An Analysis of Eighteenth-Century

Home , British West Indies, Carriacou, Danish West Indies, Petite Martinique

Journal of Interdisciplinary History, xliii:4 (Spring, 2013), 539–570.

CARRIACOU David Beck Ryden “One of the Finest and Most Fruitful Spots in America”: An Analysis of Eighteenth-Century Carriacou The tiny Caribbean island of Carriacou (not to be confused with Curaçao) was ceded to the British by the French after the Seven Years’ War (1763). The largest of the “Grenadines”— the group of islands and islets that fell under the jurisdiction of eighteenth-century colonial Grenada—Carriacou is only 8,000 acres in size and is not remembered for any great fortiªcations or fortunes. Yet Carriacou’s population of Englishmen, Frenchmen, Scots, and free people of color, along with their enslaved workers, comprised a distinctive slaveholding society in comparison to that of the old British colonies. Moreover, historians of the Caribbean have given cotton, Carriacou’s main crop, far less attention than they have sugar. The “[b]usiness papers from these ephemeral [West Indian cotton] concerns scarcely exist,” and, because of Carriacou’s extremely small size and its remoteness from the seat of colonial government, ofªcial correspondence (such as gover- nors’ reports) concerning the settlement’s economic and social development is scarce among the Colonial Ofªce papers.1

David Beck Ryden is Associate Professor of History, University of Houston-Downtown. He is the author of West Indian Slavery and British Abolition, 1783–1807 (New York, 2009); “Does Decline Make Sense? The West Indian Economy and the Abolition of the British Slave Trade,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History, XXI (2001), 147–174. The author thanks William Pratesi Urquhart for granting access to the Craigston Castle Papers and extends his gratitude to the University of Aberdeen’s Special Collections Library, which temporarily housed these materials, and to the Bodleian Library at Rhodes House, Ox- ford, for assistance with research on the 1776 census. Edward Cox, Stanley Engerman, Russell Menard, and anonymous referees provided a number of excellent suggestions. A version of this paper was presented at a Symposium in Honor of Rus Menard at the University of Minnesota. Funds for this research were provided, in part, by a University of Houston- Downtown Organized Research Committee (orc) grant. © 2013 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and The Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Inc. 1 Recent historiographical surveys underscore the need for research in this region. Trevor Burnard, “British West Indies and Bermuda,” in Robert L. Paquett and Mark D. Smith (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Slavery in the Americas (New York, 2010), 149. For the remark about the paucity of Caribbean cotton-business records, see George F. Tyson, “On the Periphery of the Peripheries: The Cotton Plantations of St. Croix, Danish West Indies, 1735–1815,” in idem (ed.), Bondmen and Freedmen in the Danish West Indies: Scholarly Perspectives (St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands, 1996), 83. Lowell Ragatz, Fall of the Planter Class in the British Caribbean,

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/JINH_a_00461 by guest on 29 September 2021 540 | DAVID BECK RYDEN Nonetheless, Carriacou has left us two unique documents— agricultural censuses from the 1776 and 1790 crop years—that provide a rich perspective on the agro-industrial organization of both large- and small-scale cotton operations in the British West Indies before the abolition of the slave trade (1807). These sources demonstrate that, for a brief moment, some investors were able to build large plantations in an industry often assumed to have been dominated by small farmers. Although historians are familiar with the 1776 census, the 1790 enumeration has gone virtually unstud- ied. This article devotes special attention to the 1790 ªgures— since they were compiled when cotton reigned supreme on the island—supplemented by a set of letters to William Urquhart, a Scottish absentee landowner.2

the censuses of 1776 and 1790 These censuses are two of the most detailed enumerations of an eighteenth-century British West Indian slave society. The one from 1776 was likely to have been taken under the direction of Grenada’s colonial government. Al- though it is not among the Colonial Ofªce (co) records in the National Archives (na), a copy is deposited at the Bodleian library, which purchased the manuscript in 1949 with a collection of mis- cellaneous documents related to the Ceded Islands (Grenada, the Grenadines, Dominica, St. Vincent, and Tobago). Little is known about the speciªc origins of this three-page document, but the ac- companying materials clearly indicate that the 1790 census was conducted under the direction of Major General Edward Mathew, the then governor of Grenada and the Grenadines. This census was apparently collected with the endorsement of the colonists, who had recently applied for the establishment of a military garri- son on Carriacou in order to “preserve the quiet of the Island, which [at that time was]...particularly necessary to watch over . . . [given] the great inºux of mulattos and others from the neigh- bouring distracted French Colonies.”3

1763–1833 (New York, 1963; orig. pub. 1928), also laments the lack of “reliable statistics” and the fact that “cotton was seldom mentioned in despatches.” 2 The censuses under study are “State of Carriacou and the other Grenadine Islands [1776],” Special Collections and Western Mss. W. Ind. p. 4/2, Bodleian Library of Common- wealth and African Studies, Rhodes House, Oxford; “Schedule of the Population & Produce of the Island of Carriacou, taken 1st of Sept 1790,” 101/31 ff. 103–4, Colonial Ofªce (hereinafter co), National Archives (hereinafter na), London. 3 The ceded islands were acquired from the French by the British at the close of the Seven Years’ War. The manuscripts at the Bodleian include a “Description of the Island of Grenada”

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/JINH_a_00461 by guest on 29 September 2021 CARRIACOU | 541 The possibility of invasion from without or an uprising from within motivated Carriacou’s planters to submit evidence of their tiny island’s importance to the Empire, as well as to document Carriacou’s ºimsy defenses. Local authorities might have hoped that the censuses would illustrate the extent to which the English and Scots, in particular, were outnumbered by the people of color. The 1790 ªgures indicate widespread non-compliance with the Grenadian colonial law requiring one white man for every ªfty slaves; only one-third of the cotton plantations with large slave populations was sufªciently peopled with white men. We do not know for certain whether the 1776 census was also intended to prove the island to be worthy of protection, rather than simply to quantify its agricultural capacity. This latter rationale, however, is unlikely given that the much more economically and politically important island of Grenada was not similarly enumerated.4 The two censuses are indirectly connected to one another by way of their compatibility, both sharing a similar layout that records (1) the number of white men, (2) the number of slaves, (3) the phenotype of the people of color who were heads of household, and (4) the output of each individual property. As Ta- ble 1 delineates, the only noteworthy difference between the two censuses is that the earlier manuscript presents acreage and the output of the island’s experimental crops—coffee, cocoa, indigo, and sugar—which a handful of cotton planters pursued in 1776. Both censuses were based on the household as opposed to the individual. Consequently, the only named individuals are heads of household and absentee owners. The 1790 census clearly identiªes the occupation of those white householders who were on the island during the enumeration, whereas the 1776 data give no indication of absenteeism or occupation. Both censuses report the free status of householders with African ancestry, but neither records the occupation of free people of color. The complete lack of doc-

(1778) and “Queries relating to His Majesty’s islands of America, answered for Tobago” (1775). Mathew’s role is imputed from Edward Mathew to Lord Grenville, January 7, 1791, co 101/31 ff. 100–1, na. Revolution in France (1789) sparked a series of slave uprisings in Guadeloupe and Martinique, causing many to fear that the contagion of equality would spread to the Anglophone Caribbean. 4 Discussion of the law can be found in William Arbuthnot to William Urquhart, April 15, 1790, NRAS2570/Bundle 118, Craigston Castle Papers (hereinafter ccp), Aberdeen, Scot- land. With regard to the enumeration of whites, if the proprietor and the “number of white servants” comprised the total of white men on the plantation, only seven of the applicable cotton estates were in compliance with the law.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/JINH_a_00461 by guest on 29 September 2021 542 | DAVID BECK RYDEN Table 1 Information Reported in the Carriacou Censuses of 1776 and 1790 1776 census 1790 census Proprietor[’s] names Inhabitant[’]s names [& phenotype] Number of white men Denomination [occupation or phenotype] Number of slaves Place of abode Land Proprietors absent Acres cleared Number of slaves Acres in wood Number of white men Total land Quantitity of cotton 1790 [measured in pounds] Crop 1776 Pounds of sugar Puncheons of rum Pounds of cotton Pounds of coffee Pounds of cocoa Pounds of indigo note The 1790 census includes all dwellings, whereas the 1776 enumeration may include farms. sources “State of Carriacou and the Other Grenadine Islands [1776],” Special Collections and Western Mss., W Ind. R.4/2, Bodleian Library of Commonwealth and African Studies, Oxford; “A Schedule of the Population & Produce of the Island of Carriacou,” 101/31 ff. 103–4, Colonial Ofªce, National Archive, London.

umentation for the spouses, children, or other relatives of household heads suggests that the census under-reports the total number of free people. It is unlikely, however, that the true ªgure was signiªcantly larger than that reported; the proclivities of the men who lorded over female slaves retarded the development of stable families among the white population. In the early nineteenth century, one English commentator rhetorically asked the free men of the Grenadines, “Where are your wives? Where are your heirs?”5 Although neither census was designed to capture information about every individual living on Carriacou, both of them appear to have recorded the basic economic and demographic data from all of, or nearly all of, the farms. A map of the island dated 1784 shows a total of ªfty-four farms, and an undated map from the 1790s places the total number at forty-eight. These ªgures are remarkably close to the numbers reported in the 1776 and the 1790 census—ªfty-two cotton farms (forty-seven with land enumer-

