Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

The Empire of Women: Transient Entrepreneurs in the Southern Caribbean, 1790–1820

2010; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 38; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/03086534.2010.503393

1743-9329

Kit Candlin,

Cuban History and Society

Abstract This article uses the details of those who fled to Trinidad from the violence of the Venezuelan war of independence in 1814, 1815 and 1816 as a prism through which to view female agency in the southern Caribbean during first two decades of the nineteenth century. In particular it focuses on free coloured women as being able to exploit the poorly controlled edges of empire for their own advantage. Characterised by a self-reliant independence these women were at once highly mobile, independent and influential. These women have been marginalised in the histories of the region and yet this research suggests that they had a far more prevalent and powerful role in shaping its character and history than has been recognised to date. Notes The historiography of the South American Independence struggles is extensive, in particular: Waddell, Gran Bretagne y La Independencia; Brown, Informal Empire and Latin America; 'Adventurers, Foreign Women and Masculinity'; Lynch, Spanish American Revolutions 1808-1826. This understanding is not really applicable to either the eighteenth century or the period from about 1790 to about 1820. Recently however there have been a number of works which do emphasise the years 1790–1820 and upon which this study hopes to build; they are chiefly: Bayly, Birth of the Modern World, see Ch. 3, 86–120; Jasonoff, Edge of Empire; Laidlaw Colonial Connections 1815–1845. Despite remaining constrained by their emphasis on middle-class elites, Laidlaw and Jasonoff nevertheless do emphasise a chaotic process of nineteenth-century imperial formation. This builds on the work by Ballantyne and Burton (eds), Moving Subjects, which in part builds upon Stoler, Haunted by Empire. In particular this article strengthens the idea of the trans-local as a particularly underplayed element in imperial formation and the idea of empire being made up of kinetic, non-static geographies. Handler, 'Joseph Rachell and Racheal Pringle-Polgreen', 377–78. Two important exceptions have been Matos-Rodriguez, 'Street Vendors, Pedlars, Shop Owners and Domestics' and Kerr, 'Victims or Strategists?', both in Shepherd, Brereton and Bailey (eds), Engendering History. In 2004, Gaspar and Darlene Hine also edited a book, Beyond Bondage, but, as with Engendering History, each chapter referred to aspects of free women's lives within a particular colony. There remains a paucity of research into the importance of transience, self-reliance and entrepreneurialism among free coloured women across frontier colonial societies. There has been significant work produced on gender and slavery in recent years, most notably: Bush, '"Sable Venus", "She Devil" or "Drudge"?'; Slave Women in Caribbean Society 1650–1838; Newton, 'New Ideas of Correctness'; see also Beckles, 'Centering Women'; '"Taking Liberties"'. Over a quarter of Venezuelans would die in the conflict outright—some 250,000 people. See Lynch, Spanish American Revolutions. The island of Margarita was even being used as a base for military operations by elements of the nationalists and, indeed rather famously, Bolivar and his family lived for some time on Curacao. Curacao was also to see its share of refugees from the same conflict in 1821 when approximately 2000 refugees 'mainly women and children' arrived there also: see Hartog, Curacao. National Archives (of the UK) Colonical Office (hereafter NACO), 295/33/374, Woodford to Bathurst, 23 November 1814. National Archives of Trinidad and Tobago (hereafter NATT), Book of Spanish Protocols, Index 1787–1813 (Port of Spain, 1813). Handler, 'Joseph Rachell and Racheal Pringle-Polgreen', 383–84. There are a number of sources for Rosetta Smith, the main ones being: Candlin, 'Aspera et Horrenda Virgo of Government House: Rosetta Smith' in 'Making Empires Work', 170–213; P. F. McCallum, Travels in Trinidad during the Months of February, March, April 1803; Campbell, Cedulants and Capitulants; Fullerton, Refutation of the Pamphlet. A revealing account of her life is also found in NACO, 295/4/159, Petition of Mrs Rebecca Griffith and Grace Lilburn March 1803. Finally, and most importantly, there are her entries in NATT, Book of Spanish Protocols Index 1787–1813 (Port of Spain, 1813), in particular NATT, 1161/198, 256 and 502. Evidence from the register of the Parish of St George, Grenada, Church of the Latter Day Saints, Utah, and personal communication from Cassandra Pybus, May–June 2009. 