The British West Indian Legislatures in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries: An Historiographical

Introduction

M I C H A E L W A T S O N University of Western Ontario

Twentieth-century historiographical notions about the West Indan sugar islands’ legislatures in the centuries preceding the American Revolution have been the product of two dfferent historical perspectives.’ The first group of studies have nearly aU been produced by British or Commonwealth historians concerned with how the West Indian colonies functioned within the British empire in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Working from a metropolitan and imperial point of view, these scholars characteristically describe specific governmental or administrative problems in the sugar islands to elucidate a wider perspective on the internal workings of empire. Although producing valuable constitutional and political insights, this historiography has been limited by its inability to comprehend and incorporate the growing scholarship on West Indian society produced by the American historians who dominate the second collection of writings about the sugar islands. These writers study the West Indan islands, generally considered ‘social failures’, to learn about the development of the more successful mainland colonies. Their approach, which reflects teleological notions about the successful American Revolution, has the drawback ofnot incorporating a convincing political account of the sugar islands into the analysis.

The problem facing students and scholars in this field today is one of solitude. Both historical schools raise interesting and instructive points concerning the political evolution of island life, but trahtionally there has been little notice taken of each other’s views or concerns. For some years the primary challenge for scholars interested in the history of the sugar islands’ legislatures has been to

For the purposes of this discussion, the British West Indian sugar colonies consist of Jamaica, Barbados and the four Leeward Islands of St Christopher’s, Nevis, Montserrat and Antigua. After the Peace of Pans these colonies were augmented by the Ceded Islands, Dominica, Grenada, St Vincent and Tobago. The Bahamas and Bermuda, the other British Atlantic island colonies, had little in common with the sugar islands economically and socially and their political and constitutional development will not be considered here.

Although this article features twentieth-century scholarly works, histories published in the eigh- teenth and nineteenth centuries often contain important insights about political and constitutional developments in the sugar islands. Commentators such as E. Long, History ofJamaica (3 vols., 1774); B. Edwards, The History Civil and Commercial ofthe British Colonies in the West Indies (2nd edn., 3 vols., 1801); or J. Poyer, The History of Barbados, (1808) are valuable once their perspectives are understood. For critical appreciations of these, and other sources, see E. Goveia, A Study in the Historiography ofthe British West Indies to the End Offhe Nineteenth Century (Mexico, 1956).

’

90 Michael Watson

integrate the insights and questions which inform both approaches to West Indian history. In doing so historians will derive a fuller appreciation of how the constitutional and political development of these colonies contributes to a better understanding of the early modem British empire. During the essay that follows, therefore, signposts will be established in the search for this new synthesis.

English settlers first occupied Barbados and the Leeward Islands in the 1620s and 1630s. Charles I granted most of these ‘Caribee Islands’ by charter to the Earl of Carlisle in 1627 and the authority for the young colonies’ first legislative bodies was found in the terms of his charter whereby the proprietor was com- manded to make laws only with the advice and consent of an island’s freeholdex2 Formal legislatures came into existence some time later; the first sittings of an appointed council and elected assembly occurred in 1639 in Barbados, 1642 in St Christopher’s, and 1644 in Antigua, followed by Montserrat and Nevis in 1654 and 1658 respectively. Jamaica, conquered &om the Spanish in 1655, was soon granted its own civil government, and its legislature was sitting by 1663. Legislatures in the sugar islands conformed to the basic pattern found in other British American colonies in the seventeenth century, being made up of a governor selected by the Crown, a council of prominent citizens, appointed in London, although usually controlled by the governor, and an assembly composed of two represen- tatives &om each parish, elected by white freeholders.

