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Slavery, Marronage and Rebellion: The English-Colonised Caribbean Verene A. Shepherd The University of the West Indies, Mona, Jamaica Establishing Slavery in the Caribbean: Slavery and related forms of multi-ethnic bondage and subordination have

characterised human societies throughout the world; and chattel slavery as an institutionalised

form of marginalisation existed across the vast dimensions of the Greco-Roman world and in

Western Europe even before its evolution in the Caribbean.1 The historiography of slavery is

thus not only immense, but the subject continues to attract the attention of scholars on both

sides of the Atlantic.

Six European nations succeeded in establishing slave societies in the Caribbean

between 1492 and the end of the 18th century. The most important of these in terms of impact

upon the socio-economic development of the region, were Spain, England, France and

Holland; Denmark and Sweden were minor powers. England eventually out-paced the other

nations in territorial acquisition. Having conquered the land resources of the indigenous

peoples and decimated their numbers tragically, and with no desire to work this land

themselves, Europeans turned to "outsider" coerced labour to extract returns from the land.

Indeed, European colonial capitalism could see no way to ensure profitable economic activity

other than with the mass deployment of servile labour. As the intensity of economic

accumulation gripped colonial élites, and the pressures of profits, power and glory fuelled the

colonising enterprise, chattel slavery became the preferred form of servile labour. Other labour

institutions were tried for varying periods in most places, but with the development of the

productive activities in all colonies, the enslavement of Africans was centred as critical to

economic accumulation and the cultural imperatives of white supremacy. Indeed, Europeans,

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ignoring the multi-ethnic model of early slavery, opted to re-invent chattel slavery exclusively

for black Africans. The use of the labour of enslaved Africans, then, had become a part of the

strategic economic thinking of European wealth accumulators in the Americas as early as the

16th century. By the mid-18th century chattel slavery had become an integral part of North

Atlantic capitalist accumulation and subject to the forces of the market economy.

The expansion of slavery in the Caribbean was linked to the expansion of agriculture.

The success of the colonization project depended on the export of agricultural commodities to

provide raw material for Europe's industries. Sugar, indigo, coffee, cotton and tobacco were

among the crops which provided planters in the Americas with the exportable agricultural

commodities they needed. Yet, there was no inherent reason why export-led growth had to be

associated with slavery. Small-holders in other parts of the world successfully produced cacao,

wheat, wool and rice with the use of free labour. But the Europeans in the Americas believed

that plantation crops had production characteristics that gave slave labour enormous cost

advantages over free labour. For various military, economic and political reasons, enslaved

people could be coerced into coming to America. When they came, they could be coerced

into doing work that free labour would not do; and in conditions under which free labour

would not work. These reasons and the needs of sugar and other large-scale crops were

among the factors that caused enslaved Africans to form the bulk of the labour force and

slavery to become the dominant mode of production in the Americas. Added to the ample

land of the Americas and capital investment, African labour sparked economic growth.

This chapter, relying on the works of the major historians of Caribbean and African

slavery history, provides an overview of the development of slavery in the English-colonised

Caribbean and the implications of the trade in enslaved Africans and the slave mode of

production for the evolution of Caribbean anti-slavery.

The Trade in, and Sources of, African Captives:

The creation of the Atlantic World as an integrated economy rested heavily on the

enormous movement of Africans into the Americas. Unable to exploit indigenous peoples or

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afford African slaves, up to the mid-17th century, white servants provided the early colonisers

with a cheaper form of labour for the sugar industry than slaves. But as the supply of

indentured servants eventually failed to keep pace with the labour demands of the sugar

industry, the prices of white servants went up; and as more and more traders got access to the

African coast, Caribbean proprietors gradually shifted to purchasing enslaved captives.

Estimates of the number of Africans sold into the transatlantic trade in African captives have

ranged from a low of 5 million to a high of 30 million. The debates over the quantitative

aspects of this trade have been contentious and at times, racialised. Nineteenth century

abolitionists had estimated that between 15 and 25 million Africans were exported. Philip

Curtin, believing this to be too large and an exaggeration by the anti-slavery factors, came up

with an estimate of 9.6 million, 6 million being exported in the period 1701-1810.2 To this

figure of 9.6 million may be added 15% who died before reaching the Americas, leaving us

with close to 11 million exported. Most other scholars believe that Curtin's figure is too low and

have accepted a figure of around 11-12 million.3 Paul Lovejoy has argued that 6 million were

shipped out in the 18th century alone.4 Joseph Inikori, a Nigerian scholar, has gone even

further, estimating that over the entire period of the transatlantic trade in captured Africans,

1492-1870, 15.4 million were traded globally, with 13.3 million being traded to the Americas 5;

and 10%-20% probably died from punishments, hunger, disease, resistance and trauma on the

Middle Passage. Large numbers were also thrown overboard when slavers considered them

sick or when they believed that sea conditions 'necessitated' such action. In addition, it has

been estimated that another 15 million Africans lost their lives in the process of being

kidnapped, captured in war and prepared for shipment.

Inikori, in defending his estimate which other scholars believe is inflated, admits that an

accurate figure cannot be produced by anyone given the types of data available for the

quantitative study of population movements from Africa. For example, trade through

smuggling would not have been recorded by officials (initially countries gave monopolies on

trade to Africa to companies and private traders were outlawed). Captives bought by private

traders would not have been recorded. This was compounded by the lack of accurate record-

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keeping especially before the 17th century; and even for the 'legal trade', where records were

kept, not all documents have survived. Despite these difficulties, Inikori maintains that a more

accurate figure than Curtin's is possible and has increased Curtin's figures by 49.2% on the

British trade from 1701-1807.6

The capture and enslavement of Africans was a large commercial venture with many

people including Africans themselves and the various European powers (Iberians, English,

Dutch, Danes, Norwegians, Swedes, French and Germans) becoming involved in the business

of procuring captives to supply the large demands of the trade. Admittedly, the whole

procurement and shipment of Africans was an expensive undertaking; but the cost was

defrayed by the purchase price paid by Europeans for the captives and the profits they could

make. It would seem that the price paid per captive by the Europeans - though not remaining

constant over the period of the trade, increasing at times by 100% - was low enough to allow

them to make a profit on sales in the Americas as well as high enough to satisfy the African

factors.

