Homegoing

Yaa Gyasi has written a book partly based on her own background as an immigrant from Ghana.  She must have speculated at the different ways Africans arrived in America and opted to show two parallel lines that reflected different aspects of both living a colonial existence and a slave experience.

One of the characters, a teacher in the Gold Coast in an elaborate anecdote expresses a perspective of history, I suspect shared by the author.  History is stories told by the powerful.  We, the listeners should wonder and investigate about the missing stories.

Naively taking history as a young boy and watching the odd movie one got the idea that slaves were pulled at random from their natural habitat and shipped to America, a trip many did not survive.  Yaa demonstrates that the British, Dutch and other Europeans had many local accomplices.  One line picks up from local accomplices which required capturing other tribes further from the coast, often losers in tribal fights.  One British officer marries a local woman through her parents.  For him it is a second marriage while away from his native England.   A mulatto son is sent to England and after coming back helps the slavery business.  The author carries on with a series of vignettes illustrating different aspects of the evolving history illustrating to me how precarious any ancestral line really is.

"The Book of Negroes" by Lawrence Hill has a chapter devoted to natives being captured inland and walked several days to the coast.  I can imagine that it made more sense to have a business relationship with coastal tribes.  Hill carries on with a story of one individual who endures history through to the American Revolution and the emigration of British Empire Loyalists to Nova Scotia.

The other line starts out from the same location and involves a captured women who ends up in America.  The generations progress through history from pre Civil War until contemporary times.  One part that struck me was where southerners had forced a law by 1850 that required northerners to return runaway slaves.  Freed Africans (many really escapees) felt some tension after assuming they were safe.  Future generations were depicted under Jim Crow, moving north encountering racial discrimination.

Known as Gold Coast by British colonizers we become aware of different tribes, Fante, Assante, Twi, etc.  Eventually it become  independent as Ghana  As students in a European system (mine happened to be in Canada, but with only minor differences in other European tradition countries) we see a map of Africa with over 50 countries and assume they are homogenous entities.  Our own tribal backgrounds have amalgamated and we forget the literally thousands of years of shaping what we have become.  As the world becomes more globalized, tribalizing ebbs and flows and the shaping continues.

Shades of color is a role in both parallel stories.  The British officer with his 2nd wife eventually is able to use his mulatto son in the slave trade.  Others are not so fortunate.  When we get to America it turns out mulatto slaves are slightly more privileged and as we move beyond the Civil War we learn some are white enough to try to pass.  One character does succeed, but when whites see him in contact with darker people, turn against him.  There is a fear of getting caught.  Another character wants to be a singer, but is told she is too dark to be accepted in a particular Harlem club, implying that lighter skinned entertainment is accepted.  I once read a science fiction book by Robert J. Sawyer, "Hominids"  where apparently the Neanderthals have integrated to be be one universal color, but find themselves amongst modern humans with distinct races.

George Will, a noted conservative commentator is noted for saying any group that doesn't take responsibility for births shouldn't expect to succeed in life.  Yaa doesn't shy away from this and has one of her characters participate, generating 3 children with different mothers.  Immaturity and racial prejudice play a role.  She points out drugs are part of the culture and can become a vicious circle with blacks being jailed disproportionately.

"Half the Story Has Never been Told" by Edward E Baptist gives some much needed scholarly account of the role of slavery and the rise of American capitalism.  Read more:  http://www.therealjohndavidson.com/2016/12/the-half-has-never-been-told.html

Nearing the end of the book a couple from Ghana with a young daughter emigrate to Hunstville, Alabama as the author's family did .  Fictional characters can be manipulated to cross paths for dramatic effect and the author carries forth this tradition which helps to close the circle.  Symbols from both sides, fire and water with deep meaning are confronted at the end.  In my sixty odd years I have been struck how we are all inter-related without being conscious of it.  I like poetic endings and hope the readers aren't put off with coincidences that are really part of life.  This is an enjoyable read, making one aware of how different aspects of our current world fell into place.

Color shades still play a role in society.  My interest in Bollywood led me to realize that attitudes towards skin colour are still ingrained.  http://www.therealjohndavidson.com/2013/08/bollywood-and-skin-colour.html

THE HALF HAS NEVER BEEN TOLD

Most of us whites think of slavery as history with no significant consequences today.  But slavery shaped America in ways most citizens are unconscious of with very definite impacts today.  Edward E Baptist has done a scholarly job of uncovering the real story.

Eight Presidents were slave owners helped by a Constitution that counted slaves as 3/5 of a person for the purpose of electing members to the House of Representatives which in turn gave slave states more leverage in the Electoral College. This is the same electoral college that has enabled Donald Trump to win the recent election, even though he trailed Hillary Clinton by well over 2 million votes.  Southerners forced the capital to move to newly created District of Columbia to be closer to them.

