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Michael visits Jamaica, the Caribbean capital of the Empire, to reveal how pirates, slaves and sugar allowed Britain to amass the wealth to conquer the world.
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00:01A century ago, Britain ruled over a quarter of the planet.
00:07In this series, I will go in search of Britain's imperial past.
00:13I have found gold.
00:15And uncover its legacies.
00:19How did a small island on the edge of Europe end up dominating the world?
00:25He turned a miserable group of accountants into swashbuckling pirates.
00:32From its proudest achievements to its most shameful failures.
00:37We're ripped away from Mother Africa into a strange land.
00:42And how has the history of empire transformed Britain?
00:47We became the black people of Britain.
00:49On this journey, I uncover the extraordinary story of the biggest empire that the world has ever seen.
01:01In this program, I discover how Britain's empire was built by pirates.
01:07They were given permission from the King of England to plunder. And plunder they did.
01:13How millions were ripped from their homelands and stripped of their identities.
01:17I cannot say exactly where I'm from. I just can't trace that back.
01:23And how the descendants of those men and women altered Britain.
01:27The trade in enslaved Africans, uprooting millions from their homeland and transporting them across the Atlantic, drove the early development
01:36of the British Empire.
01:37At the empire's sunset, the descendants of some of those slaves gravitated towards Britain at the empire's heart.
01:46Another migration. Another adaptation for them.
01:49But this time, changing Britain into the multicultural country that it is today.
01:56This is the story of a tiny island that redefined what it means to be British.
02:14Jamaica, the Caribbean island of lush green mountains, coral reef beaches and sleepy fishing villages.
02:25A small tropical country that plays an outsized part in Britain's imperial history.
02:35And here, beneath the waves of Kingston Harbour, an extraordinary piece of empire lies hidden.
02:43The lost city of Port Royal.
02:48On the 7th of June, 1692, 2,000 people died when the sandy peninsula on which Port Royal was built,
02:57slid into the sea during an earthquake.
03:08The impact can still be seen today under water.
03:18Barnacled walls mark out the edges of forgotten streets.
03:27You can just make out the rooms in which people lived over 300 years ago.
03:35People whose lives were unexpectedly cut short.
03:42The town lies beneath the water now, preserved like a submarine Pompeii, yielding insights into how the British exercised mastery
03:52of the seas at the opening of their imperial adventure.
03:59Who were these early empire builders and why did they come to a remote island so far from home?
04:07Doric Gray is the former executive director of the Jamaica National Heritage Trust.
04:15Port Royal literally sits on a sand spit.
04:21And when the earthquake occurred, there was a process of liquefaction.
04:28The sand turned quicksand.
04:31And the buildings went down vertically.
04:35The walls fell in on some, and some of the other walls fell out.
04:40It's also a burial site.
04:422,000 people died instantly.
04:46What happened on that day, on the 7th of June, 1692, is locked in a time capsule underwater.
04:56Why is this town underwater so valuable to our understanding of those times?
05:02In 37 years, Port Royal became the most important English city in the Americas.
05:10So most of the site is preserved.
05:13It is still there.
05:15There is still a lot of information that we can learn about not only Jamaica, but about ourselves.
05:28The sunken city is slowly yielding its secrets, including the surprising identity of those who transformed England into an imperial
05:38power.
05:40In the middle of the 17th century, Spain, with its extensive colonies, was the world's superpower.
05:48Spain dominated the Americas, whereas England had only a few trading posts in North America and the Caribbean.
05:58All of them private ventures.
06:01But that was about to change, under the leadership of a man with a plan.
06:10Oliver Cromwell, having beheaded and replaced the English king, sent the first English state-sponsored colonial expedition across the Atlantic
06:21with the aim of seizing those parts of its empire that are now decaying Spain could not defend.
06:31The first piece of land captured from the Spanish was Jamaica in 1655.
06:38The indigenous Taino had been all but wiped out.
06:43And there were barely 2,000 people on the island.
06:51Peter Gordon is a former officer in the Jamaican Coast Guard.
06:56In Port Royal, his family goes back generations.
