It's difficult to understand the reasons for
our vastly different attitudes to figures in our historical past. Naturally any figure with plenty of pigment gets a much higher rating than any pale ghost. But when the pigment is reasonably equal, and the historical ghostly
interest much the same, why is one figure greatly preferred to another?The present example is the Governmental adoration of G. Washington as compared with its loathing of Admiral Nelson. G.W. stayed in Barbados for
three months, at a rental of L15 a month, because his brother was suffering from tuberculosis and our climate was then considered advantageous. It is thought that he rented Bush Hill House, and we are going to spend lots of money
to restore this rather undistinguished building to its former condition, whatever we may guess that to be.
Alas, our weather had little if any curative effect upon the Washington family. Indeed G.W. caught a mild attack of
smallpox, and G.W.'s brother succumbed to TB after trying Bermuda and then returning home.
Do you think that hordes of US tourists will flock to Barbados to see the house where Washington slept and pustulated?
But later on
there was an interesting story about G.W. In 1776 he owned a bloody-minded slave he wanted to get rid of. So he sent Tom to the captain of a sloop bound for the West Indies, and with him Washington sent a note. " With this letter
comes a Negro, Tom, which I beg the favour of you to sell in any of the islands you may go to, for whatever he may fetch, and bring me in return : one gallon of best molasses
One gallon of best rum
One barrel of lymes if good and cheap
One pot of tamarinds
Two small pots of mixed sweetmeats.
I cannot find anything historical to tell us the result of that request. Let us forget that story about that great man
Admiral Lord Nelson, who had won many naval battles against the Napoleonic French Fleet, had the
convenient effect of preserving us from the necessity of learning French, and therefore eventually allowing us to become independent, instead of a Departement Francaise, similar to an English County, as has been the sad fate of
Martinique and Guadeloupe.
Such an admirable effect, so suitable (as it proved) to our Bajan ways of thought and political behaviour, would, I imagined, have appealed to whatever political party is our current master. But no!
Every pol seems keen to banish that rather elegant statue from prominence.
The suggestion is made that Nelson was, if not a slave owner, at least in favour of that now deplorable idea. How dreadful! But Washington certainly was
himself a slave owner. Should he then be forgiven, any more than some ancestral Bajans could possibly be forgiven?
What about Bussa and Franklin, both apparently possible leaders of that failed rebellion of 1816, before
the emancipation of the slaves in 1834. Is it true that Franklin was the paler of the two, and therefore, in the unprejudiced view of the eminent historian and professor, Mr. Hilary Beckles, less entitled to the honour of being a
leader?
When Mr. Karl Broodhagen's impressive statue first appeared it was described as a symbolic representation of an emancipated slave; the whole idea of Bussa came much later.
I wonder what will be the next example of
the brilliant professor's creative history, his creativity so little restricted by any need for evidence.
