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British
West Indies Economic
and
Social Development
327
try. Survival without the British navy and army was unthinkable. Thus,
when the legislatures of Jamaica, Barbados, Grenada, and Tobago passed
resolutions in support of the American colonies during the Stamp Duties
crisis,
they attacked parliamentary tyranny rather than self-confidently
claiming local autonomy. They merely sought to preserve their powers to
govern internal affairs, notably the slave system. Brathwaite has expanded
this interpretation to contend that, in the case of Jamaica, the Creoles who
possessed political power remained essentially colonial in their attitudes,
that they were not sufficiently creolized to surrender their dependence on
the metropolis.*
6
An alternative interpretation has been advanced by T. R. Clayton, who
rejects the security issues and puts sociopolitical factors at the center. The
Jamaican political system, Clayton argues, bestowed hegemony on the
gentry and, in contrast to the mainland
colonies,
provided "ample opportu-
nities for ambitious young members of the provincial elite." At the same
time,
the period between the Seven Years' War and the American Revolu-
tion was one of prosperity for the British West Indian plantocracy, whereas
for the continental colonies it was "a period of increasing social, economic,
and political crisis."
37
The British West Indian legislatures' decision to align with the mother
country rather than with the continental colonies had major economic
implications in both the short term and the long run. The naval war
resulted in (1) heavy loss of shipping in trade between the West Indies and
Europe, and (2) a consequent rise in freight rates and insurance. Increases
in the prices of American commodities were less immediate, since most
colonies had large stocks on hand at the beginning of 1776. Indeed, it can
be argued that these stocks and the relatively low prices charged for
American commodities were an important cause of the Revolution in that
they resulted from a mercantilist imbalance within the British Empire.
The removal of this imbalance was perhaps the most important aspect of
the Revolution from the Caribbean point of
view.
The embargo placed on trade between the British West Indies and the
rebel colonies during the War of Independence broke the close commerce
that had linked the temperate zone producers of fish, flour, corn, and
lumber with the tropical sugar islands. Efforts by the West Indian planters
and merchants to reorganize their resources took several forms. The imme-
3*
Brathwaite,
Development
of
Creole
Society,
ioo.
" T. R. Clayton, "Sophistry, Security, and Socio-political Structures in the American Revolution; or,
Why did Jamaica not Rebel?" Historical Journal 29 (1986), 344.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
328 B. W.
Higman
diate problem of short supplies was avoided to some extent by putting
more emphasis on the provision-ground system, using available back
lands,
or taking land out of cane and planting food crops. Great Britain
relaxed the Corn Laws to permit exportation of wheat, and some islands
were able to import provisions and lumber from French and Spanish
colonies. New sources of supply were provided by the opening of trade
with Ireland in 1778. Contraband trade with the Americans flourished.
The Dutch colony of St. Eustatius, for example, became an entrepdt
(distribution center), selling manufactured goods and military supplies to
the Americans, on the one hand, and mainland lumber and provisions to
the British islands, on the other. Some historians argue that these adjust-
ments enabled the planters and their slaves to obtain ample and cheap
supplies of food. Others, however, have contended that the consequences
of trade restrictions were disastrous. Sheridan holds that the Revolution
created a crisis of
slave
subsistence, in which "hunger stalked the islands
and thousands of slaves died from causes either directly or indirectly
related to the
war.
"
38
The crisis was exacerbated by severe hurricanes that
hit the islands six times between 1780 and 1786.
Another immediate effect of
the
Revolution was that in order to pay for
the war, the British increased customs duties on imports of sugar. It was at
this point that the duties first came to be seen as a source of revenue rather
than simply the means of regulating trade. The duty was doubled between
1776 and 1782, and doubled again by 1830. Sugar prices (exclusive of
duty) increased significantly during the American war, however, and those
planters who managed to find shipping to get their product to market
reaped large profits. Prices fell after 1783 but remained fairly stable at
levels a little above prewar averages until 1820.
