“Her English ensign tied upside down”: Carnival as a means of anticolonial resistance in Emmanuel Appadocca

Abstract

This article focuses on Michel Maxwell Philip’s mid-nineteenth-century novel Emmanuel Appadocca (1854), which draws upon the cultural institution of carnival to critique British colonialism and advocate for the right of free people of colour to hold positions of power in Trinidad’s government. Philip enhances his characters’ protests against British colonialism and preserves the carnival revellers’ spirit of resistance and rebellion through allusions to the pirate, Red Indian, and military masques of early Trinidad carnival. This is particularly evident in one radical scene in which a pirate ship known as the Black Schooner masquerades as an English wreck in front of an actual English man-of-war, confronting England with an image of its own vulnerability and future defeat. Applying Mikhail Bakhtin’s theory of utopian carnival, I argue that the image of the triumphant Black Schooner bursting forth from its disguise figuratively represents a united Trinidad replacing England as a world power. However, when Philip uses the diverse pirate crew rather than the pirate ship to symbolize Trinidad, the path to unification and power becomes far less utopic. The second half of this article suggests that Philip presents the pirate captain as a strong brown leader capable of ruling the people, in part through his strategic use of carnivalistic “days of pleasure”. Using the safety-valve theory of carnival, I suggest that the days of pleasure aboard the Black Schooner actually reproduce contemporary social and racial inequalities. Thus, Philip harnesses the disruptive power of carnival to construct a powerful critique of British colonialism, but also, in a far less liberating way, views the “days of pleasure” as a mechanism to control and subdue the people.

In 1854 Michel Maxwell Philip, an Afro-Trinidadian studying law in England, published his first and only novel, a pirate adventure story entitled Emmanuel Appadocca; Or, Blighted Life: A Tale of the Boucaneers. ¹ Recovered from obscurity 20 years ago by William Cain and Selwyn R. Cudjoe, Emmanuel Appadocca has been called the “first Anglo-Caribbean novel” (Cudjoe, 1997: 249). This paper builds upon the recuperative efforts of such scholars as Belinda Edmondson, Raphael Dalleo, and Leah Rosenberg, who argue that Emmanuel Appadocca holds an important place in the Anglophone Caribbean literary canon. By drawing on early nineteenth-century accounts of Trinidad carnival as well as both utopian and safety-valve theorizations of this festival, I argue that Emmanuel Appadocca is the first Trinidadian novel to harness the disruptive power of carnival in order to resist British rule and establish the qualifications of brown Trinidadian leaders. Although Philip does not depict actual carnival celebrations in his novel, he alludes to several types of early masque bands and channels their spirit of resistance in his own radical critique of British colonialism and empire. He also advocates for the right of free people of colour to participate in Trinidad’s government by depicting a brown leader who uses carnivalistic “days of pleasure” (Philip, 1997/1854: 53) ² to effectively govern the people.

While I argue that Emmanuel Appadocca is a significant text because it shows that as early as the mid-nineteenth century a Caribbean writer was already borrowing from the institution of carnival to promote an anticolonialist agenda, I also acknowledge the novel’s limitations. First, the novel reproduces some contemporary racist and classist beliefs. Appadocca, who represents the educated brown elite, is an erudite and powerful leader, but Jack Jimmy, who stands in for the black working class, proves physiognomically inferior and ignorant. In addition to perpetuating stereotypes in his depiction of Jack Jimmy, Philip appropriates the institution of carnival for Trinidad’s educated elite and elides the role of the black working class in developing the festival.

Set in the early nineteenth century, Philip’s novel follows the exploits of Emmanuel Appadocca, a “quadroon” pirate captain, who, like Philip himself, is a highly educated, brown-skinned Afro-Trinidadian (23). ³ As a student, Appadocca excels in science and mathematics and hopes one day to become an astronomy professor. Following the death of his devoted mother, who was funding his education, Appadocca seeks financial assistance from his father, James Willmington. As a wealthy white creole who owns a sugar plantation in Trinidad, Willmington can afford to help Appadocca; however, he refuses to publicly acknowledge or financially assist his illegitimate son. Unable to fund the rest of his education, Appadocca becomes a pirate to avenge his mother and himself by punishing Willmington. The first time Appadocca captures his father, he ties him to a barrel which he sets adrift on the ocean, symbolically subjecting him to the same type of suffering he endured as an abandoned child. However, the commander of an English man-of-war rescues Willmington and later arrests Appadocca. By the end of the novel, Appadocca has escaped and recaptured Willmington. He knowingly sails into the heart of a tempest and instructs his men to evacuate the ship just before it shatters against the rocks outside of Trinidad. Willmington, the only man still on board the ship when it crashes, dies in the wreck. Having achieved his revenge, Appadocca commits suicide, leaving the care of his surviving crew members to his second-in-command, Lorenzo.

