Your way of life, economic well-being, and culture is
largely based on the institution of slavery…
What do you do when the government emancipates the slave labor
force? The British West Indies extended
slavery through apprenticeship and legal implementations after passing of the
Abolition Act of 1833.
Crewmen
from the Pinta were the first to see
land in the evening of October 11th, 1492; the caravel was the
“better sailer” of the three ships in Christopher Columbus’s fleet. Rodrigo de Triana, sailor on the Pinta, was the first to see land, yet no
confirmation was made until after midnight. King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain
“invested so liberally in his [Columbus] enterprise, determined to find new,
more expedient trade routes between Europe and India. ]
American journalist and author Charles C. Mann appropriately identifies
Columbus’s voyage not as “the discovery of a New World,” but the creation of a
New World. A world in which cultures already existed and
populations were thriving.
As
with any mark of bravery, once it is successfully accomplished by one, more
will attempt, more will try. This is
true with Columbus’s expedition. Columbus’s
initial voyage lit the fuse of European Exploration throughout the Americas,
creating a Trans-Atlantic trade that would exchange goods, resources, and
people. This transferring of cultures,
plants, disease, animals, and populations from the Americas, Europe, and Africa
will become known as the Columbian Exchange and it will provide nations the
opportunity for settlement in the New World.
With that opportunity for settlement and the movement of British
citizens, also came the extension of “the medieval Mediterranean slave codes
into the Atlantic World.” The British West Indies were founded and
operated on slave labor until its emancipation in 1838.
Emancipation
for the slave in the British West Indies was not dissimilar to the emancipation
of the slave in the United States. Both
saw emancipation put into law. Both saw
a population lost the ability to own slaves.
Yet, one major difference between emancipation of slaves in the United
States and emancipation of slaves in the British West Indies was the economic
impact immediately following emancipation.
The loss of the American Civil War and the loss of slave labor in the
South after the American Civil War brought economic downfall and famine to the
American South. The same is not true
with the emancipation of slaves in the British West Indies, who did not see a
depression or a loss in imports or exports after emancipation. Why?
The British West Indies planters found themselves in a “peculiar”
situation after the abolition of the slave trade, even more so upon
emancipation. The impact of the emancipation of slaves in
the British West Indies is similar to the impact of the Emancipation
Proclamation made by Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War in 1863, slavery
continued to exist, even after prohibited by law. British West Indies planters used
apprenticeship programs to continue a control over their slaves, hence the
absence of an economic recession or a drop in import/export data. The British West Indies eliminated slavery by
law, but continued practices to control former slaves after emancipation,
avoiding an economic downturn.
Opportunistic
and powerful, Great Britain will participate in expanding through colonization
of the New World, particularly in Central and North America. What will become the British West Indies was
a series of islands in the Caribbean, including; Belize, Bermuda, the Cayman
Islands, The Bahamas, Jamaica, Guyana, Trinidad and Tobago, the British Leeward
Islands, and the British Windward Islands.
Sir Thomas Warner and associates claimed the first West Indies
settlement, St. Christopher, for the English in 1624 (Appendix, I). St. Christopher would be referred to as the
“Mother Colony” by the British. These islands will become a major recipient
of the goods traded from Africa,
human slaves. For over a century the
slave culture will be “deeply embedded” throughout the British West Indies. This culture will remain after emancipation
in 1838.
Native
Americans already living in the New World preferred death over a denial of liberty,
thus the importation of African slaves began.
African slaves were imported into the New World as raw materials and
manufactured goods were exported from Europe and the Americas. Portugal was first to use the slave trade.
Great
Britain also became an active participant in the slave trade. By the 1600’s slavery was “planted on an extensive
scale in the West Indies.” The British actively participated in
kidnapping from the West African coast to acquire slave labor. The use of bound labor, slavery, to operate
plantations in the British West Indies was considered more valuable, more productive
in the New World than in the Old.
Amos
K. Fiske, a writer for the New York Times in his lifetime, cited the prices of
sugar in Europe in conjunction with the cheap production of sugar in the
British West Indies as an “extremely profitable business”: a business in which
slaver labor was “considered necessary.” The sugar plantations in the British West
Indies became a crucial negotiation point during the Seven Years’ War (French
and Indian War), as approximately 90% of the world’s sugar came from the
islands in the Caribbean. British West
Indies planters were to grow sugar for Great Britain and Ireland. At the turn of the 19th century,
sugar was a profitable and demanded resource.