'Every servant I had was a slave, but not mine, as I hired them from their proprietors, chiefly from the well known Doll Thomas, a negress, who had formally been a slave on Montserrat, but having a liaison with her master, she bore him two daughters (as fine girls as ever lived), and she was not only emancipated, but well provided for and her wealth increasing, she was at this time the richest person in the colony.' Barker, The Victory, 191. These findings complement and offer a supporting perspective to that of Foucault's rendering of state and empire in Discipline and Punish. The development of 'technologies of security' over discipline is made more profound here by the confusion of social markers that were to become so prevalent later, a division recently elucidated for the peripheral colonial context by Stoler, 'Bourgeois Bodies and Racial Selves', 88–90. See, in particular, Ward, 'The British West Indies: 1748–1815', 429–34. NACO, 385/1, 'Particulars of Those Allowed to Stay on Trinidad 1814–1822'. Some were listed as 'old woman' and a couple listed as 'a very old woman', which might indicate an age well in advance of 60. See, for example, Matos-Rodriguez, 'Street Vendors, Pedlars, Shop Owners and Domestics' and also Kerr, 'Victims or Strategists?'. Hall, Civilising Subjects, 135. Wells, Population of the British Colonies in America before 1776. National Archives (of the UK) Probate, 11/2077, 'The Will of Dolly Thomas', 1847. NACO, 385/1/48, Rousseau—Trinidad. NACO, 385/1/48, Rousseau—Trinidad. NACO, 385/1/49, Buipon—Trinidad. One of the most consistent features of these records was the entries made regarding former places of residence. For a detailed description of this transience with particular reference to the southern Caribbean, see Scott, 'The Common Wind', 185–91. Matoz-Rodriguez, Street Vendors, Pedlars, Shop Owners and Domestics, 176–90. For more information regarding the transience of employment opportunities and communication among underclass individuals, see Scott, 'The Common Wind', esp. Ch. 1 and 2, 6–59. NACO, 385/1. The reference comes with no date; however, judging by the preceding and following dates it is between January and 5 February 1815. Grenada had been originally populated by the French and, despite a brief French occupation (1779–1803), had been in British hands since the peace settlement in 1763. Despite this, the majority of the free population, even by 1789, was of French extraction. This argument is also made by Boa 'Freed Women's Economic Contribution to Jamaica 1760–1834'. The plurality of 'revolutions' clearly implying that she may have been witness to a few. NACO, 385/1/56, Crenzy—Trinidad. This article concurs with many of the conclusions drawn by Games in Origins of the English Atlantic World, 43, where she refers to, among other ideas, the prevalence of repeat migratory journeys made by migrants after they arrived in the Americas, an idea which this evidence supports conclusively. For example, see NACO, 385/1/36, Girod—Trinidad, 'Came from Fright, in a Great Hurry'; NACO, 385/1/13, Coulon—Trinidad, 'Came Here to Save Their Lives'; variations on these theme abound. These testimonies were not lost on British officials. NACO, 295/33/384, Clegg to Woodford, Dec. 1814, 'flying from the bayonets and daggers of an enraged and bloodthirsty enemy'. Trinidad had a large population of French and Spaniards (as well as Maltese, Germans, Italians, Dutch and even some shipwrecked Portuguese). There is evidence that at least some of the entries were written by a native French speaker—'de la' often being written instead of 'of the' and other small additions. French was widely spoken by low-level officials given that the Francophone peoples were by far and away the largest ethnic group (including free Africans) on the island after slaves. It would be extremely unlikely that no one would have spoken French on the quayside. It was therefore Estier who introduced the group not because she was the only one conversant in the language but that she was the leading spokesperson. NACO, 385/1/4, Estier—Trinidad. NACO, 295/33/374, Woodford to Bathurst, 23 Nov. 1814. The NACO series 295/33 is littered with divisive letters between the two men, increasing in tension as they progress. NACO, 295/33/384, Clegg to Woodford, Dec. 1814. NACO, 295/33/379, Woodford