The Revolution also had a minor demographic impact on the British
West Indies. Although most of the North American colonists who chose
to remain loyal to the crown went to Canada, significant numbers settled
in the Bahamas, Jamaica, and Dominica. Their slaves were forced to
follow. As a result, the population of the Bahamas tripled between 1783
and 1789. Many of these Loyalists had been cotton planters, and the
introduction of the crop to the Bahamas resulted in a minor plantation
revolution. In Jamaica, on the other hand, areas granted by the Assembly
were swamplands, and many Loyalists chose to locate in the towns.
With the Peace of Versailles in 1783, the Americans looked forward to a
3*
Richard B. Sheridan, "The Crisis of Slave Subsistence in the British West Indies during and after
the American Revolution," William ami Mary Quarterly 3d set., 33 (1976), 641.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
British
West Indies Economic
and
Social Development
329
reopening of their previously profitable trade with the British West In-
dies.
Similarly, the sugar planters called for reestablishment of the trade
on a liberal footing. But British reluctance to enter into a commercial
treaty with the United States meant that from 1783 to 1822, provisions
and supplies could enter the islands only if carried in British ships. In
turn, the colonies could export their staples to the United States only
under restrictive tariff regulations. Illicit trading became common. Can-
ada, Nova Scotia, and Newfoundland increased their trade in fish and
lumber, but the United States retained the trade in flour. Thus, trade
between the tropical and temperate zones continued along established
lines,
though indirectly and at greatly increased
prices.
Most of the restric-
tions were removed in 1822, but it was not until 1830 that the trade was
truly reopened. By that time, the Atlantic slave trade of the British had
been abolished, and the price of sugar had collapsed.
ECONOMIC DECLINE AND THE ABOLITION OF SLAVERY
The identification of "economic decline" has an important place in the
historiography of the British West Indies. This importance may be traced
in part to a fundamental cyclic metaphor. Something that went so high, as
in the superprofits of the golden and silver ages of sugar, must inevitably
suffer a mighty fall. The concept of economic decline also has a central role
in the history of the region, because it undermines the traditional British
humanitarian interpretation, in which the slave trade and slavery were
abolished for righteous rather than material motives. The significance of
this last debate is also rooted in a long continued focus on movements
toward abolition rather than on the experience of slavery or even adjust-
ments to freedom after emancipation.
Modern historiographic interests have shifted away from these preoccu-
pations; this, in turn, demands a rethinking of the notion of economic
decline. Most historians have measured decline in terms of the plantation
economy: the output of sugar, metropolitan prices for export commodi-
ties,
and the profitability of the system to the planter class and the larger
British imperial economy. There is little place here for a colonial or Creole
perspective, and none at all for measures that mattered to the slave popula-
tion: the output of grounds and gardens, opportunities for accumulation
through self-hire, marronage and the internal marketing system, and
changes in nutrition and levels of living. Trends in these indexes did not
follow in any simple fashion the patterns observed in the plantation export
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
330 B. W. Higman
sector, and the income of the planter had little immediate impact on the
life of the slave. For the long term, it can, however, be argued that the
planter-slaveowner was the key to the system and that changes in the
plantation sector's profitability determined imperial policy, including the
legality of different forms of labor domination. If this argument is ac-
cepted, then the debate over "economic decline" remains important.
Questions of chronology are basic to the interpretation. The British
Parliament passed a bill for the abolition of the Atlantic slave trade in
1807,
with effect from 1808. In 1833, the Emancipation Act was passed.
Slaves in some islands, such as Antigua, were freed from 1834, but the
majority entered a period of compulsory "Apprenticeship" to their former
masters, which did not end until 1838. The British provided £20 million
for the compensation of slaveowners throughout the Empire for the loss of
their slave property, nothing for the slaves themselves. In terms of this
chronology, the question is, did the plantation economy based on the slave
system enter decline before 1833 or 1807 and so bring about abolition and
emancipation, or were abolition and emancipation responsible for that
decline?