The data on slave prices are most complete for the last third of the 17th and 18th

centuries. The cost of goods purchased in Europe that were used to buy captives (cowrie shells,

horses, firearms, iron bars, textiles, etc) remained fairly steady at £3 to £4 sterling between the

1660s and 1690s. Within a few years after that the price doubled. Prices in the 1730s ranged

from £10-£13. They rose to between £18-£19 by the 1740s and then levelled off. For the rest

of the century, the prime cost of goods gradually rose again, ranging from £13-£18. This

coincided with the rising demand for enslaved labourers; but traders sold at prices which gave

them a profit. The average price of captives rose from £3 to £20 on the Gold Coast from the

early 16th to the end of the 18th century.7 Prices were often set in terms of bars of iron, ounces

of gold and cowrie shells. In the Caribbean, the average price of captives was £15 (on those

bought for £3 in Africa) in the 1670s. By the mid-18th century, captives bought for £18 each

in Africa were being sold for £35 in the British Caribbean. Skilled artisans sold for much more.

Traders thus stood to make significant profits.8

African suppliers responded to market forces in catering to the export trade. Indeed,

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some Africans abandoned alternative economic activities for the trade in human cargo. In

Central Africa, for example, the Portuguese abandoned their early policy of developing the

Kingdom of the Congo, concentrating instead on the removal of its population and those of

neighbouring states. The Portuguese, including priests and missionaries originally brought to

the Congo to develop its economy, became enmeshed in the trade in captives. The

Portuguese colony of Angola devoted all its energies to the procurement of captives for export

and remained uninterested in the development of commodity production. The frequent socio-

political conflicts and warfare which the export demand for captives engendered, further

discouraged the development of commodity production. Up to the 1650s, ivory and gold were

Africa's leading export to Europe. By 1700, these items had fallen to less than 10% of Africa's

export and captives had assumed the overwhelming share. The trade introduced into African

communities a range of new goods the possession of which conferred high status on local elite

who were the principal consumers.9

African captives came from several regions of Africa. In the period 1700-1800, the main

source areas for the Caribbean were Senegambia, Sierra Leone, the Gold Coast, the Bight of

Benin (called the Slave Coast), the Bight of Biafra (centred on the niger delta and the cross

river - a major exporter in the 1740s), and West Central Africa, which was also the largest

exporting region in the 16th and early 17th century.10 Paul Lovejoy has estimated that of the 6

million exported in the 18th century, 40% came from Angola and the Congo, 40% from the

Bights of Benin and Biafra, about 15% from the Gold Coast, Sierra Leone and Senegambia

and the rest from unknown places. Twenty-three percent went to the English-colonised

Caribbean, 22% to the French-colonised Caribbean, 9% to Spanish America, 7% to the Dutch-

colonised Caribbean, 6% to English-colonised North America and the rest to the Danish-

colonised Caribbean.11 These areas exported not just an enormous pool of involuntary,

victimised labour, but also a wide range of intellectual, technical, scientific and cultural

resources. Africans took with them to the Caribbean an array of agricultural and manufacturing

capabilities as well as artistic and social ideas that gave the wider Atlantic world much of its

present identity.

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The Spanish and the Portuguese were the first to begin the shipment of Africans for

enslavement in the Caribbean and other parts of the Americas and were also the last to quit.

The majority of enslaved peoples shipped by the Portuguese went to Brazil which imported

about 4 million African captives. The Iberian dominance of the trade up to the 16th century

gave way to Dutch (17th century) and then English and French dominance in the 18th century.

Iberian powers continued to be involved in a significant way in the slave trade, but were

overtaken in terms of volume of the trade in their hands. At the peak of the trade in the mid-

18th century Europeans were shipping some 90,000 Africans per year to the Americas.

One useful index of the relative importance of the major powers involved in shipping

enslaved Africans to the Caribbean is provided by the numbers of captives each handled at the

height of the trade. Whereas England handled over 2 million in the period 1701-1810, most

other powers, for example the French, Dutch and Danes, handled under 1 million each.

England's supremacy was further demonstrated by the fact that she alone was responsible for

about 2/3rds of the total number of enslaved peoples shipped by the three leading powers.12

Within the British Caribbean, Barbados and Jamaica were the major importing colonies,

accounting for 387,000 and 747,500 respectively over the whole period of the trade according

to Noel Deeer's conservative estimate.13

The transatlantic trade in enslaved Africans was characterised by a sexual disparity, with

under 40% of the total numbers shipped to the Americas comprising females. Inikori has

shown that between 1781 and 1798, for example, the percentage of females shipped from

seven main supply areas in Africa ranged from 29.4% to 45.5%.14 The average accepted by

most scholars hover around 38%.15 Explanations for the male/female differences continue to

fuel debates among feminist and other scholars but seemed to have been linked to planter

preference for male workers and the competition for females among local African users, the

Islamic market and the American market which served to increase the price of women beyond

the level that merchants were prepared to pay. Unlike the trade to the Americas which was

male dominated, that to the Muslim world north of the Sahara was female dominated, with an

estimated 67% females and 33% males in that trade.16 Despite the disparity, enslaved African

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women eventually came to dominate the field gangs on the agricultural units in the Caribbean.

Despite the profits made from the trade in captured Africans by the African elite and the

Europeans, the results were extremely disastrous demographically, socially, economically and

politically for Africa, as Walter Rodney has shown.17 Goods exchanged for captives, such as

horses and firearms, increased the military capabilities of political elites. This militarisation of

West Africa, a noticeable consequence of the transatlantic trade in enslaved Africans caused

Old States to be subverted and destroyed and new ones formed as local elites became clients

of slave traders. The City State of Benin, for example, expanded politically because its kings

and nobles participated in the trade during the 16th and early 17th centuries. On the other

hand the transatlantic trade in African captives stimulated domestic political conflict. Increased

levels of warfare weakened the potential for development. As a consequence of the trade in

African captives, Africa lost invaluable intellectual and technical resources; and West Africa was

drained of its young men, principally, increasing the responsibilities of women left behind. It

should also be noted that added to the trade to the Americas, Africa exported about 10 million

captives via the trans-saharan route largely to the Arab world and another 5 million to the Red

Sea-Indian Ocean trade making the total exports between 25-30 million.