07:03The British didn't waste any time in building this fort, because they had taken it so easily from the Spaniards,
07:11they didn't want the same thing happening to them.
07:13So they almost immediately, within a year, build this fort.
07:21It was one thing to seize Jamaica, another to hold it.
07:28This new colony needed sea power to protect it.
07:33As England's navy was overstretched, the task was outsourced to an unlikely quarter.
07:47Having expelled the Spanish from Port Royal, the English feared a counterattack which they were ill-equipped to repel.
07:55The resourceful first governor, Edward Doyley, had a solution.
07:59He invited buccaneers from nearby Tortuga, present-day Haiti, to make the town their home port, from which these Spanish
08:08-hating pirates could harass Spain.
08:14Peter, tell me about these buccaneers that were brought in by Edward Doyley.
08:20I'm afraid most people tend to regard them as pirates.
08:25I willingly embrace them as buccaneers, because I know they were given permission from the King of England to plunder.
08:33And plunder they did.
08:34Did these people have a particular grudge against Spain?
08:38Everybody had a grudge against Spain, because she wanted to keep everybody off these lands.
08:44We romanticized pirates from Peter Pan to Pirates of the Caribbean, but actually they were a very bloodthirsty lot.
08:52They did what they had to do to enrich themselves.
08:56They could do as they pleased, and they did.
09:00A license to kill.
09:01Exactly.
09:03When the English gave these pirates the mark, the stamp of official approval, was there any limitation to what these
09:09guys could do?
09:10Well, in the case of Morgan, there was absolutely none. The man took full advantage.
09:17Henry Morgan was the pirate master of the smash-and-grab.
09:26On behalf of England's start-up empire, Morgan tormented the Spanish, weakening the threat that they posed to Britain's imperial
09:34ambitions.
09:38And how do you Jamaicans feel about this huge figure with a lot of scallywag running through him?
09:45We are of different stock here in Port Royal.
09:48We embrace Henry Morgan, because many of us generations through the years came out of these cutthroats and robbers.
09:57Henry Morgan transformed the fortunes of Port Royal.
10:03On one raid alone, he brought back the equivalent today of £155 million.
10:13Port Royal became a powerful English naval base.
10:17And, with its riches, gained a reputation as the wickedest city on earth.
10:33Fundamentally, British Jamaica was founded on theft.
10:36It had been seized from the Spanish, and they, in turn, before that, had grabbed it.
10:40And, Jamaica depended on buccaneers who were violent for its defence and its economy.
10:48By the time Port Royal was drowned by earthquake and tidal wave, a new age was dawning.
10:56The empire was turning away from piracy and the theft of gold to the plunder of human beings.
11:04Enslavement on an industrial scale.
11:16After Port Royal, dubbed the wickedest city on earth, was sunk by earthquake, a new chapter in the history of
11:24empire began, with Jamaica at its centre.
11:32The old Port Royal dockyard became the headquarters of the British Navy in the Caribbean.
11:40It would become one of the biggest naval bases in the world.
11:47These old buildings evoke that imperial past.
11:53This old naval hospital is quite recent when you think how far the Royal Navy's connection with Jamaica goes.
12:00It was built in 1818 and making use of the most modern technology.
12:07An iron-framed building.
12:09And the extraordinary thing is how it has survived numerous earthquakes.
12:15Any number of hurricanes.
12:18Although, in fact, a hurricane in the 1980s left it pretty dilapidated and destroyed the outer buildings.
12:26Ontions.
12:41Early in its existence, the Royal Navy discovered the importance of having naval surgeons and even hospital ships to treat
12:50scurvy and injuries and dehydration.
12:53dehydration. And then when they came to the tropics, they would suffer from malaria and
12:59yellow fever, and the men would be treated in wards like this. And you can be absolutely
13:05assured that many a Royal Navy sailor breathed his last in this room.
