Barbados-Carolina History: What's the value?
Author: Rhoda A. Green, Founder and CEO
The Barbados and Carolinas Legacy Foundation
The unseen hands of history provide a record - an accounting of human engagement and interaction with each other. The past informs. It never determines our present and our future. A Barbados delegation returned to Charleston to continue discussions begun last October on business, trade, and investment on the island. Barbados and Charleston, SC's historical lineage remind us of our past interconnections. Today we collaborate on ways to update business opportunities, trade, and investment connections that benefit each other.
In the whirlwind of preparing for our Barbadian guests, I had a reflective moment of pause. I stopped to reflect: Shared history reminds us that trade was the engine that drove the colonial economy. Cost, value, and commodities, including enslaved bodies, had utility in colonial commerce. I'm baffled. How do we reconcile that history? What's the value of my ancestors' equity in today's economy - marketplace? Do I fully understand its worth? How do I invest that worth for future returns? Their sweat equity was toil, pain, torture, suppression, and subjugation. We, their legatees, should attribute value to their deposit - invest and expect returns.
We rely on historians' research and documentation for history. We apply what we learn to contemporary usage. For example, Bridgetown, Barbados, and Charleston, South Carolina, were pivotal ports in global trade during the colonial period. So what? I reached into my timeless imaginary fob - pulled out my imagined lens, and peered deeply into my ancestors' past. I picture planters, traders, and merchants transacting, bartering, and negotiating the terms of BIG business. In the meantime, our enslaved ancestors, indentured servants - people trapped and entangled in a societal net constructed by the powerful. Caught up in the imaginative buzz of activity, I stepped into their shoes - their spaces. I envisioned freedom and empowerment they did not have. I seized their agency and fast-forwarded to the present to engage in meaningful commerce and engagement that will yield worth for our present and future.
People in our era continue to evaluate the past. Some recipients received a legacy less fraught with stigma and dehumanization than others. I ponder the value of the heritage of a Barbadian - of a Carolinian. I mused: knowing and understanding one's history should be something of worth - capital - a resource - to activate and leverage for positive return.
Last week's engagement with the Barbados Delegation on matters of business, trade, and investment between Barbados and South Carolina brings into laser focus the realization that knowing one's value and the ability to communicate that value adds value. Barbados, a new republic, continues positioning itself as a hub of possibilities in our time. "Pride and Industry" is stated in Barbados' Coat of Arms. That statement still resonates today.