Slavery was certainly vital in capitalist globalisation. Eric Williams and C.L.R. James

have demonstrated convincingly that both the slave and sugar trades were lucrative, and that

the plantation system provided a significant amount of the critical surplus capital which

propelled England and France into self-sustained economic growth in the eighteenth and

nineteenth centuries.18

Slavery and Caribbean Agriculture:

From the mid-17th century to 1834, slavery became inextricably linked with agricultural

production in the Caribbean. The extensive use of servile labour, both Amerindian and African,

has origins within the mining and agricultural sectors of Spanish colonies in the Greater Antilles

during the sixteenth century. But the establishment of African slavery as the principal labour

institution is related more specifically to the expansion of the sugar industry. In the first half

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century or so of settlement, settlers made only modest incomes from food cultivation, tobacco,

indigo, cacao, cotton and livestock farming. The period beginning in 1645 and ending in 1886

marked a new phase in the development of the Caribbean. It saw the full emergence of the

plantation as the basic unit of capitalistic agriculture and the expansion of slavery. A slave-

based sugar-plantation regime became the motive force of the region's development. From

around 1645, Dutch capital and technology helped to transform the economies of the region.

The emergence of the industry gained revolutionising proportions in the Lesser Antilles,

beginning with Barbados, during the seventeenth century, and in the Greater Antilles during

the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. By the mid-18th century most of the British Caribbean

colonies had become almost exclusively committed to a single economic activity, sugar

production, for export. Everywhere, the relations between sugar and black slavery were similar.

As Carlisle Batie and others have shown, as large-scale sugar production spread through the

entire region, the demand for enslaved African labourers increased at a phenomenal rate.19

Barry Higman's invaluable account of the occupational distribution of the British

Caribbean enslaved populations, while emphasising that work was central to the experience of

the enslaved in all colonial settings, demonstrates that there was no homogeneous slave

experience. The enslaved worked in a variety of physical environments and were engaged in a

wide range of economic activities. They worked on rural agricultural and livestock properties as

well as in the towns in a wide range of occupations. 20 They worked as domestics, vendors,

prostitutes, musicians and street cleaners among other jobs; some men were also slave catchers

and militiamen. The nature of work determined to a considerable degree the general nature of

their life experiences. It influenced their mortality, fertility, and domestic life. It might very well

have shaped their consciousness in ways that determined political responses. Every slave

worked as long as he/she was in good 'condition'. Even the elderly and children worked; and

women worked just as hard as men. Indeed, by the end of the 18th century, women were the

majority workers in the gangs of the English sugar economy.

The majority of enslaved peoples lived their lives on the sugar estates in the region. Of

the 19 British Caribbean colonies in the period 1807-34, only five were not significant sugar

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producers. British Honduras relied on logwood and mahogany; the Cayman islands on

maritime activities such as turtling; the Bahamas on cotton and extractive and maritime

industries; Barbuda on livestock-rearing and Anguilla on salt. Sugar dominated export

production in the other territories. For example, Higman has shown that sugar and its by-

products accounted for 98% of exports in Barbados and sugar occupied 78% of the enslaved

labour force compared to 11% in cotton and 11% in the towns. In fact the percentage of the

enslaved engaged in sugar ranged from 60%-90% in the British Caribbean. In St Kitts, Nevis,

Antigua and Montserrat, few of the enslaved were occupied other than in sugar cultivation.

Other colonies, especially Trinidad, Jamaica and the British Windward islands, were more

diversified with significant amounts of cotton, ginger, cocoa, coffee, food provisions, arrowroot,

indigo, pimento and cassava being produced; but even so, the majority of the enslaved were

involved in the cultivation of sugar. In Trinidad, for example, the agricultural economy was

diversified with significant amounts of coffee and cocoa being produced; yet sugar and its by-

products comprised 90% of total exports, with coffee amounting to 2% and cocoa 6.2%.

Cocoa was grown mostly by free people. St Lucia, with 20% of those enslaved in coffee,

recorded one of the highest percentage for those not working in sugar. A low of 60% of the

enslaved in St Lucia were in sugar.21

In Jamaica by 1740, sugar had become the dominant export staple. By 1832, this

island had 527 sugar estates with 117,670 enslaved people. This was in contrast to 176 coffee

plantations with 22,562 enslaved Africans and creoles; pimento, 15 with 1287; livestock farms,

56 and 5529. Sugar then employed 49.5% of the enslaved population, coffee, 14.4%, pens,

12.8%, the others shared among urban centers [8%], jobbing gangs, plantations of minor

staples, pimento, wharves etc.22

Nature and Organisation of Work:

The considerable variety in the nature and organisation of work done by those enslaved

derived not only from the range of crops under cultivation but also from the size of the farm or

plantation. On small farms, the owner worked with the labourers and supervised them directly;

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and working relationships were less formalised and regimented. Small farms generally lacked

an overseer. Large plantations had an overseer, usually white, to maximise the crop and

organise the enslaved. Beneath the overseer were the 'slave drivers', men who were

themselves enslaved but who saw to the day to day running of the plantation.

On Caribbean sugar estates, the enslaved worked under the gang system and were

allocated to tasks on the basis of age, colour, gender, skill, birthplace and health. Gender

determined that females were located in the fields and males in the skilled and supervisory

positions. In fact, women outnumbered men in all the field gangs. For example, in 1789, just

over 43% of the total number of females on Worthy Park Estate in Jamaica were field

labourers compared to 16% of the 177 males. In Barbados in the late 1700s the Codrington

Estate employed 2/3rd of the women in field gangs compared to half of the men. Gender

differences, however, were not observed in terms of the type of field work given to men and

women. Women were involved in all the arduous tasks of field and factory.23 Age and health

determined which men and women were placed in which field gangs; colour determined which

men and women worked as domestics and which men worked as artisans; and birthplace was

also a factor in the allocation of domestic work, owners evincing a preference for creoles over

Africans.

Field labourers had the most physically demanding tasks. There were usually 3-4 field

gangs on sugar estates. The first gang, comprising the strongest men and women, prepared the

soil, dug cane holes, planted and manured the canes, cut canes at harvest time and performed

manual labour in the mills during crop time. On coffee and cotton plantations and on pens with

100 and more enslaved people, the gang system was also used. The smaller agricultural units

producing cocoa and provisions and the small pens, had less clearly defined hierarchies within

the field labour force. On coffee estates, the first gang planted and picked the coffee. The men

in this gang, led by a driver, cut and cleared trees and extracted rocks.

