Dear Editor,
Please excuse my tardiness [I am recovering from the Corona virus and was too ill to respond earlier] and allow me to make a few observations on a 7th January 2021 letter that was published in the newspaper under the caption -`Kars’ work on the 1763 rebellion reads more like historical fiction.’ As I began reading the letter, I was struck by the opening salvo, “As a trained historian and anthropologist, I was unnerved when reading Marjoleine Kars’s `Blood on the River: A Chronicle of Mutiny and Freedom on the Wild Coast’ last year.” At that point, I stopped reading and scrolled down to the signature line with the expectation of seeing: Boodram, Bisram or Hinds. But to my surprise, I saw Dr. Greenidge’s signature. So, I decided to read the letter with an open mind because I also read the book. Here are my thoughts:
First, Guyanese owe a debt to Dr. Kars for writing this book. All of the source documents pertaining to the Berbice uprising are in Dutch. Dr. Kars painstakingly translated those documents and brought this very valuable piece of Guyanese history to us [non-Dutch speaking/writing] Guyanese.
Second, Dr. Greenidge opined, “This book is written about us, but certainly not for us.” I am every bit a Guyanese as Dr. Greenidge. Albeit, my ancestors came much later after 1763; I hope I am permitted to have a say.
Third, Dr. Greenidge takes umbrage that Dr. Kars wrote a book that potentially has a wider appeal than just Guyana. Writing a book and publishing a book is a commercial enterprise. Dr. Greenidge’s desires to have Dr. Kars to write a book that is narrowly tailored to a few Guyanese [some of his “us”] would have doomed the project from its inception. And this important bit of history would have not been published and we would have been lesser for that.
Fourth, Dr. Greenidge pulls up some obscure debate in Texas to denigrate Dr. Kars’ scholarship. When one reads a book, context is everything. Dr. Kars compared the “enslaved people” with the mercenaries. The term “worker” in that context referred to people who did the hard labour. Dr. Kars did not make the case that the Berbice slaves/rebels were labouring of their free will.
Fifth, Dr. Greenidge misleadingly gives the impression that Dr. Kars threw in a gratuitous paragraph devoted to cannibalism. In fact, there were four references to cannibalism in the book. He is incorrect in stating, “there is no evidence of African cannibalism towards the indigenous peoples during the rebellion.” Dr. Kars did not state that the slaves killed or ate Amerindians. Read in context: The preceding account was related by Moravian missionaries that Amerindians fled their villages based on rumours that the slaves killed and cooked native children. However, he does have a point that Dr. Kars may have overreached when she wrote, “Such stories persisted. An elderly man living in an Arawak village on the Wiki Creek, reportedly well-versed in his people’s history, told me when I visited in 2006 that fugitive slaves barbecued and consumed Amerindians, especially children.” The stories persist, but they were based on rumours and not historical facts [as contained in the records]. Nonetheless, Dr. Kars is on solid ground when she relies on the historical document and accounts of “a group of African” and 2 survivors [slaves/ rebels]. According to Dr. Kars, “Two survivors later claimed that the fugitives resorted to cannibalism. They allegedly ate parts of a woman named Sophia after she was shot to death by Amerindians.” The survivors were slaves/rebels. Dr. Greenidge may not like the account that some of the Berbice slaves/rebels engaged in cannibalism. However, he failed to show that Dr. Kars misrepresented the record. In fact, Dr. Kars demonstrated that the rebels, because of the necessities of war, reluctantly resorted to cannibalism instead of starving to death.
Sixth, the book has serious historical lessons for all Guyanese. Dr. Kars was able to demonstrate that the leadership within the slave rebellion was not uniform. There was discord between Africans and Creoles. As she noted, “One might think that slaves would be united in their vision. But they were not. Popular politics in this rebellion were as complex as any other in this era. Leaders of the rebellion wanted to run a colony of their own with a measure of human bondage in place. Ordinary self-emancipated people wanted autonomy to attend their own gardens. This difference is a common theme in the revolutionary age: elites want one thing; commoners want another. Both called it “freedom.”
Seventh, Dr. Greenidge seems upset that Dr. Kars wrote about Georgina George. Well, first of all, Dr. Kars is a Dutch woman, Georgina George was also a Dutch woman. Logically, she was drawn to write the harrowing tale of a Dutch woman. Writing about Georgina George does not in any way diminish the atrocity that slavery visited on Guyanese of African descent. On the contrary, I believe that Dr. Kars’s book is an important starting point of critically evaluating our history and, in particular, the history of the Berbice slave revolt/rebellion.
Dr. Kars has thrown down the gauntlet: It is up to us [Guyanese] to learn Dutch, read the source documents and write our history. I am pretty sure that Dr. Kars would be kind enough to direct Dr. Greenidge to the source documents; so, the eminently “trained historian and anthropologist” can write his book.
Sincerely,
Roger Ally,
Fort Lauderdale