5 Henry Nelson Coleridge, Six Months in the West Indies (New York, 1826), 102.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/JINH_a_00461 by guest on 29 September 2021 CARRIACOU | 543 ated) and ªfty cotton properties, respectively. Further reducing the probability that these censuses were not comprehensive, the census takers in 1776 even listed the output of Dominique Lucas’ farm, which yielded only 50 lbs of cotton ªber. Any under-count of planting activity during the 1790 enumeration process was likely to have been the result of aggregating multiple properties: Data about Urquhart’s second property, the Meldrum estate, for example, is not listed in the census return, but its details were pre- sumably merged with ªgures from Craigston, his primary plantation. Although no tax lists or similar sources survive to test the comprehensiveness of the records, the late-eighteenth-century maps mentioned above suggest that lapses in the data collection were limited.6 One unique feature of the censuses is their recording of staple export crop production for each estate (but not provision crops). That cotton production is listed in pounds, rounded to the nearest hundred, in the 1790 schedule, suggests that planters reported their production in terms of cleaned cotton bales, which were later converted into pounds using the standard weight per bale of 300 lbs. The 1776 data offer more precision, measuring output to the nearest pound. Nothing is known about how the census was conducted on Carriacou. In the 1776 enumeration, the island’s grandees appear on the ªrst page and the smallest farmers, in terms of land holding, on the last. The 1790 census has no ordering by estate size or by name. It shows some clustering of the non-farming households from Hillsborough, but this grouping of hamlet properties was not perfect. The initiative for the data-collection process in both censuses may well have come from the settlers themselves, possibly reporting their household information to a central location. Both manuscripts include additional information from other Grenadine islands, but this inter-island information is irrelevant to this analysis of Carriacou cotton farming.7 6 The undated map is reproduced in H. Gordon Slade, “Craigston and Meldrum Estates, 1769–1841,” Proceedings of Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, CXIV (1984), 485. Slade’s article provides a good overview of the properties and the Urquharts. 7 The 1776 census includes ªgures from the following islands: Union, Petite Martinique, Petit St. Vincent, Prunes, Myreau, and Canouan Bequia, all of which produced cotton. The 1790 return accounts for three islets, or “Quays that Adjoin Carriacou”: Islet Rhind, Isle de Large, and Pt. Martinique, each of which had a single cotton farm.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/JINH_a_00461 by guest on 29 September 2021 544 | DAVID BECK RYDEN cotton farming in carriacou Contemporaries of the late eighteenth century often remarked on the fertility of Carriacou. The governor of Grenada and the Grenadines, for example, reported the island to be “happy in soil, and very Successful in its produce”; another visitor described Carriacou as having the “most beautiful appearance, and conveyst [sic] the idea of one continued garden.” According to a ceded island promotional pamphlet, “Cariouacou” was “one of the ªnest and most fruitful spots in America: the soil remarkably fertile, and...theclimate equally whol[e]some and pleasant,” despite its lack of fresh-water sources other than the 50 inches of rain that fell in a typical year. The dec- lination of the terrain is proportionally less on Carriacou than on Grenada, permitting easier tillage of the then-rich volcanic soil.8 Sugar was cultivated on two properties in 1776, but Carriacou’s small size rendered sugar investment too risky during the late eighteenth century; the island had neither the manpower nor the defenses to protect costly sugar mills, boiling apparatus, and distillery equipment. John Campbell, an eighteenth-century traveler, remarked that the soil on the Grenadines was suitable for sugar but that it was “improper to attempt the planting of canes, from an apprehension that in time of war[,] they might be liable to the insults of privateers, as their size would hardly admit of a sufªcient number of inhabitants to defend them.” Edwards, the well-known Jamaican planter and writer, reported two sugar plantations on Carriacou in 1791, and, indeed, the 1776 census identi- ªed Duncan Campbell and William Todd’s estates as producing, respectively, 60,000 and 73,495 lbs of sugar, meager ªgures both.9

8 Arbuthnot to Urquhart, April 6, 1790, NRAS2570/Bundle 118, ccp; Arbuthnot to Urquhart, July 12, 1792, NRAS2570/Bundle 130, ccp; Arbuthnot to Urquhart, c. July 15, 1793, NRAS2570/Bundle 130, ccp. Governor Edward Mathew to Lord Sydney (Secretary of State), December 20, 1788, co 100/28 f. 267, na. Mathew was made captain general and governor-in-chief of the island of Grenada and the Grenadines in March 1783 according to An- nual Register...fortheYear1783 (London, 1800), 230. William Urquhart [the Surveyor] to William Urquhart, September 25, 1787, NRAS2570/Bundle 118, ccp. John Campbell, Can- did and Impartial Considerations on the Nature of the Sugar Trade (London, 1763), 193. Michael G. Smith, Kinship and Community in Carriacou (New Haven, 1962), 18. Note that today the soil is described as “in a state of extreme degradation,” having been “effectively mined by colonial agriculture.” See Augustus Thomas, Grenada, Carriacou & Pettit Martinique National Report on the Implementation of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertiªcation and/or Drought (St. George, Grenada, 2000), 11, 17, available at http://www.unccd.int/cop/reports/lac/ national/2000/grenada-eng.pdf (accessed March 1, 2011); Bonham C. Richardson, “The Overdevelopment of Carriacou,” Geographical Review, LXV (1975), 390–399. 9 During the Anglo-French War in 1793, the surrounding waters were described as being

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/JINH_a_00461 by guest on 29 September 2021 CARRIACOU | 545 From the French occupation during the American Revolu- tion to the end of the eighteenth century, there is no further evidence of commercial sugar production (other than Edwards’ remark) in either private documents or the papers of the Colonial Ofªce. As Edwards correctly noted, cotton was at that time the primary cash crop; “corn, yams, potatoes, and plantains” were also planted in sufªcient quantity to be exported to nearby Grenada. Corn growing in Carriacou, as in other regions, was a vital com- ponent to long-staple cotton farming. During dry months, planters there found the prospect of turning to North American suppli- ers or nearby island markets to feed their enslaved workers “vexing.”10 In the ªnal decade of the eighteenth century, the approxi- mately ªfty farms on Carriacou were expected to produce 1 mil- lion lbs of cotton per year—an output that represented half of Grenada’s total cotton exports to Great Britain and Ireland and between 9 and 14 percent of the total British West Indian production. Unlike British sugar, which was protected from foreign competition by mercantilist legislation, cotton was imported “into Great Britain from every quarter of the world...[being] the growth of the East Indies, Africa, the Levant and the south of

“plageud [sic] by privateers.” Arbuthnot to Urquhart, August 12, 1793, NRAS2570/Bundle 130, ccp. For comparison on sugar output levels, the estimated median output for Jamaican estates in 1775 is just under 225,000 pounds. See Ryden, West Indian Slavery and British Aboli- tion, 1783–1807 (New York, 2009), 223. 10 During the American Revolution Grenada and the Grenadines—along with Tobago, St. Vincent, Dominica, Montserrat, and St. Kitts—fell into the hands of the French (1779). While Grenada and the Grenadines were under French occupation, British absentees had their estates placed under appointed “conservators,” and the proªts were deposited into the “public treasury.” All of the islands, with the exception of Tobago, were returned to Britain at the close of the Revolution. See Bryan Edwards, History...of...theWestIndies (Dublin, 1793), I, 364–365; Anthony Stokes, A View of the Constitution of the British Colonies (London, 1783), 18. Edwards, History of the West Indies, I, describes the types of provisions grown (373). In the early nineteenth century, T. Bayley, Four Years Residence in the West Indies (London, 1831),wrote, “Fowls, turkeys, and guinea birds are bred in abundance, and carried over to supply the market of Grenada” (336). Cotton was regarded as particularly suited to complementary corn production. See West Indian Planter, Remarks on the Evidence Delivered on the Petition Presented by the West-India Planters and Merchants (London, 1777), 8–9. On the inter- cropping of corn and cotton in North America, see John Douglas Campbell, “The Gender Division of Labor, Slave Reproduction, and the Slave Family Economy on a Southern Cot- ton Plantation, 1800–1865,” unpub. Ph.D. diss. (Univ. of Minnesota, 1988), 34. Corn is also presented as a complementary crop in the context of Grenada and Tobago in 1775. See West- India Planter, Remarks on the Evidence Delivered on the Petition Presented by the West India Planters and Merchants (London, 1776), 8.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/JINH_a_00461 by guest on 29 September 2021 546 | DAVID BECK RYDEN Europe.” Global competition, and Britain’s meteoric rise in demand for cotton ªber, meant that Carriacou’s contribution to total “cotton wool” imports into Great Britain was probably only 3 percent in the 1790s.11 Because eighteenth-century British imperialists focused on the Caribbean colonies’ potential to grow sugar, no precise annual cotton output ªgures for Carriacou, or even Grenada, are available. The production levels listed in the censuses, however, suggest a greater intensity in cotton production soon after 1780, when “cotton wool of all kinds found ready sales” due to the rapid development of “large spinning machines” in England. By the early 1790s, Carriacou’s annual output was nearly 30 percent greater than its 1776 levels. This rush into cotton farming, and concomi- tant abandonment of all other staple cash crops, was not limited to small farmers; it also included large planters who funneled, or attracted, British capital to the tiny island. One Grenada-based merchant, who observed the success of both large and small cotton operations during this period, claimed that “the Cariacou [cotton] Estates have prospered more uniformly & generally than any other of our West India Islands.” The 1790 census occurred during Carriacou’s short-lived cotton boom, when large planters and small farmers capitalized on the island’s rich land, African slaves, and the rapid rise in the metropolitan demand for cotton.12

