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recent bookmarks from jerryking"Boss: The Black Experience in Business" Explores the History of African American Entrepreneurship Tuesday, April 23 on PBS2019-04-24T13:01:24+00:00
https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/boss-the-black-experience-in-business-explores-the-history-of-african-american-entrepreneurship-tuesday-april-23-on-pbs-300836640.html
jerrykingAfrican-Americans CEOs documentaries entrepreneur entrepreneurship filmmakers founders historians history inspiration moguls PBS storytelling Berry_Gordy C.J.Walker Kenneth_Frazier Merck Reginald_Lewis Robert_Smith trailblazers Vernon_Jordan Lazard Silicon_Valley vc venture_capital womenhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jerryking/b:312f5969457e/John Steele Gordon: The Little Miracle Spurring Inequality - WSJ2015-03-06T00:49:14+00:00
http://www.wsj.com/articles/john-steele-gordon-the-little-miracle-spurring-inequality-1401751381
jerrykingSilicon_Valley wealth_creation innovation income_distribution income_inequality plutocracies software Thomas_Piketty microprocessors historians history entrepreneurship books Industrial_Revolution Gilded_Age Simon_Schama discontinuities disequilibriums adverse_selection productivity_payoffs dislocations semiconductors CPUs Dutchhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jerryking/b:a0b7b91dae1d/Then – And Now (Notes by A. A. Fenty for Emancipation 2010)2010-08-06T14:15:29+00:00
http://www.stabroeknews.com/2010/stories/08/02/then-%E2%80%93-and-now/
jerryking>seventeenth century<<. They worked on the Cotton, Cocoa, Coffee, Tobacco and Sugar plantations.[i.e. = "commodities"] During the early period the supply of slaves to the territories was very low, as compared to the demand and owing largely to the reluctance of the Dutch West India Company.
ABOLITION, EMANCIPATION – AND “BUSINESS”?
as the economics of production and trade dictated the impending demise of the vast sugar plantocracy in this part of the world, by the 1820’s – with some more conscience, religion and changing values thrown in – pre-emancipation threw up a system of Apprenticeship.
Whilst this attempted economic amelioration did not work for the Plantation—owners, the system saw the remarkable resilience and economic sense of the half-freed, half-bonded slaves between 1834 to 1838. For during those four years, when the Africans, now registered as “apprentices”, actually earned wages for some of the time they were made to remain on their (former) plantations, hundreds of thousands of dollars were accumulated by these “workers”. This money was later to be used to purchase abandoned plantations, or portions thereof. And these Africans, with “full-freedom” -Emancipation in August 1838, established Guyana’s coastal village system thereafter [i.e = " African Guyanese villages"] , on those lands legally purchased from their erstwhile masters.
BUT NOT “BUSINESS – AS USUAL”
Even before knowing I’d be preparing these notes, I had cause to be reading some of our Guyanese >>historians<< for whom I have high regard. That list would include Daly(s), Payne, Benjamin, Mc Gowan, Rose, Granger and Brian Moore, amongst others.
Checking their work on the post—Emancipation condition of the African Guyanese then, I found that they, generally, coincide with respect to their research, findings and conclusions. Using different language, of course. I summarise, therefore the African confrontation with “business” in that post-Emancipation – Colonial period as follows.
The plantation—owners, beset by the economic consequences of Emancipation, were also amazed at the **gumption** [i.e.="chutzpah"] of their former slaves who established the basis of a village movement and demonstrated intentions of large-scale farming and various forms of commerce. Through sheer spite, partly, and the desperate need to retain the freed people as employees, the planters used all their advantages to thwart, undermine and sabotage the African thrust towards business and independence (i.e. = "restrictions" and "hurdles").
Amongst the Planters’ destructive strategies: the importation of Portuguese, Chinese, Indian and other immigrants to work in the sugar fields and to alter, significantly, the demography of the colony; no longer would the African majority, now free, be absolute and there would be rival groups to compete for all the socio-economic space had to offer; the Planters used their intact political/>>legislative power<< to re-demarcate and affect drainage and irrigation with respect to the Africans new property; >>taxes<< and >>licences<< were imposed, harshly, for every commercial activity the former slaves turned to – portering, >>huckstering<<, shop-keeping, boat, mule and donkey-cart transportation; (these taxes were never applicable to Plantation supplies; most consumer items used by the freed man were suddenly also heavily taxed; then as the village economies became depressed, the freed Africans had to contemplate a return to the plantations, Albert, in a new capacity; of course, Portuguese merchants also found credit easier to obtain with no such luxury granted to the Africans.
Little wonder then that these freed “Creoles” and their immediate descendants, having taken advantage of the education offered by the various religious bodies, turned to the professions. They were our first policemen, lawyers and government “civil” servants. But then they were also mere consumers – and customers of the other arrivals — the Chinese, Portuguese and East Indians.
Any Black Business Today?
From 1968 to 1992 the People’s National Congress (>>PNC<<) administrations controlled political and governmental power and tried desperately too to control “the commanding heights” of the national economy. The latter ambition was undermined by both self-destructive policies, in part, and hostile international economic imperatives.
Both perception and reality suggested that the African—Guyanese-dominated governments of the PNC would have created an enabling environment for Black enterprise – even as the leaders preached economic prosperity for all Guyanese.
Granted that more than generous loans from the governments themselves and the National Co-opertive Bank did facilitate certain Black hoteliers, auto dealers, rice farmers, and bankers themselves, James Rose posits that “In spite of official encouragement and support, the growth of a Black business elite did not really materialize. Then came the post-1980 recession and economic conditions which threatened to emasculate the old commercial class extended the range of opportunities for a Black economic take-off. Blacks had survived the long night of economic despair. They had perhaps the most resilient of all **ethnic psyches**. They were ‘movers and shakers’ and survivors and were the best equipped to exploit the adversity of the recession and the enabling condition created by Burnham’s import substitution programme. They packed their suitcases with next to little, braved the bureaucratic autocracy of Customs and immigration officialdom, manipulated language barriers and cultural differences and kept a nation which was virtually on the brink of starvation adequately, if expensively, supplied. For nearly a decade, they bore the brunt of a hostile bureaucracy and created the image of a new breed of international small trader.
HE CHALLENGES, THE RESPONSES
Who owns most of the auto spare-parts outlets and hardware stores? How many local black lumber dealers can you name? Can you name six big, successful black pharmacies? Do Afro-Guyanese control more than five(5) big manufacturing concerns in Guyana? Are there any Afro-Guyanese, black-banks? Or travel agencies? (You get the drift? i.e. = "marginalization")
]]>emancipation Afro-Guyanese Guyana economic_development entrepreneurship African_Guyanese_villages black-owned consumer_mindset Dutch_West_India_Company plantations abolition apprenticeships civil_servants civil_service drainage Essequibo hucksters hurdles informal_economy irrigation PNC propertied_class slaveholders small-scale smallholders spitefulness vindictiveness Guyanese history marginalization restrictions plantocracies post-Emancipation indentured_laborers 17th_century Allan_Fenty collective_psyche commodities historians licensing taxes reality-perception_gap legislative_power chutzpahhttps://pinboard.in/u:jerryking/b:88e71a676507/