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Panchoo Campbell The last living former slave

by

#meta[ag-author]
20140803

An­ge­lo Bisses­sars­ingh

William "Pan­choo" Camp­bell was pos­si­bly the last per­son in T&T who had been a kid­nap vic­tim of the slave trade.Eman­ci­pa­tion in 1834 af­fect­ed To­ba­go dif­fer­ent­ly from Trinidad since un­like the lat­ter, To­ba­go had no ex­ten­sive crown lands for ex-slaves to set­tle and thus those who did not em­i­grate were com­pelled to con­tin­ue work­ing for the planters.In or­der to keep sug­ar es­tates go­ing, the metayage sys­tem, which was a form of share­crop­ping, de­vel­oped. The metay­er (share­crop­per) oc­cu­pied a piece of land on which he/she plant­ed canes. At har­vest time, the es­tate own­er sup­plied the mill where cane was processed in­to wet mus­co­v­a­do sug­ar, of which the metay­er re­ceived a per­cent­age for the labour.

Over a decade lat­er, falling sug­ar prices and the fail­ure of es­tates in the West In­dies for want of labour saw the bank­rupt­cy of the West In­dia Bank.The lack of cred­it for ma­chin­ery up­grades and labour­er wages meant that the planters were more de­pen­dent on the metay­ers than ever. Planters still need­ed bond­ed paid labour and could not en­tire­ly re­ly on the test­ed share­crop­pers. In­den­tured work­ers from In­dia and Chi­na were con­sid­ered, but the cost of im­por­ta­tion was too heavy for the dec­i­mat­ed colo­nial purse. A de­vi­ous stop­gap mea­sure was found in "lib­er­at­ed Africans."

Al­though eman­ci­pa­tion had come to the British colonies in 1834, the Por­tuguese on­ly fol­lowed suit in 1888. Even in the Unit­ed States, a bloody civ­il war had to en­sue be­fore free­dom came in 1865. This meant that many Eu­ro­pean slavers still plied the At­lantic. British men-of-war ships preyed on these and "lib­er­at­ed" the cap­tives, tak­ing them to To­ba­go, St Kitts, An­tigua and St Vin­cent.Ac­cord­ing to the act passed to sup­port this mea­sure: "All per­sons dealt with or de­tained as slaves, who hereto­fore have been, or here­after may be seized or tak­en, un­der any of the acts for the abo­li­tion or sup­pres­sion of the slave trade, by her Majesty's ships of war or oth­er­wise, and lib­er­at­ed or de­liv­ered to the of­fi­cers ap­point­ed to pro­tect, re­ceive, or pro­vide for such per­sons, and all oth­er per­sons who, as hav­ing been dealt with, car­ried, kept, or de­tained as slaves, may have been tak­en and lib­er­at­ed, or re­ceived, pro­tect­ed, or pro­vid­ed for un­der any of the said acts."

In 1851 the first group of lib­er­at­ed Africans ar­rived on the is­land. Chil­dren were housed with na­tive eman­ci­pat­ed ex-slaves and were ex­pect­ed to ac­quire the rudi­ments of Eng­lish speech.

A sys­tem of in­den­ture­ship was im­ple­ment­ed and de­scribed thus in 1862 by Hen­ry Wood­cock, who was the Chief Jus­tice of To­ba­go: "The im­mi­grants are to be lodged by the em­ploy­er in com­fort­able hous­es, and to be pro­vid­ed with med­ical at­ten­dance in sick­ness; and a week­ly al­lowance of food, as pre­scribed in sched­ule G of the act. The em­ploy­er is al­so to fur­nish the im­mi­grant, in each year, with the ar­ti­cles of cloth­ing enu­mer­at­ed in the same sched­ule. The first year's cloth­ing is to be fur­nished the im­mi­grant on his en­ter­ing in­to the con­tract."

The num­ber of lib­er­at­ed Africans was small enough, to be sure, be­ing less than 300 all told. Many went to Wind­ward es­tates. Though they in­te­grat­ed in­to the colo­nial so­ci­ety, the Africans were a peo­ple some­what apart, re­tain­ing much of their lan­guage and cul­ture which, when com­bined with a large­ly ho­moge­nous pre-eman­ci­pa­tion eth­nic­i­ty, is prob­a­bly why so much West African her­itage has sur­vived in To­ba­go.In 1861 an­oth­er batch of im­mi­grants ar­rived and took their place in a unique chap­ter of To­ba­go his­to­ry.Many old To­bag­o­ni­ans (now dead) re­mem­bered the very old Africans who were alive up to the 20th cen­tu­ry. Per­haps the most re­mark­able was William "Pan­choo" Camp­bell, who died in 1938 at an al­leged 115 years of age.

Bear­ing the scars of the ter­ri­ble brand­ing iron put to his skin, Pan­choo was ab­duct­ed from his na­tive Con­go by Brazil­ian slavers around 1849-50 and was orig­i­nal­ly res­cued by a British war­ship and tak­en to the is­land of St He­le­na in the At­lantic Ocean.He was one of the ar­rivals among the lib­er­at­ed Africans who came to To­ba­go in 1851. Orig­i­nal­ly an in­den­tured labour­er, Pan­choo be­came a small farmer af­ter his con­tract ex­pired and even­tu­al­ly ac­cu­mu­lat­ed sig­nif­i­cant wealth for a man whose orig­i­nal des­tiny in­tend­ed him for bondage. He was the own­er of a house and cul­ti­vat­ed lands in Spey­side amount­ing to sev­er­al acres, had mar­ried sev­er­al times and had nu­mer­ous off­spring.This grand old man, at his pass­ing, rep­re­sent­ed the last of the fas­ci­nat­ing peo­ple who had orig­i­nal­ly been cap­tured slaves, but end­ed up be­ing freed men in a strange land. Though he was not tech­ni­cal­ly en­slaved in To­ba­go, Camp­bell was the last doc­u­ment­ed sur­vivor of the bru­tal hu­man traf­fick­ing that took place in the plan­toc­ra­cies of the West.


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Created by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

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