While early critics of Emmanuel Appadocca dismissed the novel on both aesthetic and ideological grounds, Philip actually employs the adventure genre in an inventive and subversive way by using the metaphor of piracy to draw attention to the ethical problems of imperialism. Edmondson points out that, traditionally, critics “consign[ed] [Emmanuel Appadocca] to the ideological dustbin”, suggesting it was a mere “effor[t] to copy British literature, and [a] poor effort at that” (2009: 52). Contrary to these early assessments, Philip offers a self-aware critique of British imperialism within the very genre the British typically used to defend and rationalize it. As Sarah Ficke argues, in the wake of the Napoleonic Wars, “British sea adventures, like those written by Captain Fredrick Marryat, effectively sought to transform the unstable and contingent space of the ship […] into an intensely national space that would construct, rather than deconstruct, a firm and unshakeable national identity” (2011: 116). Philip’s mixed-race, Trinidadian protagonist epitomizes many of the virtues associated with heroic British masculinity, including “courage, attentiveness to duty, [and] resolute self-command” (Ficke, 2011: 117). Although Appadocca embraces an Anglicized form of heroic masculinity, he also problematizes a British national or imperial identity that claims to be grounded in these principles on the one hand, while participating in war, colonization, and slavery on the other.

While traditional British adventure fiction “opened up the world for boy readers, suggesting that it was rightfully theirs to explore, possess, and rule” (Roberts, 2002: 364), Emmanuel Appadocca denounces the institutionalized piracy of England and other so-called civilized nations. Functioning as Philip’s mouthpiece on this issue, Appadocca points out the hypocrisy of his young English friend, Charles Hamilton, who condemns the “robbery and thieving” of pirates (112), but fails to recognize “the whole civilized world turns, exists, and grows enormous on the licensed system of robbing and thieving” (113). Specifically, Appadocca argues that war, colonization, and slavery all constitute a form of legalized piracy. Consequently, he contends that merchants who sell sugar, rum, tobacco, and indigo cultivated by slave labour on Caribbean plantations have no right to the property they sell for “exorbitant and excessive profits” (115). As Alexandra Gasner points out, Philip was the first writer to voice this argument through the “subaltern subject position” of “a heroic ‘colored’ pirate and intellectual” (2012: 53).

This critique of English imperialism is more radical than those found in many nineteenth- or early twentieth-century Anglo-Caribbean novels. Edmondson notes that early Anglophone Caribbean writers often depict white creole characters in a negative light but endow English characters with ideal qualities. Of this widespread trend, she observes:

A consistent thread in all of the novels of this period is that English characters, in contrast to white creole ones, are never guilty of racism or narrow thinking and are always voices of reason and fellowship […] [T]he sympathetic views of the English permeate all of these novels, from One Brown Girl to Rupert Gray to Jane’s Career. The good English characters are almost always contrasted with bad white creoles, as if the authors’ message to white creoles is “we all agree that as Englishness is the white ideal, and your views are at odds with the English, you are therefore not sufficiently white” — a charge, incidentally, that had been leveled at the white creoles by the English themselves. (Edmondson, 2009: 66–67)

Edmondson accurately identifies this tendency among early Anglophone Caribbean writers and correctly asserts that, in Philip’s novel, “all of the respectable men who admire Appadocca are English naval officers” (2009: 66). However, although Philip’s English characters are certainly honourable — particularly when contrasted to the demonized white creole, Willmington — this does not result in a completely sympathetic portrayal of the English. First, Philip does not totally divorce England’s actions from the white creole presence in the Caribbean. In Appadocca’s opinion, England purposefully sends over its undesirable citizens to govern its colonies: “they send their weak-minded, afflicted, and helpless friends or relatives to govern those whose ancestors gave philosophy, religion, and government to the world” (114). Second, although Philip does not disparage individual English sailors, he does criticize the English nation as a whole: given England’s colonial policies, he questions the nation’s commitment to the principles of duty, honour, and justice, and, with it, their claim to superiority.

Some scholars have started to point out the ways in which Emmanuel Appadocca prefigures the anticolonial literature of the twentieth century. Raphael Dalleo points out that Philip’s pirate captain “anticipates the anticolonial intellectual in his ability to speak with an authority that comes from both his widely acknowledged learning and his practical use of language” (2011: 47). Dalleo stresses, however, that Philip publishes Emmanuel Appadocca during a transitional period in Caribbean literary history, when he can voice anticolonial critiques from the deterritorialized decks of a pirate ship but not from within the Caribbean itself. While Leah Rosenberg acknowledges the aesthetic differences between Emmanuel Appadocca and its twentieth-century successors, she observes that Appadocca is “a super modern man” and stresses the novel’s revolutionary content (2007: 21). Rosenberg convincingly argues that by examining the ways in which early Caribbean writers including Philip “invoked political independence in figurative but not concrete terms”, it is possible to see how “the politics of the early ‘respectable’ and ostensibly imperial writers shared as much or more of [George] Lamming’s revolutionary politics than did the Beacon Group [of the 1920s and 1930s]” (2007: 31). She points out, for example, that in a figurative reading of Emmanuel Appadocca, the struggle between the father and son could represent the fraught relationship between England and Trinidad (2007: 32).

