Slavery and Creolization,
Education vs. Indigenous Cultures

South Asia
West & South Africa
Children’s Experience of
•
Civil Wars (displacement – child soldier)
•
Racial, Class, Language and Cultural Differences
•
City (Mumbai, Monrovia, Jos, Nsukka, Johannesburg) vs. Country
•
Modern (radio, violin) vs. Traditional Culture
Racial/Class
Composition in India,
Pakistan, Sri Lanka
Religion: Indian gods:
Krishna & Ganesh;
Religion in Iran
Gender , Bride-Bride game & Marriage
In Nigeria
( Hausa , Igbo , Yoruba)
;
Liberia
(Bassa vs. Congo);
South Africa
(Apartheid, AIDS)
Folk belief
(Sangoma, dibia man, mask)
Love of eating sweets, bullying at school
 war games & Education

Treasure Island = Hispaniola = Haiti
(Friday from Robinson Crusoe )
Image sources: 1 , 2 , 3 . 4

Haiti: Earthquake 2010, 1, 12
Rachel Wheeler (from Florida)– Champions for the Poor a 12-year-old that raised
250,000 US dollars to build 27 homes in
Haiti ( source ) famous for its legends of pirates ( source

《金銀島》 Treasure Island; Pirates of the
Caribbean ） drug dealing

1.What color is Friday’s skin?

Not yellow , because the aborigines were mostly eliminated there. The few Caribs left were mixed with the black slaves, who get associated with Cannibalism.
2. Can Friday speak? Does Caliban only know how to curse? ( The Tempest : Prospero, Miranda and
Caliban; Coetze Foe: Foe, Friday and Susan Barton)
(The Middle Passage) Slavery

Colonial Education

Creolization
(in people and language )
Image source

Caribbean Disapora Cultures

The Caribbean Area :
Definitions & History of colonization
The Texts We Read
Creolization
: Definitions
English language & of people
Race Relations

Conflicts and Displacement;
Caribbean Poetry and Music at a Glance :
Caribbean poetry; Derek Walcott
& dub poetry
Popular culture: Different ways ;
Calypso , (Raggae &
Rap)
Our Course: Thematic Continuity , Geographic
Expansion

Definition (1): the Caribbean –3 groups
1. the Bahamas to the North East of Cuba the Greater Antilles the
Lesser
Antilles

Brazil

Don’t forget the triangular trade!!!
“discovered” by Columbus in late 15th c., Spanish colonization, followed by the British, French and
Dutch.
names:
West Indies (Anglophone) –a misnomer (also
East Indians); the Antilles (Francophone) the Caribbean as a term encompassing both
Composed of immigrants only: diaspora ( 離散族群 ) the aboriginal communities [Amerindians--
Arawaks, Caribs, etc.] exterminated;
Immigrants from Africa, Asia and Europe .
Columbus & Arawak-http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_B1C-v0BzTE

Jan van de Straet’s engraving “America”--the new world as a woman

in the Caribbean Area
1492-96 -Columbus’s “discovery” of the West
Indies
The Middle Passage
Colonialism in the Caribbean The Bitter Reality of Satisfying Europe's Sweet Tooth : middle passage & sugar production
Image source

Slavery in Jamaica (The House of Beckford), part 1 , part 2 2:30 (luxuries and all things Oriental) 12:30
Excessive wealth of the whites ; part 4 Fonthill Abbey
Coolies : How Britain Re-Invented Slavery
Best Documentary Movies - Britain's
Forgotten Slave Owners Profit And Loss -
Official
40:50 London-- center of sugar commerce
48:41 a duchess as an example
52:00 mix-raced Nathaniel
57:40 wouldbe planter owner (out of the system of plantation)

Fonthill Abbey
~ Beckford’s House
(or Beckford's Folly)

16th-18th centuries --Colonial period : also a period of wars among colonial nations and pirates, and conflicts between the white masters, black slaves and mulatto.
Rebellion (1) – the Maroons * e.g. Abeng – (from a West Africa); used primarily as a signaling device; served as a vital means of communication when the
Maroons were at war with the British (e.g.) e.g. in Sugar Cane Alley

petit marronage ( 小走私 ) in francophone islands pretend sickness, steal, or even poison their masters.
with music, dance, religion ( voodon ), or simply their different ways of living; examples: the school children’s tales of zombies; the songs the laborers sing—at the field, after Madouze dies-- in Sugar Cane Alley ; open rebellion (Haitian revolution)

in the Caribbean Area
1808 --1838 Britain and USA abolished slave trade; complete abolition of slavery in British colonies
1845 East Indian indentured laborers in
Trinidad; Chinese indenture in French colonies (e.g. Wide Sargasso Sea)
East Indian and Chinese indentured laborers:
•
In Guyana and Trinidad: Indian population-mostly rural; blacks—more urbanized; Indians in trade; blacks—civil servants

in the Caribbean Area
1919-1939 seen as
Slums of the Empire .
• Negritude ( Aimé Césaire );
•
Back to Africa movement
(started in the 19 th century; supported later by MARCUS
GARVEY )  Rastafari movement
Madouze’s account in
SGA riots & strikes in 1935-
1938 and afterwards

in the Caribbean Area
Since the 50’s
Colonization in reverse :
West Indian migration to England  restrictions imposed  to Canada, etc.
Independence movements:
1958-62 -- The Federation of the West Indies
Independence:
 1962 -- Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago;
1966 -- Barbados and Guyana;