There is general agreement that sugar prices declined significantly dur-
ing the 1820s, undercutting the profits of the planters. Thus, it is easily
conceded that economic decline was a contributory factor in the passing of
the Emancipation Act. Other important factors, only tenuously linked to
decline, were the Jamaican slave rebellion of 1831—2, the mobilization of
public opinion in Great Britain, and Reform of the British Parliament in
1832.
By 1833, the political power of the West Indian "interest," or
lobby, was reduced to a shadow, and many absentee planters expressed a
willingness to accept emancipation with compensation.
Debate centers on the abolition of the slave trade and the state of the
plantation economy between 1750 and 1820. Some argue that the seeds of
destruction were planted in 1763, when the Peace of Paris added new
territories to the British tropical Empire, removing the effective protec-
tion formerly enjoyed by the old sugar colonies and leading to overproduc-
tion. « According to this interpretation, the failure of the planter class to
adopt technological innovations in field and factory, as well as the exhaus-
tion of the soil, and the inefficiencies of absentee management, led inevita-
bly to the bankruptcy of the planters and the collapse of
the
system. Other
interpretations date the decline of the system to the American Revolution,
» Lowell Joseph Ragatz, The Fall oftbt Planter Class in the British Caribbean, 1763-1833 (New York,
1928),
111-3.
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British
West Indies Economic
and
Social Development
331
placing particular emphasis on the dislocation of trade between the tropi-
cal and temperate colonies, the consequent increase in costs of production,
and the British government's desire
to
extract revenue from the sugar
trade.*
0
The revolution in St. Domingue, on the other hand, provided an
artificial respite for the British West Indies, removing its major competi-
tor from the European market and pushing up metropolitan prices.
Interpretations that deny the importance
of
1763 and the American
Revolution generally identify continued planter prosperity until about
1815,
after which sugar prices fell consistently until 1830, when they
were only one-third the level
of
1815.
4
' Sugar production declined
in
some British West Indian colonies after 1800, but overall they showed
substantial growth until emancipation.
It
can be argued, therefore, that
(1) the British abolition of the Atlantic slave trade in 1807 occurred at a
point when the system of sugar and slavery was flourishing rather than in
decline, and (2) the abolition was itself an important factor in the reduc-
tion of planter profits after 1815. The demographic structure of the slave
labor force was also changed by the abolition of the slave trade, creating
tensions that worked
to
undermine the system indirectly, and made
it
increasingly Creole in composition and outlook. These transformations, in
turn, affected the expectations of slaves and planters, within both Creole/
slave society and the coming world of freedom.
POSTEMANCIPATION ADJUSTMENTS
DEMOGRAPHIC AND SOCIAL CHANGE
Political power remained in the hands of the colonial planter and merchant
classes until 1850, with the exception of the Crown Colonies (Trinidad,
St. Lucia, and Guyana), which were ruled directly from London. Regard-
less of the locus of authority, the state sought to maintain the export-
oriented plantation system as the basis of the British West Indian econ-
omy. The capitalist classes believed that (1) the plantation was the best
possible mode of organizing land and labor for the extraction of profit, and
40
Eric Williams, Capitalism
and
Slavery (Chapel Hill, 1944), 108-25; Sheridan, "Crisis
of
Slave
Subsistence," 641; Selwyn H.
H.
Carrington, The British
West Indies
during the
American Revolution
(Dordrecht, 1988),
180-1.
41
Seymour Drescher,
Eamocide:
British Slavery in the Era ofAbolition (Pittsburgh, 1977), I5~37;J.
R.
Ward, "The Profitability
of
Sugar Planting
in
the British West Indies, 1650—1834,"
Economic
History Review 31 (1978), 197-213.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
332 B. W. Higman
(2) saw it as an institution with a civilizing force capable of defending
colonial society from the barbarism of Africa and the more insidious
features of creolization. Thus, government was deployed in the service of
the planter class, seeking to control labor and restrict access to land.
