Murphy Browne © March 17-2018
UPRISING OF ENSLAVED AFRICANS ON MARCH 17-1768 ST PATRICK'S DAY
On St. Patrick's Day March 17, 1768 a group of enslaved Africans on the Caribbean island Montserrat planned a revolt while their mostly Irish enslavers were celebrating St. Patrick’s Day. When sugar cane replaced tobacco and indigo, entrepreneurs from several Irish counties, including representatives of several Galway “tribes”, set up plantations and imported thousands of Africans who they enslaved on the island.
As historian Donald Akenson notes in his 1997 study, “If the Irish Ran the World,” "pre-emancipation Catholics denied full rights were “notably callous” towards potential black congregation members. The Church of England did “only marginally better”, and it was the Wesleyan Methodists, arriving towards the end of the slave era, who showed any serious concern for the spiritual welfare of those in captivity."
Montserrat is described as a 40sq m mountainous volcanic rock, home to spiders and lizards and leatherback turtles, to three species of hummingbirds and to the rare oriole. Queen’s University Belfast academic Donald Akenson and Sir Howard Fergus, Montserrat historian and poet, have researched the "relationship" of Irish slaveholders and the Africans they enslaved debunking any notions of a “nice” Irish slave holder or overseer. Ears could be cut off as punishment for minor theft, death was a regular penalty, and “mulattos” born of the rape of enslaved African women by their white enslavers and white overseers could not be christened by Catholic priests. In 1985 March 17th was declared an official holiday to commemorate the uprising of enslaved Africans on March 17-1768.
Beginning in 1632, European settlers arrived in Montserrat from the neighbouring islands of St Kitts and Nevis, as well as from other Caribbean islands, Ireland and England. Seventy percent of Montserrat’s white population self-identified as Irish, in comparison to much lower percentages of the populations on nearby St Kitts (10 percent), Nevis (23 percent) and Antigua (26 percent).
"Ireland's Neo-Feudal Empire 1630-1650." In his 1997 published book "If the Irish Ran the World: Montserrat, 1630-1730" Ackenson writes: "Ireland's putative empire in the West Indies, the island of Montserrat, was a fragment kicked loose by the cultural equivalent of a nuclear blast, the so-called “expansion of Europe” of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It was a bizarre, and totally unprecedented time in human history. Europeans, having discovered what to them were new worlds, began to exploit them with a ferocity that challenges description and defies explanation. Having found several Edens, Europeans treated these places instead as Eldorados, sites to be strip-mined for quick, or at least easy, riches. " A royal patent was given to the Earl of Carlisle in the 1630s which entitled him to control all affairs in Montserrat including the holding of all land. "It is probably best to label this form of colonial activity feudal remnant since the spirit was commercial and not military, and the pattern of landholding made it more manorial, at least initially. European settlement began in the early 1630s with the arrival of the Irish from a variety of venues. Survivors from the Amazon, rejects from Virginia, migrants from St. Christopher and maybe Nevis, and colonists recruited by an Irish entrepreneur (with Italian ancestry) formed the first wave of settlers."
In 1768, the enslaved Africans planned an island-wide attack on St. Patrick’s Day, when the planters would be celebrating. Enslaved Africans who worked in Government House were supposed to seize and use all the weapons they could find inside, while those who worked in the fields would attack with rocks, farm tools, clubs and homemade swords.
The plot to seize their freedom came to nothing when the Africans were betrayed. In Montserrat: History of a Caribbean Colony, Fergus shares this information about the fateful St. Patrick’s Day plot: “The slaves working within Government House were to seize the swords of the gentlemen while those outside were to fire into the house using whatever missiles were at their disposal. They evidently had some arms because the plan was revealed when a White seamstress, noted for her drunkenness, heard two of the leaders discussing the disposition of their arms.” Needless to say, “As the plot broke the Whites went berserk. They hacked, quartered, hanged, and starved in gibbets any suspects whose owners were foolish enough to send them to town for ‘trials’.”
In some quarters of the British Isles there is much made about the fact that St. Patrick’s Day is a public holiday in Montserrat. It seems to escape the attention of those who tout Montserrat’s “Irish heritage” that Montserratians are the descendants of enslaved Africans who were enslaved by White people from Britain (English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh).