11 For a contemporary estimate of expected output, see Mathew to Lord Sydney, co 100/ 28 f. 267, na. Note that in 1787, Grenada and the Grenadines exported 2,062,427 lbs of cotton. See Grenada Planter, A Brief Enquiry into the Causes of, and Conduct Pursued by, the Colonial Government, for Quelling the Insurrection in Grenada (London, 1796), 117; Edwards, History of the West Indies, I, 374. The estimate of 9% is based on 1789 import ªgures of 10,051,780 lbs of cotton imports from the British West Indies, as recorded in the “Accurate Statement of all the COTTON WOOL Imported from all parts of the world, in the Year 1789,” Times of London, issue 1651, 14 Aug. 1790, 3, col. C. Note, however, that these “British West India” ªgures include foreign cotton bales imported into the British colonies through colonial free ports. Ed- wards recorded that, on average, 40% of cotton imports from the British West Indies were foreign-grown from 1784 to 1787, inclusive. This percentage suggests that Carriacou’s true share of British West Indian cotton production was closer to 14%. See Edwards, History of the West Indies (London, 1793), II, 267. For the British diversity of cotton imports, see William Young, The West-India Common-Place Book (London, 1807), 77. 12 For the manufacturing demand in England, see Edwards, History of the West Indies, II, 262–263. Nearby Barbadian sugar planters also diversiªed into cotton planting during the 1780s. See Justin Roberts,”Uncertain Business: A Case Study of Barbadian Plantation Man- agement, 1770–93,” Slavery and Abolition, XXXII (2011), 225. For the growth of Carriacou’s cotton output, see Raymund P. Devas, A History of the Island of Grenada, 1498–1796, with Some

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/JINH_a_00461 by guest on 29 September 2021 CARRIACOU | 547 To the best of our knowledge, West Indian planters grew a strain of cotton called gossypian barbadense, which was not indige- nous to Carriacou or other Caribbean islands but was imported from South America during the seventeenth century. According to Stephens, this long-staple plant was likely to have been natu- rally outcrossed with a “wild West Indian form of hirsutum.” This combination was probably the basis of the well-known North American long-staple Sea Island cotton. During the 1790s, Carib- bean planters identiªed at least seven different strains of cotton plants, but only the French (“small seed,” identiªed as g. hirsutum var. marie-galante) and Brazilian (“kidney,” classiªed as g. barbadense var. brasiliense) varieties were commonly cultivated. During the early years of Britain’s Industrial Revolution, Carriacou’s planters were not entirely satisªed with these two options and, according to William Arbuthnot, the manager of Urquhart’s Craigston estate, had changed “the seed or otherwise, whereby the quality of their cotton had much improved.” Although neither census con- tains any assessment of cotton quality, by the early nineteenth century, Carriacou’s cotton “fetche[d] the best prices” of the British West Indies. This high valuation placed on the island’s cotton, along with the detailed description of the crop’s “ginning” in Urquhart letters (more on that below), indicates that the island was a center for long-staple cotton production (g. barbadense).13 A passing comment by Arbuthnot reveals that the enslaved laborers were divided into “gangs.” The use of this term does not necessarily mean that slave labor was always severely regimented, only that managers were conditioned to classify slaves in terms of

Notes and Comments on Carriacou and Events of Later Years (St. George, Grenada, 1974), 181– 182. For the general prosperity among cotton farmers, see Thomas Campbell to Urquhart, March 3, 1790, NRAS2570/Bundle 131, ccp. 13 For contemporary references to cotton types, see Edwards, History of the West Indies, II, 257–260. For the quotation about the origins of Sea Island cotton and the formal classiªcation of the plants mentioned by Edwards, see S. G. Stephens, “The Origin of Sea Island Cotton,” Agricultural History, L (1976), 392, 398–399. For discussion of the cultivation and origins of cotton in the earliest English settlements, see Russell R. Menard, Sweet Negotiations: Sugar, Slavery, and Plantation Agriculture in Early Barbados (Charlottesville, 2006), 23–24. The contemporary quotation about the innovation in planting is from Todd & Co to Urquhart, October 31, 1791, NRAS2570/Bundle 121, ccp. For the quality of Carriacou cotton, see “Monthly Commercial Report,” The Monthly Magazine, XXVIII (1809), 341. The high market value of Carriacou cotton conªrms that the island specialized in a long-staple variety. For the ginning of Urquhart’s crop, see Arbuthnot to Urquhart, May 18, 1787, NRAS2570/Bundle 116, ccp.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/JINH_a_00461 by guest on 29 September 2021 548 | DAVID BECK RYDEN ability. In a recent time-study analysis of a Barbadian account book, Roberts explains that cotton slaves on Barbados were closely monitored and not tasked—that is, they did not work inde- pendently in pursuit of a planter-mandated production goal.14 Despite the lack of comparable plantation records for late eighteenth-century Carriacou, Alexander, a white employee who lived on the island c. 1800, recalled a close and muscular supervision of slave work on Carriacou’s Dumfries estate (see Figure 1): “Before daybreak,” the white overseers “called the roll upon the ªeld, and commence labour. At nine o’clock, if at work near the house, we went there for breakfast, the time being announced by the crack of the driver’s whip, who is always a slave selected for that purpose; if any distance, we had [breakfast...]brought out to the ªeld, by the domestics; and the slaves always took theirs with them. At half-past nine the whip again announced by its crack that labor was to be resumed. At noon the shell blew; and whether near the house or at a distance, we went to it for dinner the hour for which was one o’clock. Exactly at two the whip cracked again, and we continued labor until half-an-hour before sun-down, when the whip announced the time had arrived for the gang [my emphasis] to cut their proportion of grass for the cattle on the estate.”15 Alexander also observed that “many of the negroes [on Dum- fries...]spoke neither French nor English,” and, as a conse- quence, they were “required to be drilled in their respective works.” Slave resistance (in the form of “thieving”), along with the language barrier, led to “one continued current of roaring, bawling, swearing, and ºogging.” Another visitor in 1833 further conªrmed that the gang system was the norm on Carriacou by noting that “tasking” was foreign to the island and that when the “system of task work” was “introduced into every [emphasis added] department of labour [c. 1829] . . . both Managers and Negroes set

14 Arbuthnot wrote, “There will be more provisions than will be sufªcient to serve both Gangs [emphasis added].” Arbuthnot to Urquhart, October 16, 1788, NRAS2570/Bundle 116, ccp. Roberts, “Notes and Documents: Working between the Lines: Labor and Agricul- ture on Two Barbadian Sugar Plantations, 1796–97,” William and Mary Quarterly, LXIII (2006), 559, 568. Carriacou cotton planting may have followed a model similar to that of North American long-staple farming, in which “[s]omething like a combination of the gang system and the task system was not unknown.” See Lewis Cecil Gray, History of Agriculture (Gloucester, Mass., 1958), I, 551. 15 Alexander Alexander, The Life of Alexander Alexander (Edinburgh, 1830), 29–30.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/JINH_a_00461 by guest on 29 September 2021 CARRIACOU | 549 their faces against it.” By 1833, however, slaves were enjoying the beneªt of a seven- to nine-hour day that was completed “almost always by 2 [p.m.].”16 Hence, given the evidence about late eighteenth-century Carriacou, the long-held generalization that “long-staple cotton production in various Caribbean societies...generated a task system” must be re-evaluated in the context of the Grenadines. Weeding, in particular, required close supervision to ensure that the workers did not intentionally or accidentally damage the plants. Arbuthnot’s use of a martial expression to describe the ur- gency surrounding this chore—people had to be “mustered [emphasis added]...togettheEstate free from Weeds as soon as pos- sible”—is telling. Picking (harvesting) and cleaning might have involved tasking to some extent, but, by all indications, gang management was integral to organizing Carriacou’s cotton slaves from the 1790s and to the early nineteenth century.17 A successful cotton crop demanded close management of the cultivation process. The agricultural cycle in Carriacou usually began in June, when slaves started to clear and prepare the land for planting. According to Edwards, West Indian cotton slaves typi- cally dug holes four feet in diameter that were between six and eight feet apart. These depressions in the soil were over-seeded because cotton shrubs were regularly lost to a “grub or worm, [while] others rot[ted] in the ground.” After about six weeks—and again after three or four months—the cotton plants were thinned. Pruning the branches of the remaining plants was repeated several times with hopes of maximizing yields.18 Since the island had no rivers, springs, or wells, rain was es-

