Polly Pattullo - Your time is done now: Slavery, Resistance, and Defeat: the Maroon Trials of Dominica (1813-1814)

Slavery, Resistance and Defeat:
the Maroon Trials of Dominica (1813-1814)

Copyright Polly Patullo 2015
Introduction copyright Bernard Wiltshire 2015

All rights reserved.

First published in the United States by Monthly Review Press 2015
First published in Great Britain by Papillote Press 2015

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available from the publisher.

ISBN: 978-1-58367-558-8 pbk
ISBN: 978-1-58367-559-5 cloth

Typeset in Freight Text
Text and cover design by Andy Dark

Your time
is done now

Slavery, Resistance and Defeat:
the Maroon Trials of Dominica (1813-1814)

First published in Great Britain in 2015

Polly Pattullo 2015
introduction Bernard Wiltshire 2015

All rights reserved

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Typeset in Freight Text
Design by Andy Dark
Cover design by Andy Dark
Printed by Printondemand-Worldwide.com , UK

ISBN: 978-0-9571187-7-5

Papillote Press
23 Rozel Road
London SW4 0EY
United Kingdom
and Trafalgar, Dominica
www.papillotepress.co.uk
@papillotepress

Many were brought to Roseau and butchered in cold blood; and there is a well there, which though of sweet water, and in the centre of the market place, remains unused to this day, from a belief that it is defiled with the blood of these unfortunate people.

Joseph Sturge and Thomas Harvey
The West Indies in 1837

Executed in the market place, Roseau, 1813 and 1814

Guillaume, Buoy, Jean Pierre, Peter, Victor, Joe, Francoise, Adelaide, Ebo, Zabet, Michel, Quashie, Charlie

The documents of the Maroon trials of Dominica (1813-1814) that form the core of this book are produced by kind permission of The National Archives, United Kingdom. I was first alerted to these manuscripts by my friend Catherine Lord - for which many, many thanks, since the idea for the book sprang from that first encounter. Various people read the typescript at various times in its development - I am extremely grateful to Annie Davies, Nigel Fountain, Peter Hulme, and, again to Catherine Lord, for their enthusiasm, acumen and encouragement. Proof-reading - and far more - was by Jeannette Page: thanks to her eagle eye and generosity.

My thanks also go to Roberta Allport for research and Ros Asquith for sleuthing. Others who kindly advised on general or specific points are: Gad Heuman, Barry Higman, Lennox Honychurch, Alick Lazare, Lisa Paravisini-Gebert, Diana Paton; and Bernard Wiltshire for his introduction and for many conversations. Appreciations to Lambert Charles for bringing me wahwah and to Louisette Auguiste for showing me the wahwah vine. To Paul Crask and Celia Sorhaindo for our trip to Jacko Steps and beyond.

Andy Dark, the designer, was, as usual, infinitely patient with textual details and infinitely creative in solving visual and typographical problems and for magically conjuring up the cover.

Many thanks to the National Archives, United Kingdom, and its helpful staff and likewise to the National Archives of Dominica in Roseau; the London Library; and the National Library of Scotland. Polly Pattullo

POLLY PATTULLO is the publisher of Papillote Press and a former journalist from the UK. She is the author of Last Resorts: the Cost of Tourism in the Caribbean and Fire from the Mountain: the Tragedy of Montserrat and the Betrayal of its People. She is the editor, with Celia Sorhaindo, of Home Again: Stories of Migration and Return and, with Kathy MacLean and Karen Mears, compiled the educational pack, A Caribbean History: Hillsborough - a Plantation in Dominica. Both are published by Papillote Press. She lives in London and Dominica.

BERNARD WILTSHIRE, a native born Dominican, was educated at the universities of York and London in the UK; and at the University of Columbia in New York. He lectured in African, Caribbean and Black American history at the University of the West Indies in Jamaica, the City University of New York and Manhattan Community College, New York. He was a University of the West Indies extra-mural tutor in Dominica and deputy leader of the Inner London Education Authority in the UK. He is a former Attorney General of Dominica.

The main body of the text consists of transcriptions of documents held in The National Archives, United Kingdom. The memoirs of William Bremner are taken from a typescript of the original. All attempts to contact the copyright holder of these memoirs have been unsuccessful; copies of the microfilm of the typescript are held at the University of the West Indies, Mona (Jamaica), and the National Library of Scotland.

Punctuation has occasionally been modernised for clarification. Stylistic features, such as upper- or lower-case letters, have been standardised. Omissions are marked by ellipses. Editorial inserts appear in square brackets. Square brackets also indicate uncertainties in transcription: missing words are shown as [missing word/s]; illegible word/s are indicated as [illegible]; and guessed words are followed by [?].

Abbreviations

The following abbreviations have been used for text references, credits and endnotes:

TNA: The National Archives, United Kingdom

CO: Colonial Office

WB: Memoirs of William Bremner in Dominica

NAD: National Archives Dominica

Introduction

newspaper notices: NAD; Hillsborough runaways list:

Quarry Bank Mill, Styal. Library of Congress

1813 : Suppression of the Maroons begins

TNA

1814: Under martial law

NAD

1814: A governors defence

; Ainslie: British Museum; sword: Peter Finer catalogue, 2005

1815: Maroons defeated, Ainslie sacked

copyright Richard Croft

After: memory and memorials

Independence Day parade: Polly Pattullo; libation: Celia Sorhaindo

Your Time Is Done Now is a book about resistance to slavery. Not much is known of the men and women who participated in this struggle and made their own Maroon communities on the Caribbean island of Dominica for their voices have remained hidden from history. But through the transcripts of the trials (held in 1813 and 1814) and published here for the first time, we hear the stories of those who had lived as free people in the forests as they stood in the dock.