The politically marginalized ex-slave population of the British West
Indies, on the other hand, saw in freedom not only the right to bargain for
wages and the right to mobility within the labor market but also rights to
the houses and gardens that they and their ancestors had occupied for
generations and to the grounds that they had cultivated in their own time.
They were the true inheritors of the land and believed that the Crown
intended them to have access to this resource as well as freeing their labor
from their former masters.
The consequence of these conflicting readings of the meaning of free-
dom was competition for land and labor that, by 1850, resulted in new
forms of labor domination, the establishment of an independent peasantry,
and population moves within the Caribbean region. But the pattern of
adjustment was by no means uniform throughout the British West Indies,
and historians continue to debate the causes of these variations. One
particularly resilient theory is tied to population density and the existence
of open or closed resources.** This theory is, of
course,
the counterpart to
the population-density interpretation of the
emergence
of involuntary labor
systems. Where the population was dense, as in Barbados and the Leeward
Islands, the ex-slaves had no real alternatives to remaining on the planta-
tions and working as tied wage laborers at low rates of remuneration. For
this reason, the planters of Antigua decided to dispense completely with
the Apprenticeship. In such situations, the plantation system survived
intact, and a peasantry, emerged only painfully on the margins of the
estates. Where population was sparse, as in Jamaica and the Windward
Islands, the planters were unable to hold the ex-slaves to wage labor
because of the attractions of free or cheap land, which permitted the
establishment of a thriving peasantry, with its roots in the protopeasantry
spawned by the provision-ground and internal marketing systems during
slavery. In these colonies, many sugar plantations were abandoned, with
the white population migrating out of the region, and attempts were
*' William A. Green, British Slave
Emancipation:
The Sugar
Colonies
and the Gnat
Experiment
1830—
1865 (Oxford, 1976), 192—3; Stanley L. Engerman, "Economic Adjustments to Emancipation in
the United States and the British West Indies," Journal of Interdisciplinary History 13 (1982), 191-
220; Stanley L. Engerman, "Economic Change and Contract Labor in the British Caribbean: The
End of Slavery and the Adjustment to Emancipation,"
Explorations
in
Economic
History 21 (1984),
133-50.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
British
West Indies Economic
and
Social Development
333
made to introduce assisted immigrants and contract labor. In colonies
with sparse populations and new, vibrant sugar economies, such as Trini-
dad and Guyana, the planters brought in large numbers of indentured
immigrants to meet the demand for labor and ensure continuance of the
plantation system.
In general terms, the population-density model appears to fit the British
West Indian
case
quite well. It
has,
however, been subjected to criticism in
recent times, particularly by Nigel Bolland, who argues that population
density is too simple a ratio to capture fully the experience of the colonies.'
43
Bolland introduces the
case
of Belize,
a
colony with
low
population density
but little peasant development or immigration, to show that the structure
of planter hegemony was equally important. To understand the pattern in
all its ramifications, contends Bolland, it is necessary to
see
the struggle for
labor domination in dialectical terms. This argument links directly with
other current issues in postemancipation historiography. Until recently, it
was widely believed that the ex-slave population left the plantations behind
as quickly as possible, wherever free land was available, in order to escape
the scene of their enslavement. It has been shown, however, that the ex-
slaves' attachment to their community, as expressed in houses, gardens,
grounds, kinship, and burial sites, was well developed and embodied an
alternative reading of the plantation landscape. Rather than a "flight from
the
estates,"
it
is
argued, the ex-slaves
were
pushed off
by a
planter
class
that
adopted a crude interpretation of freehold property rights, charging rents
for houses and
yards
occupied by generations and requiring plantation labor
as
a precondition of continued residence.
44
Here the dialectic
was
played out
in the politics of plantation economy, in competition for resources within
the separate niches of planter and ex-slave.