16 Alexander, Life of Alexander, 30. For the implementation of the task system, see Bristol Mirror, 15 June 1833, quoted in Smith, Kinship and Community in Carriacou, 22–23. According to the St George’s Chronicle and Grenada Gazette, 24 Aug. 1833, this tasking system was exported to Grenada from Carriacou. See B[arry] W. Higman, Slave Populations of the British Ca- ribbean, 1807–1834 (Baltimore, 1984), 179. For tasking in the West Indian cotton sector, see Philip Morgan “Task and Gang Systems: The Organization of Labor on New World Planta- tions,” in Stephen Innes (ed.), Work and Labor in Early America (Chapel Hill, 1988), 191. 17 The quotation about mustering is from Arbuthnot to Urquhart, June 1, 1793, NRAS2570/Bundle 130, ccp. 18 Arbuthnot to Urquhart, June 8, 1787, NRAS2570/Bundle 116, ccp; Arbuthnot to Urquhart, May 22, 1788, NRAS2570/Bundle 116, ccp; Arbuthnot to Urquhart, April 6, 1790, NRAS2570/Bundle 118, ccp. Edwards, History of the West Indies, II, 261. See also D. Gail Saunders, “Slave Life, Slave Society and Cotton Production in the Bahamas,” Slavery and Abolition, XI (1990), 335.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/JINH_a_00461 by guest on 29 September 2021 550 | DAVID BECK RYDEN sential for the development of the seedlings. Too much rain, or a tropical storm, between May and November, however, could be a detriment for farmers, planters, and investors. In the summer of 1787, for example, Artbuthnot reported, “Till a week ago, the weather continued very favorable, but on Monday last in the eve- ning, it began to rain with great violence and continued longer than was even before remembered. The wind was likewise very high so that there was every appearance of a hurricane, which I am convinced has been the case in some of the Islands to the North- ward of this [island]. In several places the Cotton has been much injured & in some few places intirely swept away. I am happy however that this has been so early in the season. I have already made the Negroes raise up the Cotton which has been thrown on the ground & replant what is dead so that if we have no no [sic.] more heavy rains, I hope none of your ªelds will sustain any injury.”19 If the young plants escaped hurricane season, they were expected to produce “beautiful yellow ºowers” at the end of Octo- ber. Pods containing the cotton wool would appear within the following two months, barring any weather mishap. In general terms, Caribbean planters could expect that between “the seventh to the tenth month the pods [would] ripen in succession; when they burst open in three partitions, displaying their white and glossy down to the sight.”20 Because of the fragility of the cotton plants and the uncer- tainty of the weather, cotton farmers were hard-pressed to forecast the size of their crops, even in the ªnal months of the agricultural cycle. Unseasonable late-winter and early-spring rains could either sever the pods from the plant or “stain” the ªber. Heavy winds on the eve of the harvest were another worry for cotton investors, who could literally see their investment blown away in an after- noon. Planters were also wary of a cotton blight called the “blast”

19 Uquhart’s property included an 85,000-gallon cistern built for irrigation purposes. Arbuthnot to Urquhart, February 18, 1787, NRAS2570/Bundle 116, ccp. Note, however, that one early nineteenth-century account explained that all the “Grenadilloes are...desti- tute of water, except the island Cariacou [sic.], where one spring has been discovered by dig- ging, and is kept carefully locked up by the proprietor.” Thomas Smith, The Wonders of Nature and Art (London, 1804), X, 116. Professor Edward Cox, a Carriacouan by birth, told me that in the mid-twentieth century, the island had water wells that were saline and of limited value. Arbuthnot to Urquhart, August 18, 1787, NRAS2570/Bundle 116, ccp. 20 For the ripening of the crop, see Edwards, History of the West Indies, II, 262.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/JINH_a_00461 by guest on 29 September 2021 CARRIACOU | 551 as well as the “Cursed Chenille” bug, which destroyed both cotton leaves and blossoms. Although cotton farming was far less capital-intensive than sugar planting, it was nonetheless risky. In the words of Sir William Young, the most well-known absentee sugar planter of the ceded islands, “The cotton crop and returns” were “more varying in quality and quantity, and more precarious, than any other article of West India growth.”21 When the cotton pods fully burst open, farmers worked the slaves hard to harvest the crop quickly. Like the sugar harvest on neighboring islands, Carriacou’s cotton harvest had to stay ahead of the spring rains for economic success. But whereas the rain merely upset the transportation of sugar cane from the ªeld to the mill, wet weather caused direct damage to the cotton crop. Al- though not as physically punishing as cutting sugar cane, picking cotton was tedious and demanded speed. Once harvested, the cotton wool was carried to the “cotton house,” which both protected the ªber from the elements and provided an area for slaves to “clean” the cotton.22 Carriacou planters in the eighteenth century used a mecha- nized device to assist in the processing of the wool. References to “ginning” or “ginned” cotton appear throughout Urquhart’s business papers and, in 1791, Edwards described a gin that resembled a “turners lathe.” It was “composed of two small rollers placed close and parallel to each other in a frame, and turned in opposite direc- tions by the foot. The cotton being put by the hand to these rollers as they move round, readily passes between them, leaving the seeds, which are too large for the interspace, behind.” Lakwete recently noted that this American innovation of supplying power through the operator’s legs allowed for greater efªciency than the hand-crank gins that likely originated in the Far East. The effec- tiveness of this processing equipment was limited, however. Carriacou slaves completed the cleaning by “properly hand picking” trash from the lint. Once this local processing was ªnished,

21 Arbuthnot to Urquhart, January 12, 1792, NRAS2570/Bundle 130, ccp; Arbuthnot to Urquhart, April 6, 1790, and April 5, 1791, NRAS2570/Bundle 118, ccp. Arbuthnot to Urquhart, January 12, 1788, and December 26, 1788, NRAS2570/Bundle 116, ccp. Edwards, History of the West Indies, II, 266. Young, West-India Common-Place Book, 78. 22 Arbuthnot to Urquhart, June 8, 1787, NRAS2570/Bundle 116, ccp; Arbuthnot to Wil- liam Urquhart, June 19, 1793, NRAS2570/Bundle 130, ccp; A New and Accurate Map of the Is- land of Carriacou in the West Indies. Survey’d...1784 by Walter Fenner (London, 1784), British Library.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/JINH_a_00461 by guest on 29 September 2021 552 | DAVID BECK RYDEN the “cleaned” cotton wool was wrapped with “bailing cloth” into 300-lbs bales.23 Planters had several different avenues for delivering their cotton to British markets. The most direct method was to send the bales to Britain on a planter’s own account by arranging for a Brit- ish-based ship, bound for Grenada, to call at Carriacou. Ocean- going vessels probably anchored at Hillsborough, the island’s prin- ciple town (see Figure 1), or at Tyrrel’s Bay, an extremely good harbor in the southwest of the island. Since two-thirds of the farms had direct access to the sea, small boats were also likely to have moved cotton to these two anchorages. Those not willing to risk soaking their cleaned cotton with seawater—or those smaller farmers with landlocked properties—would have chosen to move their cotton along one of Carriacou’s cart paths. Planters and managers could also ferry their cotton wool on coastal craft bound for St. George, Grenada, where they either met with ships sailing for Britain or sold their cotton to a local merchant, agent, or visiting supercargo.24 During the late eighteenth century, the Alexander Bartlett and George Campbell Company, a London–Grenadian merchant house, had a foothold on Carriacou; Campbell’s brother was situ- ated on the island as a major planter, ready to promote the ªrm’s business. The smallest cotton farmers—who did not have the re- sources to contract directly with British-based merchants or the capital to own a small vessel—could also have sold their annual production to one of the ªve Hillsborough merchants. These local buyers would then have assumed the burdens and risks associated with contracting delivery to Great Britain.25

23 Edwards, History of West Indies, II, 262. See also Saunders, “Slave Life, Slave Society,” 335–356; Lakwete, Inventing the Cotton Gin: Machine and Myth in Antebellum America (Balti- more, 2003), 30–31; Arbuthnot to Urquhart, April 6, 1790, NRAS2570/Bundle 118, ccp; Arbuthnot to Urquhart, c. July 15, 1793, NRAS2570/Bundle 130, ccp. The size of a Carriacou bale is estimated to have been 283 lbs (variance 22.75; nϭ273), based on Glasgow sales accounts for Urquhart’s cotton (NRAS2570/Bundle 122, ccp). 24 According to one writer, “the most of what they [British merchants] import are consign- ments not their own, but the property of planters.” See Experience, A Treatise on the Cotton Trade in Twelve Letters Addressed to the Levant Company, West India Planters, and Merchants (Lon- don, c. 1789), 11. This observation squares with Urquhart’s business records. On the utility of Tyrrel’s Bay as an anchorage, see Mathew to Lord Grenville, January 7, 1791, co 101/31 f. 100, na. Judging from Fenner’s A New and Accurate Map of the Island of Carriacou in the West In- dies (1784), 63% of the ªfty-four properties were located on the water. The average size of a landlocked property was 68 acres, and the average size for those estates with water access was 180 acres. 25 For metropolitan merchants with ties to Carriacou, see Mark Quintanilla, “Mercantile

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source A New and Accurate Map of the Island of Carriacou in the West Indies. Survey’d...1784 by Walter Fenner, British Library, London (Author’s Rendering).

carriacou’s cotton investors and workers Both censuses identify three classes of proprietor in Carriacou. They also permit English, Scottish, and French families to be distinguished, albeit

Communities in the Ceded Islands: The Alexander Bartlet & George Campbell Company,” International Social Science Review, LXXIX (2004), 14–26. Another London ªrm that had close links with Carriacou was the aforementioned Todd & Co. According to the 1791 census, ªve merchants lived in Hillsborough.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/JINH_a_00461 by guest on 29 September 2021 554 | DAVID BECK RYDEN Table 2 Characteristics of Carriacou’s Heads of Farming Households by Year demographic characteristic 1776 1790 Ethnicity Of-color 11% 19% White-French 44% 33% British 43% 48% Scottish 26% 23% English 17% 25% Unk. 2% 0% 100% 100% Sex Female 13% 12%

n ϭ 46 n ϭ 52 note European ethnicity is distinguished by surname, which is admittedly imprecise in the case of the Scots and English. “Boyal Nutat,” who appeared in the 1776 census, is classed as “unknown.” In the multivariate analysis herein, however, Nutat is placed in the “non- French” reference category. Absentee ethnicity is not incorporated in this table. When two proprietors were listed, both were included in this frequency table. This table includes only monocultural cotton farmers. sources “State of Carriacou and the Other Grenadine Islands [1776],” Special Collections and Western Mss., W Ind. R.4/2, Bodleian Library of Commonwealth and African Studies, Oxford ; “A Schedule of the Population & Produce of the Island of Carriacou,” 101/31 ff. 103–4, Colonial Ofªce, National Archive, London.