13:16At the end of the 17th century, the Royal Navy was on a path to becoming the world's
13:22most powerful sea force. For the brigands and scoundrels who'd done Britain's dirty work
13:28on the high seas, time was running out. One of the last English pirates of the Caribbean
13:36was John Ratten, alias Calico Jack, credited with being the inventor of that symbol of piracy,
13:43the Jolly Roger. In 1720, he was captured, brought to the Admiralty Court of Port Royal,
13:49and hanged. His body was then suspended in chains at the entrance to the harbour. And
13:56a place now known as Ratten's Quay has a warning to everyone. The piracy, which had once been
14:03endorsed by the British authorities, was now strictly prohibited.
14:10The beginning of the end for the pirates had come with the Treaty of Madrid in 1670. This was
14:18a watershed moment for the Empire, because the Spanish recognised England's American colonies. But
14:26the price to be paid was to end the use of anti-Spanish pirates. I've come to meet historian Jonathan
14:35and Greenland to ask how such a deal could be done between imperial rivals.
14:42The Spanish suddenly decide that they have to come to peace with England, because the
14:47privateering and the piracy were wrecking their economy. They gave England a sweet deal. They
14:53basically said, but we recognise all your territories in the Western Hemisphere as long as you stop this
14:59piracy. Having agreed to end piracy, did they actually do so? Yes. They hung quite a lot of pirates,
15:05anybody who was caught in the act, because suddenly they discovered something even better than piracy.
15:12Sugar. People were making far more from sugar than they would be making from piracy anymore. Far more.
15:22Sugar cane, first brought to the Caribbean by Christopher Columbus himself, thrived in the tropical
15:29conditions of Jamaica, with its plentiful supply of sun and rain. The fertile land would be a magnet to those
15:39willing to risk their lives to make their fortunes. I'm approaching Stokes Hall. Luke Stokes had been
15:47governor of Nevis, another Caribbean colony. But after the fall of Port Royal to the British, he spied an
15:55opportunity in Jamaica. In an extraordinary piece of logistical organisation, he arrived with 1,600 people.
16:04But adventuring in the tropics was a risky business, and Stokes and his wife soon succumbed to disease.
16:15Stokes had chosen to settle in the east, in the area of the Plantain Garden River, one of the most
16:22fertile in Jamaica.
16:25But the conditions that made it good for sugar cane also made it a breeding ground for the mosquito.
16:34Two thirds of the 1,600 people who came with Luke Stokes would die from malaria and yellow fever.
16:46For the early colonists, this was also a lawless land.
16:52And coming to Jamaica, I didn't expect to find anything as old as this and as substantial.
16:59It feels like a baronial hall. It also has the feeling of being defensible territory.
17:05The thing has the feel of a castle. Of course, to resist hurricanes and earthquakes, you'd want great
17:12thick walls. But these are enormous. And while it's true that a proper castle wouldn't have windows,
17:21what proper castles do have are arrow slits. And here are slits all over the place.
17:29Not for arrows, of course, but a place where maybe a person could position himself
17:36with a gun and resist those who were coming up the hill.
17:43Despite the risks of this frontier territory, the lure of sugar was irresistible.
17:55Sugar was the developed world's new drug. And as the appetite for tea took off,
18:01so did the craze to sweeten it.
18:06One man who saw the business potential was Henry Morgan.
18:12The same Henry Morgan who'd amassed a fortune in piracy.
18:18Jonathan Greenland has offered to show me the inventory of Morgan's possessions at the time of
18:24his death. Henry Morgan was a self-made man. He went from being a soldier to becoming a pirate.
18:32Then he eventually became governor general of Jamaica. And then his last chapter of his life,
18:37he became a very successful sugar planter. A lot of it is sort of borne out by this inventory.
18:42This is an inventory of Henry Morgan's property. Most important things are the amount of stuff he had.
18:49A lot of jewelry, a lot of, you know, things which, you know, just demonstrated wealth, gold and silver.
18:55And then he also had a velvet saddle. I don't know whether that would be very much use.
18:59And then more kind of interestingly here, 44 negro men, 42 negro women.
19:06And they, of course, these people are just listed amongst his other properties.
19:11They are just listed as property, exactly.
