Origins of Pan-Africanism

Henry Sylvester Williams, Africa, and the African Diaspora

Marika Sherwood

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781136891137
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: African History
• Index: History

Origins of Pan-Africanism: Henry Sylvester Williams, Africa, and the African Diaspora recounts the life story of the pioneering Henry Sylvester Williams, an unknown Trinidadian son of an immigrant carpenter in the late-19th and early 20th century. Williams, then a student in Britain, organized the African Association in 1897, and the first-ever Pan-African Conference in 1900. He is thus the progenitor of the OAU/AU. Some of those who attended went on to work in various pan-African organizations in their homelands.

He became not only a qualified barrister, but the first Black man admitted to the Bar in Cape Town, and one of the first two elected Black borough councilors in London. These are remarkable achievements for anyone, especially for a Black man of working-class origins in an era of gross racial discrimination and social class hierarchies. Williams died in 1911, soon after his return to his homeland, Trinidad.

Through original research, Origins of Pan-Africanism: Henry Sylvester Williams, Africa, and the African Diaspora is set in the social context of the times, providing insight not only into a remarkable man who has been heretofore virtually written out of history, but also into the African Diaspora in the UK a century ago.

1 Trinidad

From Childhood to Teaching

In 1860 the North American journalist and campaigner William G. Sewell travelled through the British colonies in the Caribbean and described Trinidad as ‘forest-covered from mountain-top to water's edge, its luxuriant and gigantic vegetation rich with coloring that eternal summer alone can give. … Except at the Naparimas, where the principal sugar plantations are situated…. Trinidad has the appearance of a wild, unreclaimed country, broken up with savannas…. Port-of-Spain, the principal town, [has] more life and business activity than in any British Antillean town that I have seen…. The streets are wide [and] well laid out … there is an immense savanna or park reserved for the recreation of the people … with only a present population of 70,000 or 80,000 souls, Trinidad can sustain a million.’¹ The village of Arouca was some twelve miles along an unpaved road going east from Port-of-Spain to the larger settlements of Arima and Sangre Grande. According to missionary Edward Underhill travelling one year later, Arouca was a ‘village of some extent, surrounded by sugar estates. The houses of the Coolies are ranged along the roads of the estates, or near the mill yards and are generally superior to those inhabited by the common Creole negro.’²

THE COSMOPOLITAN POPULATION OF TRINIDAD

By the papal decree of 1493 the entire Western Hemisphere was allotted to Spain while south and south-east Asia were given to Portugal. The indigenous populations were ignored, as if they did not exist. Cristoforo Columbo first sighted the island he named Trinidad in 1498, but it was not till 1530 that a Spanish governor, Antonio Sedeno, was appointed. The island's indigenous population, agriculturalists and fishermen, who tried to resist the Spanish encroachment on their lands, were almost exterminated by the Spaniards through warfare, enslavement, disease and transportation. The island languished, not having deposits of the gold and silver the Spaniards sought. Some tobacco was grown, but little else until the early 18th century when there was a short-lived attempt to grow cocoa.

The colony's fortunes changed when a French planter from Grenada, after visiting Trinidad, submitted to the King of France a proposal for the development of the island. The French and Spanish kings reached an agreement in 1783, which permitted French immigration, including free people of colour. Many of the settlers were planters wishing to relocate to virgin lands from the exhausted soil of the long-settled French West Indian colonies. A provision within the cedula permitted the importation of enslaved Africans free of taxes for ten years from 1785. By 1797 profitable quantities of sugar, coffee, cocoa and cotton were exported from the island.

It was in that year that in the course of the war between Spain and Britain, the British captured Trinidad without having to fire a shot, the Spanish defences being almost non-existent. Britain thus acquired a new Caribbean possession of 10,009 enslaved Africans, 2,086 Whites of Spanish, but mainly French descent; 4,466 free people of colour, and 1,082 Native Americans. A governor was appointed and the Crown Colony system of government instituted in 1810, as this was thought by Great Britain to be the best method of anglicising the heterogeneous and multilingual population. Agitation by the planters against this direct rule by Britain resulted in the granting of some measure of representation in the councils advising the government. These representatives were chosen by the governor from the principal planters, but he retained the casting vote.³