With the assertion: “Montserratians are Afrikans” in the June 1993 edition of “THE PAN-AFRIKAN LIBERATOR, Chedmond Browne wrote: “At no point in time throughout the 360 years of European occupation on the island of Montserrat is there any indication that the two ethnic groups merged, amalgamated, and formed a Creole Afrikan-Anglo or Creole Afrikan-Irish society. If there’s any doubt in your mind, just look at the faces around you.”
The original name of the island was Alliouagana before the arrival of Europeans. Alliouagana is a Carib (the original inhabitants of the island) word which means “land of the prickly bush”. In November 1493, Christopher Columbus renamed the island “Santa Maria de Montserrat” when he “sighted” it as he sailed by during his second voyage to the area. The first European colonizers were Irish Catholics from nearby St. Kitts who were sent there in 1632 by Thomas Warner, the first British governor of St. Kitts. Irish immigrants from Virginia followed. Plantations were established to grow tobacco and indigo, followed eventually by cotton and sugar.
African Montserratian historian, Howard Archibald Fergus, writes in his 2004 book Montserrat: History of a Caribbean Colony, that it is “reasonable to infer” that enslaved Africans were first taken to Montserrat in the 1640s although the first record of enslaved Africans in Montserrat is from 1651 when: “In 1651 an Irish trader of the English Guinea Company called at Montserrat, having buried 23 men at sea, including Mr. Dobes who was a factor. This is the first actual mention of slaves in Montserrat.”
According to Fergus, “Slave labour was in demand, not just for plantation but for public works.” He also writes: “Slaves were unevenly distributed across the island and among households. In the heyday of the plantation economy and right down to emancipation, more than half of the slaves were located in St. Peter’s and St. Anthony’s.”
After the Africans were betrayed and captured the Irish slave holders beheaded Cudjoe the leader of the uprising and hung his severed head from a silk cotton tree. A dawn “freedom run” from Cudjoe Head Corner to the village of Salem commemorates the failed uprising on March 17, St. Patrick's Day.
Murphy Browne © March 17-2018
UPRISING OF ENSLAVED AFRICANS ON MARCH 17-1768 ST PATRICK'S DAY
On St. Patrick's Day March 17, 1768 a group of enslaved Africans on the Caribbean island Montserrat planned a revolt while their mostly Irish enslavers were celebrating St. Patrick’s Day. When sugar cane replaced tobacco and indigo, entrepreneurs from several Irish counties, including representatives of several Galway “tribes”, set up plantations and imported thousands of Africans who they enslaved on the island.
As historian Donald Akenson notes in his 1997 study, “If the Irish Ran the World,” "pre-emancipation Catholics denied full rights were “notably callous” towards potential black congregation members. The Church of England did “only marginally better”, and it was the Wesleyan Methodists, arriving towards the end of the slave era, who showed any serious concern for the spiritual welfare of those in captivity."
Montserrat is described as a 40sq m mountainous volcanic rock, home to spiders and lizards and leatherback turtles, to three species of hummingbirds and to the rare oriole. Queen’s University Belfast academic Donald Akenson and Sir Howard Fergus, Montserrat historian and poet, have researched the "relationship" of Irish slaveholders and the Africans they enslaved debunking any notions of a “nice” Irish slave holder or overseer. Ears could be cut off as punishment for minor theft, death was a regular penalty, and “mulattos” born of the rape of enslaved African women by their white enslavers and white overseers could not be christened by Catholic priests. In 1985 March 17th was declared an official holiday to commemorate the uprising of enslaved Africans on March 17-1768.
Beginning in 1632, European settlers arrived in Montserrat from the neighbouring islands of St Kitts and Nevis, as well as from other Caribbean islands, Ireland and England. Seventy percent of Montserrat’s white population self-identified as Irish, in comparison to much lower percentages of the populations on nearby St Kitts (10 percent), Nevis (23 percent) and Antigua (26 percent).