The second gang, males and females who were less physically fit, had newly arrived,

women who were pregnant and nursing mothers, did lighter and more varied tasks including

moulding, weeding and gathering cane thrash. In some territories they planted food crops for

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the estate and carried manure to the cane fields. During crop time they worked in the field,

removing trash for use as fuel. At the sugar factory they carried crushed cane stalks to the trash

house, dried them and took them to the furnaces. On some estates, weeding was the job of

women in the second gang. This second gang was also under the direction of a driver.

The third gang, chiefly children 8-13 led by an old woman, gathered grass for estate

livestock, attracting the name "grass" or "hogmeat gang". More individualised field-related tasks

included carrying water to the field labourers, cooking their food and minding their children.

Sugar cultivation required arduous labour. During crop time, the enslaved had to work

long hours on shifts, carrying out the tasks of cutting, hauling, grinding, clarification, filtration,

evaporation and crystallisation without interruption.

Up to 1807, in the British Caribbean, enslaved people worked according to set hours

per day. After 1807, task work was more usual - that is, specific tasks measured in terms of

distance, area or volume. Planters believed that task work increased productivity and lowered

costs of supervision. Of course, task work was more suitable where the work could be

quantified.24

Slavery and Agriculture on Non-sugar Properties:

Caribbean socio-economic history has displayed a rather totalising tendency, focusing

on the sugar sector and ignoring other sectors regarded as less important. In fact, within the

context of Caribbean history, slave society was almost synonymous with sugar plantation

society; and among students of rural history, enquiry into class and race dynamics outside of

the sugar plantation per se has been confined to a position of secondary importance. This is

understandable; for in a tradition of scholarship which has tended to concentrate on the

dominant sugar economy and society throughout the region, non-sugar producing units

represented a divergent pattern of socio-economic development. But more recent scholarship

has stressed the need for Caribbean to be re-problematised by stressing its diversity in

economy; for while slavery in the Caribbean has largely been associated with large-scale

plantation agriculture, it is also clear that slavery was not incompatible with small-scale

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subsistence agriculture nor with an agricultural regime based on the raising of livestock,

logwood, etc;.25

Jamaica provides a clear example of a colony in which subsistence farming assisted by

slave labour worked both socially and economically from the 16th century. This British-

colonised island was not as monocultural as the plantation colonies of the Eastern Caribbean.

Enlaved people were used in the cultivation of cotton, tobacco, coffee, foodcrops, raised

livestock on pens and exploited logwood and other dyewoods. Additionally, sugar did not

define the societies and economies of all Caribbean colonies. In fact, as observed above,

neither Aruba, Bonaire, the Bahamas, Anguilla, Barbuda, British Honduras or the Cayman

Islands produced major agricultural export staples, except for the short-lived cotton industry in

the Bahamas. By 1785, 2476 acres of cotton was being produced, mainly on New Providence,

Exuma and Cat Island. By 1800, cotton cultivation had declined due to various factors chief of

which was attack from the chenille and red bug and they remained marginal to the imperial

plantation economy.26

The character of slavery was different on non-sugar properties. In fact, the most striking

contrasts in rural regimes were between sugar and non-sugar units. Among the non-sugar units

themselves, variations were slight. The majority of the enslaved were assigned to field labour,

though the proportion varied from colony to colony. Bahamas and the other non-sugar

colonies had a lower percentage of their enslaved population in field occupations than the

other British Caribbean colonies - only 60%. Those not in the field were employed as skilled

tradespeople, domestics, watchmen, etc. Sugar estates had more skilled tradespeople than

other agricultural properties. They also had more nurses and watchmen. Males were less often

employed in the field on sugar estates than on other units; but the reverse was true of

females.27

Slavery was less-regimented on non-sugar properties, though the work was no less

hard. Gang labour was less marked on non-sugar properties like pens where tasks were more

individualised. Many of those who laboured on non-sugar properties worked unsupervised. In

fact, pens often had one white resident, who at times, as in the case of Vineyard Pen in

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Westmoreland, left the property under the care of the black male driver.

On Caribbean non-sugar properties, those enslaved tended to live in smaller units. In

the Bahamas, for example, about 74% of the enslaved lived in units of 50 or less, with only

one unit of 200.28

The factors determining how enslaved labour was used seemed similar to those on

sugar plantations. Gender was the determinant in all occupations except field work, where age

and colour were more important. In the Bahamas, only in the islands devoted to salt-raking

were the enslaved divided into gangs; and here colour was important, enslaved coloureds

hardly being employed in this activity.

It should be noted, however, that the attitudes of the enslavers towards bondsmen and

women varied little. Whether the enslaved served their bondage on sugar or non-sugar

properties; whether their enslavers were male or female, white or coloured, made little

difference to the brutalising conditions of slavery which resulted from the existence of a pro-

slavery ideology among the slave-holding elite. The journals of the Lincolnshire slave manager,

Thomas Thistlewood, and the narrative of Mary Prince, provide ample evidence, from both

sides of slavery, of the brutalising regimes and attitudes of those who were not always engaged

in sugar production. Furthermore, the values of those property-owners who were involved in

diversified production, even those born in the Caribbean (creoles) paralled those of the

sugarocracy. Thus, exploiting the resources of the Caribbean and exporting profits if possible to

facilitate an elite lifestyle in the metropole were unifying ideals of sugar and non-sugar

proprietors. There was no dichotomy, in other words, between colonial and creole.29

Non-Agricultural Slavery:

Slavery has been most closely associated with agricultural labour in the Caribbean. But

beyond the farms and plantations there were those who functioned in urban regimes.30 Slavery

as a system did not provide the basis for great urban or industrial development though

enslaved individuals were employed in various capacities in the urban areas. Not many parts of

the Americas had large cities or enough urban occupations to absorb the enslaved population.

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The largest occupational group among the enslaved in the city were domestics. Others were

employed as drivers, porters, roadmen, handymen and shop assistants. Some worked in

industry. Basically the period of slavery coincided with a pre-industrial era; and manufacturing

was essentially carried out in the countryside and villages and very small towns. The larger

towns were commercial, transport, social and political centres rather than hives of industry.

