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by David Comissiong
The black American poet – Langston Hughes – might very well have been describing the relationship between our Caribbean Community (CARICOM) and its fellow predominantlyEnglish-speaking Western Hemisphere nations of Canada and the United States of America (USA), when he penned the following lines :-
“I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes…”
You see, there were three poles of British colonization in the Western Hemisphere: namely, the English-speaking colonies of “lower” North America that formed themselves into the United States of America; the English-speaking colonies of “upper” North America that were consolidated into the Confederation of Canada; and the English-speaking colonies of the British West Indies that have not yet succeeded in establishing a single unified nation, but that have coalesced in the economic and functional integration organism known as the Caribbean Community (CARICOM). And so, in a very real sense, these three sovereign configurations – the USA, Canada and CARICOM – are siblings or brothers.
But, they are brothers with a difference! Both Canada and the USA are predominantly white nations, while the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) is very much a predominantly black, Afro-Asian, entity. CARICOM is therefore “the darker brother”, and – as the Langston Hughes poem suggests – is perhaps not treated as an equal by its lighter brothers.
Indeed, in our 21st century, it is par for the course
for a Secretary of State (Minister of Foreign Affairs) of the United States of America (USA) to peremptorily inform a caucus of Caribbean Community Ministers of Foreign Affairs that he could only spare one hour for a meeting with all fourteen of them.
But, it is important that we be aware that it was not always like this. It is important for us to know that there was a time – in the not too distant past – when the USA and Canada were very much aware that the British West India colonies were very much their equals.
Permit me, then, to give one simple example of this. Back in the late 18th century – in the years just after the USA had achieved its independence and nationhood – here is how US Secretaries of State typically spoke about our West Indian islands:- “Without a free admission of all kinds of provisions into the Islands, our agriculture will suffer extremely.”
(Robert Livingston, 1st US Secretary of State)
“The commerce of the West Indian islands is a part of the American system of commerce. They can neither do without us, nor we without them. The Creator has placed us upon the globe in such a situation that we can have occasion for each other”
(John Quincy Adams, future US Secretary of State)
Yes, two hundred years ago there was an understanding and an acknowledgement that the three English-speaking “brothers” of the Western Hemisphere – the USA, Canada and the British West Indies – were all virtually equal in status and importance. Of course, at this period in its history, the British West Indies was a territorial area comprised of slavery-based colonies in which a large black or African labouring class was ruled by a white oligarchy.
But aside from this factor of the racial configuration of power in the British West Indian colonies, the fact that I really want to zero in on is that for the first two hundred years or so of Britain’s colonial enterprise in the New World – commencing around the period of the establishment of the colonies of Jamestown (USA , 1607) / Newfoundland (Canada, 1610) / St. Kitts (West Indies, 1623) – there was mutual respect and a sense of interdependence between the several British colonies that were to be found in these three distinct geographical areas of British colonial empire building in the Western Hemisphere.
The second point I want to emphasize is that, in each of the geographical areas, a very similar process of “national” consolidation took place: namely, a number of disparate British colonies were brought together and consolidated into the sovereign entities that came to be known as the United States of America (USA), Canada and the British West Indies Federation (1958- 1962)/Caribbean Community (1973 to present).
But let us examine this process in some detail: and let us begin with the first of the geographical areas that consolidated itself – the United States of America.
When the US Declaration of Independence was issued in 1776, it was issued on behalf of the following thirteen British colonies of the “lower” part of North America – Virginia (est. 1607); Massachusetts (est. 1620) South Carolina (est. 1629); North Carolina (est. 1629); New Hampshire (est. 1629); Rhode Island (est. 1632); Maryland (est. 1632); Connecticut (est. 1636); Delaware (est. 1638); New York (est. 1664); New Jersey (est. 1664); Pennsylvania (est. 1681); Georgia (est. 1732).
And corresponding to these thirteen colonies of 1776 “lower” North America (USA) would have been the following thirteen British West Indian colonies of the day – St. Kitts, Barbados,
Nevis, Antigua, Montserrat, Jamaica, the Bahamas, Dominica, Grenada, St. Vincent, Cayman Islands, British Virgin Islands and Bermuda – and the following colonies of “Upper North America” (Canada) – Newfoundland, Rupert’s Land (containing areas of Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Ontario), Nova Scotia and Quebec.