to Bathurst, Dec. 1814. NACO, 295/33/379. Jack Greene most notably has written extensively on this idea of peripheral power, see Greene, Peripheries and Center. Montlezum, Souvenirs des Antilles, 251. Wilson, 'Empire, Gender and Modernity', 33–35. Examples of this wealthy female agency abound; see the description and analysis of Elizabeth Fenwick of Bridgetown in Beckles, 'Centering Women', 168–69. See also Mary Prince's description of her mistress's agency in The History of Mary Prince and Carmichael, Five Years in Trinidad and St Vincent, for the autobiography of one such planter's wife and of her relationship with both her European and creole servants and her slaves. Handler, 'Joseph Rachell and Racheal Pringle-Polgreen', 385–86. Two of the smaller islands, between the mainland and Trinidad. NACO, 385/1/32, Penelever—Trinidad, 22 Nov. 1814. NACO, 385/1/41, Thomas—Trinidad, Jan. 1815. Building upon work on colonial missionary societies by Beidelman, Hall and Comaroff, in particular, Ann Stoler has neatly identified the racial and class confusions inherent in the West Indies and in colonial societies more generally at this time. My study confirms this view by finding evidence for the early nineteenth century that clearly identifies the period before more pronounced racial segregation and social codification. See Stoler 'Bourgeois Bodies and Racial Selves', 90–94; see also John Comaroff, 'Images of Empire', 661–85; Beidelman, Colonial Evangelism. NACO, 295/33/374, Woodford to Bathurst, Dec. 1814. There is, for example, no evidence that points to racial segregation among the arrivals. Nor is there any evidence that arrivals were divided into groups according to race upon landing. There is also considerable evidence that points to mixed seating positions being maintained on the boats. People were alighting onto the quayside in a myriad of ways. The register is maintained in the same fashion with no separate sections for different classes of immigrant. While it may be argued that these were extreme times, as is argued in this article, there was a commonality to this type of extreme event. This makes the small details of quayside precedence important. The automatic response of officials on Trinidad was to get them registered and ashore not to differentiate racially between them. NACO, 295/33/374, Woodford to Bathurst, Dec. 1814. Despite the detail in subsequent social studies, the Anderson idea (developed from Kiernan among others) of a 'bourgeois aristocracy' remains; see Kiernan, Lords of Human Kind, 37; and Anderson, Imagined Communities. This interpretation continues to undermine the myth of an 'aristocratic democracy' among European whites within colonial space by providing evidence of racial confusion. For a detailed analysis of this myth, see Ridley, Images of Imperial Rule, 124–45. See in particular, Millette, Genesis of Crown Colony Government. National Archives (of the UK) War Office, 1/86/83, Abercromby to Dundas, 20 Mar. 1797. There are numerous accounts in the records of the island's character, in particular: McCallum, Travels in Trinidad during the Months of February, March and April, 1803. See also B.L Add. Mss 36499 anon to the Duke of Cumberland dated 23 May 1802 for a detailed and lively description of Trinidad and the southern Caribbean in 1801. See also Lavaysse, Statistical, Commercial and Political Description of Venezuela, Trinidad, Margarita and Tobago. Save, of course, for St Domingue/Haiti. McCallum, Travels in Trinidad, letter 9, 133; see also Fullerton, Refutation of the Pamphlet; Joseph, History of Trinidad, Ch. 12. Several private letters exist in the archive detailing these efforts, in particular the long letter signed by Trinidad's principal physician and associate to Lord Bathurst in 1823. NACO, 318/76/243–59, Baptiste and Cognet to Bathurst, 19 Nov. 1823. For example, in a private letter to his patron, Woodford complains of the capriciousness of African pilots. 'Our communication with the opposite shore which depending on the negroes is always likely to be cut off'; see, Gloucestershire County Archives, 421/X13/21, Woodford to Charles Bathurst (private), July 1814. However, with emancipation, and as the century wore on, racial prejudice becomes an increasing feature on British islands in the southern Caribbean. For other examples of working from terse sources and the problems associated with their interpretation, see Davies, Return of Martin Guerre and, more recently, Carretta, Equiano the African, and Colley, Ordeal of Elizabeth Marsh.