American Imperialism in the Caribbean
Area (
Cf. Bob Marley site http://www.bobmarley.com/)
Economic the area becomes the tourists’ heaven and a cheap labor factory (capital, technology and management shipped to the area to use the labor power without leaving the profits there.)
Cultural Explotation & Caribbean selfexpression – Bob Marley and The Wailers -
Caribbean Nights Documentary music styles – the emergence of reggae 13: 50
Marley’s Trenchtown and the musical styles (from rhythm & blue to Ska to reggae )

in the Caribbean Area
Neo-Colonialism of the U.S.A. military intervention (e.g. "Caribbean
Basin Initative" – bribing Jamaica and the rest of the Caribbean to support the armed confrontation in Grenada and the war in El
Salvador .

The Wide Sargasso Sea (1966) – 1840’s
(Martinique), (Grandbois) Dominica, Jamaica
(near Spanish town)
Sugar Cane Alley (1983) –Martinique 1930’s
Abeng (1984) by Michelle Cliff -- Jamaica
1950’s
Olive Senior " Bright Thursdays " (published in
1986 -- Jamaica
Annie John (1985) –Antigua 1950’s
" Children of the Sea " (1993; from Krik, Krak!
2004) -- Port-au-Prince Haiti 1960’s – 90’s

A. language: mixture of languages, esp. in
Southern US and the Caribbean area.
“This is the story of patois, pidgin and creole; the story of Empire striking back.”
( episode
9-1 )
B. People
1). Original meaning: Native, local, ” pure ” ;
2). Native-born whites; (e.g. Antoinette in WSS)
3). Hybrid (mixed-blood)

Language – the mixture of English and African tribal languages into some special kinds of native languages ( Patois, such as French Patois, Jamaican Patois ).
• e.g. Liberia epi 9-3; Beijan: 5:30 The English used in Barbados-- closest to standard English
•
Jamaican creole ( 9-4 dub poetry opening; 2:30), postcreole continuum“*
( 後新生語連續體 )
-parallels the social hierarchy to some degrees (--those speaking in creole are looked down upon).
Postcolonial usage of creole
 dub poetry
— the empire strikes back

in the
Caribbean Society
People --
Europeans born in the Caribbean, mulatto
“Dying to raise their color all of them” (199) (e.g.
“Bright Thursday”)
The color triangle: white Hair –less curly
Tightly curly kinky
Clear, yellow,
Red, light brown
Brown, light black brown dark

WSS
Post-emancipation period
– conflicts between different races (e.g. the English vs. the
French), between plantation owners and small farmers , ex-slaves and contract laborers between the newly rich and the declining aristocrats.
Discriminated: mulatto and creole.
In the contemporary Caribbean area and diaspora: the Bajan vs. the Jamaican, all against Haitian, etc.

racial conflicts; split sense of identity – in between Europe and Africa (e.g. Black Skin, White Mask –
Frantz Fanon from Martinique) diverse and dynamic culture ( Walcott on its music, painting and language)

The people’s resistance to colonialism: some examples of
Caribbean Poetry
– Ref.
Caribbean poetry
(introd.)
Derek Walcott (e.g.
) – combination of Western culture and creolized culture and island landscape
• “I happen to have been born in an English and a
Creole place, and love both languages. …”
• “ I who am poisoned with the blood of both,
Where shall I turn, divided to the vein?”
" A Far Cry From Africa“ Derek
Walcott, 1957
As I worked, watching the rotting waves come past the bow that scissor the sea like milk,
I swear to you all, by my mother's milk, by the stars that shall fly from tonight's furnace, that I loved them, my children, my wife, my home;
I loved them as poets love the poetry that kills them, as drowned sailors the sea.
You ever look up from some lonely beach and see a far schooner? Well, when I write this poem, each phrase go be soaked in salt;
I go draw and knot every line as tight as ropes in this rigging; in simple speech my common language go be the wind, my pages the sails of the schooner Flight.
But let me tell you how this business begin.
(from “
The Schooner Flight
”