And what, you may ask, was the relative importance of these various colonies to the British Empire? Well, this is how the distinguished Caribbean historian – Dr. Eric Williams – writing in his magisterial work titled “From Columbus to Castro” explained the prevailing state of affairs around the turn of the 18th century:-
“The Triangular trade presented an impressive statistical picture. Britain’s trade in 1697 may be taken as an illustration.
Exports British West Indies 326,536
North America 279,582
Imports £ 142,795 140,129
Barbados was the most important single colony in the British Empire, worth almost as much, in its total trade, as the two tobacco colonies of Virginia and Maryland combined … The tiny sugar island was more valuable to Britain than Carolina, New England, New York and Pennsylvania together.”
But, it is not only in matters of trade that, for much of the colonial era, the North American colonies were forced to defer to the British West Indian colonies. There was also the “little” matter of the very inspiration behind the thirteen colonies’ historic 1776 Declaration of Independence.
The 1776 Declaration of Independence was a direct response to the British Empire’s attempt – via the Stamp Act and the Navigation Acts – to impose a rigid system of British imperial monopoly and exploitation on the thirteen colonies. And this, in turn, provoked the defiant declaration of Massachusetts’ James Otis that “taxation without representation is tyranny”, and the Declaration of Independence’s indictment of Britain’s King George for “cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world”, and for “imposing Taxes on us without our consent.”
But, without a doubt, the North American colonists were merely following a precedent that had already been established by the British West Indian colony of Barbados way back in the year 1651, when the Governor and Council of that Island – in their own de facto Declaration of Independence from Britain – had enunciated as follows:-
“Shall we be bound to the Government and Lordship of a Parliament in which we have no Representatives, or persons chosen by us, for there to propound and consent to what might be needful to us, as also to oppose and dispute all what should tend to our disadvantage and harm?”
And just like the American example some 125 years later, these defiant and principled words were the precursor to the colony of Barbados going on to fight its own 1651 to 1652 War of Independence against Britain, and to conclude hostilities with a 1652 Charter of Barbados in which both sides agreed that “no taxes, customs, imports, loans or excise shall be laid, nor levy made on any of the inhabitants of this island without their consent in a General Assembly.”
And, of course, the possibility of the North American colonists having been inspired and instructed by the much earlier Barbados example is made all the more likely by the fact that between 1751 and 1752, the then nineteen year old George Washington – future first President of the USA – spent several months in Barbados – the only country that he ever visited outside of the USA.
Furthermore, not only did the West Indies inspire and provide the precedent, but it also provided practical help in the form of the contingent of black and coloured troops from Saint Domingue (present-day Haiti) who fought under the French general Lafayette, at the side of George Washington. This support was further augmented by the moral support given to the American revolutionary cause by the Houses of Assembly of Jamaica, Barbados, the Bahamas and Bermuda.
And if further evidence of the infant nation’s dependence on the West Indies is required, it may be noted that once the USA had won its independence from Britain in 1781, its first order of business was to secure its economic progress by negotiating a Treaty with Britain to permit it to continue to trade with the British West Indies.
But those are by no means the only contributions that the British West Indies made to the infant USA. Where, for example, would the USA be today without the contributions of Nevis’ Alexander Hamilton?
This great West Indian born and bred states-man was perhaps the foremost architect of the effort to transform the initial loose, weak and ineffectual “Confederation” of the USA into a solid centralized “Federation” under a new Constitution. Hamilton also played a critical role in helping to ratify the new Constitution by writing 51 of the 85 “Federalist Papers”, and, as the nation’s very first Secretary of the Treasury, it was he who harnessed the potentially destructive massive public debt of the new nation; established the national Bank of the USA; and developed the blueprint for establishing manufacturing as a major industry of the USA.
But even Hamilton’s contribution constitutes only a further scratching of the surface. Who was it, but a West Indian – Dr. William Thornton of the British Virgin Islands – who designed the Capitol building in Washington, D.C. and thereby gave the USA its very symbol of Independence.
David Comissiong is Barbados’ Ambassador to Caricom.