The island legislatures and imperial authority were in confhct as early as the Civil War. The first decade of sugar cultivation had left Barbados decidedly richer and made its royalist dominated assembly more pugnacious. The assembly’s first act of defiance was declining to pay rents to the proprietor in 1643. In 1651 it refused demands from England to recognize the Commonwealth’s authority and passed an act declaring its independence. Barbadians claimed that because they were not represented in Parliament their rights as Enghshmen were being denied by parliamentary claims of legislative sovereignty over the colonies. The island’s inhabitants remained defiant until the appearance of a parliamentary fleet, but managed to negotiate terms of capitulation which they felt protected their legislative privilege^.^ Robert Schuyler points out in Parliament and the British Empire, Some Constitutional Controversies Concerning Imperial Legislative Jurisdiction the similarity of the Barbadian rhetoric to that used by the patriots in the mainland colonies 125 years later, even including calls for representation in the Enghsh Parliament. An important difference, though, was that West Indians still considered themselves, at this time, and for some time after, ‘as extensions ofEngland, rather than extended dependencies’, and as such expected to have their interests ~onsidered.~

C. M. Andrew, The Colonial Petiod ofAmerican History, (4 vols., New Haven, 1934-1938), XI, 244-250. For more about this period see J. Wtlliamson, The Caribbee Islands Under the Proprietary Patents (Oxford, 1926).

For Barbados during the Civil War see N. D. Davis, 172e Cavalim and Roundheads of Barbados, 1650-1 652; Wi th Some Amount ofthe Early History of Barbados (Georgetown, 1887); V. T. Harlow, A History ofRarbados, 1625-1685 (Oxford, 1926) and J. H. Bennett, ‘The Enghsh Caribbees in the Period of the Civil War, 1642-1646’, William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., XXIV (1967). 359-377.

R. L. Schuyler, Parliament and the British Empire, Some Constitutional Controversies Concerning Imperial Legislative_lutisdiction (New York, 1929), Chapter 3.

’

An Historiographical Introduction 91

The assertiveness exhibited by the new legislatures in Barbados and the other islands was striking. Expansive representatives soon seized upon the obvious, if misleading, analogy to the English constitutional arrangement of Crown, Lords and Commons to claim privileges for their particular assembly equivalent to the English House of Commons. Typically for British American legislatures, govern- ment in the sugar islands became a contest between the governor, representing the Crown and imperial interests, but also the colony’s chief administrative officer, and an assembly dominated by local concerns. Assembly members soon agitated for separate sittings and for the sole power to initiate legislation and control money bills.5 H. H. Wrong makes clear that the circumstances surrounding their creation made it impossible for the British American colonial executives and assemblies to have evolved into the English parliamentary model of responsible Cabinet officers. Instead these institutions remained locked in a seventeenth century mode which ensured contentious government. The assembly exerted pressure on the executive by refusing to grant supplies, and money bills seldom exceeded one year in duration, making certain the governor’s continued need and the assembly’s continued existence. Governors could retaliate only by proroguing or dissolving the assembly-actions which guaranteed conflict.6

It was this conflict between the colonial governors and the assemblies which attracted the attention of imperially minded British historians. These historians, nearly all of pre-World War I1 vintage, shared a common assumption that commercial factors, complicated by military considerations, were the motivating force behind this empire. As the sugar islands were the British empire’s most valued possessions in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, these colonies provided the most suitable forum for examining imperial strategies and structures. Controlling the assemblies was a standard preoccupation of the restored Stuarts, and the sugar islands were the sounding board for this initiative. Agnes Whitson points out that for twenty years after the Restoration all the royal colonies, except Virginia, were located in the West Indies, and it was in regard to these colonies that the Stuarts first evolved the imperial policy they later extended to the colonies at large. A. P. Thornton amplifies Whitson’s assessment of the West Indies’ importance in the imperial constitutional battles fought at this time. For him the sugar colonies were the chosen field for the Stuart centralizing policies which would eventually attempt to reduce the mainland, and especially New England, colonies to a proper ~bed ience .~ The royal governor was the featured character in the studies dealing with these conflicts in the West Indies. The requirements of office made the colonial governor the middle functionary in many of the

M. Kammen, Deputyes and Libertyes: 7 l e Origin $Representative Government in Colonial America (New York, 1969), shows that despite their disparate beginnings, all American legislatures developed in similar ways after their founding. He also stresses how assertive the colonial assemblies were from the start (pp. 62, 67-68). ‘ ’ H. H. Wrong, Government Offhe West Indies (Oxford, 1923). pp. 39-45.

