Slave Trade Remembered

The 23rd of August is the International Day of the Rememberance of the Slave Trade and its Abolition (promoted by UNESCO). I have already written on the issue and the significance played by Ghana and Bristol in the transatlantic slave trade. I also recently posted pictures taken at Elmina Castle where slaves were kept before they were taken away from Africa for what others had decided for them to be their last travel.

I learnt new information on the subject in the Daily Graphic today, such as the Wilberforce Institute for the Study of Slavery and Emancipation (WISE) at the University of Hull in England said to be Britain’s first institute for the study of historic and contemporary slavery and emancipation. The institute was named after homeboy William Wilberforce (he must have deserved the last component in his name) who was very instrumental in the legal ending of the British slave trade 200 years ago.

The write-up reminded me of a novel with the title ‘Le Hussard de la Liberté’. This fiction relates to real facts, namely slavery in the Caribbean and the uprising on the island of Santo Domingo (today Haiti and the Dominican Republic) during the night of August 22 to 23, 1791, which “shook the slave system radically and irreversibly and provided the impetus for the process which would eventually lead to the abolition of the Transatlantic Slave Trade”.

The character, Toussaint L’Ouverture (his name, which can be translated by ‘opening’ fits him also very well), was one of the leaders of the Haitian revolution and helped lead the slave uprising. This rebellion can be linked to the French Revolution of 1789 proclaiming the Rights of Man (Les Droits de l’Homme) to include all free men (at that time, it is rather certain that women were not included). However, when Napoleon Bonaparte came to power in France (11 November 1799), he began to work with colonists to return France's Caribbean territories to their earlier profitability as plantation colonies.

For more on Toussaint, Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia is a good starting point: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toussaint_L

The definition of slavery by the Director of WISE, “slavery now as in the past, denies people their identity”, brings me back to a research yesterday on child labour and this UNICEF publication: ‘The State of the World’s Children 2006: excluded and invisible’
(http://www.unicef.org/publications/index_30398.html). The report identifies four categories of forgotten children, one of them being ‘children without a formal identity’. ‘Without a registered identity, children are not guaranteed an education, good healthcare, and other basic services that impact their childhood and future’(http://www.eldis.org/). It can be said that they become easy preys to exploitation. Deprived of identity and status, they would not benefit of rights and access to protection.