"Ireland's Neo-Feudal Empire 1630-1650." In his 1997 published book "If the Irish Ran the World: Montserrat, 1630-1730" Ackenson writes: "Ireland's putative empire in the West Indies, the island of Montserrat, was a fragment kicked loose by the cultural equivalent of a nuclear blast, the so-called “expansion of Europe” of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It was a bizarre, and totally unprecedented time in human history. Europeans, having discovered what to them were new worlds, began to exploit them with a ferocity that challenges description and defies explanation. Having found several Edens, Europeans treated these places instead as Eldorados, sites to be strip-mined for quick, or at least easy, riches. " A royal patent was given to the Earl of Carlisle in the 1630s which entitled him to control all affairs in Montserrat including the holding of all land. "It is probably best to label this form of colonial activity feudal remnant since the spirit was commercial and not military, and the pattern of landholding made it more manorial, at least initially. European settlement began in the early 1630s with the arrival of the Irish from a variety of venues. Survivors from the Amazon, rejects from Virginia, migrants from St. Christopher and maybe Nevis, and colonists recruited by an Irish entrepreneur (with Italian ancestry) formed the first wave of settlers."
In 1768, the enslaved Africans planned an island-wide attack on St. Patrick’s Day, when the planters would be celebrating. Enslaved Africans who worked in Government House were supposed to seize and use all the weapons they could find inside, while those who worked in the fields would attack with rocks, farm tools, clubs and homemade swords.
The plot to seize their freedom came to nothing when the Africans were betrayed. In Montserrat: History of a Caribbean Colony, Fergus shares this information about the fateful St. Patrick’s Day plot: “The slaves working within Government House were to seize the swords of the gentlemen while those outside were to fire into the house using whatever missiles were at their disposal. They evidently had some arms because the plan was revealed when a White seamstress, noted for her drunkenness, heard two of the leaders discussing the disposition of their arms.” Needless to say, “As the plot broke the Whites went berserk. They hacked, quartered, hanged, and starved in gibbets any suspects whose owners were foolish enough to send them to town for ‘trials’.”
In some quarters of the British Isles there is much made about the fact that St. Patrick’s Day is a public holiday in Montserrat. It seems to escape the attention of those who tout Montserrat’s “Irish heritage” that Montserratians are the descendants of enslaved Africans who were enslaved by White people from Britain (English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh).
With the assertion: “Montserratians are Afrikans” in the June 1993 edition of “THE PAN-AFRIKAN LIBERATOR, Chedmond Browne wrote: “At no point in time throughout the 360 years of European occupation on the island of Montserrat is there any indication that the two ethnic groups merged, amalgamated, and formed a Creole Afrikan-Anglo or Creole Afrikan-Irish society. If there’s any doubt in your mind, just look at the faces around you.”
The original name of the island was Alliouagana before the arrival of Europeans. Alliouagana is a Carib (the original inhabitants of the island) word which means “land of the prickly bush”. In November 1493, Christopher Columbus renamed the island “Santa Maria de Montserrat” when he “sighted” it as he sailed by during his second voyage to the area. The first European colonizers were Irish Catholics from nearby St. Kitts who were sent there in 1632 by Thomas Warner, the first British governor of St. Kitts. Irish immigrants from Virginia followed. Plantations were established to grow tobacco and indigo, followed eventually by cotton and sugar.
African Montserratian historian, Howard Archibald Fergus, writes in his 2004 book Montserrat: History of a Caribbean Colony, that it is “reasonable to infer” that enslaved Africans were first taken to Montserrat in the 1640s although the first record of enslaved Africans in Montserrat is from 1651 when: “In 1651 an Irish trader of the English Guinea Company called at Montserrat, having buried 23 men at sea, including Mr. Dobes who was a factor. This is the first actual mention of slaves in Montserrat.”
According to Fergus, “Slave labour was in demand, not just for plantation but for public works.” He also writes: “Slaves were unevenly distributed across the island and among households. In the heyday of the plantation economy and right down to emancipation, more than half of the slaves were located in St. Peter’s and St. Anthony’s.”
After the Africans were betrayed and captured the Irish slave holders beheaded Cudjoe the leader of the uprising and hung his severed head from a silk cotton tree. A dawn “freedom run” from Cudjoe Head Corner to the village of Salem commemorates the failed uprising on March 17, St. Patrick's Day.
Murphy Browne © March 17-2018
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