A. M. Whitson, The Constitutional Development $Jamaica, 1660-1729 (Manchester, 1929), and A. P. Thornton, West India Policy Under the Restoration (Oxford, 1956). Thornton finds that the West Indians were wllling to give up some of their economic and political independence in return for the home government providing protection from the Spanish and French.

92 Michael Watson

disputes between the imperial government and provincial interests. The governor’s dificult task of reconciling imperial and local concerns was complicated in the sugar islands by the great many incompetent or dishonest men appointed to the position. Their careen reveal the irony in George Metcalfs assertion that the strengths and weaknesses of the British imperial system as a whole were revealed by how the colonial governors did their jobs.8

Jamaica’s status as a conquered colony made it especially vulnerable to royal intrusions. It was postulated in London that Jamaica’s peculiar constitutional situation entitled its citizens only to those rights which were granted by the Crown. To this end, the Earl of Carlisle was sent to Jamaica in 1678 with instructions to subordinate the Jamaican legislature to the Privy Council. The chosen method was to force the Jamaican assembly to pass a measure known as Poynings’ Law, first used against the Irish Parliament, which would have allowed the legislature to do no more than accept or reject laws previously drafted by the Privy Council. The assembly proved well able to protect itself, and Carlisle’s attempt failed, confirming Jamaica’s legislative independence. Over the next century sporadlc constitutional spats enlivened Jamaica’s political life, a basic contest being the governor’s periodlc efforts to secure an annual revenue to reduce the assembly’s hold on the executive. During that period the Jamaican assembly was arguably the most assertive of the British colonial legislatures.’

Jamaica’s economic weight within the Empire made it a natural vehicle for historians to demonstrate broad imperial themes. The lesser importance of the Leeward Islands meant that the authors interested in their development, Charles Higham, Vincent Harlow and Wiham Laws, could adopt a local perspective in regard to constitutional and political matters. Higham’s work in particular demonstrates the potent internal jealousies which often poisoned relations among the sugar islands. Despite their local perspective, these studies still focused upon the governor’s actions, while the basic imperial topics of commercial control and development, and the problems of defense remained paramount.”

The Leeward Islands were the oddest governmental arrangement in British America. Initially these islands were administered by the governor of Barbados, but the colonists petitioned for their own governor in 1667 on the grounds that:”

it is in the interest of the Council and Assembly of Barbados that these islands be no more settled, for one pound of their sugar wdl be worth as much as two before these islands were lost, and petitioners can prove that several Barbahans have wished these islands sunk

G. Metcalf, Royal Government and Political Confrict inJamaica 1729-1783 (1965), p. 23. For Jamaica’s constitutional history untll 1729 see Whiuon, Development ofJamaica; thereafter

Metca, Conflict inJamaica takes up the story. C. S. S. Higham, The Development of the Leeward klands Under the Restoration (Cambridge,

1921) and ‘The General Assembly of the Leeward Islands’, English Historical Review, XL1 (1926), 190-209.366-388; V. T. Harlow, Christopher Codrington, 1668-1720 (Oxford, 1928); and W. Laws, Administration ofthe Leeward Island, 1699-1 721 (Edinburgh, 1969) and Defamation, Death and Disgrace: Governorship o f f h e Leeward Islands in the Eighteenth Century (Kingston, 1976).

Quoted in A. Burns, History of the British West Indies (2nd edn., New York, 1965). p. 339. Bums is a good primer for the sugar island’s colourfd political history.