From 1796 through 1800, the market for sugar never ran out of
purchasers; sugar was a cash crop in high demand. At this time, no one thought of using the
labor of African slaves other than as slave labor.
The
process of cultivating and manufacturing sugar and goods derived from sugar was
a strenuous and dangerous task. Thomas
Fleming, an award-winning American historian describes the harvesting of sugar
in the British West Indies as a task that “required unremitting, exhausting
toil in a climate that was thick with diseases such as malaria and yellow
fever.” To the typical Englishmen and planters of
the British West Indies, manual labor was considered an “undignified”
undertaking; this would be a continued mentality after emancipation. Slave labor, especially in the British West
Indies was grueling and dangerous. The
death rate of slaves in the British West Indies was higher than the birthrate. Slave labor
Regardless
of the increased death rate among the slave labor force, slaves vastly
outnumbered the white population in the British West Indies. In the Caribbean, slaves outnumbered whites
10:1. Antigua had a 15:1 ratio, while in
Jamaica, a 30:1 ratio existed. Fear of slave uprising was not unfamiliar. Fleming’s book, A Disease in the Public Mind: A New Understanding of Why We Fought the
Civil War argues that it was the extension of this fear from the British
West Indies that sparked the Civil War through radical abolitionist
mentalities, such as John Brown.
The
treatment of slaves on plantations is a debated topic among historians. In 1838, slavery ended in the British West
Indies, the same year that photography was developed, therefore a pictorial
history of slavery is not accessible, only the written history. Henry Nelson Coleridge, suffering from
illness, joined his uncle, the Bishop of Barbados to the British West Indies in
1825. He documented this trip, where he spent six
months. He characterizes the treatment
of slaves over
twelve British colonies in the Caribbean. He explains the the “state of society in the
West Indies is of that mingled and peculiar character… difficult for anyone to
conceive,” arguing that “there is much to praise and much to condemn” about the
goings on in the West Indies. Coleridge states that “it is a certain truth,
that the slaves in general do labor much less, do eat and drink much more; have much more ready money, dress much more
gaily, and are treated with more kindness and attention when sick than
nine-tenths of all people of Great Britain under the condition of tradesmen.” Further, he claims that slaves were treated
so well and had comforts that they would “forego freedom rather than be
deprived of them [comforts].” Coleridge paints an interesting picture of
the treatment of slaves in general. This
could be because of his uncle’s position, or a true change in the treatment of
slaves in the British West Indies.
Coleridge took his trip in 1825; a year after the British West Indies
passed laws that would implement more humane treatment of the slaves. In 1824, prohibition of the use of whip or
“physical force” to coerce work effort was implemented throughout the British West
Indies.
Richard
K. Fleischman, accounting scholar at John Carroll University, David Oldroyd,
Australian geologist, and Thomas Tyson, Certified Management Accountant,
compare the plantation systems of the British West Indies and the United States
at the end of their slavery eras. The
British West Indies plantation would, on average, be twice as large as the
American plantation in regards to acreage and the number of slave laborers on
the plantation. This was due to the size
of the sugar mills and the hands needed to efficiently operate those
mills. In the British West Indies,
slaves
showed higher skill. Again, this
is needed due to the necessity of skill in operating the sugar mills; using the
mills to convert the crop into rum, sugar, molasses, etc.
In general, “life and labour for the majority
of slaves” was considerably more easy than in the American South than in the
British West Indies.