Like Rosenberg’s reading of the father and son’s symbolic relationship, my analysis of the influence of carnival on the novel shows the ways in which Philip figuratively represents “Afro-Trinidadian petitions for justice” and the “overthrow of English rule” (Rosenberg, 2007: 32). After providing a brief history of early Trinidad carnival, I analyse the novel’s allusions to early masque bands and the Black Schooner’s carnivalistic transformations, particularly its disguise as an English wreck. I use Mikhail Bakhtin’s theory of carnival here because it usefully highlights the more utopic aspects of Philip’s vision of Trinidad’s rise to power. Philip suggests it is both desirable and possible to channel the revolutionary spirit of Trinidad carnival in order to replace deference to colonial authority with national pride (and, perhaps, a Crown Colony government with self-rule). The fact that Philip only manages to evoke a truly utopian form of carnival on a figurative level may point towards the limitations of actual carnival celebrations as theorized by critics of Bakhtin. Indeed, Philip seems very aware that carnival has the potential to reify existing power structures and prevent change. In the second half of this paper, I use the safety-valve theory of carnival to highlight how Appadocca uses carnivalistic days of pleasure to reinforce his own power and ensure his crew’s obedience. I argue that, unlike Bakhtinian carnival, these days of pleasure reproduce contemporary socioeconomic and racial inequalities.

A brief history of early Trinidad carnival

In the decade before the publication of Emmanuel Appadocca, British officials in Trinidad restricted carnival proceedings. Kim Johnson notes that in 1843 the British limited the festival to two days instead of the traditional three and that in 1846 they prohibited public masking altogether (1988: xiv). Thus, Philip embraces carnival as a useful and potentially subversive Caribbean tradition at a time when the British were trying to limit its influence.

Carnival was brought to Trinidad in 1785 by white and mixed-race French settlers and their slaves relocating under the 1783 Cedula of Population (Anthony, 1989: 1). Errol Hill explains that during the first several decades of Trinidad carnival the festival was celebrated primarily by wealthy French planters who donned masks and costumes, threw elaborate balls, and played practical jokes (1972: 10). Johnson notes that during carnival there was an alliance, however temporary or superficial, between white planters and free people of colour against black slaves. During carnival, Johnson argues,

the racial and economic divisions of the society were clearly demarcated and affirmed: all freedmen stood together against the slaves […] and although white and colored were carefully segregated, they symbolically linked arms by sharing the festival as a collective tradition that harkened back to their French background. (1988: xii)

Indeed, slaves did not typically participate in pre-emancipation upper-class carnival festivities unless they were summoned to provide entertainment. For example, Jack Bowell was invited to several carnival parties to perform his famous marionette dance (Pearse, 1988/1956: 17), Ofuba the chantuelle entertained guests with his singing (Liverpool, 2001: 137), and Gros Jean amused his master by creating witty, insulting songs about the guests (Anthony, 1989: 3).

After emancipation, the demographics of carnival participants and local newspapers’ attitude towards the festival changed. Hill observes that newspaper reports of pre-emancipation carnival, which were characterized as high-society affairs, “are brief but always approving in tone” (1972: 10). By contrast, reports covering the period between emancipation and 1919 — when members of the black working class became the primary carnival participants — proved “antipathetic and frequently hostile” (1972: 16). In 1839, following emancipation and the ensuing apprenticeship period, the newly-freed former slaves “came out on the streets in great numbers to celebrate the masquerade” (Anthony, 1989: 5). Over the next several years, the middle and upper classes complained about the increase in noise, violence, and obscenity during carnival. However, for the former slaves, who incorporated canboulay and stick fighting into the festivities, carnival arguably became more meaningful. ⁴ Johnson notes that even before emancipation “the festival certainly held an important meaning” for slaves, “part fantasy, part defiance” (1988: xiv). In the wake of emancipation, it “had become a symbol of freedom […] and not merely a season of frivolous enjoyment” (Hill, 1972: 21).

In keeping with this new spirit of freedom and subversion, carnival revellers developed masque bands, groups of between two and 800 costumed participants that mimicked, mocked, or parodied a particular group or institution (Crowley, 1988/1956: 42). There are few eyewitness accounts of mid-century Trinidad carnival, but the English traveller Charles Day, who attended the festival in 1848, saw several masque bands, including ones depicting pirates “dressed in Guernsey frocks, full scarlet trousers, and red woolen caps” and others portraying “the Indians of South America” with participants “dubbed with red ochre” (Day, qtd. in Pearse, 1988/1956: 25–26). In addition, David Crowley observes that “[b]ands with costumes based on military uniforms are among the oldest still extant in the Trinidad carnival”, noting that a reporter described an “Artillery” masque in 1834 and that another journalist writing in 1860 recalled “a band from years past [that] was referred to as ‘A man-o-war’s men’” (1988/1956: 53). Although Philip does not depict actual masque bands in his novel, interestingly, he does evoke pirate, Red Indian, and military-themed bands in scenes that involve costume or disguise, carnivalistic displays of wit and ingenuity, and rebellious, anticolonialist messages.