’”

An Historiographical Introduction 93

The Leeward Islands’ government was separated from Barbados in 1671, by which time Nevis, Montserrat, St Christopher’s and Antigua each had its own assembly, council, and lieutenant-governor. Each legislature passed its own, often exclusive, laws which complicated trade among the islands and presented an ongoing challenge for the Leeward Island governors. Steps were taken by Governors William Stapleton and Christopher Codrington, both local planters, to form a general assembly of all the islands to discuss both a uniform series of laws for the colony and common defense measures. Although such a body met irregularly during the 40 year period from 1680 to 1720, as Higham recounts, the governors never persuaded the various islands to surrender their legislative independence.12 Despite the clumsiness of this form of government, the idea of separate legislatures within a loose federation was so potent among islanders that after 1763, following the wishes of the inhabitants, the Board of Trade grouped together the ceded islands of Grenada, Tobago, St Vincent and Dominica in a like manner.

The constitutional contest between the executive and assemblies in the sugar islands, and the diminution of the governor’s prerogative power, is recounted by F. G. Spurdle in Early West Indian Government: Showing the Progress of Government in Barbados, Jamaica and the Leeward Islands, 1660-1 783. Despite its detail, Spurdle’s factual account is unfortunately shorn of the political manoeuvering that accom- panied these constitutional changes. However his book hints at some of the opportunities for further study, especially as regards the role of the council in the tripartite legislative arrangement used in the sugar islands. Over a 150 year period in Barbados, there were ten occasions when the president of the council succeeded a deceased governor as chief executive officer of the c010ny.’~ How did this affect local politics or imperial initiatives? O r how inclusive was the island’s electorate? Qualifications for the franchise varied over time and for each island, but generally entailed ownershp of a A10 freehold. The cold local reception to Barbadian Governor Francis Russell’s suggestion in 1694 that the franchise be extended to 4s. freeholds suggests that a significant group of unrepresented white citizens existed.14 As it was, assemblies in the Leeward Islands had ratios of one repre- sentative for fewer than 20 white males during the eighteenth century, by far the lowest in British America. How did this affect elections and personal ambition?15

Higham, ‘General Assembly of the Leeward Islands’, pp. 19@209. Antigua’s growth, and St Christopher’s relative decline, proved a major stumbling block as did fears of losing local autonomy.

F. G. Spurdle, Early West Indian Government: Showing the Progress of Government in Barbados, Jamaica and the Leeward Islands, 166&1783, (Palmerston North, N.Z., 1963). See appendices for lists of the executive officers of these colonies.

See Burns, British West Indies, p. 395, for Russell’s recommendation, which was a barb often aimed at local elites. Property qualifications for assembly members varied, but were generally A300 income, ownership of a specified number ofacres or possessions worth A3.000. Franchise qualifications based on land meant that landowners dominated the assemblies, leading to complaints from merchant interests about discriminatory legislation: Wrong, Government of the West Indies, 40-41 and Higham, Development ofthe Leeward Islands, pp. 157-159, 222.

These ratios are from J. P. Greene’s interesting, ‘Legislative Turnover in British America, 1697-1775: A Quantitative Analysis’, William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., XXXVIII (1981), 442-463, especially Table VII. Jamaica’s ratio of representatives to white males grew from 1:40 in 1700 to 1:62 in 1770. Barbados remained relatively steady at 1:146 or so. For most ofthe eighteenth century these numbers are well below the values for the mainland colonies.

’’ l3

l4

l5

94 Michael Watson

And besides their being planters, who made up the political tlite? Are they the Janus-faced colonial leaders described by I. K. Steele, playing different tunes in order to appeal to both local and imperial interests?16

Despite any drawbacks and unanswered questions, the studes by Whitson, Metcalf, Higham, and other British imperial historians, remain the standard political and constitutional references for the sugar islands. The topic has never been popular with American historians who have had little interest in the British empire after the American Rev01ution.l~ Without the context which made the sugar island legislatures different from the mainland colonies, their constitutional de- velopment seemed to American historians a pale reflection of the more familiar tale of the triumphant North American assemblies. While the peculiarities of the sugar island’s social and economic history would come to be ofinterest to American scholars, West Indian political and constitutional topics were considered to be irrelevant to a better understanding of why the mainland colonies came to rebel.