Enslaved people in the urban areas were in the minority in all British Caribbean

colonies. For example, St Lucia in 1815 had 6906 rural and 164 urban; Trinidad in 1813,

11014 rural and 1136 urban. The enslaved urban population in the Caribbean was

predominantly female, indicating that most were domestics. In fact, as Higman's quantitative

analysis has shown, on the eve of abolition, urban enslaved people accounted for 71% of the

total enslaved population of Roseau, 66% in Kingston, 60% in St Johns and 49% in St

George. Urban enslaved people also worked as skilled labourers, sellers, transport and wharf

workers, fishermen and general labourers. Women had a narrower range of occupations than

men, working, in addition to domestic servants, as washerwomen, seamstresses and sellers.31

Interestingly, as Hilary Beckles' work demonstrates, the majority of urban enslavers also tended

to be female. In Bridgetown, Barbados in the 19th century, 58% of the enslavers were women,

mostly white.32

Mortality, Health and Social Reproduction:

Enslavers in the Caribbean were caught in the web of a major dilemma. As rational

entrepreneurs they sought to maximise profits by reducing the cost of productive inputs.

Expenditures on those enslaved were suppressed to subsistence levels. At the same time,

however, the protection of property rights in chattel was a top priority that required carefully

policy formulation and implementation. The effective social maintenance of the enslaved then,

meant that the daily management of subsistence and health care could not be left to chance.

Those enlaved had to be properly nourished and medically assisted if they were to be

productive workers. At the same time the impact of class and race prejudice upon economic

thinking oftentimes led to subsistence levels being located below what was required to maintain

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general health.

Research on slavery has confirmed that the enslavers were generally malnourished and

preyed upon by a range of diseases related to malnutrition. Not only did food availability

fluctuate seasonally, but the enslaved experienced long periods of hunger after hurricanes,

during droughts and major war. Crop cycles in Europe and North America also affected food

availability. Kiple and Kiple, and Craton have suggested that the enslaved suffered from severe

deficiencies in important vitamins and minerals, and that the root cause of their vulnerability to

fatal and damaging diseases was malnutrition. These authors, however, recognise the problems

inherent in any research that attempts to diagnose symptoms known to be the result of

nutritional deficiency that were widespread among enslaved people. By discussing labour in

relation to food supplies within a hostile disease environment, they have provided pioneer

accounts of the biological history of slavery.33

Poor health and nutrition, as well as demographic and other socio-economic factors, as

Higman's work demonstrates, contributed to the general inability of Caribbean slave

populations, in particular those engaged in the sugar culture, to reproduce themselves naturally

until the closing years of the slavery system.34

Subaltern Autonomy: Economic Culture:

The subalterns, or enslaved Africans and other racially marginalised groups, demanded

room for themselves. The ways in which the enslaved pursued the right to be autonomous

economic agents, as part of the legitimate use of their 'leisure' times, have emerged as major

concerns for historians and anthropologists. As Mintz and Hall, among others, show, the culture

of marketing emerged among Blacks as a common expression, and material and social

conditions on the plantations as well as in the towns made it particularly attractive.35 It was the

provision ground system which facilitated this market culture which developed.

Where the system of rationed allowance was not the dominant mode of providing the

enslaved with food, the provision ground system assumed great importance. Kitchen gardens

were kept by most of the enslaved, even in islands where there were no individual provision

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grounds. The aim of providing provision grounds was not a benevolent gesture on the part of

the enslavers, but a way to get enslaved people to provide their own food and save the owners

the cost of imported food. The internal organisation of the provision ground was left up to the

cultivators. Planters sometimes sub-divided the grounds and allocated them to individuals; but

beyond this, they took no interests apart from making occasional inspection. Grounds were

worked by family groups or individuals. Those too old to work their plots got help from friends

and relatives.

Marketing of the surplus from their gardens and grounds allowed the enslaved to

improve the quality and quantity of their diets in a context of general malnutrition, to own and

possess property in a system that also defined them as property, and offered them time to

travel, and to attempt to normalise their social lives as much as possible under generally

restrictive circumstances. These benefits, however, had to be militantly pursued; and it is here

that women in particular displayed great tenacity. Marketing symbolised a spirit of

independence and was central to the process of non-violent protest and resistance which

characterised day-to-day anti-slavery behaviour. The right to possession, and open

engagement in the market as autonomous buyers and sellers, was aggressively demanded.36

Rejecting Slavery: Marronage, Resistance and Rebellions:

The slave systems of the Caribbean persisted from the 15th to the 19th centuries. Slave

societies were able to persist partly because of the complex and pervasive structures of control

and regulation. Nevertheless, wherever there was slavery, there was resistance; and many

scholars have directed their research efforts towards the study of the agency of the enslaved.

Resistance effectively indicates how most Africans felt about their entrapment and enslavement.

Despite denial by some slavers, African resisted their capture, enslavement and shipment

across the Middle Passage and continued their resistance activities in the Caribbean. The

evidence of resistance - from marronage to armed revolts -is compelling and speaks to the

existence of the slave trade and slavery as existing within a context of endemic mass

opposition. Blacks pursued their freedom by all means possible. They pursued the right to be

17

autonomous economic agents as has been demonstrated above, fled the scene of their

enslavement in acts of marronage, declared war on the system and fought bloody battles in the

process. The enslaved, (Africans and creoles), free coloured, poor whites, and Amerindians

constantly opposed internal socio-political arrangements. Indeed, historians are now in

agreement that in the Caribbean anti-slavery revolt was endemic; it has also been suggested

that the period of slavery was characterised primarily by one protracted war launched by those

enslaved against their enslavers.

Detailed studies of the patterns and forms of resistance are now available. It is possible,

therefore, to identify the major events and ideas that have shaped the development of

Caribbean anti-slavery. Though highly structured revolts and long-term marronage have been

considered the most advanced rebellious acts, the effectiveness of the more spontaneous day-

to-day resistance to slavery has also been assessed by historians. This record of resistance

illustrates that there was hardly a generation of enslaved males or females in the Caribbean

who did not take their anti-slavery actions to the level of violent armed encounters in the

pursuit of freedom.