tentatively, by surname and make clear which household heads were either “mulattoe,” or “N[egro].” Every person of color who headed a farming household had a French surname, and the only person of color with an Anglophone surname who was not a planter was Sara Eason, a “F. Mulattoe,” who owned four slaves in Hillsborough. Although it would be reckless to suggest that this slave society evinced any degree of racial ºuidity, Carriacou possessed one of Britain’s most ethnically diverse set of Caribbean landholders during the eighteenth century.26 In addition to identifying Carriacou’s proprietors, the censuses also enumerate the number of white men on each cotton estate. It is likely that these ªgures include the proprietors, given that all households headed by whites have at least one white man recorded. The white men who were counted but not named were probably hired hands. Arbuthnot repeatedly described such workers as “indentured.” For example, in 1787, he described the condi-

26 The population of the English Leeward Islands had a similar level of diversity. See Natalie A. Zacek, Settler Society in the English Leeward Islands, 1670–1776 (New York, 2010).

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/JINH_a_00461 by guest on 29 September 2021 CARRIACOU | 555 tion of “two indented Overseers Murray & Lawrie” and, in 1792, he informed Urquhart, his absentee employer, that the plantation required an “indented carpenter” to build a new “cotton house.” Most likely, many of these laborers were either local or from another island, such as Grenada, with various terms of service. Alex- ander, the aforementioned Scottish resident, was once offered £95 per year wage, plus “bed and board,” in exchange for three-years employment, “under a penalty of £100.” Arbuthnot requested similar terms be made by a Glasgow merchant, when he stated that he should “get a young man sent out indented for 3 years” to supply Urquhart’s cotton estate with the requisite numbers of white men.27 The second half of the eighteenth century saw fewer than 100 free men and an excess of 3,100 slaves on the island. If family for- mation among whites was indeed limited (as suggested above), the total number of free people was well below 5 percent of the island’s population. The white population failed to grow between 1776 and 1790, while the number of those enslaved surged by 12 percent.28 The 1790 census offers a perspective on both the cotton and the tiny non-farming sectors of Carriacou’s economy. There is no indication that the non-cotton householders—80 percent of whom (twenty) lived in Hillsborough—were involved in any competing or complementary agricultural enterprise. About 55 percent of the free people of color and 70 percent of white heads of household grew cotton. According to the 1790 census, whites not connected with cotton farming pursued a variety of supportive professions. The seventeen non-farming white heads of household were carpenters (four), merchants (four), clerks (two), surgeons (two), a constable, a ªsherman, a mariner, a mason, and a tailor. Four of the eight free people of color lived in Hillsborough, possibly, but not probably, involved in agriculture. The four remaining non-whites were located in different sectors of the island; unfortu- nately, the 1790 census does not say whether they were tradesmen, ªshermen, merchants, provision farmers, or hired hands.

27 Arbuthnot to Urquhart, January 12, 1792, NRAS2570/Bundle 130, ccp. Alexander, Life of Alexander Alexander, 32–3. Arbuthnot to William Urquhart, April 23, 1791, NRAS2570/ Bundle 118, ccp. 28 The 1776 census lists 86 “white men” and 3,113 slaves; the 1791 census lists 88 “white men” and 3,494 slaves. Devas, History of the Island of Grenada, 181.

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percentage number of percentage number of quartile of slaves slaves n of slaves slaves n Top 54.8 1,221 11 59.2 1,972 12 Third 27.3 608 12 27.1 903 13 Second 14.0 312 12 10.9 362 13 Bottom 4.0 89 11 2.9 96 12 ⌺ 100 2,230 46 100 3,333 50 sources “State of Carriacou and the Other Grenadine Islands [1776],” Special Collections and Western Mss., W Ind. R.4/2, Bodleian Library of Commonwealth and African Studies, Oxford ; “A Schedule of the Population & Produce of the Island of Carriacou,” 101/31 ff. 103–4, Colonial Ofªce, National Archive, London.

The cotton-ªber boom between 1776 and 1790 made Carria- cou among the most densely populated islands in the British Ca- ribbean, with nearly 270 slaves per square mile in 1790 and exactly two-thirds of the household devoted to cotton planting. The largest estates were owned by white absentees, who produced two- ªfths of the cotton in 1790. Nearly all of these men were English or Scottish; only two “proprietors absent” had French surnames that year. Table 3, which shows the distribution of slaves among the respective estate quartiles for 1776 and 1790, reºects the fact that the healthy home market for ªber encouraged even the wealthiest landowners to specialize in cotton. Not only did the total number of monocultural cotton farms increase from forty-six to ªfty; the median number of slaves per cotton farm also increased from thirty-six to forty-seven.29 Despite a slight increase in the concentration of wealth (as measured in number of slaves) among cotton farmers during a course of fourteen years, slaveholding was not nearly as concen- trated on Carriacou as it was on the sugar islands. A similar microdata study of St. Andrew parish, Jamaica, reveals that 69 percent of that community’s slaves were owned by the richest one- ªfth of the community, whereas only two-thirds of the enslaved people were owned by the richest one-fourth of the population

29 For the sake of comparison, the median number of slaves on U.S. cotton plantations in 1860 was thirty-ªve. Robert Fogel, Without Consent or Contract: The Rise and Fall of American Slavery (New York, 1989), 31.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/JINH_a_00461 by guest on 29 September 2021 CARRIACOU | 557 on Carriacou. One of the least wealthy 1790 cotton farmers was Jean L’Entneac, whose two slaves produced only 400 pounds of cotton. The largest slave population was on the 544-acre Dumfries estate (see Figure 1), whose absentee owner—the London merchant William Todd—owned 275 slaves. According to the 1784 Walter Fenner map of Carriacou, this massive plantation was neatly arranged with eleven outbuildings and a grand house over- looking the south coast (Great Breteche). Todd’s slaves produced 96,000 lbs of cotton, the single largest crop in the 1790 census. Hence, during the ªnal decade of the eighteenth century, cotton supported small slaveholders as well as high-stakes investors: If Todd received his 1790 cotton output in good order, he would have grossed more than £5,000 in London’s market.30 Nearly half of the cotton farmers in the bottom quartile of the 1790 enumeration (six) were identiªed as people of color. All of them had French surnames, and three of them were female. Madam St. Louis, the largest woman planter, managed thirty-three slaves at Point Cistern, on the north side of Tyrrel’s Bay (see Fig- ure 1). Apparently, the border between her land and that of Madm. Antoine’s was ambiguous; the Fenner’s 1784 map shows the two women as joint owners of the 160-acre peninsula (see Fig- ure 1). Among the population of landowning people of color, only the “F. Mulatto,” Jaquec Versepuis, and the “F. Negroe,” Madm. Jean Gutpha, lived away from this southwestern-most anchorage. The top quartile of slave owners in 1790 was entirely British and male. Not a single French name or free person of color appears among these wealthiest twelve planters, although the 1776 enumeration lists among the top quartile a “Fr. Negro” woman, “Jeanette,” who possessed eighty-two slaves and produced 17,000 lbs of cotton on 160 acres. In the 1790 census, the median number of slaves belonging to the largest grandees was 130, and the median number of white men living on their estates was only 2.5, thus suggesting a certain laxness in the enforcement of the statute that

30 Ryden, “‘One of the fertilest pleasentest Spotts’: An Analysis of the Slave Economy in Jamaica’s St. Andrew Parish, 1753,” Slavery and Abolition, XXI (2000), 32–55. In May 1790, 1 Todd’s ªrm was quoting cotton prices at 12 to 15 2 d. per pound. Todd & Company to Urquhart, September 11, 1790, NRAS2570/Bundle 121, ccp. For the third quarter of 1790, Tooke recorded cotton prices in London at 12d. to 1s. 9d. Thomas Tooke, A History of Prices and the State of the Circulation from 1792 to 1856 (New York, 1928; orig. pub.1856), II, 401.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/JINH_a_00461 by guest on 29 September 2021 558 | DAVID BECK RYDEN mandated three whites per every ªfty bondsmen; only two of the nine largest plantations were in compliance. Todd’s Dumfries estate was the most notable violator, having only one named employee, Colin McKenzie, and one other unnamed white man, to manage nearly 300 slaves. In general, it was the tendency for the larger estates to have a smaller proportion of whites to slaves than the smaller plantations did (see Tables 4 and 5).31 the organization and productivity of carriacou’s cotton plantations Edwards’ brief account of the organization of a West Indian cotton farm claims that the ªber crop was a yeoman’s pursuit and that a typical cotton operation could be built “on a small capital.” In contrast to his discussion of sugar growing, which entailed an investment of thousands of pounds in ªxed capital and extensive land holding, he described cotton as requiring no more than 50 acres, only twenty-ªve of which needed to be cleared and cultivated. For Edwards’ hypothetical Jamaican cotton farm, the requisite “twelve negroes,” land, maintenance, and interest would cost a ºedgling farmer slightly more than £1,200 sterling. Given the expectation that one acre would “yield annu- ally 150 pounds weight,” Edwards estimated that a yeoman would clear £175 or, in other words, an annual return on investment of nearly 15 percent.32 Estimates of proªt for Carriacou’s growers do not permit Ed- wards’ precision, though data gleaned from the censuses and Fenner’s 1784 map show that investment in cotton planting there was on a much larger scale than Edwards’ reckoning could accom- modate. In the 1776 enumeration, which includes total acreage for thirty-six cotton-only operations, the median property size was 96 acres and the median improved size was 80 acres. Cotton cultivation was widespread on the island; Alexander observed that even on the island’s peaks, “the least patch of soil[s] are cultivated.”33