19:13And why was the combination of sugar and slavery so extraordinarily lucrative for people like Henry
19:20Morgan? People like Henry Morgan could, you know, purchase human beings at price and then have them
19:26as their personal property. And then they would work their plantations and make a lot of money.
19:38But it also set up a triangular trade that enriched and empowered the emerging empire.
19:50Jamaica's sugar molasses was shipped to Britain.
19:54And the profits were used to purchase goods to take to West Africa.
20:00Those were bartered for enslaved Africans who were transported to the Caribbean
20:06and sold to Jamaica's sugar planters.
20:11The system created vibrant colonial economies while filling the coffers of the British crown.
20:19But what was the human cost of this imperial trade?
20:25Professor Veront Satchel is an historian who's descended from enslaved Africans.
20:32The vast majority would have been coming from the west of Africa.
20:37Say, from that area around Nigeria, Ghana.
20:43Were they sold on arrival?
20:44Yes. It would be advertised in the newspaper.
20:47You're having this, um, auction. There would be auction off.
20:51And it would be on by scramble.
20:53Scramble?
20:54Yes.
20:55When the day of that auction would be taking place,
20:59the planters would be advised and they would go to the market.
21:06And at an opportune time, this lease would be placed onto, say, a platform.
21:12And the planters would just rush up and grab a number or just bundle a number of slaves.
21:21That's scramble.
21:22You're kidding.
21:24So that would be, and that can be dramatic, isn't it?
21:28Describe the life of enslaved people on an estate like this one.
21:32Wow.
21:33If the slave finds himself or herself working in the, in the fields,
21:39their work would be extremely difficult because they would have to be plowing with their hose,
21:47this stiff soil, just to prepare the soil. And that's backbreaking. Backbreaking.
21:54All of this, the slave trade, slavery, wars, all driven by the sweet tooth theory.
21:59All driven by the sweet tooth theory.
22:02That is the power of sugar.
22:07With rocketing demand for sugar across the globe,
22:10Jamaica became an engine room of empire, creating wealth and power for Britain.
22:16America became an engine room of empire, creating wealth and power, creating wealth and power for Britain.
22:18But it depended on violence and suppression,
22:22and therefore lived in fear of revolution.
22:44Jamaica, once the home of the indigenous Taino, looks very different today.
22:53Many of its population are descended from enslaved Africans, ripped from their homelands,
22:59and stripped of their identity. The islanders are who they are as a result of empire.
23:11The story of how that came about is one of extraordinary economic success at woeful human cost.
23:22It's well illustrated here at the lavish and elegant Good Hope Estate.
23:31Here lived John Tharp, at the start of the 19th century, probably the richest man in Jamaica.
23:39Having inherited two estates from his father, he shrewdly amassed ten enormous sugar plantations,
23:46covering 16,000 acres with 3,000 enslaved workers.
23:51It was said, with a little exaggeration, that he could ride across the island without ever leaving his own land.
24:02This estate stands as a striking example of the extraordinary fortunes that could be created on the plantations.
24:19It may not be appropriate even to show appreciation for the architecture of a plantation owner,
24:25whose estate depended on enslaved people, but this has been brilliantly created.
24:32The house expresses both its owner's status and taste.
24:41Bedrooms on the ground level.
24:46Benefiting from the marvellous circulation of air.
24:56This floor, 200 years old, made of Jamaican orange wood, and as good as the day it was laid.
25:09And here,
25:13a splendid map of Good Hope Estate, the parish of Toronto, Jamaica, 1794.
25:19Here, the river, without which there would not have been a plantation because it gave power to the mill.
25:25Here is the little bridge.
25:27So, on one side would be the wheelhouse, the mill, and the factory.
25:34The bridge, the river, and the wheelhouse are still here today.
25:41I'm meeting O'Shane Robinson from the Jamaica National Heritage Trust to find out what life was like
25:48for those who toiled to process the sugar that was fueling the empire.
25:55O'Shane, an enormous water peel.
25:57And I suppose this was at the very heart of the sugar manufacturing process.
26:01Yes, it's within these structures that the sugarcane would have been crushed so that the juice can be
26:07extracted and then transported over across the river.
