Today I will write about a book which I’d wanted to read for quite a few years. I finally did it last year, so it’s time for a quick review. And it’s “Lost White Tribes” I’m talking about today, by Riccardo Orizio. My copy is in English, but this book has also been translated into Polish (if you prefer) and you can easily buy a copy online. However, I have no idea how good the translation is. And you can find my review in Polish here.
As you can imagine, one of these missing white tribes are the Poles. They are, of course, the descendants of Polish legionnaires who, on Napoleon’s orders, came to Haiti (then Saint-Domingue) in 1802-03 to help suppress the anti-French uprising of black people. The book also describes five other “white tribes” scattered around the world. I will briefly mention each chapter, and soon I will write a separate post about our legionnaires in Haiti.
My copy was published in 2001 by The Free Press and has less than 290 pages. The font is quite large and you can read the text without much effort. Only in the central part of the book we can find four pages with black and white photographs taken by the author.
“Lost White Tribes” is not a history book, it is a reportage, although in each chapter the author gives a historical background. When it comes to Polish legionnaires, Polish readers have a large selection of strictly historical works, I will present a detailed bibliography in the next post. Those unable to understand Polish have a quite limited choice, I’m afraid.
First chapter takes us to Sri Lanka (formerly called Ceylon), where we learn the history of the descendants of Dutch colonists (the Dutch ruled the coast of Ceylon in 1640-1796), known as the Dutch Burghers. The Burghers are a small ethnic group (over 30,000 people), being a mixture of Portuguese colonists (they were in Ceylon before the Dutch), Dutch, British (the British took Ceylon from the Dutch) and indigenous people (mainly Sinhalese). These are people who adopted English language from the British and did not emigrate from Sri Lanka after it gained independence in 1948.
Orizio, in addition to conversations with living Burghers, briefly describes their history and reveals to the reader how diverse this world is. English-speaking descendants of Dutch colonists, using words in archaic Portuguese – they used to be an elite, now they are all equal. We know how twisted fates of many Poles over the centuries were, but Poles do not have a monopoly on such stories. The author describes, for example, how the Burghers fought in the Boer wars, but on the side of the English and having contact with Boers, they noticed that they spoke a language that sounded strangely familiar to Ceylon Burghers, and that, for example, the recipes for Christmas cakes were practically the same…
From Sri Lanka, the author takes us to Jamaica, but not in search of good rum or traces of Bob Marley – he reveals the history of several hundred German settlers who found themselves in Jamaica in 1834. Where did they come from?
When they were enrolled in the Duchy of Braunschweig, they were probably told they were going to America. However, they landed in Jamaica, where most of them were dispersed across the plantations, with the exception of a group of about 300 who settled in Seaford Town (called German Town), in the western part of Jamaica. Some of them were able to buy a new ticket and a few years later they departed for America. Others emigrated later, but the descendants of the Brunswick settlers still live there.
In the third chapter, we move to Brazil, where Orizio reveals to us the history of the descendants of the Confederates. No, not the Bar Confederates, but those of the American South 😉 They came to Brazil in 1865-85 because they didn’t want to live in a country ruled by the hated Yankees. They mainly settled in the so-called Interior Paulista – in the interior of the Sao Paulo state, because these areas reminded them of the states of Georgia, South Carolina and Mississippi. It is not known exactly how many settlers from America came to Brazil, probably between 10,000 and 20,000. At least six separate communities have been founded in different parts of Brazil. To this day, many Confederate descendants are proud of their origins, many speak English, the Confederate flag is an often visible symbol, and many have no love for the people from the North of the United States.
The fourth chapter is about our compatriots in Haiti. I won’t go into details here because, as I mentioned above, I am going to start writing a post about Poles in Haiti and I hope to finish it soon. Long story short: in 1802-03 two half-brigades arrived in Haiti, consisting of Poles, former soldiers of the Polish Legions and the Danube Legion – a total of slightly over 5,000 Polish soldiers. Tropical diseases and fighting the insurgents decimated Polish troops. A few hundred Poles joined the insurgents and those who survived settled in Haiti, in Casales and other places. Orizio visited their descendants, who are called les polonaises and often have lighter skin tones and blue eyes. Although they have never been to Poland and don’t speak Polish, they consider La Pologne a dream country – almost a paradise… We can also read some very interesting facts about that community, e.g. about the theory that John Paul II was in fact a Voodoo priest or about a saying used there in Creole: M-ap fe Krako – I do like in Krakow, meaning properly 🙂 It’s worth borrowing or buying the book, if only because of this chapter!
The fifth chapter is about Namibia and the history of the Basters – a small ethnic group descended from Dutch settlers and indigenous women (Khoikhoi). Orizio visited Rehoboth, their capital in Namibia. In the second half of the nineteenth century, fleeing racist treatment and pressure from white settlers, they moved from Cape Colony to Namibia and even Angola. Throughout all these years, the Basters tried to maintain their autonomy. They are very religious Calvinists, speak Afrikaans and English, and have the same idealized image of the Netherlands as, for example, the Haitian Poles of Poland. It is an interesting story of a small group (now less than 40,000 people) who struggled hard for decades for the right to live in peace.
In the final chapter, Orizio takes us back to the Caribbean, to the island of Guadeloupe, which is an overseas department of France, and tells the story of Blancs Matignon, a mysterious ethnic group that inhabits the interior of the island, away from others. No one knows exactly why, at the beginning of the 19th century, a group of about 400 French colonists abandoned their coastal properties and moved with their slaves deep into the island. Were they running away from something? Did they want to try something new?
The group believes they come from the aristocratic Matignon family of Normandy and that their ancestors must have fled France during the French Revolution. According to their version, they are related to the Bourbons and Grimaldi families. They try to marry among themselves or possibly with people from the islet of Saint-Barthélemy, where the inhabitants are of French and Swedish origin. Some of them, of course, especially now, are marrying black people of Guadeloupe, and their descendants are already becoming Creoles, mulattoes. They had cultivated sugar cane before, but with plots of land being divided among more children, there has been a fragmentation and now most of the Blancs Matignons live on the brink of poverty.
What a journey through time and continents! I recommend this book to anyone interested in history/anthropology. I suspect that this book would be in the top 10-15 of my favourite books if I ever had to compile such a ranking. When it comes to the customs and cuisines of different countries/regions, I have always been interested in how they came about. What group/nationality/religion influenced this or that. That’s why I enjoyed Orizio’s book so much. I hope you will read it, and soon an entry about Polish legionnaires in Haiti is coming.
Polish traces around the world 
Apparently allpoles have a right to a Haitian passport?
In the 1805 constitution Poles and Germans were the only white people who were allowed to settle down and own land. Doubt the thing about Poles having a right to Haitian passport