31 The correlation coefªcient between the “number of slaves” and the “number of slaves divided by the number of whites” is positive (0.592) and statistically different from zero (0.01 level). This measure is based on the twenty-ªve estates that possessed ªfty or more slaves. 32 Edwards, History of the West Indies, II, 264–265. Edwards’estimated return did not make any allowance for interest charges, maintenance fees, and incidental fees. The inclusion of these additional expenses yields a hypothetical return closer to 10%. The average size of the four cotton farms that appear in the St. Andrew, Jamaica, census of 1753 is only 15 acres, the largest of which was only 30 acres. See, Ryden, “‘One of the fertilest pleasentest Spotts,’” 42. 33 Alexander, Life of Alexander, 32. The 1784 map of the island indicates that the median- sized property for the ªfty-three cotton farms was 113 acres.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/JINH_a_00461 by guest on 29 September 2021 CARRIACOU | 559 For a stretch of fourteen years, Carriacou cotton planters, whether large or small, tended to follow a uniform model in their mix of laborers and acreage. Evidence from the thirty-one estates, the total acreage of which can be linked to colonial-era maps, as well as from the forty properties listed in the 1776 census that recorded acreage, shows a strong and signiªcant correlation between farm size and number of slaves. The slope of a ªtted regression line suggests that, on average, planters purchased one slave for, roughly, every two acres that they owned.34 Tables 4 and 5, which array the relevant data from the two censuses by cotton output, indicate that crude productivity was not directly affected by plantation size. Carriacou’s typical cotton output per slave (280 lbs) was lower than Edwards’ ªgure (300 lbs) but much higher than estimates from a similar empirical study of cotton farms in Danish St. Croix (c. 110 lbs/slave). The two most productive estates in 1790, each yielding 545 lbs per slave in 1790, were vastly different in size: The Mt. Sinai estate, owned by Laruant Codrean, had only 22 slaves, whereas John Bell’s property had 110 slaves. On the other end of the crude-labor productivity spectrum, the Carriacou estate with the worst economic perfor- mance was Madm. Maxwell’s Point Cistern property, which had 90 slaves and cultivated only 9,700 lbs of cotton. The gap between plantation size and output per slave is also evident in the 1776 data, in which the second quartile had the highest crude-labor productivity. The multivariate analysis below, however, demonstrates that the impressionistic conclusion that Carriacou had no economies of scale would be misleading.35 Carriacou’s two censuses and map-derived data permit the estimation of several production-function speciªcations, both sim- ple linear and log-transformed linear. The former speciªcation posits that total cotton output (measured in pounds) was a function of (1) the total number of slaves, (2) the number of white men

34 The linear model speciªcation was Numbers of Slaves ϭ␣ϩ␤Acres. The R2 for the 1776 data is 0.88, and the estimate for ␤ is 0.40 (n ϭ 41). The R2 for the 1790 data is 0.86, and the estimate for ␤ is 0.44 (n ϭ 32). 35 The 1776 data in Table 4 shows the median output per enslaved person to be 265 lbs and the mean to be 278 lbs; the 1790 data in Table 5 shows these ªgures to be 264 lbs and 283 lbs, respectively. By contrast, the estimated output per slave calculated from the 1760 St. Croix data, when “cotton grew . . . profusely from the recently cleared virgin soils,” was just under 110 lbs per slave. Tyson, “Cotton Plantations of St. Croix,” 86, 105. Edwards’ rough estimates above suggest that 150 lbs x 25 acres ϭ 3,750 lbs total—a reckoning that would produce an optimistic estimate of 312 pounds per slave.

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Table 4 Carriacou Cotton-Only Planters Ranked in Descending Order by Quantity of Cotton Produced, 1776 number number of quantity cleared wooded total pounds slaves per inhabitants’ names of slaves white men of cotton acreage acreage acreage per slave white man 1 Thos. Tarleton 180 2 55,000 420 89 509 306 90 2 Hough Munro 157 2 38,100 300 50 350 243 79 3 David Mill 131 2 37,545 250 250 287 66 4 Peter Pegus 97 3 32,800 200 24 224 338 32 5 John Urquhart 118 2 31,400 215 215 266 59 6 James Bartlet 109 3 31,155 275 275 286 36 7 Joseph Cumming 72 2 25,600 120 22 142 356 36 8 Messrs Wilsons 96 2 25,387 200 56 256 264 48 9 Robert Youn[g] 75 1 23,596 196 196 315 75 10 Mitro Mogalas 100 2 22,189 144 144 222 50 11 Griffen 56 1 20,793 120 46 166 371 56 12 Collete de Cran 61 1 19,717 127 50 177 323 61 13 Jeanette Free N. Woman 82 1 17,000 160 160 207 82 14 Thos. Tresham 51 1 15,488 87 87 304 51 15 John Reid 37 2 14,200 80 16 96 384 19 16 Angus Mackay 70 1 13,275 130 45 175 190 70 17 Widow St Louis Free 28 1 12,270 80 8 88 438 28 Mulatto Woman 18 Tran Pettier 29 2 12,200 136 136 421 15 19 Henry Touquet 24 1 11,500 71 71 479 24 20 Widow Maxwell 76 1 11,200 69 40 109 147 76 21 Jean Augier 42 1 11,000 262 42 22 Alexander Mayes 35 1 10,625 54 54 304 35 23 Widow Cauldwell 31 1 10,420 104 104 336 31 24 Robert Bogle Jr 47 1 10,132 98 98 216 47 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/JINH_a_00461 by guest on29 September 2021

25 William & John 48 2 10,000 105 25 130 208 24 Urquhart 26 William Brown 44 1 9,700 89 89 220 44 27 Dupont Dievivier 40 1 8,200 76 20 96 205 40 28 Farn Farlin 17 1 7,900 40 17 57 465 17 29 Abr Bellemare 40 3 7,499 79 10 89 187 13 30 Verspuy Free Mullato 25 7,459 40 40 298 31 Jean St Zozier 24 1 7,000 292 24 32 Piere Bordeau 26 2 6,000 27 27 231 13 33 Antoin Leroy 21 1 6,000 80 8 88 286 21 34 Louis Moigne 22 2 4,600 48 48 209 11 35 Fran Delisle 30 2 3,900 80 80 130 15 36 Boyal Nutat 8 1 3,400 39 39 425 8 37 The Recd Lamaisoneuf 10 1 3,000 12 0 12 300 10 38 Barthelemy Quelly 12 1 2,860 20 20 238 12 39 Piere Rozie 12 1 2,510 32 10 42 209 12 40 Antoin Regaud 10 2 2,100 10 6 16 210 5 41 Jean Piere free N. W. 3 2,000 38 38 667 42 Andre Seprien 13 1 1,912 16 16 147 13 43 Jean Martineau 5 1 1,240 20 15 35 248 5 44 Piere Ramandon 6 1 1,220 203 6 45 Louis Sapempe free M. 4 500 125 46 Dominique Lucas 6 1 50 8 6 note This table does not include cotton planters who experimented with alternative crops. source “State of Carriacou and the other Grenadine Islands [1776],” Special Collections and Western Mss., W Ind. R.4/2, Bodleian Library of Common- wealth and African Studies, Oxford. Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/JINH_a_00461 by guest on29 September 2021

Table 5 Carriacou Cotton Planters Ranked in Descending Order by Quantity of Cotton Produced, 1790 number slaves acres number of quantity pounds per place of from proprietors of white of per “white inhabitants’ names denomination abode maps absent slaves men cotton slave man” 1 Colin McKinzie Manager Dumfries 554 William 275 2 96,000 349 138 Tod[d] 2 Benj. Lund Manager Mt Pleasant 510 T. Tarleton 227 3 77,000 339 76 3 W. Arbuthnot Manager Craigston a470a William 235 3 76,000 323 78 Urqhart 4 John Bell Planter Bay L’Eau 51 110 4 60,000 545 28 5 Patrick Bartllete Surgeon Limlair 347 160 3 58,000 363 53 6 John James Grant Manager BeauStJour 503 John Grant 254 2 56,000 220 127 7 Alexr. Turnbull Manager G[rand] 275 David Mill 149 2 52,000 349 75 Bay 8 James McCaul Manager Prospect 131 Mssr 121 3 41,000 339 40 Robertson 9 John Davis Manager Harvey 250 J A Rusher 127 2 35,000 276 64 Vale 10 Joseph St Hilaire Jr Manager Bay L’Eau *320a J. De St. 69 3 32,250 467 23 Hilaire 11 Joseph & Berry Renter Morm Collet de 85 2 31,000 365 43 Desire Cran 13 Nitre Mongulas Planter Ana Noir 96 1 26,000 271 96 12 Philip Wilson Planter L’Ance 266 107 3 26,000 243 36 14 David Young Manager Hermitage 141 Peter Pegus 69 1 23,900 346 69 c(235c) 15 John Park Manager Belmont 169 H[eir]s of Jos. 99 1 23,200 234 99 Cumming Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/JINH_a_00461 by guest on29 September 2021