The people’s resistance to colonialism: some examples of
Caribbean Poetry
Dub poetry: forerunner of hip-hop an extension of reggae culture (“new raggae”) a form of performance poetry having its roots in popular Jamaican culture, and more particularly in reggae and
Rastafarianism.
The movement has served to bring poetry back to the people

openness to pop culture and esp. to music (reggae and calypso); appeal of public performance; acceptance of social responsibility --poetry has a
“function”
( poetry vs fiction as a middle-class genre) amateur poetic practice in the WI
(e.g.
Jamaican creole ) e.g. Edward Braithwaite ,

About a Rasta Man
“Brother Man the Rasta man, beard full of lichens 地衣 brain full of lice watched the mice ”
After smoking his pipe of his gangja, he s peaks of his people in ‘Bablylon town’
“So beat dem drums dem, spread dem wings dem, watch dem fly dem, soar dem high dem, clear in the glory of the Lord.
Watch dem ship dem come to town dem full o' silk dem full o' food dem an' dem 'plane dem come to groun' dem full o' flash dem full o' cash dem silk dem food dem shoe dem wine dem that dem drink dem an' consume dem praisin' the glory of the Lord.


Bob Marley, a Rasta So beat dem burn dem, learn dem that dem got dem nothin' but dem bright bright baubles that will burst dem when the flame dem from on high dem raze an' roar dem an' de poor dem rise an' rage dem in de glory of the Lord.

“Roots”
“ Black and White ”
Different implications of
“ black ”
Michael Smith ;
Image source

Louise Bennett
What a joyful news, Miss Mattie;
Ah feel like me heart gwine burs--
Jamaica people colonizin
Englan in reverse
By de hundred, by de tousan
From country an from town,
By de ship-load, by the plane-load,
Jamaica is Englan boun. ( source : 4:49)

Dem a pout out a Jamaica;
Everybody future plan
Is fi get a big-time job
An settle in de motherlan
What a islan! What a people!
Man an woman, ole and young
Jussa pack dem bag an baggage
An tun history upside dung !
--Louis Bennett (e.g.)
( source )

“ dis poem ” ; another reading starts with middle passage, but extends to all kinds of racism all over the world.
Note: nyahbingi drumming http://www.mutabaruka
.com/lyrics.htm
Music video of the 2006 song
Della and Mutabaruka

The people’s resistance to colonialism: some examples of
Popular Culture
Calypso : originated in the songs of African slaves who worked in the plantation fields of
Trinidad. Forbidden to talk to each other, they used calypso to communicate feelings and information. e.g. Work songs in Sugar Cane Alley. e.g. "Dan is the Man ".

In education, he is taught to be
“a block-headed mule” with his world filled with nonsensical nursery rimes.
How about the education in the film Sugar
Cane Alley?

Sugar Cane Alley –a boy
’s experience of 1930’ s labor exploitation; Western education vs. local cultures; cultural identities
The Wide Sargasso Sea
–
1830
’s (abolishment of slavery)
 poor creole women (girls) vs. a black girl, Tia
Abeng by Michelle Cliff – another creole girl whose great grandfather, Judge Savage, burned his hundred slaves on the eve of their emancipation. * Claire and Zoe
Olive Senior's "Bright Thursdays" –a creole girl
’s experience and fear of white culture and open space
Annie John
–a black girl
’s growth to reject of her mother/culture.
"Children of the Sea" –refugees from Haiti; two voices

in our course
Area Cultures, race & gender
Indian
Subcon
-tinent
Religions
 gender (purdah, sati, marriage), caste system, partition
 children and (lack of) education; wedding ; sisters,

War
(neo-)olonization diaspora
--UK. Departure
--Hollywood
--South Africa, the Caribbean, and to US
West &
SouthA frica
1) War and children
2) Apartheid, politics & power  land and body, religion, gender , language, AIDS  education
1) Congo in Liberia
2) Boer war
 Afrikaaner vs.
Bantu  ( Writing vs. silence)
Exile & Return
The
Caribbean
Diaspora + refugee; Creolization  language , race & gender  children
& education ; marriage, sisters , mother-daughter
Slavery & Contract laborers; US.
“Back” to
Africa or UK

The Caribbean area and the Caribbean diaspora
Canada
The U.S.
“Children of the Sea” ; Fugees
Annie John
M. Cliff , B. Marley
Wide Sargasso Sea
Sugar Cane Alley
Derek Walcott
England
France India

Jean Rhys (Dominique) Wide Sargasso
Sea Book I
Education Sugar Cane Alley

The Evolution of Afro-Caribbean Music
< http://www.cariwave.com/Evolution_Afro_Caribbean_M usic.htm
>
Caribbean Poetry: Barbados
<http://www.courses.vcu.edu/ENGsnh/Caribbean/Barbados/index.html >