How Emancipation birthed a nation

Aug 07, 2016 APNU Column, Features / Columnists

(Excerpt of an Address by His Excellency Brigadier David Granger, President of the Cooperative Republic of Guyana at Den Amstel on July 31, 2016 on the occaision of the 178 anniversary of Emancipation)

This year we celebrate not only our 50th anniversary of Independence but our 178th anniversary of emancipation. August 1 is our new year’s day. August 1 was the day of deliverance; deliverance from bondage, 200 years of enslavement from the time the Dutch came here, from the 1600s to the time Africans were freed.

His Excellency Brigadier
David Granger

We celebrate the day of departure, the day when we started to move away from the degradation and the domination of servitude under plantations. We celebrate a day of determination, the determination of our forefathers to build a better life for our families and future generations. One hundred and seventy-eight years ago, on the 1st of August, 1838, we made a covenant, we made a promise, it was a promise of freedom, and freedom meant everything to our forefathers.
In Guyanese history I see five great movements and the first great movement was the emancipation movement; the movement to be free. It was not a gift of humans. It was something that our forefathers struggled for and it was a gift of God. There were great revolts; 1763 led by Kofi; in 1823, and in a few days’ time we will be celebrating the great East Coast Revolt and don’t ever forget, it was on the 20th of August, 1823 as the enslaved Africans were coming down the East Coast they were stopped at Bachelors Adventure and 200 of them were slaughtered in one morning; the greatest massacre in the history of our country and then again there was the revolt in Essequibo led by Damon in 1834.
Emancipation didn’t come easy. It is something that people fought and died for, and in our country you commemorate those struggles and the deaths and the executions in 1763, there’s a monument, in 1823 there’s a monument, and in 1834 there’s a monument.
It is the emancipation movement which brought us to the 1st of August, 1838. Some people like to speak about 1834; nothing happened in 1834 except a man called Damon raised a flag at La Belle Alliance and was executed for his trouble.
So, we didn’t get freedom from 1834 so don’t fool yourself, we got freedom in 1838, and that’s what we celebrate tomorrow, but that emancipation movement led to other movements, it led to the village movement, and last year I passed an order so that the 7th of November, every year could be commemorated as National Day of Villages.
It’s not a holiday, but stamps have been issued and it is observed as the day, which our first village, Victoria was purchased. That village movement led to a $100 plantation being bought and made into human habitations, and of course Den Amstel and Fellowship and Bagotville and other villages were part of that great movement.
Within 10 years of emancipation, over 40,000 Africans had moved off of the plantations and were living in freed villages, and there were other movements. The labour movement; we remember Hubert Critchlow. The political movement; we remember Forbes Burnham and other political leaders. We remember the cultural movement, which gave us these beautiful songs that this present generation is embellishing even further, songs written by people like, R.C.G Potter and Valerie Rodway.
So, emancipation was important because it started and triggered all of those movements but most importantly, I see emancipation not as an African festival, although Africans are justly proud to celebrate that day when their forefathers and mothers were freed, but it is also the day when the other ethnic groups found it necessary to come into Guyana, and don’t forget brothers and sisters, that only on the 5th of May this year, the Indians celebrated the 178th anniversary of their arrival.
Isn’t it a coincidence that Africans celebrated their hundred and seventy-eighth anniversary of emancipation and the Indians celebrated a hundred and seventy-eight anniversary of their arrival? They came because of emancipation; because it was felt than the Africans would leave the plantation.
The Portuguese themselves came on the 3rd of May, 1834, after the Emancipation Act was passed and when you go down by Windsor Forest you’ll see a monument. Windsor Forest is the village where our first president was born; Arthur Chung. But there’s a monument because in 1853 January, the Chinese arrived at Windsor Forest, the first place they went to.
So the coming of the Portuguese, the coming of the Indians, the coming of the Chinese all had to do with African emancipation. That is why I should say this; there is one day that all Guyanese should celebrate, Indians, Africans, Chinese and Portuguese and Amerindians because it gave birth not only to their immigration into this country, but also to the liberation, and all of them knew that there would never be any slavery again after the bonds of slavery were broken on the 1st of August, 1838. What a great day it was for all of us.
I’ve often said, and I repeat that these villages which were established on the coastland were the single most important economic, social and political development in the history of our country. Before the village movement, before the Victorias and Buxtons and the Bagotsvilles and the Den Amstels and the Queenstowns and the Danielstowns, there was nothing but plantations. People lived in hovels, not logies, hovels, disgraceful hovels. If they had some poultry, the poultry was in there with them.
They slept on the ground, they were treated like two-legged domestic animals, they had no rights, they couldn’t marry, they couldn’t give evidence, they could be tortured and killed and we must remember emancipation put an end to all that, but some people never emancipated themselves intellectually, or as our brothers told us, philosophically or ideologically.

1 thoughts on “How Emancipation birthed a nation”

19CAGriffith48 August 7, 2016 at 10:29 pm

“This year we celebrate not only our 50th anniversary of Independence but our 178th anniversary of emancipation. August 1 is our new year’s day. August 1 was the day of deliverance; deliverance from bondage, 200 years of enslavement from the time the Dutch came here, from the 1600s to the time Africans were freed.”

No man/woman/child is FREED until all men/women/ child are FREE .

De Oppresso Liber !