26:10Over that rather fine bridge?
26:12Yes.
26:13Where would the mill actually have been? Where would the turning pieces have been?
26:16The mill is on the other side.
26:19The mill is where the cane is crushed.
26:22So, in here, you would have found the rollers, would you?
26:24Yes, the rollers would have been like this, and the sugarcane would have been fed through it.
26:31The juice would have then been extracted.
26:33Are we talking about a crowd of enslaved people in here?
26:35Yes. Now imagine operating for close to 24 hours with little to no break, and you're there just
26:41pushing sugarcane, pushing sugarcane to get all the juice out of the cane. And then one of your
26:47fingers accidentally get caught in the rollers. It would then pull you in. And as it pulled you in,
26:52there would have been somebody on standby that would have a machete to sever your hand from your body,
26:58so that the production would not stop. Because production was valued more than the lives of the slaves.
27:21Here at Good Hope, I begin to grasp the scale of what was required to meet the growing taste for
27:28sugar in Britain, and the human cost. In 1662, seven years after Jamaica had been conquered by the British,
27:37there were 554 enslaved people in the colony. Just over a century later, there were more than 400
27:46times that number. More than 200,000 people in this island alone.
27:57The success of the British Empire required the mass movement of peoples across the oceans.
28:05Starting in 1662, the British transported three and a half million men and women from Africa
28:13across the Atlantic to be sold into slavery. Had I looked down on one of the harbors on this coastline
28:22in the early 19th century, I might have seen up to 20 vessels at any one time, decanting their cargo
28:29of Africans who had crossed the Atlantic in chains and loading sugar and rum bound for Britain and its empire.
28:38That extensive colonial trade, based on slavery, was protected by Britain's extraordinary asset,
28:47the most powerful fleet in the world.
28:58Slavery has been practised throughout human history. Africans have enslaved other Africans.
29:05North African barbary pirates put white Christians into bondage.
29:10Arab traders seized vast numbers of Africans and shipped them eastwards.
29:15The European abduction and transport of Africans across the Atlantic was truly massive and systemic,
29:23and in that sense, exceptional.
29:27But increasingly, voices were raised against slavery.
29:32The transport and trade of enslaved people would be abolished throughout the British Empire in 1807.
29:41But slavery itself remained legal.
29:45There were sporadic rebellions in Jamaica and elsewhere.
29:52Reprisals were swift and brutal.
30:00In the run-up to Christmas 1831, a rumour circulated that the king had at last decided to set free
30:07the enslaved people of his empire. And when that turned out not to be true, all hell broke loose here.
30:14It would be the most widespread rebellion in Caribbean slave history.
30:21Tens of thousands of enslaved people set fire to plantations.
30:28White authority and the empire's livelihood were under attack.
30:39The uprising was blamed on the Baptist Church of Jamaica, founded by former enslaved Africans.
30:56Tens of thousands of enslaved people set fire to plantations.
30:57Nearly 200 years ago, there was a small chapel where this modern church now stands.
31:04Tens of thousands of people set fire to plantations.
31:07Lay preacher Leon Jackson can tell me about how its Baptist minister, William Nibb,
31:14led a rebellion against the system of slavery on which the empire was built.
31:20William Nibb described slavery as one of the worst things that could ever happen to human.
31:26William Nibb came to Jamaica as a missionary at the age of 21.
31:32So he wrote to his mother back in England that he was going to work towards ensuring that slavery
31:38would no longer exist.
31:40And the enslaved people, how did they feel towards William Nibb?
31:44First, they weren't trusting of William Nibb, because along comes a white man looking like
31:51the slave owner and trying to befriend them. They thought it was a trick, but William Nibb was tenacious.
31:57And soon, they began to trust him. And the trust was aided by the fact that the slave
32:03owners didn't like William Nibb.
32:05You think this rebellion had an impact on parliament in London?
32:10Yes, it did. It forced them to move closer towards emancipation.
32:13It gave them the feeling that, yes, if we don't give emancipation now,
32:19something worse than a rebellion is likely to happen.