Regardless
of the treatment of slaves on a sugar plantation in the British West Indies,
sugar crop exports saw a “gradual diminution” in the beginning of the 19th
century. In 1806, planters saw less than half of the
sugar crop exported compared to 1802. The following year, the slave trade would be
abolished, furthering the strain on the British West Indies planter who had to
struggle with high death rates and low birth rates of the slave labor force. John Robley, a governor of Trinidad and
Tobago, in a public letter to planters noticed the coming grim consequence of
the abolishment of the slave trade. He
warned that “you [planters] are now without hope of ever keeping up the numbers
of the Negroes upon your estate but by natural increase, “and prophesized that
no produce can make up the expense of a lowered strength of their [planters]
slave force. Advocates for the continuation of the slave
trade made last, desperate, arguments to stick with the status quo. They argued theory and logic of consistency
by claiming that an end to the slave trade was merely “experiment… and theory,
contradicted too by all that we know from fact and experience.” He continued with the understood fact and
experience that “we are not now in the
case of debating whether our colonies shall or shall not be cultivated by
slaves from Africa; they are and ever have been so cultivated; and we know at
least that their prosperity has been hitherto dependent upon… the… imported
population.” This argument would be used during debates
for emancipation.
After
the abolition of the slave trade in 1807, debate heated up in British
Parliament on the emancipation of all slaves.
Supporters of the abolitionist movement cited economic benefits to the
emancipation of slavery, while defenders of the institution of slavery leaned
on the economic necessity and culture that was common ground for centuries in
the British West Indies. The debates
included the economic impact of the elimination of slavery. Proponents of emancipation cited financial
responsibilities of estate owners as a reason for emancipation. A slave owner would need to purchase food,
clothes, medicine, beddings, and utensils for the household on top of hiring
white watchers, whips, and “bilboes” for their slave force. With emancipation, they would need only to
pay for labor, which Robley assessed at one dollar per day as “the usual rate
of hire.” In
agreement with the arguments supporting emancipation, British historian James
Anderson argued that there was evidence to suggest that slavery “in no case”
can prove to be a benefit to those employing “bond-men” in regards to profit. Advocates of slavery contested that the
“value of a slave was greater, especially in the British West Indies, than any
non-slave laborer in the colonial zone.” To the planters and slave owners of the West
Indies, slavery was an “economic necessity” as well as a means to salvage “savage
souls.”
By
1824, and more intensely following that year, the British government “took a
very active interest… in slavery” throughout the British West Indies. Professor of History Emeritus at the
University of York, James Walvin argues that this increased attention by
British Parliament in the issue of slavery in the British West Indies was due
to an absence of the slave tradition and slavery’s standing in British Law at
the time. With this increase in British oversight, more
restrictions on the treatment of slaves took place. In 1831, an “order in council” enforced
“mutual obligations of slaves and masters” concerning work expectations,
allotment of foods, medical care, and clothing.During
debates in the British House of Commons, the concern for the future of the
British West Indies post-emancipation was analyzed. The issue was centered on whether the
“colonial slave labor forces already in place” was efficient for future and
present needs for the plantations and their staple production.
Coleridge,
during his visit to the British West Indies, eloquently predicted the fate of
slavery; saying that “the untraveled Englishmen… knows the strict definition of
slavery…” but does not know, or understand that slavery has never permanently
existed in the world. In British Parliament, the debate for
emancipation surged as did slave revolts in the early 19th century; the
same revolts that Fleming accuses of sparking radical abolitionism in the
United States. Abolitionists considered
and “validated slave rebels” as an instrument in advancing their campaign. As predicted by Coleridge, in 1833, slavery
would no longer exist, by law, in the British West Indies.
Unlike the United States, the British West
Indies implemented emancipation without fighting a full-fledged war. Instead of a slow, gradual emancipation of
the slaves in the British West Indies, In 1833 British Parliament passed the Abolition
Act. This movement away from gradual
emancipation shifted in 1830 and abolitionists used the “decision of slaves in
Jamaica” to rise as a reinforcement to immediate emancipation.
The
British West Indies after emancipation did not differ drastically from years
prior to the 1833 Abolition Act. O.
Nigel Bolland, Sociology professor at Colgate University, goes as far to call
it “erroneous to imply an evolutionary development in labor systems” after
1838’s emancipation. The production of sugar remained
consisted. Besides Jamaica, major sugar
plantations did not see a drop in exports.
This was due to the aspects of the Abolition Act that created an
environment in which slave owners still held control over their now former
slaves. The 1833 Abolition Act included
provisions for apprenticeship as well as rules for behavior, punishments,
effort, and pay. In general, the Abolition Act of 1833 was a
“comprehensive framework” with the goal of transitioning the British West
Indies from slave to wage labor.
