(REPOST from Year 2012) INTERVIEW with United Kingdom Journalist, Christopher Taylor, Author of The New Book, “The Black Carib Wars: Freedom, Survival and The Making of The Garifuna”
“I wanted to read the (Garifuna) story and no one else had written the book I wanted to read.” – Author, Christopher Taylor
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Originally published on August 8th 2012.
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Copyright 2012 by Teofilo Colon Jr (a.k.a. “Tio Teo” or “T.O. Tayo”) for Being Garifuna. All Rights Reserved. Contact Tio Teo.
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London, United Kingdom: Below is an interview with UK Journalist Christopher Taylor about his new book, “The Black Carib Wars: Freedom, Survival, and The Making of The Garifuna”.
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While reading his mighty and worthy book, I couldn’t help but be curious about the inception of this book, as well as the research Mr. Taylor conducted while researching and finally writing this book.
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I suspect that his answers to my questions will at the least, intrique you. Brace yourselves…
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The 204 page book, “The Black Carib Wars: Freedom, Survival and The Making of The Garifuna” is a historical account with new details of the Garifuna (then known as Black Caribs) fight to stay free on the site of their ancestral homeland, St. Vincent.
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The book covers the 17th and 18th Centuries (1600s-1700s) from the origins of the Garifuna in St. Vincent in the 1600s, their uneasy alliances (and conflicts, wars, battles) with Great Britain and France over the years and finally their expulsion from St. Vincent in 1797.
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The book is available for purchase in both hardcover and softcover editions. At this time, interested readers can click this link to buy the softcover edition of the book, “The Black Carib Wars: Freedom, Survival, and the Making of The Garifuna” at The Book Depository website (which offers FREE shipping worldwide) for $17.01 (at this time, August 9th 2012). The book is currently only available in the English language.
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Photo of Author and Journalist, Chris Taylor in 2009.
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Christopher Taylor is a journalist who works for the Guardian (London). He is also the author of The Beautiful Game: A Journey through Latin American Football. This is his second book. Interviewer: Teofilo Colon Jr for Being Garifuna.
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INTERVIEW with Author, Christopher Taylor
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1) You explain in your book, that your interest in the the story of the Garifuna people began about 20 years ago in Nicaragua, while watching a baseball match.
Is that where you first heard of the Garifuna people?
If so, what were your initial impressions or thoughts upon hearing about the Garifuna people?
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Christopher Taylor – Yes, I first heard about the Garifuna in the context of Nicaragua. The Atlantic Coast of Nicaragua is a fascinating place, home to a variety of ethnic groups but the Garifuna people seemed to have the most unusual story, although I picked up only the barest outline.
As I heard it back then, the Garifuna were Africans who had been shipwrecked on the island of St Vincent, had some time later been on the wrong side in a war between the British and the French and had as a result been exiled to Central America.
I think what struck me most about the story was the apparent possibility of being able to trace an unbroken history back to the moment of arrival in the Americas – something that the nature of slavery makes very difficult for most people of African descent.
Naturally, when I finally got around to researching the subject the story got a lot more complicated.
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2) You also explain that upon listening to an Andy Palacio album many years later after your Nicaragua visit, you began to wonder about the real history behind the music.
What compelled you to make the decision to actually proceed and write a book about the history of the Garifuna in St. Vincent?
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Christopher Taylor – I was on holiday with my wife and she played me the Andy Palacio & The Garifuna Collective record (Wátina) which we both thought was wonderful.
Listening to the songs and hearing the language we got to wondering about the Garifuna story.
Initially I just wanted to be able to buy a book that would tell me the history.
I started off by borrowing a copy of Sir William Young’s book (An Account of the Black Charaibs of St Vincent’s) which was written in 1795.
From there I sought out any books I could find but none seemed to me to tell the whole story.
As I read more I became more fascinated with the subject and after a while I realised that I had discovered details that had never been published before.
By the time I went to St Vincent in 2009 I had decided I would write a book.
The main motivation was that I wanted to read the story and no one else had written the book I wanted to read.
I only set about finding a publisher after I had written it.
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3) You note in your book’s introduction that there are very few written records or documents from that time period (17th or 18th century) in the Black Caribs (Garifuna) own language (or anything from THEIR perspective) so their history in St. Vincent needs to be pieced together from English and French sources, who at times were very hostile to the Black Caribs.
As you constructed the historical narrative for your book, how did you determine what English or French sources would garner sufficient information?
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Christopher Taylor – Initially I was keen to read anything I could lay my hands on and I thought about presenting a series of verbatim contemporary accounts of the Black Caribs without writing the story through.