32:23In Britain, the campaign against enslavement was led by an evangelical Anglican, William Wilberforce,
32:31and taken up by others. Slavery was finally outlawed throughout the British Empire
32:39by the Abolition Act of 1833.
32:43On that night, when the slaves were going to be freed, right here in this church, the slaves made a
32:53make-believe coffin. In it, they put the shackles, the handcuffs, the whips, and everything. As it got
33:01closer to twelve o'clock, all the two thousand slaves gathered in and around this church. And they
33:09started at about ten minutes to twelve. The monster is dying. The monster is dying. The monster is dying.
33:20And when the clock struck twelve, they all got up in unison and shouted,
33:25the monster is dead. And they took up that make-believe coffin. And they buried that coffin.
33:36How parliament was persuaded over decades to abolish first the trade in human beings and then,
33:44in the face of rebellions, slavery itself is an epic. But in the British Empire, it was the slave
33:51owners who were compensated. Whilst the enslaved people, as they achieved their freedom, were left
33:57to fend for themselves on an island whose economy had depended on their servitude.
34:06It was no longer legal for one human being to own another. But that did little to eliminate the
34:14hardships of the formerly enslaved. In many ways, their lives got worse, not better.
34:24I'm talking to historian Veront Satchel again.
34:30Emancipation was just, well, giving the former slaves freedom in the sense that they were no longer
34:40bondmen or they were no longer chattels. They were now seen as human beings, but they were still
34:46being treated as inferior subjects. What sort of problems had persisted in Jamaica?
34:52With emancipation, the slaves who had this land free for years now found themselves having to pay rent
35:03for the land, as well as rent for their huts. And their wages, quote-unquote, that they were getting,
35:10couldn't cover all of those costs. How would you describe the legacy of this period of slavery
35:16in Jamaica today? Bob Marlison, emancipate yourself from mental slavery. We are still suffering from
35:27that psychological trauma, that lack of confidence in some of us. We were, as children of enslaved people,
35:37were dragged out, ripped away from mother Africa, to the Americas. Suddenly, leaving family, friends,
35:52taking nothing in us but our cultural baggage into a strange land, in a strange culture, strange language,
35:59strange everything. You have lost part of you. I cannot say exactly where I'm from. I just can't trace
36:11that back. I don't know where in Africa, West Africa, yes, but where? Where's my village?
36:24The British Empire uprooted millions of men and women from the continent of Africa and deposited them
36:33on the island of Jamaica. Many of their descendants would mourn their loss of identity. Some would turn
36:42to a revolutionary movement that not only rejected empire, but holds its inheritors, like me, to account.
36:51Do you think the United Kingdom economy benefits from slavery? You've benefited from our labor.
37:12I'm approaching a village called Pinnacle. And with this amazing panorama that's opened up over
37:19Kingston Harbour, the name is absolutely justified.
37:27It's not just a beauty spot. It's a revolutionary hub. One that rejected the British Empire and everything
37:36that it stood for. Before the Second World War, as the British Empire waned, a political movement grew up in
37:45Jamaica
37:46that looked to reach out to black people in Africa and elsewhere to throw off the legacy of enslavement.
37:57The Rastafari movement established a settlement at Pinnacle under the leadership of Leonard Howell,
38:05who is sometimes known as the First Rasta. He argued that black Africans are superior to white Europeans.
38:17To enter Pinnacle, I need permission from the Council of Elders.
38:23Africa love, brother, thank you so much for your welcome here today to Pinnacle.
38:28Would it be possible for me to meet the elders as well, please?
38:32Yes, man. It's possible. Good.
38:35It couldn't work without them, resurrecting the name of Leonard P. Howell.
38:40Yes. And I'm happy to introduce real soldiers.
38:45Brother. For the rights.
38:47My name is Michael.
38:51Brother, my name is Michael.
38:53Bless up, man.
38:54Leonard Howell's uncompromising anti-colonial message made an enemy of the authorities.
39:01And that's Brother Constance.
39:03Brother Constance.
39:04Yes, spirit.