16 Jean Ginette Planter L’Esterre 128 Ginnette & 82 1 23,000 280 82 Pegus 17 John Barclay Manager Bel Air 96 John Reid 63 2 21,500 341 32 18 Alexr. Young Manager Brunswick 196 A. W. Young 66 1 19,800 300 66 19 William Brodie Manager Breteshe 170 Heirs of 108 1 19,800 183 108 Sabazane 20 John Allan Manager Belvidere 86 Mon Reid 44 1 14,500 330 44 21 James White Manager P. Carenge 175 Angus McKay 59 1 12,350 209 59 22 Laruant Codrean Planter Mt Sinai 22 1 12,000 545 22 23 Abraham Bellmare Planter Carenage 53 2 11,778 222 27 24 Peier Fanre Planter Morm D’or 29 1 11,300 390 29 25 Francis Martin Planter Fair Hill 58 25 2 10,070 403 13 26 Madm Maxwell Planter Carenage 214 90 1 9,700 108 90 27 Dupont Davinux Planter Carenage 90 65 1 9,500 146 65 28 Ross Overseer Const Hill 34 1 9,000 265 34 29 Joseph Dennete Manager New Ark 58 Alexander 35 1 7,800 223 35 Mays 30 Madm St. Louis F.[ree] Mollatoe L’Esterre b80b 33 0 7,500 227 — 31 Peir Charbonne Planter Bashnic 53 37 1 7,500 203 37 32 [?]Can Leuis Renter Resourse Collet de 13 1 7,000 538 13 Desbatte Cran 33 Alexander Murray Manager Grand c140c Indin Philips 50 1 7,000 140 50 Ance 34 John Boyce Planter Industry 73 56 1 7,000 125 56 35 Jaque Versepuis F.[ree] Mollatoe Mont. 48 27 0 6,000 222 Plaisir 36 Francis Romeir Planter Carenage 15 2 5,700 380 8 37 Madm Antoine F.[ree] Mollatoe L’Esterre b 80b 21 0 5,500 262 — 38 Gabriel Bollette F.[ree] Mollatoe Carenage 18 0 5,000 278 — 39 Pere Guis Priest Bay L’Eau 16 19 1 3,600 189 19 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/JINH_a_00461 by guest on29 September 2021

Table 5 (Continued) number slaves acres number of quantity pounds per place of from proprietors of white of per “white inhabitants’ names denomination abode maps absent slaves men cotton slave man” 40 John Martinean Planter Pt 35 12 2 3,500 292 6

Carengage c (55c) 41 Barthmi Zeli Planter Carenage 18 1 3,000 167 18 42 Peir Rosie Planter L’Esterre 56 16 1 2,200 138 16 43 Madm Wolf F.[ree] Mollatoe L’Esterre 9 0 2,100 233 — 44 J. B. Sabazane F.[ree] Mollatoe Carenage 0 0 1,900 — — 45 Louis Breton F.[ree] Mollatoe L’Esterre 3 0 1,500 500 — 46 J. B. LeRoy F.[ree] Mollatoe L’Esterre 6 0 1,500 250 — 47 Madm Jean Gutpha F.[ree] Negroe Bay L’Eau 8 0 1,500 188 — 48 Denis Latour Planter L’Esterre 36 6 1 1,200 200 6 49 Louis Rosie F.[ree] Mollatoe L’esterre 6 0 1,000 167 — 50 Jean L’Entneac Taylor Hillsbro’ 2 1 400 200 2

asum of acreage for two properties listed in Fenner. b160 acres on point cistern occupied by two proprietors. cacreage taken from “From A New and Accurate Map of the Island of Carriacou in the West Indies: redrawn form Fenner c. 1785–1796 and lithographed in the 19th Cen- tury,” reprinted in H. Gordon Slade, Craigston and Meldrum Estates, Carriacou, 1769–1841,” Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland CXIV (1984), 485. note Acreage is drawn from Walter Fenner, “A New and Accurate Map,” unless otherwise noted. sources “Schedule of the Population & Produce of the Island of Carriacou, taken 1st of Sept1790,” 101/31 ff. 103–4, Colonial Ofªce, National Archives, London; A New and Accurate Map of the Island of Carriacou in the West Indies. Survey’d...1784 by Walter Fenner (London, 1784), British Library, Oxford. CARRIACOU | 565 on an estate, (3) the size of an estate measured in acres, (4) an owner being white with a French or non-French surname (1 ϭ French; 0 ϭ non-French), (5) an owner being of color or white (1 ϭ of color; 0 ϭ white), (6) an owner being female or male (1 ϭ female; 0ϭmale), and (7) an owner being an absentee or non- absentee planter (1 ϭ absentee; 0 ϭ non-absentee). The data are pooled; a dichotomous variable (8) controls for census year (1ϭ1776; 0ϭ 1790). The independent variables in the linear estimation of this model explain more than 90 percent (R2 ϭ 0.91) of the variation in the total number of pounds of cotton produced, as shown in Table 6, model estimate (i). The individual coefªcient estimates suggest that an additional ªve-sixths of a bale of cotton (255 lbs) was produced for every slave on an estate, holding all else constant in the model. The strong correlation between the number of slaves and the acreage of the estate produced the anomalous and statistically insigniªcant estimate of a 6.02-lbs increase for each acre on the estate in model estimate (i). The only other variable that proved to be statistically signiªcant in this particular estimate was the “number of white men” on each plantation: On average (holding all else constant), an additional white man substantially increased cotton output by a factor of roughly 4,500 lbs.36 In light of the exclusion of the eighteen estates for which acreage is unknown from model estimate (i) and the multico- linearity problem between the “number of slaves” and the “number of acres,” model (ii) through model (iv) in Table 6 present similar sets of coefªcient estimates that exclude the “number of acres” term. The inclusion of the complete cotton-farm data has little effect on the individual coefªcient estimates. Hence, the second set of results conªrms the initial ªnding that an additional slave contributed nearly a bale of cotton to total output (between 268 and 277 lbs), ceteris paribus. As mentioned above, this set of estimates also indicates that adding more managers to the mix of inputs had a positive and strong effect on overall output; models

36 Eliminating “number of slaves” from the linear regression model produces a statistical coefªcient of 103 for the “number of acres” term. In other words, this re-estimated model suggests that 103 lbs of cotton were produced as the cotton estate grew by one acre, ceteris paribus. The R2 estimate for this model is calculated to be 0.83 (n ϭ 69). The direction of the other estimated coefªcients are the same, though inºated from those listed in Table 6.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/JINH_a_00461 by guest on 29 September 2021 566 | DAVID BECK RYDEN Table 6 ols Regression-Model Estimates for 1776 and 1790 Pooled Data (Dependent Variable Is Pounds of Cotton Produced) estimate number model (i) model (ii) model (iii) model (iv) R2: 0.91 0.91 0.91 0.91 N: 69 83 83 83 (Constant) Ϫ7,113.68* Ϫ5,862.85* Ϫ5,432.57* Ϫ6,184.21* (Ϫ2.39) (Ϫ2.44) (Ϫ3.18) (Ϫ4.16) Continuous variables Number of 255.04* 268.01* 274.63* 277.30* slaves (6.56) (16.70) (20.80) (21.6) Number of 5048.85* 4566.08* 4,484.25* 4,461.56* white men (4.16) (4.29) (4.39) (4.37) Acreage of 6.02 — — — estate (0.36) — — — Dichotomous variables White French Ϫ818.02 Ϫ207.45 — — (Ϫ0.426) (Ϫ0.13) — — Of color 6,121.27 6,250.90 — — (0.95) (1.06) — — Female Ϫ4,328.90 (4,656.26) — — (Ϫ0.90) (Ϫ1.07) — — Absentee 2,289.66 2,053.08 — — (0.86) (0.97) — — 1776 134.09 Ϫ403.63 Ϫ1,182.97 — (0.06) (Ϫ0.25) (Ϫ0.90) — * ϭ p-value Ͻ 0.05. notes Coefªcient estimates appear in the same row as the variable names. “t” ratios for each estimated coefªcient appears in parenthesis. The reference group for model estimate (i) and (ii) includes 1790 farms owned by non-absentee white British males. The average crude output per hand was 277 lbs in 1776 and 283 lbs in 1790. Since the null hypotheses that the two measures are statistically different (t-statistic for equality of means is Ϫ0.23) cannot be re- jected, it is hardly surprising that the 1776 dummy variable would prove statistically insigniªcant in all four estimates.