Nancy Gonzalez’s book, Sojourners of the Caribbean, cites the log of the ship which carried the Black Caribs to Roatán, along with a few other documents from the British archives.
I was curious to see this object, which was very evocative, having been written on a vessel in the Caribbean more than 200 years ago, so I went to Kew in south-west London, which is where the archives are housed.
I realised that there were many more relevant documents from the period.
So I started seeking out anything that referred to the Black Caribs.
That meant leafing through countless pages of handwritten documents over the course of many months.
Later I went to the French archives in Aix-en-Provence.
Sources such as these can be frustrating because they are not concerned with many of the questions one might like answered, which essentially boil down to: how did the Black Caribs themselves see things?
Having said that, Black Caribs are occasionally quoted and many important aspects of their lifestyle and activity are alluded to or can be pieced together.
The Black Caribs were seen as a problem by the British throughout the eighteenth century (although they were allies of the French) so negative aspects are frequently stressed in the documents.
But there are a variety of different types of document and often the confidential reports from the civil or military authorities in St Vincent to the metropolitan government in London are trying to give as accurate a picture as possible.
These are contemporaneous accounts so in general they reflect how things appeared to observers at the time and, as in a trial, a witness’s earliest statements are often the most reliable.
So, for example, it is possible to read the account of the battle in which Chatoyer was killed which was written the day after it took place.
Evaluating sources is always a question of judgment but I think that the British and French archives contain a great deal of important information which I hope I have made available to a wider audience.
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4) Where did you do your research for this book? The back cover of your book (as well as press releases for your book) states that extensive research took place in Britain, France and St. Vincent.
Were those the only places where research took place? If not, where else did research take place? What places did you visit?
NOTE: Author Christopher Taylor does reveal this in the Further Reading and Bibliography section at the end of the book. However, I wondered if there were any other places where research took place, like the Central American countries of Honduras, Guatemala, Belize and Nicaragua; where most Garifuna people ended up.
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Christopher Taylor – I was lucky in that my place of work, the Guardian newspaper, was very close to the British Library, which has a copy of every book published in this country (like the Library of Congress in the US). So I could spend time researching there on my way to and from work.
Also, the UK National Archives, which contain some of the most important primary sources, were easily accessible in London.
I also went to the archives of the French overseas territories as well as visiting St Vincent and Baliceaux.
The visit to SVG (St. Vincent & The Grenadines) was very important in familiarising myself with the landscape where the events I describe took place.
Just as important was to spend time with the delegation organised by the Garifuna Coalition who were visiting the country at the time.
It was a rare privilege and I’m very grateful to all of them for allowing me to share some of their experience.
I always kept them in mind while I was writing the book, although of course that’s no guarantee that they’ll like the book I’ve produced.
The Black Carib Wars only really goes up to 1797 and the years immediately afterwards, although there is a short section at the end designed to give a brief sketch for the general reader of the Garifuna story over the last 200 years.
That is why I didn’t conduct research in the Central American countries: because they were unlikely to have much material relevant to the period, although I do refer to some documents from the colonial archives in Guatemala which are cited in secondary sources.
I do refer to some Garifuna oral traditions, but others have mined that seam and I felt I had more to contribute in other areas.
I did go to Roatán and visited the Garifuna village of Punta Gorda there, which helped in trying to visualise the arrival of the survivors of the Black Carib wars in 1797, as well as in appreciating the island’s enduring role in the Garifuna story.
The indomitable spirit of the Garifuna people has been an inspiration throughout this project and I certainly hope in the future to visit the Garifuna communities in Belize and Guatemala.
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5) You mention doing research at The National Archives in Kingstown, St. Vincent and the lack of original documents of 18th century colonial period.
Could you explain just how much information is available at The National Archives?
In my own reading about St. Vincent, I still find it odd that many St. Vincentians don’t know much about Black Caribs or the Garifuna and I am curious about the resources available there for people interested.
St. Vincent is the ancestral land of the Garifuna people and I find it odd that apparently there isn’t much information about The Black Caribs (Garifuna) there.
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Christopher Taylor – Chatoyer is an official national hero of SVG, commemorated by an obelisk on Dorsetshire Hill, and the northern windward coast is known as Carib country, so it’s not as if the Black Carib story is unknown there. However, hard information on the subject is as scarce there as it is elsewhere. You hear a few stories repeated which have acquired the polished quality of legend.
There have been a number of Garifuna visitors to SVG in recent years who have helped spread awareness of the Garifuna diaspora.