39:04As did the settlement's use of cannabis, which they saw as a sacrament.
39:09Brother, I, I, the priest.
39:10The elders provide a living link to Leonard Howell and his original settlement.
39:16Yes.
39:17Now, I'm unknown Mr. Howell.
39:20Mr. Howell, in 54, he was raided here by the police.
39:26A lot of people got to prison.
39:28And they used to plant a lot of ganja here too.
39:31When you smoke those herbs, it gives you an inspiration.
39:36Police arrest him.
39:38They say they charge him for treason and then send him to prison.
39:42And many people here go to prison and scatter.
39:46I know a lot of them.
39:48He have the inspiration of almighty, you know?
40:00I'm invited to join the elders in a communal gathering overseen by Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia.
40:11Ethiopia was seen as their African promised land.
40:16And its ruler, Haile Selassie, was hailed by the Rastafari as their king and biblical savior, their black messiah.
40:28In finding a new religion, they'd found a new politics too.
40:35Leonard P. Howell said, look, I am looking for a god with new morality and new justice.
40:43Because this existing system, given its support to colonialism, slavery and oppression, they cannot be our liberator.
40:52I'm meeting Brother Louis, a Rastafari authority on Leonard Howell.
40:58His approach to colonialism was not just a simple thing of getting rid of the colonial master.
41:04He went beyond it now and said, look, we need to build our own civilization.
41:10By the wholesale rejection of British colonialism, the Rastafari were declaring independence.
41:17These people were no longer British subjects now, you know? They have a new identity.
41:24The Rastafari looked to Africa to remake their identity.
41:29But thousands of Jamaicans made a different choice, voyaging instead to the very heart of empire.
41:40In June 1948, the Empire Windrush, a former troop carrier, steamed out of Kingston Harbour, bound for Tilbury near London.
41:50On board were several hundred people who intended to settle in the United Kingdom.
41:55The British government was concerned about labour shortages and had granted citizenship to colonial subjects.
42:06The people of the British Empire were on the move again.
42:10But this time, they were headed for Britain.
42:16In the coming years, identities would shift and be remade once more.
42:25We became the black people of Britain.
42:29Meaning, like, America had an African population, but England never really had an African population.
42:36So, Jamaicans, I think, spearheaded that.
42:39Sister Maxine from the Pinnacle Community believes that Jamaica is still being exploited today.
42:46What you're trying to keep is your economic system.
42:49We are.
42:50Yeah, the British are.
42:52Economically, if you look at the wealth of Jamaica, it goes abroad.
42:57You know, the majority of Jamaicans migrate for better economic opportunity.
43:02Where is the growth if your educated masses leave?
43:06Do you think the United Kingdom economy benefits from slavery?
43:10You've benefited from our labour.
43:14Because it's our labour.
43:15You know, we didn't come here because of race.
43:17We came here because we could withstand the sun to grow the sugar.
43:21That was the cocaine of that time.
43:23You know what I mean?
43:24Because the sugar came into the human body and everybody wanted it.
43:28You know what I mean?
43:29How would you express the legacy for you, for Jamaicans, of the British imperial experience?
43:37With such a majority African population here,
43:41the majority of the economics is still held by the plantation class.
43:46Even today?
43:47Even today.
43:51The capture in 1655 of a small island in the Caribbean set the British Empire on a path
43:59that would change the history of continents and the futures of millions,
44:05including the Britain that we call home today.
44:10In the next programme, I'm going to explore how the lure of Africa's wealth
44:15drew the empire into a shameful war.
44:18Surviving more than a hundred years, original barbed wire.
44:22And a century of racial oppression.
44:25The idea of subordinating black people and making them into a vassal class does not start after 1948.
44:33Don't miss all that. New next Friday at nine.
44:36Their shock departure changed the monarchy forever.
44:40We explore all the events from just two troubled years for Harry and Meghan,
44:44brand new at 9.20 tomorrow.
44:46Back to tonight.
44:47And we're reliving Russell Howard's on-stage mishap in When Comedy Shows Go Horribly Wrong.
45:03And we'll see you next time.
45:03You