Rewriting a slave’s journey

However, the renowned historian tackles the topics in an unapologetically fresh and detailed style, quite unlike the typical and often sedate material contained in survey history publications.

In what might be regarded as a major departure from current texts, contemporary developments such as the collapse of insurance giant Clico and the 2011 riots in the United Kingdom, have also been given space in the 366-page book, Martin’s 14th publication.

“This book has given me the opportunity to put my discontent to some positive purpose and it represents 30 to 40 years of research into Caribbean history and a variety of new perspectives,” Martin, Professor Emeritus of African Studies, Wellesley College, United States, said in a recent Sunday Newsday interview.

He was alluding to what he considered to be the downfall of many current history texts.

“What I have tried to do is practically re-write Caribbean history and so in every aspect of this book you will find information on new perspectives,” he said.

While most books have tended to focus on the period following Christopher Columbus’ conquering of the new world, Caribbean History from Pre-Colonial to the Present examines, in some detail, the fact that “Old World” peoples may very well have come to the Americas before Columbus.

For example, in the book, which was formally launched at the National Library in Port-of-Spain on Wednesday, Martin referred to a Chinese navigator who is believed to have gotten to South America about 40 to 50 years before Columbus.

Martin also debunks the belief that Columbus met a sparsely-populated Caribbean when he discovered the region. In fact, he argued that it was because of the region’s dense population that the Spaniards were able to carry out mass genocide within many Caribbean territories.

“When Columbus got here he found a heavily-populated area in the Caribbean,” he said.

“Many historians have denied that, but I have evidence that suggests that the Caribbean was probably the most heavily-populated place in the whole of the Americas. Maybe eight million people may have been killed around Hispaniola alone within 20 to 30 years. The Spaniards came here and wiped people out.”

Saying that Hispaniola bore the brunt of the genocidal activity, Martin noted that the Spaniards had done their first censuses about 50 years after Columbus, in the middle of the 16th century.

And by that time, he said, there were only a few native people left.

“So that is one new area in terms of my perspective. I see the beginning of written history in this area as an act of incredible genocide on the part of the Spaniards,” Martin added.

Martin also provides a graphic overview of slavery, arguing that it existed one way or other for most of the history of the Caribbean since Columbus.

He said, “Columbus came here only 500 years ago. But 384 of those 500 years, somewhere in the Caribbean, an African was enslaved.”

According to Martin, the enslavement of Africans began in 1502 in Hispaniola and ended in Cuba in 1886.

“So for that entire period, slavery was a dominant reality and it remains, in my mind, a dominant reality,” he said.

What is unique about Martin’s take on slavery is the fact that he has tried to present a true-to-life portrait of an enslaved person “more than any of the other survey textbooks out there”.

He said, “Books tend to deal with it on a macro way, through the Middle Passage, in terms of how many lost their lives. And although I have done that too, I have tried to get into what it was really like.”

Although he has taught history for more than three decades, Martin told Sunday Newsday he was still amazed by the brutality that had been associated with slavery. “Slavery was an incredibly brutal business,” he said.

“Africans had their hands and legs cut off for running away. African men were castrated for running away. People had to walk with iron hooks around their necks with prongs sticking out for months. It was impossible to lie down and sleep.”

Martin also laid bare details of how women were raped by white sailors during the Middle Passage, with some of them becoming pregnant by the time they arrived in the Caribbean. In the book, which carries a photograph of the National Academy for the Performing Arts on its cover, Martin also makes reference to an enslaved woman in Suriname who was stripped naked and dealt 200 lashes by her oppressors for resisting the sexual advances of a white man. He wrote that the woman was given a further 200 lashes after a man tried unsuccessfully to prevent her from being beaten.

“The people who were beating her got so vexed they gave her an extra 200 lashes. The skin on her back was just completely obliterated. And this was normal,” he said.

Martin lamented that history texts, have for the most part, dealt superficially with the sexual abuse of women. He observed, however, that the frequent abuse of women at that time has manifested itself in contemporary society through persons of mixed heritage.

He said, “All you have to do is look around anywhere in the Americas and you will see the percentage of African descendants who are mixed - in Brazil, Trinidad, US.

“Nowadays the racial mixing is voluntary and goes both ways. But for most of the period of our history that racial mixing was one way. It was the white man forcing himself on the African woman who had no rights and could not defend herself in any way.”

Asked why there has not been tremendous emphasis on slavery and the treatment of Africans by authors over the generations, Martin reasoned: “Non-Caribbean people wrote the books and they had a vested interest in not wanting to get the people vexed. I did not write this book to get anybody vexed, but at the same time it is hard to read the stuff and not get upset. As an historian, I feel I have an obligation to set the record straight and wherever the record takes us, I will go.” Martin, in the publication, also addressed the fact that some Africans, for fear of death, had conspired with the white slave masters to oppress their own people.

“Sometimes the record takes me in a direction where, as an African descendant, I am a little embarassed. Some Africans on the continent collaborated with the white slave owners. I don’t like that but I have to deal with it,” he said.

But Martin also dispelled a common myth associated with slavery: the belief that Africans had remained somewhat passive to act over the centuries. He made it clear in the publication that this was not so.

“It is possible to read the old books on Caribbean history and come away with the feeling that something is wrong with African people. But I have found out that resistance was pervasive and happened all the time,” Martin said.

“The very first set of Africans came to Hispaniola in 1502 and went into the mountains. The resistance started there. They became the first maroons.”

Martin argued that there were maroons in every territory that slavery existed.

“Some of the maroons fought so successfully to the point where they were able to achieve independent statehood. That is something that is not usually dealt with,” he said. “They were excellent guerilla fighters. They went into the inaccessible areas, deep into the forest and they cultivated the land and set up towns.”

Martin also explores the relationships that have existed between the two major ethnicities - Africans and East Indians - over the decades.

“We have tended to concentrate on conflict,” he said, noting that the first Indian immigrant in the Caribbean came to this country in 1595. He also noted that the first East Indian music programme on radio in the Caribbean was played on an African-owned station.