroons), he used the occasion to arrest his public critics, including assemblyman George William Gordon, newspaperman Sidney Lindo Levien (editor of the County Union and Anglo-Jamaican Advertiser in Montego Bay), and Dr Robert Bruce, the coroner for the parish of Vere. Gordon was illegally arrested in Kingston (where there was no martial law), shipped to Morant Bay, and executed under martial law.

Eyre was recalled to England, and a Commission of Enquiry convened into his conduct. In England, a committee was formed to prosecute Eyre for the murder of George William Gordon: members included well-known figures such as John Stuart Mill, Charles Darwin, Thomas Huxley, Thomas Hughes, Herbert Spencer and John Bright. The Eyre Defence Committee included Thomas Carlyle, Alfred Lord Tennyson, John Ruskin, the Rev Charles Kingsley, and Charles Dickens, “backed by 71 peers, 20 members of parliament, 40 generals, 26 admirals and 400 clergymen, mostly Anglican”.

Will the iconoclasts call for the banning of the poetry of Tennyson and the novels of Dickens because of their support for the brutal Governor Eyre? Why have the moralist historians not called for reparations to be paid to aggrieved Jamaicans by the Maroons?

SLAVERY PART OF HERITAGE

The fact is that slavery with its Maroon collaborators, and colonialism with its black British, are all part of our Jamaican heritage. The Maroons fought for their own freedom, but then became a black militia supporting the system of slavery. Many politicians whose ancestors slaved in cane fields and coffee-pieces have continued and perpetuated the colonial structures in education and the economy that keep the majority of Jamaicans poor. That is also our heritage, and it is the job of historians to tell it like it is.

For every Jamaican slave that fomented a revolt, there were a dozen who betrayed it. Despite outnumbering whites 30-to-one, there has never been a successful slave revolt in Jamaica.

We must avoid the temptation to present a rosy picture of our history and heritage. Yes, there was heroic behaviour by some, and venal behaviour by others; several men and women who supported slavery were otherwise great; and several antislavery campaigners had serious personal problems.

The fact is that talented Jamaicans have taken us from being an overseas plantation of an oppressive metropolitan power to being a world power in terms of culture, sport and intellectual prowess, despite successive generations of self-seeking politicians and rapacious businessmen.

If the goal is national and human development, no useful purpose will be served by continually shouting blame upon all those who deserve it; we must seek to own our history and heritage with all its warts and peaks and troughs; we must work hard to move beyond our past and to ascend to a future that is better than the present we inherited.

Let us carefully analyse where we are coming from as a people, and strategically map the way forward.

Peter Espeut is a sociologist and development scientist. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com