American historians interested in the sugar islands were heavily influenced by Frank Pitman and Lowell R a tz’s earlier studies about the eighteenth century British West Indian colonies. “Pitman and Ragatz were associated intellectually with the American imperial historians. This school of thought, which had formed in reaction to the perceived exceptionalist biases of the American national histo- rians, viewed the pre-revolutionary American colonies as a part of an extended British Empire, centred in London. The sugar islands, the most valued component of that empire, were integral to their analysis and central to any understanding of why the American Revolution occurred.”

Pitman asserted that the sugar colonies’ reliance upon the Navigation Acts during the eighteenth century distanced the islands from the mainland colonies who were in the process of becoming fiee traders. The Peace of Paris put an end to any hopes of British territorial expansion in the Caribbean and, by restricting the increasingly vigorous American colonies to the same markets, revealed the basic incompatibility of American mercantile and West Indan planting interests. The American Revolution was the culmination of these pressures.20 Ragatz’s Fall of the Planter Class in the British Caribbean, 1763-1 833 extended Pitman’s thesis.

I . K. Steele, ‘The Empire and Provincial Elites: An Interpretation of Recent Writings on the English Atlantic, 1675-1740’,]ournal oflmpm’al and Commonwealth History, VIII (1979-1980), 2-32.

This was not a problem for British imperial historians whose perspective included an under- standing that the British empire, and the process of defining imperial constitutional relations, did not end with the American Revolution. The same imperial approach is used profitably to describe West Indnn political and constitutional history in the nineteenth century. See H. T. Manning, British Colonial Government after the American Revolution (New York, 1933); D. J. Murray, 7 k e West Indies and the Deuelopment of Colonial Government, 1801-1834 (Oxford, 1965) and H. A. Will, Constitutional Change in the British West Indies, 1880-1903 (Oxford, 1970).

F. W. Pitman, The Development ofthe British West Indies, 1700-1763 (New Haven, 1917) and L. J. Ragatz, Fall Offhe Planter Class in the British Caribbean 1763-1833 (1928).

In his acknowledgements Pitman thanks the three most prominent hstorians of the imperial school, Charles MacLean Andrews, Herbert Osgood and George Beers, for their encouragement and comments. L. H. Gipson discusses ths group’s hlstoriography in, ‘The Imperial Approach to Early American History’ in The Reinterpretation offAmm’can History, ed. R. A. Billington (San Marino, Calif., 1966), pp. 185-199.

l6

”

l9

*” Pitman, British West Indies, p. 360.

An Historiographical Introduction 95

Ragatz agreed that the prosperity of the West Indian planters in the eighteenth century was an illusion dependent on the unnatural monopoly created by the Navigation Acts. This group’s consequent decline had little to do with the Emancipation Act and the abolition of slavery but stemmed &om years of wasteful agricultural procedures, continued restrictive trade procedures in the British empire, four decades of intermittent warfare in the area, and the disruption of the island’s ‘natural commercial relations’ with the American Atlantic ports.21

Both Pitman and Ragatz’s contentions rested upon an uncomplimentary view of society in the sugar colonies, which was crippled, in their view, by an exploitive, often absentee, planter class and slave based economies. British West Indian planter/slave society was ‘a wilderness of materialism, where little was consecrated or ideal’, in contrast to the energetic, restive and enterprising society on the North American mainland.22 This assertion continues to be significant in this field of study, despite being based upon untenable assumptions about the American colonies. For instance, Pitman and Ragatz ignored the equally exploitive practices in the staple driven slave economies of the Chesapeake and Southern American colonies. Instead, they concentrated on New England to promote the more attractive vision of an idyllic, Jeffersonian America populated by small landholders and spirited merchants. As well, they overlooked the spirited competition among the sugar islands for defensive, economic and political preferment and the fact that the privileges gained by the West Indian colonies were hard won and defended in London.23