The British government encouraged emigration from Britain, Europe and other British possessions. Some German migrants settled on the Arouca savannah. Planters arrived with their slaves from Barbados and the Leeward and Windward islands. By 1808 there were 21,806 enslaved people of African descent in Trinidad. Though Britain had banned the trade in slaves in 1807, enslaved Africans continued to be brought into Trinidad (and undoubtedly sold) under the guise of ‘domestic servants’.⁴

However, the continuing arrival of such slaves and the undoubted smuggling of human cargo did not satisfy the insatiable appetite of plantations for labour. In 1806 Chinese labourers began to be imported. The labour crisis exploded in the period 1833–1838, that is, between the proclamation of the emancipation of slaves and the ending of the subsequent period of ‘apprenticeship’. The descendants of Africans were offered no compensation or means to begin life as free people, while some £20 million (well over £1.6 billion today) was set aside by the British government to pay compensation to the planters for the loss of their enslaved, unpaid labour. Sewell was astonished at the utter disregard of the first principles of economical science displayed by the West India planters:

They do not seem to reflect for a moment that the interest of a proprietor is to elevate, not to degrade, his labourer. They have misjudged the negro throughout, and have put too much faith is his supposed inferiority. After the important step of emancipation was taken, little was done to turn emancipation to the best account…. Instead of endeavoring by liberal terms to induce the laborers to remain on the estates, they commenced a system shortly after emancipation of giving less wages and exacting more work.⁵

Not surprisingly, the newly freed people had little desire to continue working on plantations. Edward Underhill probably understood the situation quite well when he visited a ‘small property of a few acres, the possession of a black man; one of the few who have commenced cultivation of the sugar cane on their own account…. Generally, small cultivators are discouraged by the planters who are said to be reluctant to buy their canes…. The Creole negroes generally refuse to become servants on the plantations, or to bind themselves by any permanent engagement; any kind of obligation which limits their independence is avoided [but] they will readily work as contractors.⁶

Immigrants from the smaller islands also began to arrive. How many is unknown, as the government kept no records of such arrivals. For example, the Williams family probably emigrated because in densely settled Barbados there had been no free land available for emancipated slaves to settle on. The planters there had also instituted rigorous laws to keep their freed labour on the plantations—and to keep them docile. Not surprisingly many Bajans sought to make better lives for themselves on the mainland or on other islands where more opportunities were available.⁷

Searching for a cheap labour force the planters found a new source: indentured workers from India. Between 1838 and 1917 when the system was ended after protests by the Indian government, some 145,000 Indians were imported. Displacing those of African descent, they did the same work on the plantations, often under Black supervisors, under draconian laws, minimal wages and horrendous living conditions, often housed in the huts that had been erected for the enslaved. Nevertheless, freedom at the end of their fixed period of indenture, with either a free voyage home (only about 25% returned to India) or the grant of some land, put the Indians in a more advantageous position than what the slaves had endured. Moreover, the Indians were deemed to be human beings, a recognition often withheld from enslaved Africans. As the government of Trinidad bore much of the cost of indenture, many Blacks objected to the scheme as being simply an aid-package for the already wealthy. They also claimed that the importation of indentured labour lowered wage rates.

Not unnaturally this situation resulted in a degree of animosity between those of African descent and the Indians.⁸ This suited the White ruling class, which fostered the division between the two groups, for example by encouraging the formation of self-sufficient communities of estate labourers.

Another source of labour were the so-called ‘Liberated Africans’. These were men freed by the British anti-slave trade squadrons from slaving vessels captured in West African and Cuban waters. The men were either ‘apprenticed’ to the settlers in Sierra Leone; inducted into the West Indian Regiment stationed in Sierra Leone and subsequently at least partially settled in the West Indies; or sent directly as indentured labour to the Caribbean colonies. By 1867, when the system was abolished, 8,854 Africans had been imported into Trinidad. Some Yoruba thus imported settled in Arouca. There was also a small African American population, as some of those who had fought for the British in the War of 1812 had also been induced to settle in Trinidad.⁹ Thus by the 1860s Trinidad had been the host to many newcomers, thus becoming probably the most cosmopolitan of Britain's West Indian territories.