Throughout the novel, Appadocca’s crew recalls the pirate masque bands of early post-emancipation Trinidad carnival. Similar to the pirate masquers Day observes, Philip’s pirates, who are dressed in “red woolen shirt[s]” (18) and “blood red caps” (20), represent an “incursive forc[e] which threaten[s] social life” (Day, qtd. in Pearse, 1988/1956: 26). Because the Black Schooner functions as a type of carnivalistic space, the pirates can attack not only passing ships but also the ideology of imperialist nations. Aboard the ship, it is possible for Appadocca to proclaim “there is no law on board this schooner save mine and great Nature’s” and to bring his negligent father to justice (65). The pirates can also mock, debunk, and reject narratives of English superiority without fear of reprisal. As Gregory Wilson points out, the pirate ship travels through liminal territory, sailing between nations where the laws of the land do not apply, which prevents readers “from rejecting the behavior of either Appadocca or the pirates as illegal from the outset” and instead invites them to consider the pirates’ alternative system of justice and critiques of imperialism on their own merits (2004: n.p.). However, precisely because it serves as a carnivalistic space, the Black Schooner and the disruptive possibilities it temporarily allows must come to an end. At the end of the novel the Black Schooner sinks and many of the crew members — whom we learn have only worked as pirates for a single year (111) — easily divest themselves of their pirate identities and return to their normal lives.

In the opening scene of the novel, which similarly involves a vessel, this time a canoe, travelling in the liminal waters between Venezuela and Trinidad, Philip evokes the Red Indian masques of Trinidad carnival. ⁵ Lorenzo leads a group of pirates, who, like traditional carnival participants, have painted their skin with red ochre to look like Red Indians, to monitor and eventually capture the Spanish master of a nearby fishing vessel. This early masquerade showcases the pirates’ tactical intelligence and ingenuity, for what appears to be a canoe holding just three Red Indians contains hidden reinforcements: when the Spanish fisherman and his two black servants realize their danger and try to paddle to shore, ten additional disguised pirates spring from the bottom of the canoe “as if it were by magic” and easily overtake the fishing boat (15). However, the pirates’ success here is far from supernatural: they trick the Spanish fisherman through careful planning and their mastery of naval technologies (16–17).

In many ways, the Red Indian scene foreshadows the Black Schooner’s later interactions with an English man-of-war, although the pirate ship rather than the individual bodies of the pirates appear in disguise. Gesa Mackenthun correctly observes that the disguises of the “carnivalesque ship” comprise a “fantastic masquerade” (2004: 145). Indeed, the Black Schooner’s string of disguises specifically channels the rebellious spirit of Trinidad’s military-themed masque bands. The carnival participants’ decision to dress in the garb of the British military, mock their pretensions, and engage in sham battles was a politically-charged response to British power in Trinidad. As Hill observes, “the revelers [who participated in the Artillery masque of 1834] determined with brazen effrontery to debunk the authority that had been paraded before them so often in the display of military force” (1972: 14). The Black Schooner engages in similar masquerades to critique England’s alleged superiority and figuratively represent Trinidad’s future cultural ascendency.

Utopian carnival: The Black Schooner’s masquerades

In order to craft a utopic and carnivalistic scene that predicts England’s fall from power and Trinidad’s future greatness, Philip uses ships to represent the collective body of a people or nation. Philip describes the actions of the Black Schooner (representing Trinidad) and an English man-of-war (representing England) rather than the actions of the individual pirates and English sailors. While Philip’s choice to focus on the two symbolic ships does coincide with the utopian notion of collective identity — “the people” or “the pirates” acting as one, unified body to achieve a common goal — it conveniently sidesteps the need to address whether race- and class-based hierarchies have been dissolved aboard the Black Schooner during this otherwise utopic scene. ⁶

Following a plan originally devised by Appadocca, although they temporarily work under Lorenzo’s command, ⁷ the pirates trick the English man-of-war into repeatedly mistaking their identity by masquerading as a Mexican brigantine, a Mediterranean trader, and an English wreck. To disguise the Black Schooner’s port of origin and purpose, the pirates alter the ship’s outward appearance. For example, in order to pass as a Mediterranean trader the pirates adopt the sails of a square-rigged vessel and cover their ship’s guns with imitation portholes cut from canvas (151). Similarly, they hoist the Mexican flag to disguise their national identity (143).