The
actual emancipation date for slaves in the British West Indies was August 1,
1834, at which time all slaveholders who wanted their share of the £20 million
fund would have a set of ordinances that detail “work rules and punishment.” Initially, as evidenced in the Jamaican House
of Assembly, emancipation was to be an experiment, one in which the
“contemporaries did not know how it was going to turn out.”
Although
slavery was abolished in the British West Indies, traditions remained the same. Hence, no economic depression or windfall
occurred, as seen in the American South after the Civil War. The “elimination of racial discrimination…
involves painful adjustments,” adjustments that were not made immediately after
emancipation. As in the American South, newly freed slaves
did not enjoy the same freedoms as Englishmen in the British West Indies,
particularly on the plantation in which they were under bonded labor. The system of the plantation also did not
change under the apprenticeship program.
The chain of command remained the same; the estate owner was the top of
this chain, followed by the estate manager, overseers, headmen, and finally drivers. This chain of command and a replication of
similar black to white ratios of the British West Indies is evidence into the
1900’s. In a 1904 photo, a white
overseer stands with twelve black laborers in the field (Appendix II). The photo, if left undated, could be assessed
as a slave labor force in the fields of a plantation in the British West Indies
prior to emancipation.
To continue to maintain the living
conditions of the planter-class, other implementations took place after
emancipation. Fleischman et al.,
emphasize the use of special magistrates along with local justices that were
“empowered to administer corporal punishments for particular (and repeated)
violations.” These violations could range from breaking
work rules or inappropriate social behaviors, but most importantly vagrancy.
As
the black codes controlled black labor in the South in North America after the
Civil War, the British West Indies used other devices to offset their
limitations on corporal punishment under the 1833 Abolition Act. Under the apprenticeship system, the
implementations of “prison reform, non-corporal treadmills, religious
instruction, and detailed work rules and work standards” were implemented in an
attempt to continue to control newly freed laborers. Difficulty to own land caused many ex-slaves
to continue their same work on the same plantations that they served under
bondage. For example, a newly freed slave in British
Guiana who entered the apprenticeship program would be doing the exact same labor
as they did prior to emancipation. Only
when that slave accumulated over 45 hours of work for the week would a
plantation owner be required to pay wages to the worker. This was not as aspect of emancipation that
the newly freed slaves took without conflict.
Bolland points out that strikes broke out, almost always due to
objections on the wage rates. These
strikes would sometimes turn violent.
The
apprenticeship system allowed for estate owners to continue their power over
the laborers on the plantation. Runaways
under apprenticeship “could be punished with imprisonment” while negligence or
disobedience could lead to a correction of the malfeasance with force. Inflicting pain on ex-slaves was also an
accepted penalty for “shirking work. In general, the apprenticeship system was an
aspect of the precedents of British law.
The British law in this case “legitimized the continued ‘enslavement’ of
plantation workers in the West Indies after emancipation” through an
alternative form of “social control” and “binding” that was typically accepted
prior to emancipation.
British
Parliament was interested in securing the benefits from the British West
Indies. English Law reflects this as it
held even the freeborn English, in manual labor, as not free due to the power
instilled to the employers and local magistrates. Basically, the system of slavery ended by
name only in 1838, yet the institution itself continued. This is interesting as the culture of slavery
was so imbedded into the population of the British West Indies and the economic
success of the plantation system.
Drescher ironically suggests that “penal restrictions on free labor
continued to apply and to be fully enforced in precisely that area of the Anglo-American
world where the abolitionist movement first developed a popular mass base.”
Although
the British West Indies implemented an apprenticeship system that replicated
slavery, some reports show that, post-emancipation, laborers were treated more
humanely, particularly the experience of Joseph John Gurney. An abolitionist and evangelical Minister of
the Religious Society of Friends, Gurney assessed the emancipated as “working
well on the estates of their old masters.” Gurney explained that this was not a rarity
among the British West Indies. While in
Jamaica, he described the treatment of Negroes in the same light as on other
islands; fair, kind, and wise. Gurney also offers a perspective of the freed
slaves that were able to find their own land after emancipation, instead of
working on their old masters’ estates.