•stages in the development of anti-slavery:

The leading scholars37 have identified several stages in the development of Caribbean

anti-slavery activities in the period up to 1834: 1500-1750; 1750-1807 and 1807 to the end of

slavery. 1500-1750 was the period of early plantation construction when enslaved populations

were highly Africanised and when land marronage was the dominant form of resistance in

practically every colony. The forested and mountainous interiors of colonies like Jamaica,

Dominica and Guyana facilitated the maintenance of the runaway slaves, called maroons

(sometimes Bush Negroes), who were able to sustain themselves in these forests and fight wars

of resistance against the British. In the Windward islands, Caribs and escaped slaves thwarted

the economic policy of the English for years. The maroons of Jamaica who were active long

before the English conquest of 1655, have received much attention from scholars like Agorsah,

Carey, Kopytoff and Price who have added greatly to our understanding of how maroon

18

communities were formed and sustained, the gender composition of maroon communities, the

fighting strategies and tactics of maroons and maroon leaders like Cudjoe, Tacky and Nanny,

the impact of treaty arrangements between maroons and the English, and the differences

between petit (short-term) and grand (long-term/permanent) marronage.38 What is clear is that

maroon activities which were endemic over the entire period greatly undermined the colonising

efforts of the Europeans and the economic life of the plantations.

The second period, 1750-1807 was characterised by mature plantation society with an

increasing creolisation of some slave populations. As the frontier disappeared in some

territories, for example, in the Eastern Caribbean, resistance assumed different forms, with land

to sea (maritime) marronage increasing. So did armed revolts led by enslaved African (mostly

Akans in Jamaica), day-to-day acts, and negotiation for rights and benefits. Only a minority

used armed revolts as their major anti-slavery activities. The enslaved were conscious of the

military might of their enslavers and knew it would be suicidal to always try to engage them in

armed conflicts. Day-to-day acts of resistance: malingering, lying, stealing, singing revolutionary

lyrics, 'back-chatting' - were considered effective strategies and undermined greatly the

efficiency of the plantations.

The period 1807-1834 was marked by growing unrest among the enslaved, particularly

among creoles, linked, of course also, to the impact of Haitian politics and growing anti-slavery

discussions in the metropole. Conscious of the increased value of their labour power after the

official abolition of the trade, many used labour bargaining to consolidate their material gains.

Armed revolt was also a feature of this period. Of the 75 aborted revolts and actual rebellions

listed by Michael Craton for the period 1638-1837, the three largest were the 1816 revolt in

Barbados, the 1823 in Demerara (Guyana) and the 1831/32 "Christmas Rebellion" in Jamaica.

In addition to these, there were widespread cases of unrest among the enslaved in Antigua in

1831 after the banning of Sunday markets, in the Bahamas between 1832 and 1834, and in

Tortola where there was an island-wide plot led by Jacob Kierney in 1831.39 These 19th

century plots and revolts helped to convince Britain that if emancipation did not come from

'above', it would come from 'below'.

19

•slave narratives and resistance:

Enslaved peoples did not only demonstrate their anti-slavery politics through armed

revolt, marronage, labour bargaining and day-to-day acts of non-violent resistance. Some of

the enslaved wrote and spoke back as part of an ontological positioning with colonialism that

placed slavery under their literary gaze. The written and spoken word oftentimes converged to

produce texts that leave little doubt that the enslaved's intention to do away with slavery, or

reform it. The existence of texts written/narrated by enslaved peoples provide a window

through which resistance can be studied from the perspective of the enslaved. It is not possible

to write of slavery without reference to these texts. Historians are now sufficiently sensitised to

the importance of the subjective knowledge of those who lived the experience of colonial

slavery. Also, they are aware that their own subjectivity as writers requires firm rooting within

the expressions of those who are the targets of study. The entry of enslaved people's texts into

the historiographical canon is in itself a major achievement of conceptual liberation. The

memoirs of Olaudah Equiano, the Ibo man who survived kidnapping as a child and decades of

slavery in Barbados and elsewhere in the hemisphere to emerge as a major anti-slavery voice

was a major political treatise with no equal in the literature of 19th century anti-slavery.40

The autobiography of Esteban Montejo and Mary Prince, together with the speeches of

Toussaint L'Overture, also represent the anti-slavery voices of blacks in their many tones and

textures.41 Equiano's vivid descriptions of the cruelty of those who owned enslaved peoples in

the Caribbean provide the background against which his anti-slavery activities can be

understood. He expressed outrage, for example at the fact that "it is not uncommon, after a

flogging, to make slaves go down on their knees and thank their owners, and pray, or rather

say, 'God bless you.'"42 These and other indignities and atrocities against enslaved Africans led

him to write in the 18th century: "I hope the slave trade will be abolished. I pray it may be an

event at hand".43 Mary Prince, the first black woman, says Moira Ferguson, to escape British

slavery in the West Indies and publish an autobiography, narrated the horrors of slavery and

her desire "greatly to get my freedom".44 She did extra work, even borrowed, in order to

20

accumulate enough cash to buy herself out of bondage. Her owners, though, were never

anxious to free her. When she eventually arrived in England she noted in a rather moving way:

"... Since I have been here I have often wondered how English people can go out into the West

Indies an act in such a beastly manner. But when they go to the West Indies, they forget God

and all feeling of shame, I think, since they can see and do such things".45

•gender and resistance:

The ideology of anti-slavery was not gender-free. While the struggles of the slavery

period were inherently collective in that they were conceived in the consciousness of the

communities inhabited by the enslaved, the gender relations of slavery determined actions in

many ways. The system of slavery sought to degrade women and womanhood in ways which

forced aspects of their resistance to assume specific forms. Maternity and fertility were placed

at the core of strategies for plantation survival, and so women’s resistance to the policies meant

that their opposition to slavery was probably more broadly based. Furthermore, it can be

argued that women’s leadership of the resistance to the enslavers’ attempts to disintegrate the

slave communities culturally and morally provided much of the organisational strength

necessary for ideological and armed resistance.

Neither enslavers nor the communities of enslaved people considered women to be the

less rebellious sex; enslavers were as fearful, suspicious and distrustful of women’s potential

activities as anti-slavery agents as they were of men’s. They did not formulate, either implicitly

or explicitly, any specific concepts of women within the culture of resistance that characterised

the slavery world. This thinking was expressed in legislative provisions for the control and

discipline of the enslaved that made no concessions to women - except in cases of flogging in

advanced pregnancy. But this specific provision emerged during the mid-18th century when

there was increasing emphasis on natural reproduction as an alternative form of securing a

long-term labour supply.

In general, enslaved women and men were stripped and whipped, branded with hot

irons, gibbeted, hanged or had limbs or joints amputated if convicted for acts of hostility to their

21

owners and the white community at large. If anything, enslaved women, possibly on account of

their closer interpersonal association with members of the white society, were likely to receive

harsher and psychologically more damaging forms of punishment.