During the first two encounters, the pirates playfully mock the English and showcase their own superior intelligence, wit, and creativity. Before approaching the man-of-war, the pirates monitor its position without being seen themselves by using one of Appadocca’s technological innovations, a system of mirrors affixed to the ship’s masts. When they do approach, they provoke the English man-of-war into attacking them just so they can demonstrate how easily they can deflect each attempted assault. In a typical scene, the narrator describes the ships’ movements: “[t]he huge vessel-of-war approached nearer and still nearer, but the schooner remained still stationary where she was”, effectively raising the English sailors’ hopes of conquest in order to dash them; for suddenly, “with the fleetness of a dream,” the Black Schooner hoists its sails and escapes the English (141). The pirates continue to toy with the English man-of-war, easily evading the danger of the guns: “Now they sailed away to a great distance, and then tacked and returned as if to meet and brave the pursuers; all the time, however, they kept out of the reach of the man-of-war’s guns with astonishing precision” (142). In this mock battle, the Black Schooner gracefully and skilfully navigates the sea “like a slender gar”, while the English man-of-war stirs up the foam “like a whale, furious with a wound” (142). The narrator, making a military as well as a sexual dig at the English, claims that by the end of the encounter, “the large vessel had proved as impotent and as incapable of carrying out their wishes, as a piece of floating timber” (142–43). Philip underscores the English sailors’ inability to learn from their mistakes by repeating the same language and sentence structure each time the pirates deploy this ruse under a new disguise.

In their final masquerade, which channels the “brazen effrontery” of carnival participants who parodied the British military and dismissed their authority, the pirates transform the Black Schooner into an English wreck that symbolizes England’s future decline. To better understand how Philip draws upon carnival to reject England’s alleged superiority and supposedly immutable power, I read the Black Schooner’s masquerade as an English wreck and its subsequent shedding of its disguise through Bakhtin’s utopian theory of carnival. Bakhtin argues that carnival functions as a “temporary liberation from the prevailing truth and from the established order; it mark[s] the suspension of all hierarchical rank, privileges, norms, and prohibitions” (1984/1965: 10). For these reasons, Bakhtin interprets carnival as a “utopian realm of community, freedom, equality, and abundance” (1984/1965: 9). In this utopian formulation, death and life are inextricably linked, for as the old order dies off it gives birth to a new one. Bakhtin explains:

By cutting off and discarding the old dying body, the umbilical cord of the new youthful world is simultaneously broken. […] Every blow dealt to the old helps the new to be born. The caesarian operation kills the mother but delivers the child. (1984/1965: 206)

Here, Bakhtin suggests violence, destruction, and death are actually generative forces and that carnival is a time and space in which genuine subversion can materialize.

By presenting the English man-of-war with a symbolic image of England’s eventual deterioration, the pirates reject the colonizer’s supposedly immutable power and dominance. The narrator describes the Black Schooner’s impressive disguise:

Portions of her masts were broken away; her rigging was slack, loose, and dry. […] In keeping with her disordered gear, her hull itself exhibited the greatest neglect and uncleanliness: the barnacles grew unmolested, to a considerable height, and the marks of the lee-water from the scuppers, stained her sides. The few sails which remained on the unsteady yards were tattered and worn. […] The vessel had her English ensign tied upside down, in token of distress. (148)

The pirates masquerade as a fallen England: unclean, neglected, disordered, and utterly broken. In effect, Philip suggests that England cannot manage its own affairs, let alone govern and protect its colonies. The inverted English ensign, here an “image of distress”, functions as a subversive taunt and prophetic warning, a carnivalistic symbol of England’s future defeat.

In a scene very much in keeping with Bakhtin’s formulation of utopian carnival, the Black Schooner sheds its disguise like a triumphant butterfly bursting from its chrysalis:

A shrill sound was heard, the apparent sides of the distressed barque opened, the stern fell heavily into the water, the rackety yards and old ropes went over the side, and from amidst the wreck of the skeleton ship, the Black Schooner sprang forth as she felt the power of her snow-white sails, which, with the rapidity of lightening, had clothed her tall masts. (149)

As in Bakhtin’s formulation of utopian carnival, this image integrates birth and death. The scene opens with a “shrill sound” that conveys the mother’s labour pains and death groans as well as the child’s first breath. The line “the apparent sides of the distressed barque opened” conjures the image of a mother giving birth, but almost immediately the sides of the ship representing the mother fall away, and the sentence ends on an image of the mother’s death: “the skeleton ship”. Out of death — England, represented by “the wreck of the skeleton ship” — comes life: Trinidad, embodied by the Black Schooner. As in Bakhtin’s formulation, Philip rejects the notion of permanent power and instead embraces a form of cyclical time: the old, decaying order has been replaced by a more youthful new order, full of invigorating power and vitality.