In this struggle, the planters used state funds to assist immigration to
the British West Indies in order to put both moral and numerical pressure
on the ex-slave population to offer its labor to the plantation sector.
British and German settlers were brought to Jamaica, and Portuguese to
Trinidad and Guyana, beginning in 1834.
4
' Efforts were also made during
the Apprenticeship period to recruit contract labor from the marginal
islands of the Bahamas and the Leeward Islands to Trinidad and Guyana,
45
O. Nigel Bolland, "Systems of Domination after Slavery: The Control of Land and Labour in the
British West Indies after 1838," Comparative Stadia in
Society
and History 23 (1981), 591—619.
*>
Douglas Hall, "The Flight from the Estates Reconsidered: The British West Indies, 1838-42,"
Journal of
Caribbean
History 10/11 (1978), 7-24; Woodville K. Marshall, The
Post-Slavery
Problem
Revisited (Mona, Department of History, University of the West Indies, 1991).
« K. O. Laurence, Immigration into the
West Indies
in the 19th Century (Barbados, 1971), 9—23.
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334 B. W.
Higman
but this practice was prohibited by the Colonial Office. The Barbados
legislature did everything possible to prevent labor recruiters from enter-
ing that island. Indentured Indians arrived first in Guyana in May 1838
and thus inaugurated the major flow of contract labor into the region,
which was to continue until 1917, substantially augmenting the popula-
tion of Guyana and Trinidad and, to a lesser extent, Jamaica. Bountied
and "liberated" Africans also added to the numbers. Thus, the 1840s saw
considerable experimentation with immigrant labor, under a variety of
styles of contract and from a variety of origins, but the financial crisis of
1847 and the equalization of the sugar duties resulted in bankruptcy for
many sugar planters. Large-scale immigration based on long-term con-
tracts was not commenced until the 1850s.
Immigration created an increasingly plural society in the British West
Indies, separating the older sugar colonies and marginal colonies, with
their large African and small white (essentially British) populations, from
the new sugar colonies with their growing Asian and varied European
components. It is in the postemancipation period that the plural society
model comes to prove most convincing as an explanation of social seg-
mentation and its relation to political power.
46
The increasing complexity
of the populations of Guyana and Trinidad also resulted from a relatively
slow growth of the ex-slave population by natural increase. Elsewhere in
the British West Indies, emancipation was followed by a quite rapid shift
from decline to positive natural increase, and the high black:white ratios
of the period of slavery became even higher.
PRODUCTION AND TRADE
The period between 1834 and 1850 witnessed a significant overall decline
in the export of sugar from the British West Indies in consequence of the
abandonment of plantations and the reduced output of the surviving
estates (Figure 7.1). In Jamaica, the leading producer, exports were
halved: Jamaica exported 62,812 tons of sugar in 1834 but only 28,750
tons in 1850, and output did not return to preemancipation levels until
the 1930s. The next most important producer, Guyana, experienced a
similar decline in the short term but saw recovery by the late 1840s and
exceeded its preemancipation peak by 1863. Trinidad reached a peak
position by 1845, demonstrating the importance of contract labor in
<
6
Brian L. Moore, Race, Powtr and
Social Segmentation
in Colonial
Society:
Guyana after Slavery, 1838—
1891 (New York, 1987).
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British
West Indies Economic
and
Social Development
335
maintaining output in the new sugar colonies. Guyana and Trinidad also
led the way in introducing new factory technologies derived from steam
power
—
productivity gains were not simply a matter of altered labor
inputs.
In the old sugar colonies, where the population was dense and the state
held tight control of the community, exports increased in many cases
without resort to contract labor or technological innovations. Barbados,
for example, peaked in 1838 when 23,679 tons of sugar were exported,
and it peaked again in 1849 and 1850 by exporting more than 24,000
tons.
St. Kitts, Nevis, and Antigua followed a similar trajectory, but
Montserrat's production fell off dramatically to recover only in the 1860s,
and the British Virgin Islands stopped exporting sugar completely soon
after 1850. Marginal, small-scale producers were forced from the market.