The publication of Eric Williams’ provocative study Capitalism and Slavery in 1944 created a resurgence of interest about the relevance of the West Indan slave societies to the United States’ colonial past.24 To this end, Richard Sheridan, Carl and Roberta Bridenbaugh and Richard Dunn, examined the implications of Pitman’s pronouncement that the ‘elements essential to a healthy and progressive social organism were . . . absent in West Indla society’.25 These authors used Pitman and Ragatz’s broad conclusions about the artificial economies and unde- veloped societies of the sugar islands to advance their own ideas. Sheridan’s work explored the economic ramifications of the West Indes reliance upon sugar monoculture,26 whle Dunn, in Sugar and Slaves: The Rise ofthe Planter Class in

2’

z3

24

Ragatz, Fall of the Planter Class, pp. vi-viii. Pitman, British West Indias, pp. 2, 30, 40; Ragatz, Fall o f the Planter Class, p . 3. L. Penson, The Colonial Agents o f the British West Indies (1924), demonstrates how much

attention the sugar colonies paid to the metropolis. E. Wdliams, Capitalism and Slavery (Chapel Hill, 1944). For the continuing influence of

William’s ideas in the debate about the role black slavery played in the Industrial Revolution and other facets of West Indian history see the articles in British Capitalism and Caribbean Slavery: The Legacy ofEric Williams, ed. B. L. Solow and S. L. Engerman (Cambridge, 1987).

Pitman, British West Indies, p. 2. R . B. Sheridan, The Development ofthe Planration to 1750 and A n Era of West Indian Prosperity 1750-1775 (Barbados, 1970), and Sugar and Slavery: A n Economic History o f f h e British West Indies, 1623-1775 (Baltimore, 1974); C. and R. Bridenbaugh, N o Peace Beyond the Line: The English in the Caribbean 16241690 (Oxford, 1972) and R. S. Dunn, Sugar and Slaves: The Rise o f t h e Planter Class in the English West Indies, 1624-1713 (Chapel Hill, 1972).

Sheridan instigated a lively debate, much of it contained in the pages of the Econornic History Review, 2nd series (hereafter Ec. H. R.), about the economic conclusions reached by Fitman and Ragatz. Relevant articles include: R . B. Sheridan, ‘The Rise of a Colonial Gentry: A Case Study

25

2b

96 Michael Watson

the English West Indies, 1624-1 713, and the Bridenbaughs, in No Peace Beyond the Line: The English in the Caribbean, 1624-1690, recounted the establishment of English settlers in the region. Although the Bridenbaughs found no coherent West Indian society worth speaking of in the seventeenth century, Dunn made an excellent case for his contention that English settlers in the region had created a durable society, albeit one without precedent or equal in England or North America.

Dunn also had some trenchant comments about the context of the sugar island’s constitutional and political hstory. He argued that it was the formation of planter dominated societies, or ‘plantocracies’, in the sugar islands which had set the West Indian colonies on a different developmental path from their mainland counterparts, one which made them incapable of the type of social progress associated with the North American, most particularly the New England, colonies. This evolution meant that constitutional and political questions such as the consequences of the decline of the executive and the rise of the assembly in the various colonies were of secondary importance and, unless the planter’s hegemony was understood, ultimately pointless: ‘The big sugar planters spoke for no one but themselves. The representative assembly in the sugar islands represented only the master class.’27

Dunn’s views were based on his reading of the ovenvhehng way in which the big planters, answerable to no one but themselves, dominated the legislatures and appointive offices in the sugar islands, which he contrasted with the compar- atively more democratic practices of the mainland colonies. As recent scholarship has shown, Dunn’s assertion is incorrect; broadly based, accountable political elites were not the norm in British iqorth America. The exclusive concentrations of power he postulates for the West Indies existed in the mainland colonies as wellF8 However Dunn’s conclusion flattered accepted wisdom on the subject which was comfortable with the social and economic marginahation of the sugar islands. From Pitman to Dunn, the decadence of the West Inhan planters remained a useful concept for it explained why the sugar islands, unlike the mainland colonies, did not develop the political structures necessary for rebellion.29

Although he acknowledged the gross nature of West Indian society, Gary

cont. of Antigua, 1730-1775’, Ec. H. R., XI11 (1961), 342-357; idem., ‘The Wealth of Jamaica in the Seventeenth Century’, Ec. H. R. , XVIII (1965), 292-311; R. P. Thomas, ‘The Sugar Colonies of the Old Empire: Profit or Loss for Great Britain’, Ec. H. R., X X I (1968). 30-45; R. B. Sheridan, ‘The Wealth of Jamaica in the Eighteenth Century: A Rejoinder’, Ec. H. R., XXI (1968), 46-61 and W. A. Green, ‘The Planter Class and British West Indian Sugar, Before and After Emancipation’, Ec. H. R., XXVI (1973), 448-463.

