GUEST COMMENTARY: BY GODFREY ENEAS
NASSAU, Bahamas, September 13, 2022 — The Monarchy of the United Kingdom is a British Institution that is dear to the hearts of the British people. This affection was manifested this past week for their Queen of 70 years. She passed away leaving a legacy, some say, unmatched by Elizabeth l and Victoria. Simultaneously, there was an outpouring of love and affection for her successor who became King Charles III.
I have lived all of those 70 years with her as my Head of State in a Colonial and Independent Bahamas, respectively. I have seen her at a distance on the occasions when she visited The Bahamas to fulfill some ceremonial undertakings.
When I was a student at ICTA/UWI in Trinidad and Tobago, she also visited an Independent T&T when Dr. Eric Williams was Prime Minister and I saw her close up as Prince Philip came to meet one of my student colleagues, Middleton Archibald.
The new King has also visited The Bahamas on ceremonial occasions. I remember him being here for our Independence. The people around Savannah Sound, Eleuthera, had some up-close and personal encounters on occasions when he visited Eleuthera as Prince Charles and one of them was invited to his wedding. These ceremonial visits represent to me officialdom, cursory and the functionary superficialities of a Head of State and a Head of State to be. The question is: were they enough to meet the responsibility of a Head of State to her or his people, particularly in the context of a Constitutional Monarch? I say no.
Over the past few days, I have watched the British people and their response to their deceased Sovereign and the expressions of gratitude and joy that was given by them when they recounted her Coronation, her Jubilee and Platinum celebrations. As a member of her realm, I could not identify with their platitudes. To me their words were empty mutterings.
The British Monarchy belongs to the British people which has become a multi-racial society as millions from the various colonies of the former British Empire have migrated there during her reign. The journey to a British identity has not been easy for them as they are just emerging from a status of second-class citizenship after centuries as British Subjects.
We in The Bahamas are a member of a political bloc where the winds of change are blowing in the direction of rejecting the Monarchy. The most recent example was Barbados, which used to be referred to as “Little England” as it ushered in Sugarcane Production in 1625 to the British West Indies.
During the visit of the new Prince and Princess of Wales to the Caribbean, the Prime Minister of Jamaica told them that Jamaica would become a Republic. Jamaica was the most important colony in the British West Indies during the Colonial Era because of its contribution to the British economy. By 1775, Jamaica’s production met 50% of Britain’s demand for sugar. Now these two stalwarts in the Colonial Era are rejecting the British Monarchy.
Europe created a Slave Empire in the Americas and used slavery and the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade to develop this Empire. It all started with the Spanish and Portuguese during the Age of Discovery/Exploitation.
The commodity they used to kick start the nefarious institution of Slavery was sugarcane production, which was introduced in the Caribbean by the Spanish on Columbus’ second voyage to Hispaniola. The Portuguese introduced it to Brazil, which eventually became the largest slave state in the Americas.
Both the Spanish and Portuguese were familiar with sugarcane production via the Atlantic Islands, where it was grown in places like Madeira, the Canary Islands and Cape Verde. African slaves were utilized in the labour-intensive production system which was the husbandry practice. It was this methodology which was to be transported to the Americas.
From the 16th to virtually the 20th century, sugarcane production was an important commodity in the Americas and specifically in the Caribbean and Brazil, either to absorb labour in response to population growth or as an earner of foreign exchange as an export commodity.
The European nations that dominated development in the Americas and Caribbean were, of course, the Spanish and Portuguese and The French, British and Dutch. When one considers the outcome of the exploitation, Britain got the best deal because it was able to attain the British West Indies or the Sugar Islands, most of the Leeward and Windward Islands, Barbados, Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago. This combination of Islands enabled the British to dominate and benefit from Slavery and the Trans-Atlantic Trade more than any other European nation.
During the course of the eighteenth century, the British had become the greatest slave traders in the Atlantic. A century later, the British would compensate its slave owners with a twenty-million-pound payout by buying the freedom of Africans who had been enslaved for three Centuries. However, this decision made no provision for a payout to those who were enslaved. To this day, Sir Hillary Beckles, Vice-Chancellor of UWI, is leading the CARICOM effort for reparations.
Emancipation was a buyout by the British for the British. The slaves who were a major element in the wealth creation of the British Empire got nothing out of the deal. The Plantocracy in the British Parliament and those in the colonies were the beneficiaries.
The exploitation did not end with Slavery. As early as 1838, the Plantocracy had to find another source of cheap labour and the “Jewel in the crown” of the Monarchy’s colonial possessions, India, would be the source. Between 1838 and 1918, a half-million indentured workers were imported to buttress sugarcane production in the Caribbean. Fifty percent of the Indians were shipped to then British Guiana,25% to Trinidad and the remainder throughout the region. The planters had built a globally dependent industry on cheap labour (slave and indentured).
The British Monarchy cannot absolve itself from condemning slavery as a heinous, dehumanizing institution. It was slavery that provided the foundation for British supremacy around the world. All of this did not cease with the reigns of George lll and Victoria, and it is this Empire that George Vl and his daughter Queen Elizabeth ll inherited.
The Monarchy needs to aplogize to its former colonies, specifically those in the Caribbean, for the injustice of chattle slavery. It should be noted that the British Monarchy was party to this imperial decision in 1834. The British Monarchy is yet to apologize against this inhumane and unjust act to the descendants of the enslaved.
In Rawson Square downtown Nassau, there is a statute of Queen Victoria, whom our forefathers revered as a Liberator because the true facts about Emancipation were never revealed to them. Her granddaughter, Queen Elizabeth ll, who is compared to her in terms of longevity on the British Throne, never apologized to the people for whom she was their Head of State — be they Bahamians, Jamaicans, Barbadians etc. — for the centuries of British slavery in the Caribbean.
The Bahamas was never tied to Britain like its CARICOM sisters. We held in common certain aspects of her governance like Parliamentary Democracy and British cultural mores; however, our socio-economic development was oriented towards North America — in essence we had an American outlook that distinguished us from our Southern Caribbean brothers and sisters.
Since World War II and the socio-economic metamorphosis this country has undergone, Bahamians are less British in our outlook than ever before. Generations, particularly those born since Majority Rule in 1967 and Independence in 1973, just do not identify with a British Monarchy. This moment may be the best time to evaluate whether we want a British Monarch or not. Timing is everything.