The Louisiana Purchase in 1803 is treated as a clever manoeuver by Thomas Jefferson, but it was more complicated.  In 1793 in the colony of St-Domingue the most successful of all slave revolts started.  Until 1799, under the leadership of Toussaint L'ouverture they fought off British infantry units. By 1800 Napoleon was in control of France and he wanted to restore monarchy.  He sent 50,000 soldiers to St-Dominque, better known as Haiti, but they too were defeated.  He had planned to send another army of 20,000 soldiers to take back New Orleans, but ended up diverting them to Haiti where they too were defeated.  To cut his losses he offered a bargain price for Louisiana.

Further to that, many French landowners, including sugar specialists migrated to New Orleans.  They brought some slaves with them, but wanted more.  Northerners had a delicate balance.  They did not want southern slave states to gain more political leverage, but some were invested in the slave trade.  The Mississippi Valley was now open to slavery.  Louisiana became a (slave) state in 1812.

The industrial Revolution really gained traction in northern England and the first significant product was cotton textiles. After the invention of a cotton gin in 1790 it unclogged a bottleneck in the process. They could sell as much as they could make and so they wanted more raw material.  America was expanding and had lots of land and cheap labour.  America by 1819 controlled the world's export market for cotton.

It is thought that machines are more efficient than manual labour, but in fact for quite a while human labour increased its efficiency faster than machines.  The secret was whips and violent calculated intimidation.  Just before the Civil War records were set for picking cotton and this became critical for economic growth.

Separation of families was seen as an economic decision.  Men were bought for particular needs, usually a wife not needed.  Women without children can work without their distraction.  Brothers and sisters were split as new buyers wanted one or the other, but not  both.  Men were called "boys" and whipped to humiliate them.  Men and women would form relationships and have them broken up and then form new relationships.  Thomas Jefferson once declared that separation from loved ones mattered little to the Africans.

Sex was a lure for many men buying female slaves.   Many women were bought for sex often being stripped at auctions.  Mulattos were one result.

Andrew Jackson, the hero of the Battle of New Orleans was also an Indian fighter and slave owner.  He pushed Indian tribes (about 50,000 individuals) off lands that allowed expansion of cotton and slave labour.  Texas belonged to Mexico, but American settlers moved in bringing slaves and after celebrated military actions were able to claim a large amount of land, in fact the third largest annexation in American history.  Slave owners saw this as a new opportunity.

Cuba, despite laws supposed to stop slave trade across the Atlantic imported 700,000.  Cuba became the biggest sugar producer in the world.  Southern slave owners were interested in Cuba as a source, but more to expand their leverage politically

Finance developed through the cotton trade.  English manufacturers needed material and farmers needed money to produce cotton.  Slaves were useful as collateral.  Bonds were sold to northern states and Europeans with in effect slaves being securitized.

The northern states developed manufacturing, stepping in with tariff protected cotton (England still did higher end textiles) and that led to supplying the south with such things as shovels, hoes, shoes, axes (using for clearing forests for farming).  They developed symbiotic relations with the southern slave owners and this led to sympathetic political arrangements.  Southerners were concerned about their property rights and demanded the right to have escaped slaves returned to their owners.

There was northern resentment of slavery and political forces to restrict its development.  Demographics changed over time with most European immigrants settling in the north and fearing competition from cheap labour.  The northern states could count the new immigrants as 5/5 of a person and gained control of Congress.  Southern slave owners were fearful of losing control and convinced the poorer whites that they needed to protect state rights, claiming if the north could impose equality of races, the whites would lose their status.  The author is quick to point out that the war was not for state rights, but to maintain slavery. It seems one political party still uses similar tactics to convince large numbers to vote against their economic self interest.

After the Civil War blacks gained some freedom, but it wasn't long before the whites reasserted their dominance.  Blacks had no accumulated wealth and soon had to contend with segregated schools and a range of Jim Crow laws.  In truth the situation was not much better in the north

A consolation and a form of communication for African slaves was music.  Their music was borrowed by whites and now is an integral part of American culture and spread around the globe.

There are many details that prove that slavery was critical to the development of American capitalism and created a culture of distrust, fear and continuing damage.  There is still much room for improvement.

The author, Edward E Baptist had a thought provoking response to a review of the book by the Economist magazine that puts the situation in a relevant context.  https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/sep/07/economist-review-my-book-slavery

As a Canadian it is easy to be self-righteous, but we shouldn't be.  As one example it turns out that George Tuckett  a former mayor of my home city, Hamilton made a fortune by cornering the tobacco market in Virginia during the American Civil War.  He had a warehouse in Lynchberg, Virginia and was allowed to go back and forth because he was a Canadian.  I learned that his home originally known as the Tuckett Mansion is in my opinion the most interesting building in town, now known as the Scottish Rite building.  Thanks to Robin McKee.