By using the pirate ship to symbolize his homeland, Philip imagines a united Trinidad acting as a single body, and by channelling the radical critiques of early military masque bands, he predicts the eventual overthrow of English rule and Trinidad’s rise to power. In doing so, Philip represents figuratively what the Trinidadian writer and linguist John Jacob Thomas states outright in Froudacity: West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude (1889), 35 years later. In the final chapter of his scathing critique and refutation of Froude’s travelogue The English in the West Indies (1888), Thomas, like Philip, points out that “different races have successively come to the front, as prominent actors on the world’s stage” but eventually, “these mighty empires have all passed away” (1889: 236). Thomas goes on to ask:

What is it in the nature of things that will oust the African race from the right to participate, in times to come, in the high destinies that have been assigned in times past to so many races that have not been in anywise superior to us […]? (1889: 236–37)

While Philip’s carnivalistic image of the Black Schooner breaking free of the English wreck similarly predicts Trinidad’s transition from colony to world power, for most of the novel Philip takes a more elitist position when imagining the future greatness of the African race.

Carnival as a safety valve: The Afro-Trinidadian leader and “days of pleasure”

In order to advance the belief that the brown elite should be able to participate more fully in Trinidad’s government, Philip presents Appadocca as a highly effective leader. Specifically, Philip argues that Appadocca’s innate gift for leadership and strategic use of carnivalistic “days of pleasure” (53) allow him to unite his crew and rule them with an “iron discipline” (110). By placing a brown Trinidadian rather than a white creole or Englishman as the captain of the pirate ship and the mastermind behind the days of pleasure, Philip reimagines the type of person capable of ruling the people. As Milla Cozart Riggio points out, when the British seized control of Trinidad in 1797, they fashioned a Crown Colony government by which the island was ruled from Britain (2004: 40). The British recognized that the “largely Roman Catholic French-speaking population […] could easily vote their conquerors out of power” if Britain did not rule the colony directly (Riggio, 2004: 40). Hill explains that previously, under Spanish law, free people of colour had “enjoyed almost equal status with whites” but under British rule they “were demoted to second-class citizenship by discriminatory legislation” (1972: 9). Rosenberg notes that even after the members of the brown elite were “freed from ‘legal disabilities’ in 1829” they “continued to be barred from opportunities in the sugar industry and commerce while they faced severe discrimination in the civil service” (2007: 20). Like his cousin Jean-Baptiste Philippe, who advocated for the rights of free people of colour in Free Mulatto (1824), Philip uses Emmanuel Appadocca to showcase his brown hero’s leadership skills and argue for the right of the educated, brown elite to hold positions of power in Trinidad’s government.

To display his natural leadership capabilities and reinforce his crew’s obedience and submission, Appadocca periodically declares carnivalistic “days of pleasure” that provide an outlet or “safety valve” for the pirates’ pent-up desires and frustrations. In contrast to Bakhtin, theorists who view carnival as a type of safety valve suggest that the festival actually reinforces the power of the ruling class and its ideologies by confining transgression to a specific time and space. Terry Eagleton contends that “[c]arnival, after all, is a licensed affair in every sense, a permissible rupture of hegemony, a contained popular blow-off” (2001: 148). In other words, Eagleton suggests that carnival has limited revolutionary potential because an officially-sanctioned rebellion is a contradiction in terms. According to the safety-valve theory, the old order does not give way to a new one during carnival; instead, it permits temporary, controlled freedoms in order to preserve existing authority and prevent change.

As the governing authority aboard the Black Schooner, Appadocca decides when and how often the days of pleasure occur. He maintains a dignified distance from the festivities, but all of his men partake in the amusements and luxuries typical of carnival. The ship deck becomes “a scene of the liveliest animation”, as the pirates exchange their customary duties for the opportunity to sing, dance, joke, and tell stories (27). The narrator informs readers that “the schooner rang with the merry laugh of those who listened to the jokes of some funny old tar” and “the jolly songs of all nations, as sung by the different denizens that formed the motley crew […] rose upon the bosom of the silent gulf” (27). It is also a time of excess and indulgence, for the “choice tobacco” circulated freely and “every sailor had his drinking can by his side” (53).

Philip describes the changes to the crew’s mood and behaviour on these festive occasions with the same language and imagery one might use to describe the total but temporary transformation produced by safety-valve carnival. For example, in a representative passage, Philip describes how the crew’s usual silence and discipline give way to “unbounded revelry”:

The sounds [of a huge gong, declaring the beginning of a day of pleasure] seemed to possess the power of transforming the vessel, where such quiet and silence a little before had reigned, to a scene of unbounded revelry. No sooner had they fallen on the ears of the grim and bearded sailors, than shouts of joy and mirth burst forth from the same men, who, but a short time before seemed pressed by a paralyzing power into discipline, order, and the silence of death. (26–27)

Here, we see the inversion of the everyday routine so often associated with carnival: silence replaced with noise, austerity replaced with indulgence, solemnity replaced with mirth — in short, death replaced with life. The days of pleasure prove an enjoyable distraction, but the pirates lead rigidly disciplined everyday lives. In exchange for these brief periods of leisure and freedom, the pirates curb their personal desires and obey all of their captain’s commands.