The Windward Islands experienced reduced production but stayed in the
market until the end of the nineteenth century.
Decline in the export sector was not balanced by growth in the domestic
sector. In Jamaica, exports contributed 41.4 percent of Gross Domestic
Product in 1832 (at current prices) but only 23.4 percent in 1850, accord-
ing to the calculations of Eisner,
*
7
Food production for local consumption,
on the other hand, moved from 17.8 percent to 28.1 percent, indicating
the growth of the independent peasantry and its role in perpetuating the
productivity of the provision-ground system in new and old settings. In
absolute terms, Eisner's calculations show an increase of only 16.2 percent
in the local food sector, yet this was the major growth area. Jamaica's
Gross Domestic Product overall fell by 26.1 percent between 1832 and
1850.
Guyana, the other British West Indian colony for which national in-
come estimates have been prepared, experienced a somewhat different
pattern.*
8
Between 1832 and 1852, Guyana's Gross Domestic Product
increased by 8.2 percent absolutely (at 1913 prices), while the export
sector's share fell from 43.3 to 22.8 percent. Food production for local
consumption moved from 27.3 to 31.6 percent, but the real gains were in
manufacturing for local consumption, public administration, and profes-
sional services. As in Jamaica, the immediate postemancipation period
saw growth in building and construction, largely in response to the de-
mand for improved housing among the peasantry and free villagers.
The external trade of the British West Indies was until the 1840s gov-
•"
Eisner,
Jamaica
1830-1930,
118.
«* Moohr, "Economic Impact of Slave Emancipation," 589.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
336 B. W.
Higman
erned by the Navigation
Laws,
which tied
the colonies to
Great Britain. But
the relaxation of restrictions on trade with the United States, beginning in
1830,
initiated significant changes in the geographical pattern of markets
for exports and sources of
imports.
By 1850, Jamaica, for example, took
20.4 percent of its imports from the United States and another 10.2 percent
from Canada. The United States received 6.0 percent of Jamaica's exports
and South America 11.7 percent. Great Britain remained overwhelming in
the pattern of trade, however, supplying 64.6 percent of imports to Jamaica
in 1850, and taking 77.9 percent of its exports.
49
By the early 1830s, the
British West Indies already imported most of
its
lumber, flour, meal, and
corn from the United States, largely restoring the pre-1776 pattern; by
1850,
hardly any food supplies came from Europe.
Growth of the peasantry and expansion of food production for local
consumption went together, in at least some of the major British West
Indian colonies, with further articulation of the internal marketing sys-
tem. The establishment of interior market towns moved rapidly, as planta-
tion villages were deserted following planter pressure or actual clearances,
and church-founded free villages emerged. The profitability of such mar-
keting continued to depend, however, on cash flow among the wage-
earning plantation labor force. Abandonment of estates and planters' at-
tempts to reduce wages, by the later 1840s, undercut the growth of the
peasant and distributive sectors to some extent.
The second half of the nineteenth century was thus marked by a pro-
longed process of readjustment. In some of the British West Indian colo-
nies,
such as Jamaica and the Windward Islands, the economies became
increasingly inward-looking until the 1870s, when new technologies cre-
ated external consumer markets and investment opportunities for trade in
crops such as bananas, formerly the
food
of
the
poor. The consequence was
a growing penetration by United States capital; in 1890, the United States
came to replace Great Britain
as
Jamaica's major trading partner. In other
British West Indian colonies, such as Barbados and the Leeward Islands,
the sugar plantation economy survived relatively intact throughout this
period, and trade patterns changed less dramatically, though the Ameri-
can connection expanded everywhere. The British West Indies gradually
became less important elements in the Caribbean region at the same time
as American influences and interests became increasingly pervasive.
<»
Eisner,
Jamaica 1830—1930, 269—70.
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