He describes them as not being idle; instead they work “busily”
cultivating their land, fishing, and attempting to benefit their own cause and
community. In general Gurney felt that more of the black
people were “operative under freedom than was the case under slavery.” This is contradictory to most evidence on the
treatment of slaves or post-emancipation laborers; however the British West
Indies began implementing provisions on the treatment of slaves beginning in
the 1920’s, almost two decades prior to emancipation. It is not unreasonable to assume that there
were instances in which laborers were treated fairly.
Basically,
the apprenticeship system, additional attention to the British West Indies by
British Parliament, English Law, and a devotion and attachment to the culture
led to a continuation to slavery in an attempt to continue the economic success
of the British West Indies.
Apprenticeship did not
create a perfect solution for the slaves or
planters; slaves wanted complete freedom and planters wanted authority and a
sustaining of plantation economics.
These implementations saw success at
different degrees in control of the former slaves who were now in the labor
force.
Yet, the British West Indies did not see the
immediate economic effects that the American South would see after the
elimination of the institution of slavery.
Workers on Plantation Walton Hall in British Guiana wrote a petition to
Captain J.A. Allen, a Stipendiary Magistrate in which they adequately sum up
their situation after the elimination of slavery. “During our slavery we was clothed, ration,
and seported [sic] in all manner of respects.
Now we are free men (free indeed), we are to work for nothing. Then we might actually say, we become slaves
again.”
Tyson
et al. explain that the economics was the reasoning for apprenticeship and
other restrictions put on the British West Indies slaves after their
emancipation. Apprenticeship assisted in
maintaining “production in the short-term by coercion, “as well as controlling
labor costs and developing a labor class of waged workers through
“indoctrination” for the long-term.
Antigua became the exception to the
general emancipation plan of the British West Indies, as analyzed by William
Grant Sewell in 1860. He identifies
Antigua as one of the “favored” islands in British West India and despite her
small size, was the lead in political and social reform for larger, more
economically advanced islands. Antigua did not approach emancipation with
apprenticeship or strict labor laws to prepare newly freed slaves for their new
freedom. Instead, immediate emancipation
took place; an “at once… substitution of free labor for slave labor.” Their argument for this course of action was
one of learning. The leaders of Antigua
knew “much had to be learnt,” that the successes and failures of this new
system “could only be determined by time and experience,” and they choose to
get a head start on the change.
The objective of maintaining
economic stability while abolishing slavery from the British West Indies was
done through an extension of slavery.
The framework of apprenticeship was basically a substitution for
slavery. Slavery was culturally rooted
in the British West Indies with hundreds of years’ worth of participation in
the slave trade. Although resistance to
emancipation existed, the halt of the slave trade in 1807 combined with the
diminution of sugar consumption in Great Britain led to the passing of the
Abolition Act of 1833. Economic
stability only remained in the British West Indies after emancipation because
slavery, by definition, was not abolished, rather given another name,
apprenticeship.
Apprenticeship extended slavery in
the British West Indies. This program
was a means to continue economic strength, the production of sugar, and to
protect the planter class of the British Empire. The belief that former slaves would work only
with extensive networks of regulations, rules, and “paternalistic persuasion…”
created a post-emancipation environment that mimicked the same slave lifestyle
for many freed slaves. As slaveholders held control over their owned
slaves, so did the estate owners after emancipation. After emancipation, it was clear that to
continue to thrive economically, the British West Indies were willing to
continue a regulation of behavior, labor, and social control over their
apprentices.
Upon the discovery of the New World
and the explosion of European exploration across the Atlantic, the slave trade
was engrained into many cultures. The
British West Indies were no exception to this reality and their cultivating,
harvesting, and exporting of sugar and other crops provided wealth to the
British Empire. As the debate for
emancipation came to the forefront, so too did the ways in which to continue a
beneficial lifestyle without slavery.
The South lost the American Civil War and their slaves. What followed was economic depression as well
as social and cultural hindrances. This
was not seen in the British West Indies.
The British West Indies avoided a similar fate, because of their
extension of social, economic, and behavioral control of their slave population
after emancipation. The production of
goods did not drop because the labor system changed only by name. Slavery, as we understand the term, existed
for many years after emancipation in the British West Indies.
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