Abstract
Colonial governments in the Caribbean tried to destroy damning historical sources. Historians today still struggle to recapture the details of the past, writes
It was a Machiavellian scheme of epic proportions. The British Colonial Office implemented a programme called Operation Legacy, which ran from the 1950s until the 1970s. As countries became independent, its goal was to destroy systematically any colonial records that might be considered an embarrassment to the British government.
Instructions were given for incriminating documents to be burnt to ashes or put in weighted containers, which were to be dropped far from the Caribbean shoreline. Those that were not destroyed were “migrated” to Britain, where they not only remained inaccessible, but their very existence was denied. Only in 2011 did the government admit that the Foreign and Commonwealth Office was holding 8,800 files from 37 former colonies.
Although the term Operation Legacy was only coined in 1962, colonial records were being destroyed before. Take the case of British Guiana. Among the several thousand files that were secretly held by the FCO, none could be found that dealt with the colony. This was despite the fact that the British played an instrumental role in overthrowing the democratically elected People’s Progressive Party in 1953, had a strong security presence throughout the 1950s and there was a covert but aggressive series of bombings executed in collaboration with the USA during the early 1960s, notes the historian Richard Drayton.
In the context of the Cold War, any colony with political parties that espoused leftist ideologies was not only a concern, but a reason to act to prevent them. Operation Legacy was put in place to remove the evidence of any such action.
During the 1960s, instructions to remove official documents were also given in Trinidad, Jamaica, as well as the Leeward and Windward Islands. In at least one memorandum produced by the Commonwealth Office, it was stated in no uncertain terms that “it has always been British policy to withdraw or destroy certain sensitive records prior to independence,” according to journalist and author of the book The History Thieves, Ian Cobain.
CREDIT: Trina Dalziel/Ikon
Education curriculums have been another arena used by various colonial governments to control historical narratives.
Cynthia McLeod, a well-known Surinamese novelist who specialises in historical fiction, told the History Watch Project that under colonialism, “we hardly learnt anything in school. Suriname was not important enough. We only learnt that Suriname was a backward country [and] that nothing of Suriname had any value. The less you spoke about Suriname the better … Of course, there was Surinamese history but seen from the Dutch perspective. We never learnt anything from the Surinamese perspective. Never.”
The situation was the same for the British, French, Spanish and Danish Caribbean, which saw the imposition of history curriculums developed in Europe. In fact, in Guadeloupe, Martinique and French Guiana – former colonies of France which never gained political independence and now have French departmental status – the decisions about the history curriculum, in both primary and secondary school, continue to be made by the Ministry of National Education in France.
When some colonies became independent nations during the 1960s and 1970s, new history curriculums were devised to serve a new purpose, one that was in opposition to that which existed under colonialism. Young Caribbean nationals were taught history that celebrated Caribbean people who challenged colonial rule, fought against racism and contributed to the making of their nation. In 1979 the very first secondary school examination in Caribbean history was offered by the Caribbean Examination Council throughout the English-speaking Caribbean. The education system was being transformed from one that imposed colonial state memories into one that imposed national state memories.
The battle for the historical consciousness of Caribbean people has taken place in public spaces too. Increasingly, under national governments, there have been efforts to establish sites of commemoration that are in line with state-sanctioned national histories. Jamaica has dedicated monuments to individuals from the 18th and 19th centuries who fought against the system of enslavement, such as Sam Sharpe and Nanny of the Maroons, as well as anti-colonialists. In Guadeloupe, despite its status as a department of France, there are still streets called Rue du Nègre-Sans-Peur (road of the black without fear) and Place des esclaves (square of the slaves).
In 2017 there were calls to rename Milner Hall at the University of the West Indies in Trinidad. It was named after Lord Alfred Milner, who played an instrumental role in setting the stage for South African apartheid. This February it was renamed Freedom Hall.
In Fort-de-France, the capital of Martinique, a marble statue of Joséphine de Beauharnais (the first wife of Napoleon Bonaparte) still stands in La Savane Park, but it has no head. It was removed by unknown individuals in 1991, and the statue is vandalised to this day with red paint to symbolise the blood at her beheading.
“For over four and a half centuries the West Indies have been the pawns of Europe and America,” wrote Eric Williams. As both a historian and a Caribbean politician, he had no doubts that how Caribbean people understood their past would influence how they engaged with their present and how they imagined their future. He wrote the first national history of Trinidad and Tobago in 1962 “to provide the people … on their Independence Day with a National History” which would act as an “essential guide to their future action” and place “their problems at all times in international perspective”. There was an urgency, he believed, to replace colonial histories with national ones.
Locating sources that provide the perspective of the Caribbean lower classes continues to be a challenge for Caribbean historians, but they do exist. There may be few written records that give them voice, but historians have learnt much from archaeological studies, as well as folklorists and anthropologists who collected or documented “cultural texts” such as stories, songs and rituals.
Nor have politicians or professional historians had a monopoly on historical narratives.
In much of the Caribbean, music has been a cultural space in which alternative histories are told. In Haiti, for example, there is a strong tradition of using popular songs performed in Creole that speak to both history and politics. Historical fiction has also played an important role in subverting conventional historical narratives. For her historical novel on Elisabeth Sampson, the wealthiest black woman in 18th century Suriname, Cynthia McLeod told the History Watch Project that she did extensive research in numerous archives.
“Her name features in all the history volumes,” she said. The assumption was always that she became the mistress of a white man and inherited her wealth. There was a need “to correct that”. All the evidence shows that by using her entrepreneurial talent it was she who “made white families rich”.
In the war over the historical imagination of the Caribbean, McLeod has struck a damaging blow. The battle for the Caribbean past continues to be a battle for the Caribbean future.