Women like Nanny of the Jamaican maroons, Cubah and Nanny Grigg of Barbados,

were to be found in the vanguard of the anti-slavery movement. As non-violent protestors, as

maroons, as participants in armed revolt, as leaders in areas of social culture, and as mothers,

black women were critical to the forging of resistance strategies; their anti-slavery consciousness

functioned at the core of slave communities’ survivalist culture.46

Conclusion: Emancipation Processes:

Every form of bondage generates an opposing struggle for liberation. It is no surprise,

therefore, that from the moment of European conquest and colonisation, Caribbean people

have resisted subjugation. The indigenous Tainos and Kalinagos (Caribs) began the culture of

resistance that was to later characterise the slavery world. Considerable debate among

historians has taken place in attempts to explain the relationships between Parliamentary

legislative anti-slavery action, the development of industrial capitalism, and philosophical

discourses about the nature of freedom. Though emancipation from above by legislative

intervention emerged in the 19th century as the dominant method of uprooting slave relations

from colonial societies, armed revolt played a fundamental role in the speed with which

Emancipation Acts were passed. In French San Domingue the enslaved were able to defeat the

master class, and their imperial allies, declare the abolition of slavery, and establish the republic

of Haiti. The enslaved in Jamaican rose up in rebellion in 1831/32 forcing England to pass its

1833 Emancipation Act; and the enslaved people of Danish St. Croix revolted on July 2 1848

and by so doing created the context in which Danish officials proclaimed emancipation. Such

cases represent acts of self-liberation by revolutionary opposition to enslavers, and illustrate that

the enslaved were first to implement emancipation schemes within the Caribbean.

Anti-slavery forces were not only internal, but by the end of the eighteenth century were

supplemented from the culture of western civilisation. Anti-slavery movements in Europe

22

targeted the enslavers in their respective colonies, and in so doing generated important political

dialogues that influenced Parliamentary agendas. In addition, the rise of the industrial complex

in the world economy posed certain difficulties for the decaying mercantile structures that had

supported slavery in the region. Eric Williams and C.L.R. James have argued that with the

ability of European capitalism to reproduce internally its own surplus capital, largely associated

with the ascendancy of industrial capital over merchant finance in the late eighteenth century

and early nineteenth century, came the economic context for the reduced economic

significance of the West Indian plantation system. Declining importance and adverse market

forces led to long-term crisis in the West Indian plantation economy and hence the movement

towards the abolition. Over these theses, rigorous polemics, with transatlantic dimensions, have

developed among scholars such as Anstey, Carrington, Drescher, Darity, Engerman, Solow

and others.47 In the end, between 1794 [when the French Convention abolished slavery in

French colonies] and the last quarter of the nineteenth century, the region’s slave systems

collapsed in a drawn-out programme of legislative emancipation.48

Verene A. Shepherd is Professor of Social History at The University of the West Indies, Mona, Jamaica.

23

NOTES

1.See Moses Finley, Ancient Slavery and Modern Ideology (Penguin Books, 1980), and essays by Keith Bradley and William D. Philips in Seymour Drescher & Stanley Engerman, eds., A Historical Guide to World Slavery (Oxford, 1988).

2. Philip Curtin, The Atlantic Slave Trade: a census (Madison, 1969).

3. See Hugh Thomas, The Slave Trade (New York, 1997), appendix 3 and pp. 861-62 for a summary of the quantitative differences among scholars such as Paul Lovejoy, David Richardson, Philip Curtin, Joseph Inikori, Noel Deerr, James Rawley, David Henige, Charles Becker and others. A good summary is also presented in Joseph Inikori & Stanley Engerman, eds., The Atlantic Slave Trade: effects on economies, societies and peoples in Africa, the Americas and Europe (Durham & London, 1992), pp.5-6.

4.Paul Lovejoy, "The Volume of the Atlantic Slave Trade: A Synthesis". Journal of African History (1982), p. 483.

5. Joseph Inikori, The Chaining of a Continent (I.S.E.R., Kingston, 1992); Inikori & Engerman, The Atlantic Slave Trade, p. 6, and Inikori, "Africa in World History: the export slave trade from Africa and the emergence of the Atlantic economic order", in B.A. Ogot, ed., General History of Africa, vol. 5 (UNESCO, Paris, 1992) and Forced Migration (London, 1982).

6. Inikori, ed., Forced Migration: the impact of the export slave trade on African societies (London,1982), p. 21.

7. Paul Lovejoy, Transformations in Slavery: a history of slavery in Africa (Cambridge, 1983), p. 51, and Patrick Manning, Slavery and African Life (Cambridge, 1990), pp. 131-132.

8.For further discussions on slave prices, see D. Richardson, Bristol, Africa and the 18th Century Slave Trade, 3 vols. (Bristol, 1986-1990), Hugh Thomas, The Slave Trade, Appendix 4, and Michael Craton, Sinews of Empire: a short history of British slavery (New York, 1974), pp. 113-120.

9. For a detailed study of the impact of the slave trade on Africa, see Walter Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (London: Tanzania, 1972). For a summary, see Hilary Beckles & Verene Shepherd, Slave Voyages: The Transatlantic Trade in Enslaved Africans (UNESCO, 1999).

10. Curtin, The Atlantic Slave Trade: a census; Lovejoy, Transformations in Slavery, pp. 48-49; Thomas, The Slave Trade, p. 805, and Herbert S. Klein, "African Women in the Atlantic Slave Trade", in Claire Robertson and Martin Klein, eds., Women and Slavery in Africa (Madison, 1983), pp. 29-38.

11.Paul Lovejoy, "The Volume of the Atlantic Slave Trade: A Synthesis", Journal of African History), (1982).

12. Curtin, The Atlantic Slave Trade; Inikori, "Africa in World History"; Herbert Klein, African Slavery in Latin America and the Caribbean (Oxford, 1982).

13. Noel Deerr, The History of Sugar, 2 vols. (London, 1949-50), 2, p. 284.

24

14.Inikori, "Africa in World History", 1992, p. 81.

15.Klein, "African Women in the Atlantic Slave Trade".

16.Inikori, "Africa in World History", 1992, p. 81. See also Elizabeth Savage, ed. The Human Commodity: perspectives on the trans-Saharan slave trade (London, 1992).

17. Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, Chap. 4.

18. Eric Williams, Capitalism and Slavery (Chapel Hill, 1944) and C.L.R. James, The Black Jacobins (Vintage Books, 1963).

19.See Carlisle Batie's, Franklin Knight's and Francisco Scarano's articles in Hilary Beckles & Verene Shepherd, eds. Caribbean Slave Society and Economy (Kingston, 1991), Section 2.

20. B.W. Higman, Slave Populations of the British Caribbean, 1807-1834 (Baltimore, 1984).

21.Higman, Slave Populations, chapters 3 and 6.

22.Higman, Slave Population and Economy in Jamaica (Cambridge, 1976).

23. See Lucille Mair, Women Field Workers in Jamaica (Kingston, 1986); Barbara Bush, Slave Women in Caribbean Society (Indiana, 1990), pp. 33-50. See also Michael Craton & James Walvin, A Jamaican Plantation: the history of Worthy Park (Toronto, 1970), Hilary Beckles, Natural Rebels (New Hampshire, New Jersey, 1989) and Verene Shepherd, comp/ed., Women in Caribbean History: the British-colonised territories (Kingston, 1999), chapter 3.

24.Higman, Slave Populations and Slave Population and Economy.

25.See work on Jamaican livestock properties by Higman in Jamaican Slave Population and Economy, and Shepherd, "Pens and Penkeepers in a Plantation Society", Ph.D. Diss., Cambridge, 1988.

26. Gail Saunders, "Slave Life, Slave Culture and Cotton Production in the Bahamas", Slavery and Abolition 11, (1990), pp. 332-350, and Howard Johnson, The Bahamas in Slavery and Freedom (Kingston, 1991), p. 34.

27.Higman, Slave Populations .

28. Craton, "Changing Patterns of Slave Families in the British West Indies", Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Vol. X, No. 1 (1979), pp. 1-35.

29. See Kamau Brathwaite, The Development of Creole Society in Jamaica (Oxford, 1971) and Verene Shepherd, "Questioning Creole: domestic producers in Jamaica's plantation economy", in Shepherd & Glen Richards, eds., Konversations in Kreole. Special Issue of Caribbean Quarterly, Vol. 44, Nos. 1 & 2 (March-June, 1998), pp. 93-107.

30.See Higman, Slave Populations, pp. 226-259 and Pedro Welch, "The Urban Context of Slave Life: Views

25

from Bridgetown, Barbados in the 18th and 19th Centuries", in Verene Shepherd, Guest Editor, Slavery Without Sugar. Plantation Society in the Americas, Vol. V, Numbers 2 & 3, Fall 1998 for further information on urban slavery. See also Lorna Simmonds' recent UWI, Mona Ph.D Thesis.

31.Higman, Slave Populations, pp.247-250.

32. Beckles, "White Women and Slavery in the Caribbean", History Workshop Journal, 36 (1993), pp. 65-82.

33.K & V. Kiple, "Deficiency Diseases in the Caribbean", and Craton, "Death, Disease and Medicine on Jamaican Slave Plantation: the example of Worthy Park 1767-1838", in Beckles & Shepherd, eds., Caribbean Slave Society and Economy, pp. 173-196.

34.Higman, "Slave Populations of the British Caribbean: some nineteenth century variations", in Beckles & Shepherd, Caribbean Slave Society, pp. 221-227.

35. Sidney Mintz & Douglas Hall, "The Origins of the Jamaican Internal Marketing System", in Beckles & Shepherd, eds., Caribbean Slave Society, pp. 319-334. See also articles by Tomich and N.A.T. Hall in section 8 of the same work.

36. See Mary Turner, "Chattel Slaves into Wage Slaves: a Jamaican case study", in Turner, ed., From Chattel Slaves to Wage Slaves: the dynamics of labour bargaining in the Americas (Kingston, Bloomington & London, 1995), pp. 33-47, for a detailed discussion of enslaved people's militant pursuit of their rights to time to work their grounds. Students will also find useful analyses of this phenomenon in articles by O. Nigel Bolland, Glen Richards, Richard Sheridan, Michael Mullin and Betty Wood in the same volume.

37. See Craton, Testing the Chains (New York, 1982), Beckles, Natural Rebels and Richard Hart, Slaves Who Abolished Slavery (Mona, Kingston, 1985).

38. Kofi Agorsah, ed., Maroon Heritage: archaeological, ethnographic and historical perspectives (Mona, Kingston, 1994); Beverley Carey, The Maroon Story (Kingston, 1997); Barbara Kopytoff, "The Maroons of Jamaica: an ethnohistorical study of incomplete politics, 1655-1905", Ph.D. Diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1973, and Richard Price, Maroon Societies: rebel slave communities in the Americas (New York, 1973).

39. Craton, Testing the Chains, p.335-339.

40. Paul Edwards, ed., The Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African: written by himself. 1789. (Longman's edition, London 1988). See also Henry Louis Gates, ed., The Classic Slave Narratives (New York, 1987), pp.1-182.

41. For a useful summary of some of these narratives and autobiographies, see Hilary Beckles and Verene Shepherd, eds, Slave Voices: the sounds of freedom (UNESCO, 1999).

42. Gates, ed., The Classic Slave Narratives, p.77.

43.Ibid., p.177.

44.Moira Ferguson, ed., The History of Mary Prince: A West Indian Slave, narrated by herself (London, 1831,

26

reprinted 1987). See also, Beckles & Shepherd, eds. Slave Voices, pp. 13-15.

45.Ibid.

46. See Beckles, Natural Rebels, Beckles, Centering Woman (Kingston 1999), Bush, Slave Women in Caribbean Society, Mair, The Rebel Woman (Kingston, 1975), and Shepherd, ed., Women in Caribbean History.

47.Students can follow these debates in Beckles and Shepherd, Caribbean Slave Society and Economy, sections 4 & 10 as well as the revised version of that volume, Caribbean Slavery in the Atlantic World (Kingston, New York, London, 1999), section 17.

48.See Robin Blackburn, The Overthrow of Colonial Slavery (London, 1988), Eric Williams, Capitalism and Slavery, C.L.R. James, The Black Jacobins, Hilary Beckles, Natural Rebels, and Michael Craton, Testing the Chains for various perspectives on slave emancipation.