(ii) through (iv) estimate that an additional “white man” increased total output by roughly 4,500 lbs.37 The relative strength of labor and management in the linear estimated models suggests the possibility that a two-input spec- iªcation might be useful to test the returns-to-scale hypothesis, where Cotton Output ϭ A ∗ (Number of Slaves)␣ ∗ (Number of

37 For gang labor’s role in maximizing efªciency in the antebellum southern United States, see Fogel and Stanley L. Engerman, Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery (Boston, 1974), 203–205.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/JINH_a_00461 by guest on 29 September 2021 CARRIACOU | 567 Whites)␤. Variations on this model (logarithmically transformed ols estimates) are presented in Table 7. The pattern revealed in the data suggests that the cotton boom induced some planters to manage their slaves more intensely. In Table 7, model estimate (v), data for both 1776 and 1790 are pooled; the coefªcients suggest positive economies of scale in planting, given that the estimated sum of ␣ and ␤ is greater than 1. Closer study, however, detects that this ªnding is driven by the 1790 data. Estimate (vi), which excludes the 1776 ªgures, reºects positive returns to scale for labor and management once the monocultural cotton boom was in full swing after the American Revolution.38 Another likely advantage of large plantations was a more con- sistent expected return on investment. For the 1776 data, the top quartile’s coefªcient of variation for crude output per hand was 70 percent less than that for the bottom one, and, for the 1790 data, it was 37 percent less. Furthermore, the fact that the quartile of the largest operations had the least variation relative to mean output levels than any of the others suggests that it achieved greater certainty in cotton planting, thereby reducing the information costs of predicting expected returns on investment. Off-island investors would have found larger plantations less risky than yeoman-run farms. Furthermore, transferring capital to a handful of large planters would have involved far lower transaction costs than distribut- ing capital among a large number of small entrepreneurs. Thus, the census data suggest that easier access to credit, as well as economies of scale (spurred by the boom in cotton demand), drove the creation of large monocultural estates on Carriacou.39

38 Alan L. Olmstead and Paul W. Rhode, “Biological Innovation and Productivity Growth in the Antebellum Cotton Economy,” Journal of Economic History, LXVIII (2008), 1123–1169, discounted worker management as the source of productivity gains in the antebellum South, emphasizing instead the importance of evolving Mexican hybrids of short-staple cotton as the engine of productivity growth. Although the Carriacou data is indeed limited in its temporal scope, it does suggest that, holding seed type constant, management was important to the in- creasing returns to scale in the ªnal decade of the eighteenth century. 39 For 1776, the coefªcient of variation for output per hand by estate quartile is bottom quartile ϭ 0.68; second quartile ϭ 0.33; third quartile ϭ 0.28; and top quartile ϭ 0.21; for the 1790 census, the coefªcients are 0.48, 0.37, 0.43, and 0.30, respectively. There are limited records describing credit terms offered to Carriacou planters, but a letter from a Glaswegian merchant house that wished to sell its interest in a mortgage for the Lance La Roche plantation in the northern quarter of the island was instructive. A. Houston to Houston and Pater- son (Grenada), April 9, 1778, Houston Papers, MS 8793 f. 428, National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh (hereinafter nls). Also, a listing of credit offered to Dr. Bartlet of Limlair estate during the late 1790s can be found in CS 1506/1 ff. 23, nls.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/JINH_a_00461 by guest on 29 September 2021 568 | DAVID BECK RYDEN Table 7 ols Regression Model Estimates for 1776 and 1790 Pooled Data (Dependent Variable is ln—Pounds of Cotton Produced) estimate number model (v) model (vi) R2 0.83* 0.91* N83* 40 * Data years 1776 & 1790 1790 only (Constant) 5.26* 5.62* (21.22)* (24.24)* Continuous variables ln(Number of slaves) 1.06* 0.95* (16.4) * (15.26)*

ln(Number of white men) 0.23* 0.50* (1.52)* (3.5)*

Dichotomous variable Ϫ0.47*Ϫ — 1776 (Ϫ0.41)*Ϫ —

Estimated returns to scale 1.29* 1.45* * ϭ p-value Ͻ 0.05. notes Coefªcient estimates appear in the same row as the variable names; t ratios for each estimated coefªcient appears in parenthesis. The reference group for model estimate (v) includes 1790 farms.

Carriacou’s agricultural censuses capture a short-lived era when investors experimented with large-scale cotton farming in the British West Indies. The island’s rich soils and Britain’s growing textile industry created the expectation that big operations would produce hefty returns. The 1790 census, in particular, overturns the assumption that Caribbean cotton farming was solely a yeoman’s pursuit. It is important to note, however, that the experi- mentally large estates showed impressive labor productivity only when they had a sufªcient number of hired hands to drive the ªeld gangs intensively. In addition to their economies of scale, the large estates probably offered returns on investment that were more certain than those that small farms could project. Increased certainty may also have been a result of how slaves were organized to work. The regimentation of slave gangs on the large estates would have rendered the personal inclinations of individual managers and slaves less important than they would have been on

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/JINH_a_00461 by guest on 29 September 2021 CARRIACOU | 569 smaller farms, where workers might have been left more to their own devices.40 Carriacou’s most conspicuous property owner was the absentee Thomas Tarleton, a member of a well-known Liverpudlian slave-trading family and the fourth largest Carriacou slaveholder in 1790 with 227 slaves on his 510-acre Mount Pleasant estate. As Campbell, the aforementioned contemporary traveler, wrote, moneyed men like Tarleton were likely to have shunned sugar planting after the American Revolution because of security concerns peculiar to a small island. Unlike sugar, cotton did not re- quire the purchase of expensive, stationary machinery and processing equipment—including mills, boiling houses, and even rum stills. Whereas Carriacou’s slaves could be moved inland, evacu- ated, or even used to defend the island, sugar-processing equipment was a soft target, easily burned or destroyed by marauding privateers or small invading armies.41 Internal threats were also of concern in Carriacou. The number of slaves per enumerated white man increased from thirty-six to forty between the two censuses, and the free people of this iso- lated “seventh parish” of Grenada could ªeld a militia of only forty-eight men. The average martial strength of the six other Grenadian parishes was 163 ofªcers and militiamen. If Geggus is correct that a military presence was necessary to keep the slaves on Jamaica’s sugar estates in line during the 1790s, the under-armed master class of Carriacou could hardly have been expected to (1) enforce the more brutal management regime associated with sugar production and (2) attract the requisite capital to develop widespread sugar planting during the age of revolution.42

40 The correlation between the proportion of whites to slaves and output per slave for the largest thirty estates is positive (0.39) and statistically different from zero (p-value Ͻ 0.05 level). For the largest twenty estates, the correlation is even stronger (0.66) and statistically different from zero (p-value Ͻ 0.01 level). 41 For the Tarleton family’s business interest in the north of England, see Robin Pearson and David Richardson, “Business Networking in the Industrial Revolution,” Economic History Review, LIV (2001), 657–679; Joseph E Inikori, “Market Structure and the Proªts of the Brit- ish African Trade in the Late Eighteenth Century,” Journal of Economic History, XLI (1981), 750–751, 758. For the political connections to the infamous Banastre Tarleton, see Stephen D. Behrendt’s review of The British Transatlantic Slave Trade in Journal of Imperial and Common- wealth History, XXXII (2004), 137–138. 42 Edwards referred to Carriacou as Grenada’s “seventh parish” in his History of the West In- dies, I, 368. “General Return of the Militia of the Government of Grenada...March 1790,” co 101/33 f. 49, na. This particular table apparently combined Grenada’s St. Mark and St. John. Dividing the total troop strength on Grenada by six instead of ªve deºates the average parish militia strength to 136, a number still nearly three times as large as Carriacou’s mili-

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/JINH_a_00461 by guest on 29 September 2021 570 | DAVID BECK RYDEN Carriacou’s experiment with large-scale cotton farming was short-lived; hopes for long-run proªts ªzzled during the ªrst de- cades of the nineteenth century. Eli Whitney’s cotton gin and the opening up of the southwest territory in the United States were the factors that contributed most heavily to the demise of plantation-style cotton farming in the Caribbean. The massive gains in productivity achieved in North America placed a downward pres- sure on cotton prices, thereby squeezing the West Indian ªber from British markets. The combination of collapsing cotton prices and increased security following the Battle of Trafalgar (1805) and Napoleon’s ªnal defeat (1815) inclined Carriacou’s grandees to turn to sugar monoculture. Fortunately for the enslaved people of Carriacou, Emancipa- tion (1834) undermined the sugar plantation system on the island. Soon thereafter, former slaves returned cotton production to the island. Small farmers and peasants continued to grow cotton into the twentieth century, combining their plots “on the share system,” a method that was commonplace in the Grenadines during the early 1900s. This ªnal chapter in Carriacou’s cotton history, however, further obscured the brief moment when cotton planting attracted large-capital investors, not just yeoman slave owners, to the British West Indies.43

tia force. David Geggus, “The Enigma of Jamaica in the 1790s: New Light on the Causes of Slave Rebellions,” William and Mary Quarterly, XLIV (1987), 274–299. 43 For U.S. competition and the demise of the West Indian cotton industry, see Ragatz, Fall of Planter Class, 370–371. According to Higman, Slave Populations of the British Caribbean, Carriacou planters “largely abandoned cotton for sugar cultivation during the 1820s” (325). By 1819, annual cotton output was only 399,624 lbs, as many planters diverted their slaves’ energy toward sugar production. Stephens, “Cotton Growing in the West Indies during the 18th and 19th Centuries,” Tropical Agriculture, XXI (1944), explains that between Emancipa- tion and 1900, cotton was no longer grown in the West Indies, “with one exception—the Grenadines where it had persisted under a primitive form of peasant cultivation which still survives” (22). For the early twentieth-century “share system,” see G. Wright, “Economic Conditions in St. Vincent, BWI,” Economic Geography, V (1929), 247–248.

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