In social class terms, Whites were at the top of a tall pyramid; mixed-race (termed ‘coloured’) people were in the middle rank with Indians, Blacks and Chinese below them, according to sociologist Lloyd Braithwaite. The relationship between Whites and Coloureds was more akin to a ‘caste’ system than to British-style social class. The caste barrier could be circumvented by marriage, but inter-racial couples did not meet with general acceptance. The only route out of the lowest class for those with dark skin was the ‘occupational ladder … a dark skinned doctor or lawyer would seek to obtain entry into a higher status group by marrying a light skinned person’. This often happened while the ambitious man was studying abroad.¹⁰

EDUCATION IN TRINIDAD

Elementary education, generally with untrained teachers, had been instituted by the churches. In order to speed the process of the Anglicisation of the heterogeneous population, from 1870 the government began to finance, via ward rates, elementary schools for children aged 5 to 15. Though some Indian children attended ‘ward’ schools, most were enrolled in the schools specially started for them by Canadian Presbyterian missionaries. By 1875 there were 49 government schools, but there was no requirement for teachers to be trained or licensed. Pupils had to pay a weekly fee, which naturally deterred many children from attending, or attending regularly. For example in 1886 the total number enrolled was 14,527 and average attendance was 9,933. As the population of school-age children was c.22,500, this meant that only 44% of children were in school on any one day.¹¹

Examinations for teacher certification were introduced in about 1870, and could be taken without attending classes at Woodbrook, the government teacher training institution. Established in 1852, Woodbrook was associated with two ‘Model’ elementary schools, which, because they offered a ‘superior’ education, could charge a higher fee of $1 per week. This fee excluded most Black children. The education teacher trainees received at Woodbrook was minimal. There was no professional training and the trainees were little more than cheap, if supervised, labour at the two Model schools.

There were two boys’ secondary schools in the colony, catering almost exclusively to White children. Queen's Royal College (QRC), started in 1859, was a non-denominational day school, and an important part of the Anglicisation process. Its fees were high—$96 per annum in 1869; it excluded illegitimate Black (but not White) children; offered two scholarships per annum; provided a classical education, and entered boys for the external Cambridge examinations. In 1869 there were 13 Black children enrolled and 55 Whites. Roman Catholic Queen Mary's College was started in 1863 by the Holy Ghost fathers to counter the secular education (and Anglicisation) provided by QRC. As it had lower fees and offered classical and commercial courses, it attracted a wider social spectrum of students. Girls could attend the Roman Catholic St. Joseph Convent.¹²

Beginning in 1870, two ‘island scholarships’ were offered for university education in the UK.

HENRY SYLVESTER WILLIAMS’ CHILDHOOD

Henry Sylvester Williams was not born on 19 February 1869 in Arouca, as reported by previous biographers.¹³ Ronald Noel has located the registration of his birth, dated 24 March 1867, in Barbados. He was the eldest son of Henry Bishop and Elizabeth Williams, who emigrated to Trinidad from Barbados at an unknown date.¹⁴ Henry Bishop Williams was a wheelwright; as a skilled workman, he probably encountered relatively few problems in earning a living. Besides Henry junior, five more children were born to the Williamses, three girls and two boys.¹⁵

Young Henry Sylvester Williams grew up in a village where the majority were of African descent, and included Africans with memories of Africa. Arouca was surrounded by large estates owned mainly by English-speakers and worked mainly by Indians; there was also a long-resident, French Creole speaking Black population in the village. Thus Henry would have heard at least four languages in his childhood: English, French Creole, Hindi (the Bojpuri dialect), and of the African languages, probably Yoruba; and witnessed three forms of religious practice, though the only places of worship were the three competing Christian sects, the Church of England, the Roman Catholics and the Presbyterians. The latter two had their own elementary schools; there was also a government school, which was attended by the Williams children. The Williams household was English-speaking and belonged to the local Church of England. Did the Williams family escape imbibing the European attitudes towards Africans as irredeemably savage unless civilised by Europeans?

Education

What sort of education did Williams receive? A very limited one: barely an introduction to the ‘Three Rs’: reading, writing and ‘rithmetic, at his village primary school. On completing his elementary education, in 1884 young Henry, probably 17 years old, took up residence in the reformed, relocated and renamed teacher training institution, Tranquillity, which now offered boarding facilities.¹⁶ Williams was one of the seven boarders at Tranquil...