Dunn, Sugar and Slaves, pp. 337-341. In contrast to Dunn, No Peace Beyond the Line had little to say about political and constitutional history. Instead the Bridenbaughs felt that too much attention had been paid to West Indnn imperial adminrstrative questions and problems, and not enough to local political matters, such as the development of the parish, the most familiar agency of government to most islanders @p. 402-405). 28 Compare Dunn’s contentions, Sugar and Slaves, pp. 98-100, 338-339, with the essays about political Clites in the mainland colonies in Power and Status: rnceholding in Colonial America, ed. B. C. Daniels (Middletown, Conn., 1986). O n the topic ofblitemobility, Greene, ‘Legislative Turnover’, concludes that all British American colonies, not only the West Indies. experienced a long term decline in turnover throughout the eighteenth century. 29 This interpretation remains influential despite its detractors. D. H. Wkinson, Barbados: A Study of North American West Indian Relations, 1735-1789 (The Hague, 1964), reiterates the constraints that the sugar islands operated under. The sugar colonies’ dependence upon the empire’s protected

*’

An Historiographical Introduction 97

Puckrein refused to accept the marginal political status which Durn had assigned these colonies. In Little England: Plantation Society and Anglo-Barbadian Politics, 1627-1 700 Puckrein called for a new political account of the sugar colonies, one whch would draw upon the new scholarship about West In&an society. He charged that Dunn’s reliance upon older, imperially based histories had blunted h s understanding of the sugar colonies’ politics. Puckrein’s own contribution was to reemphasize slavery’s central role in West Indian affairs. Drawing on Edmund S. Morgan’s work about colonial Virginia, Puckrein wrote that the social conditions associated with d n g a majority slave population had a stabilizing effect on Barbadian politics as the planters realized their reliance upon England for protection. Their political goal was to retain control of their slaves to protect their in~estrnent.~’

While scholars generally found Puckrein’s analysis problematic, his testing of Morgan’s theory in another staple economy, coupled with his call for comparative political studies of plantation societies, did suggest that the West Indies’ devel- opment might be less exceptional than had been thought. This was the case made in Jack P. Greene’s Pursuits of Happiness: The Social Development of Early Modem British Colonies and the Formation ofAmerican Culture.31 While synthesizing 20 years of social history to understand the social patterns of British America, Greene took the opportunity to reintegrate the West Indian colonies into the North American colonial experience. In Pursuits ofHappiness Greene claims that !&om 1660 to the Peace of Paris the typical British American colony developed in accord with the inhvidualistic and materialistic values manifested most clearly in the Chesapeake colonies. The inclusion of the West Indian colonies was essential for his thesis as their fervid, exploitive tendencies balanced out the communal, traditional New England Societies. Greene might agree with Dunn’s statement that the sugar island settlers ‘rapidly diverged from the . . . Puritan colonists in New England’ but he would emphasize that it was New Englanders who were the divergent society, and, as time passed, even they would come to embrace the British American prescription for the good life: ‘the pursuit of individual happiness and material a~h ievemen t ’ .~~

cont. markets and their remote location &om Britain made them absolutely reliant upon Britain for protection. E. Braithwaite, The Development of Creole Society inJamaica, 1770-1820 (Oxford, 1971), argues that Jamaica had developed a consistent system of social and governmental institutions capable of controlling life in its territory until derailed by the revolutionary conflict. T. R. Clayton, ‘Sophistry, Security and Socio-Political Structures for the American Revolution; Or, Why Jamaica Did Not Rebel’, HistoricalJournal, XXIX (1986), 319-344, agrees that traditional political structures continued to work in the sugar islands. For West Inman behaviour during the revolution see S . Carnngton, ‘West Indian Opposition to British Policy: Barbadian Politics 1774-1782’,Journal ofCaribbean History, XVII (1982), 26-49 and The British West Indies During the American Revolution (Providence, 1988).