Significantly, Philip does not criticize Appadocca for implementing this regimen of austerity and discipline. Instead, he emphasizes his brown hero’s “extraordinary power” to rule the people (32). Philip indicates his hero’s biological superiority by drawing upon the racist and classist system of physiognomy. Although he does emphasize Appadocca’s status as a brown hero by pointing out that his complexion “show[s] a mixture of blood, and proclaim[s] that the man was connected with some dark race” (23), he also stresses the lightness of Appadocca’s skin (23, 92) and the “almost femininely delicate” hands and “femininely formed” figure that mark him as a member of the refined upper-class (23). Simultaneously drawing on standard physiognomic signs of (white) leadership and redefining his brown hero’s Afro-Trinidadian features as a key source of power, Philip presents Appadocca as a born leader by endowing him with the broad forehead and cranial developments of a wise man, the “high aquiline nose, compressed lips, and set jaws” (24) of a firm and determined temper, and “large tropical eyes” that “seemed to possess the power of the basilisk” (23).

The carnivalistic days of pleasure aboard the ship serve to showcase and reinforce the captain’s natural ability to lead the people. The awe-struck narrator wonders how the young pirate captain “solitary, as he appeared, among so many stronger men” puts an immediate end to the crew’s “boisterous enjoyment” and “impose[s] the bonds of discipline” in its place at the end of a day of pleasure (32). He marvels that there exists a power so “infinitely strong” that it can “control those apparently lawless men” at the height of their “self-willed pleasure […] especially when their spirits were heated with strong drinks” (32).

Philip imagines a brown leader whose natural leadership skills and strategic use of days of pleasure not only allow him to rule and subdue the pirates but also to unite them “as if they were but the individual members of only one single body moved by one spirit” (193). However, unlike the Black Schooner’s triumphant shedding of its disguise, through which Philip figuratively represents the united population of Trinidad coming together to achieve greatness, here the pirates only move as one body because they mechanically and unthinkingly obey their leader’s commands. Indeed, Philip instructs the reader to recall “the movements of beautifully adjusted machines as they perform their parts”, to comprehend “the promptness and ease with which the hundreds of men aboard the Black Schooner executed their captain’s order” (38). If the individual pirates perform their duties as so many limbs making up a “single body”, then Appadocca serves as both the brain and the “one spirit” that moves them.

Further undermining the possibility of utopic equality aboard the Black Schooner generally or during the days of pleasure specifically, the pirates reinforce contemporary racial and socioeconomic prejudices. It is true that on days of pleasure most of the crew celebrates together despite their different nationalities and life experiences. However, the pirates exclude and marginalize the one black, working-class crew member, Jack Jimmy.

Many scholars downplay Philip’s racist depiction of Jack Jimmy in their effort to highlight the novel’s more progressive elements. Cudjoe praises Philip for incorporating “distinctly Afro-Trinidadian voices” into the novel through the dialect of Jack Jimmy and another minor character, Jack (1997: 266), but Philip actually uses the black characters’ grammatically incorrect dialogue to mark them as uneducated members of the working class and to serve as a form of comic relief. Other scholars, such as Ficke and Gasner, acknowledge Philip’s racist caricatures, but nonetheless emphasize the pirate ship’s function as a potentially transformative space in which racial inequalities and/or anxieties over racial difference may be addressed or resolved. Ficke concludes that “neither coercion nor ethnicity play a part in this confederacy [of pirates]” (2011: 126). Similarly, Gasner ultimately argues the pirate ship is a “heterotopian embodiment of the ideal state, a harmonious social body that is possible and secured only through the captain’s hybrid knowledge and the transnational transethnic solidarity of the ‘wreteched outcasts’ [citation omitted] of the Atlantic contact zone” (2012: 71). However, Philip’s depiction of Jack Jimmy is important because it reveals his elitist position. Philip restricts his celebration of the “African race” to the brown elite, lauding his hero’s African ancestry while stereotyping the only major black, working-class character.

The pirates’ marginalization of Jack Jimmy during the days of pleasure recalls the treatment of slaves during Trinidad carnival. Like the slaves, on such days Jack Jimmy entertains others rather than participating in the festivities as an equal. On the first day of pleasure, Jack Jimmy initially sits by himself and observes the festivities at a distance “lest he should be in the way of the men” (29). When the pirates finally spot him they “burst out into […] immoderate fit[s] of laughter” at Jack Jimmy’s physical appearance because they are “struck with the peculiar comicality of the exhibition” (29). Philip loads his descriptions of Jack Jimmy’s physiognomy with racist stereotypes. We are told his “long bony jaws projected to an extraordinary length in front” and “his huge large eyes looked like balls inserted into two large holes, bored on an even surface” (30). The fact that Jack Jimmy has “no brow” and “there was no distinction between his face and forehead” indicates his lack of intelligence. His diminutive, simianized stature — “[h]e was a little man of about four feet and a half, thickly set, and strong” — suggests he has not fully evolved (30). Further emphasizing this point, Philip explicitly compares Jack Jimmy to apes. On the first day of pleasure, “it [is] difficult to distinguish him from the ideal of a rolled up orangutan” (29) and, on a later occasion, “the movements of the little negro were as brisk and as rapid as those of a monkey” (50). The pirates also mock the visual signs of Jack Jimmy’s poverty and uncleanliness, laughing over his “dirty, ragged, checked shirt” and discoloured trousers, which are covered in “many incrustations of dirt” (30). As Faith Smith aptly remarks, Philip’s physiognomic descriptions of Jack Jimmy are as bad as any found in English travel narratives and pro-slavery tracts (1999: 171).

