Dr Rita Pemberton

While a high value was placed on African labour for the successful operations of plantations in the Caribbean, the Africans were considered subhuman savages with undesirable cultural practices and unacceptable pagan religious. Hence, a threefold argument was articulated as justification for the existence and brutalities of the system of enslavement. First it was a part of the civilising mission which was essential to bring Africans out of their natural savage practices. Secondly, for that purpose it was mandatory to purge Africans of their pagan habits by exposing them to European Christianity, the corollary to which was that their traditions had to be obliterated and thirdly, and most importantly, Africans had to be made to understand and accept their role in society as prescribed by “divine order.” This was the core of the European “civilising mission” which was crafted around the Christianising mission.

This was not initially considered a priority by Tobago’s planting community whose focus was on extracting labour to fuel profit generation from plantation activity. However, the spate of rebellions which rocked the island during the 1770s, led to a realisation by some members of the planting community that an effective mechanism of worker control ought to be devised. The planter-supported administration, using the Barbados Slave Code as a model, approved laws with enhanced brutal punishments for deviant behaviour. This, however, did not reduce the various forms of resistance which emanated from the island’s enslaved population, control over which was complicated by the French assault and occupation of the island from 1781 to 1793 and their subsequent activity on the island until 1802.

Meanwhile, planter John Hamilton, who was convinced of the efficacy of the Christian churches to assist the civilising mission, invited the Moravian faith to the island to work among the population on his estates. The first missionary arrived in 1790 but could not affect the operation of his mission because of the French occupation and the disastrous hurricane. Meanwhile, the anti-slave trade campaign had taken root in England and was garnering support which threatened the life of the highly profitable human trade upon which the wealth of so many UK families and institutions depended.

Christianisation was seen as the path to civilisation and more importantly to control of the working class. The Anglican church, which was the first religious body on the island, remained an aloof planter church and did not engage in missionary activity among the enslaved. Between 1799 and 1802 the Moravians re-established and conducted a more sustained mission on the island from 1827. The Moravians were followed by the London Missionary Society whose missionaries arrived on the island in1808. This mission was short-lived because of a rift between its missionaries – Roger Eliott and Isaac Purkis – it was closed in 1813. Then came the Methodists who established an uninterrupted presence on the island from 1818.

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