Also, some Vincentian writers, for example the late Earl Kirby and the alive and kicking Edgar Adams, have written on the subject (in the books, “The Rise and Fall of The Black Caribs–Garifuna” and “Saint Vincent in the History of The Carib Nation 1625-1797″).
As far as I could discover, the St Vincent and the Grenadines archives have no original documents from the period in question, although they do have a few copies and some modern secondary sources, including academic writings by Vincentian postgraduates.
However, I think the problem is wider than St Vincent. I don’t know for sure, but I would suspect that a good deal of the information in my book will come as a surprise to Garifuna readers.
In the same way as it is something of a leap for Vincentians to recognise their links to modern-day inhabitants of Central America, so I imagine it may be strange for Garifuna people to picture their ancestors in the context of the realities of eighteenth century St Vincent.
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6) One confusing aspect about reading about The Garifuna in St. Vincent during the 17th and 18th Century is determining when it is that the Garifuna are being referred to.
You have Red Caribs, Caribs, Yellow Caribs, Black Caribs as well as other Blacks on the island. Did you find that to be the case while doing your research?
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Christopher Taylor – The issue of the various ethnic groups in the story and their names is a thorny one.
The inhabitants of St Vincent at the time of Columbus are usually referred to as Caribs, or Island Caribs to distinguish them from similar populations on the South American mainland.
With the arrival of Africans to St Vincent a mixed population developed, known to the white colonists as the Black Caribs.
At the same time, a smaller, more unmixed population existed alongside them.
These were usually known as the Yellow Caribs to the British, while the French tended to call them Red Caribs.
During the eighteenth century the Black Caribs greatly outnumbered the Yellow or Red Caribs so that in contemporary documents the Black Caribs are often referred to simply as Caribs.
In addition, there were thousands of black slaves, invariably referred to as Negroes in contemporary documents, who might be African- or American-born.
There were also free blacks and mulattoes, i.e. of mixed black/white blood, as well as various European groups (British, French, Spanish, etc.).
None of the above, however, is uncontroversial.
Some modern writers dispute whether there was really a clear division between Black and Yellow Caribs and some colonial writers of the time claimed the Black Caribs were simply runaway slaves who should not be called Carib at all.
Readers of The Black Carib Wars might legitimately wonder why I have used the term Black Carib rather than Garifuna.
The short answer is we don’t know what these people called themselves.
We know what their descendants call themselves (Garifuna) and in the seventeenth century a French missionary recorded the Island Caribs’ name for themselves (Kalliponam or Kallinago, depending on whether spoken by a man or a woman) but the eighteenth century Black Caribs’ own word for themselves is unrecorded.
The contemporary sources, written by Europeans, generally use the phrase Black Caribs or some variant of it.
Given that I quote extensively from the sources, it would be tedious to constantly switch between one name and another.
In addition, the Black Caribs’ name for themselves was probably the same as the Yellow Caribs’ name for themselves which would raise the question of whether the Yellow Caribs or the Island Caribs in general should be referred to as Garifuna too.
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So, my apologies if it all gets confusing but I suppose my general point would be that we cannot assume that the ethnic categories of today are the same as, or are adequate to describe, the ethnic make-up of eighteenth century St Vincent.
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7) How long did it take you write this book?
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Christopher Taylor – I think I got my reader’s ticket for the British Library in December 2008, which I suppose marks the start of my serious research. I visited SVG in 2009 and France in 2010 and I wrote the book during the second half of 2010. I handed the manuscript to the publisher in early 2011 and made minor additions and amendments up until August of that year. And now it’s finally out. So I’ve lived with this project for some time.
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8) Was anyone interviewed in your research? If so, who? Was any unexpected information gleaned from these interviews if they took place? I know that while doing research like this, many twists and turns can take place and I wonder if that was the case in this instance.
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Christopher Taylor – I spoke to some people in St Vincent, in particular some of the Garifuna visitors, but I conducted no formal interviews for the book, which perhaps is not surprising given that the events described took place hundreds of years ago.
The Black Carib Wars is fundamentally the product of wide reading on the subject and of original research in the archives.
New details turned up right up to the end of my research, such as when I was tipped off about some intriguing old manuscripts written by the curator of Kingstown’s botanical garden in the archives of the Linnaean Society in London.
Although I did the most thorough job I could, I have no doubt that there is more information out there waiting to be discovered. So I hope that some future Garifuna writer may use my book as a starting point for their own research.
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Beinggarifuna.com extends a hearty Saragu Seremein (“ Many, many, many Thanks” in the Garifuna Language) to Journalist Christopher Taylor for agreeing to be interviewed about his noteworthy book, “The Black Carib Wars: Freedom, Survival, and the Making of The Garifuna”.
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