After laughing at Jack Jimmy’s physical appearance, the pirates “torment the little prisoner” (29). Several pirates “ta[p] him on the head jocosely, and as[k] him to sing” (29). Another sailor forces Jack Jimmy to “dance” as he dodges his sword: the sailor “took a sword, and made so dexterously at the short legs of the little man, that, to protect those members, he began to jump about like a dancing puppet — to the instant gratification of the sailors, who roared with laughter” (30–31). Here, Philip’s depiction of Jack Jimmy, forced to sing and dance by the crew, recalls slaves such as Ofuba the chanteuelle, Gros Jean, and Jack Bowell brought in to entertain upper-class guests during pre-emancipation carnival. Jack Jimmy, “jump[ing] about like a dancing puppet” brings to mind Bowell’s “marionette dance” in particular.

Philip does not criticize the pirates for making Jack Jimmy look ridiculous or for causing him physical pain during the days of pleasure; indeed, the novel minimizes the importance of the pirates’ abuse by suggesting that Jack Jimmy would fare the same (or even worse) if left to his own devices. From the opening scene of the novel, Jack Jimmy’s captors are recast as his saviours. In what is shown to be a misguided attempt to escape the supposed Red Indians, Jack Jimmy leaps into the water and “in the extremity of his fear, with his mouth wide open, and his white eye-balls glaring” (15) attempts to swim out to sea, but “fatigue[s] himself at such a rate” (16) that he must be “rescued” before he drowns. According to the logic of the novel, if the pirates force Jack Jimmy to sing and dance, he would have looked absurd anyway; if they “blanket him”, “roll him violently about”, and burn him with a lit cigar, these acts of violence are nothing compared to the damage Jack Jimmy might accidently inflict upon himself (31).

Thus, Philip problematically uses carnival to advance the interests of the brown elite at the expense of the black working class. He casts Appadocca as a brown leader who has successfully harnessed the power of carnival in order to control and subdue the pirates, while he characterizes Jack Jimmy as a mere “dancing puppet” and ignorant follower. Philip suggests Appadocca and Lorenzo mastermind or execute all of the novel’s carnivalistic events, including the Black Schooner’s subversive masquerades. In doing so, he elides the role of the black working class in developing the institution of carnival and using masque bands to mock, resist, and reject British superiority.

Conclusion: The end of carnival

When the Black Schooner crashes and sinks during the tempest, the temporary time and space of carnival ends. Philip preserves Appadocca’s status as a brown hero by allowing him to revenge himself upon Willmington and survive the storm. However, having fulfilled his life’s purpose, Appadocca is unwilling to return to his former life and commits suicide by jumping into the ocean. Unlike their captain, most of the surviving crew members quickly shed their carnival identity and return to their everyday lives. Most dramatically, Lorenzo announces “[I am a] pirate officer no longer” (246), reveals that “Lorenzo” is an assumed name, and reasserts his “true” identity as the French Royalist, St James Carmonte, “the lineal descendant of the Carmontes, who fell fighting for the Prince” (247). Lorenzo swiftly embraces Christianity, marriage, and the plantocracy. Presumably, he eventually inherits his father-in-law’s plantation and participates in the very system the pirates fought against. How can we reconcile this conservative ending with the radical critiques that came before it?

Writing 100 years before the Anglo-Caribbean literary renaissance, Philip anticipates twentieth-century Trinidadian texts that position carnival as an opportunity for resistance and rebellion. Philip looks to the images, practices, and spirit of Trinidad carnival — already a site of contestation between the colonial government and Afro-Trinidadians in the 1840s and 50s — to reject England’s superiority and predict Trinidad’s eventual ascension to power. However, Philip embraces the institution of carnival not only for the purpose of critique but also as a means of control. In his problematically elitist image of the future, he imagines that educated brown men like Appadocca and not black, working-class men like Jack Jimmy, will lead the nation. Yet, despite its flaws, Emmanuel Appadocca offers an early and radical critique of English colonialism in the Caribbean. When Appadocca informs his love that he plans to die in pursuit of justice, she objects that “the world will not know, will not attend to what you do” (228). In publishing Emmanuel Appadocca, Philip draws attention to the “blighted life” of his hero and, perhaps, the lost opportunities of many young Trinidadians whose talents went unrecognized under a Crown Colony government.