G. A. Puckrein, Little England: Plantation Society and Anglo-Barbadian Politics, 1627-2 700 (New York, 1984). E. S. Morgan, American Slavery, American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia (New York, 1975) postulates that the fears caused by black slavery produced social pressures which linked white citizens despite class hfferences.

31 J. P. Greene, Pursuits of Happiness: The Social Development of Early Modern British Colonies and the Formation of American Culture (Chapel Hill, 1988).

32 DUM, Sugar and Slaves, p. 337; Greene, Pursuits OfHappiness, p. 205. For an elaboration of Greene’s thoughts about West Indian society see J. P. Greene, ‘Economy and Society in the Britlsh Caribbean during the 17th and 18th Centuries: A Review Essay’, American Historical Review, LXXIX

30

(1 974), 1499-1 5 17.

98 Michael Watson

The implications for the history of the West Indian legislatures are evident; if the social patterns of the sugar islands were not atypical, then their political and constitutional experiences might also be relevant to American colonial studies. In a recent article about a privilege controversy in the Jamaican assembly in the 1760s, Greene establishes that all British American colonies shared the same constitutional heritage, even if their concerns and tactics sometimes differed.33 The article shows how the constitutional tensions evident in the mainland colonies at the time of the Stamp Act controversy were played out, albeit with different catalysts, in Jamaica. Greene explicitly extends to the sugar colonies his idea about metropolitan power being acceptable in the colonies only with the consent of the local political bodes and makes the constitutional and political history of the sugar islands relevant once again for the colonial United States.34 He makes common cause with the British imperial historians as regards approach, but not perspective. Greene emphasizes the colonial response to imperial issues, and despite his sources, which are either official documents or the governor’s private corre- spondence, reveals a good understanding of Jamaica’s political elite.

As outlined earlier, the West Indies’ constitutional and political history presents many opportunities to scholars interested in filling this gap in the history of the early modem British empire.35 If the West Indies once more become part of the mainstream colonial historiography, it will be necessary for scholars to reassess their political development. Clashes over the distribution of power within the empire were as virulent in the sugar islands as in other colonies. The different context and perspective associated with the sugar colonies make them a new forum for testing ideas, which can assist in breathing new life into the increasingly moribund study of colonial political history in the United States. The sugar islands might just become the point at which British and American studes of empire meet.

33 J. P. Greene, ‘The Jamaica Privilege Controversy, 1764-66: An Episode in the Process of Constitutional Definition in the Early Modem British Empire’,]ournal oflmperial and Commonwealth History, XXII (1994). 16-53.

Greene’s analysis draws heavily on the thesis developed in his Peripheries and Center: Constitutional Development in the Extended Polities of the British Empire and the United States, 1607-1788 (Athens, Ga., 1986).

Printed materials about the sugar island legislatures and West Indian colonial laws are sparse and most of the surviving sources are to be found in the Colonial Office’s correspondence located in London’s Public Record Office. The scattered nature of the sources makes bibliographic guides essential. The most useful are F. Cundall, BibliographiaJamaicensis (Kingston, 1902) and Bibliography ofthe West Indies (Excludingjatnaica) (Kmgston, 1909); L. J. Ragatz, A Guidefor the Study of British Caribbean History, 1763-1834 (Washington, 1932); E. C. Baker, A Guide to Records in the Leeward Irlands (Oxford, 1965) and J. S. Handler, A Guide to Source Materialsfor the Study ofBarbados History, 1627-1834 (Carbondale, Ill., 1972) and Supplement To A Guide to Source Materials for the Study af Barbados History, 1627-1834 (Providence, 1991).

34

35