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July 2011
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A necessary evil?By Serah Acham
“My question is – why was slavery and all its horrors allowed to exist?” she said during our interview. “The world is full of so many people, how could everybody stand by and watch other human beings being enslaved and killed, being coerced and forced, and violently so, into a system?” he gigantic, rusty lock on the book’s cover sets the sombre tone of its contents. To me it screams LOCKDOWN. Thomas says that she specifically chose it because that’s “what slavery is. It’s lockdown, ancient, old. It’s a lock on a huge iron gate – that can say ‘oppression’ … I really like the cover,” she proclaims, adding that, “it doesn’t speak to only one race or culture because slavery is throughout space and time.” But, why was slavery allowed to happen? Many studies have been done on the same question. However, they’re economic studies, Thomas says, citing works by Eric Williams as an example. “Ok, fair enough,” she reasons, “it was economically successful, but why? Did everybody just think in dollars and cents?” Therein lies the impetus for her research. A UWI postgraduate student reading for her Master’s of Philosophy degree in History, she was met with the task of writing a thesis and she chose this topic. A couple pages into the book, I notice the inscription, In memory of Dr. Fitzroy Baptiste. “He supervised my thesis,” Thomas explains. Dr. Baptiste was a lecturer in History at The UWI who taught some of her undergraduate courses. “He taught history as it should be taught … he really had no prejudices … he would share knowledge with you.” She’ll always be grateful to him, she says, “for that respect for history he gave to his students … don’t be judgemental … let your research form your opinion … The research must lead you to your conclusion and I think that is like truth.” Eight years later this thesis, housed in the West Indiana section of the Main Library – the fate of all theses churned out by successful UWI graduates – was picked up by a representative of the Lambert Academic Publishing House, who contacted her to find out if she’d like to publish her work. “It’s a little bit different to how you get published,” she admits. “Normally you seek out a publishing house ... they found me which I thank God for.” After a year-long editing process, Thomas’ book was published this April. “I always thought that the work was meant to be shared.” The breadth and scope of the information is tremendous and if people knew about it, the world could be a better place, she asserts. “I believe that knowledge on the whole is meant to be shared … history is very powerful. If you have to create change in anyway, you have to know your past … the past successes and past failures.” Thomas continues that most historical works focus on the negative aspects of history, enforcing the rule that mistakes should not be repeated, “and it’s valuable like that, yes, but I also believe it’s valuable in that we can learn what worked and how to continue or improve it.” Applying these ideas to her research on why slavery was allowed to exist, she discovered that the institution didn’t stem from just one person, culture or country, but instead, that “it existed in all cultures, all major religions – all major civilisations had the concept of slavery and so my research ended up taking me into ancient times … and the institution of slavery was always there.” As time progressed, it developed into modern slavery and this is the focus of the book, “that development throughout time and across cultures.” The book begins with a definition of slavery and an exploration of its origins. It delves into the characteristics of slavery and even addresses the idea of “slavery as a necessary evil.” In the following chapters, the definition of slavery is explored more widely and applied to the Greek, Roman, Indian and African cultures. The book ends by “tying all of that into the British West Indian slavery. Because, remember what we’re really seeking are the intellectual roots that caused or allowed slavery in the British West Indies to exist.”
Her research isn’t complete, however. Thomas admits, “one thing that’s sadly lacking is the concept of slavery, as defined in the book, in China and the far East.” But she assures me that she’s not going to leave it at that. “I hope … whether it’s a paper or a book … to eventually do that research.” The Intellectual Roots of Slavery in the British West Indies is now available online, at various websites including Amazon and Morebooks. |
Did you know there’s no evidence that race and colour were among the sources of prejudice that led to slavery in ancient times? Rather, such prejudice was based on “natal alienation,” i.e. being of a different land, language and religion. This is according to Ms. Nardia Thomas, Administrative Officer at The UWI’s Faculty of Humanities and Education, in her newly published book, The Intellectual Roots of Slavery in the British West Indies, where she explores ideas behind slavery. 
This is important for people to know, she says, because the ideas that supported modern slavery still exist. “There is slavery in its true form, in the sense of holding a person against their will, forcing them to work and holding violence as the whip over them. It still exists today … in every institution, in every country, in every culture, in every religion.”