General History of the Caribbean - III General History of the Caribbean

Home , History of Barbados, History of the Caribbean

Titles in the series

Volume I Autochthonous Societies Volume II New Societies: The Caribbean in the 'Long' Sixteenth Century Volume III The Slave Societies of the Caribbean Volume IV The Long Nineteenth Century: Nineteenth-Century Transfonnations Volume V The Caribbean in the Twentieth Century Volume VI Methodology and Historiography of the Caribbean General History of the Caribbean

Volume III The slave societies of the Caribbean

Editor: Franklin W Knight

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UNESCO Publishing The authors are responsible for the choice and the presentation of the facts contained in this book and for the opinions expressed therein, which are not necessarily those of UNESCO and do not commit the Organization.

The designations employed and the presentation of material throughout this publication do not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever on the part of UNESCO concerning the legal status of any country, territory, city or area or of its authorities, or the delimitation of its frontiers or boundaries.

First published in 2003 Published jointly by UNESCO Publishing, Paris, France, and Macmillan Publishers Ltd, London and Oxford This edition published in 2007 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN TN 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 and Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire, England RG21 6XS Companies and representatives throughout the world.

P ALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave Macmillan division ofSt Martin's Press, LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. Macmillan® is a registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdom and other countries. Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European Union and other countries.

ISBN 978-1-349-73772-7 ISBN 978-1-349-73770-3 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-73770-3

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available from the Library of Congress.

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10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 2011 2010 2009 2008 2007

Transferred To Digital Printing 2011 CONTENTS

Preface Federico Mayor, Director-General of UNESCO vi

Description of the Project Sir Roy Augier ix

List of Contributors . xii

List of Tables xiv

Introduction Franklin W. Knight . 1 1 The slave trade, Mrican slavers and the demography of the Caribbean to 1750 Colin A. Palmer . 9

2 The demographic structure of the Caribbean slave societies in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries Stanley 1. Engerman and B. W. Higman . 45 3 The slave economies of the Caribbean: Structure, performance, evolution and Significance David Eltis . 105 4 The social structure of the slave societies in the Caribbean GadHeuman. 138 5 Maroon communities in the circum-Caribbean Silvia W. de Groot, Catherine A. Christen and Franklin W. Knight . 169 6 Social and political control in the slave society Hilary McD. Beckles . . 194 7 Forms of resistance to slavery Michael Craton . . 222

8 Pluralism, creolization and culture Franklin W. Knight . . 271 9 Religious beliefs Mary Tumer . .287

10 The disintegration of the Caribbean slave systems, 1772-1886 Franklin W. Knight . 322 Bibliography 346 Index. 368

v PREFACE

FEDERICO MAYOR Director-General of UNESCO

How should the Caribbean be defined? It is here understood as encompassing not only the islands but also the coastal part of South America, from Colombia to the Guyanas and the riverine zones of Central America, insofar as these parts of the main• land were the homes of people engaged from time to time in activities which linked their lives with those of people in the islands. Despite the varieties of languages and customs resulting from the convergence there - by choice or constraint - of peoples of diverse cultures, the Caribbean has many cultural commonalities deriving from the shared history and experience of its inhabitants. In this region, endowed with excep• tionally beautiful landscapes and still undiscovered ocean resources, there grew up from the sixteenth century onwards a completely new SOciety, which has in our own time distinguished itself by producing a relatively large number of internationally recognized personalities in many fields - poets, novelists, painters, dancers, designers, musicians, sportsmen, jurists, historians, politicians. In seeking to promote the preservation of cultural identities and greater under• standing among peoples through the exchange of cultural information, UNESCO has found it important to facilitate the writing of a new history of this region. I call this history 'new' because until quite recently Caribbean histories were more about exploits of European nation states in the Caribbean - histories of war and trade in the islands and the mainland. Such histories of the individual islands as were published before this time tended to be written from the standpoint of resident Europeans. It was the movement for political autonomy, and the broadening of historiography in the European and American universities in the first half of the century, that led initially to changes of emphasiS in the study of the history of single islands, and later to histories of topics which linked the islands, notably the sugar industry, slavery, slave laws and Asian immigration. In the established universities of Havana and Puerto Rico and in new ones such as the University of the West Indies, departments of Caribbean studies were opened with the aim of undertaking teaching and research on Caribbean literature, history, culture and society, the better to understand forces that had shaped the region and to identify the many elements which constitute Caribbean culture. The main findings of the scholars since then are reflected in the six volumes of this

vi Preface history, thereby presenting a more regional account than before of the Caribbean past and of the people who have constituted Caribbean society. This history traces the development of the region starting with the autochtho• nous peoples of the Caribbean. This includes the hunters and the gatherers as well as the incipient cultivators associated with the beginnings of village life. Situated as they were at what had become the gateway to the New World, these populations were the first to be enslaved. The inhabitants of the Greater Antilles were decimated by acts of excessive inhumanity and disease. The Caribs survived longer through their well• honed fighting skills, but their numbers dwindled nevertheless and in the eighteenth century those who still resisted were transported to the coast of Belize where they established communities that exist to this day and from where they now return to teach their native language - 'Garifuna' - to the few Caribs who remain in Dominica and in St Vincent. The story of these early societies is told in the first two volumes. Volume III of this history (The Slave Societies) will constitute a central point of reference. In examining the creation of new societies, full account is taken of slavery, the terrible toll of human life and suffering it exacted and its pervasive impact on the psyche of the Caribbean people, both white and black. Resistance to slavery took many forms, of which marronnage in Haiti, Jamaica and Suriname, where the numbers were large, has received the most attention. Revolts and rebellions persisted throughout the region from the seventeenth century, although the best known is understandably that which led to Haiti's independence at the beginning of the nine• teenth century. The abolition of the British slave trade left slavery itself intact, until it gradually succumbed in the decades of the nineteenth century, first to the creed of the French Revolution, then to the combination of slave rebellions in the islands and the detennined protestations of humanitarians and free traders in Europe. By the middle of the nineteenth century the disputes between estate owners and the emancipated field labourers, referred to in Volumes I and IV, opened the way for the influx of people from Asia, predominantly from India, thus adding a new element to the Creole societies which had gradually been fonned since the sixteenth century. To avoid this supply of new labour for sugar estates becoming the restora• tion of slavery in a new guise, the recruitment of the labourers and their condition of work in the islands were regulated by law. Nevertheless, the constraints of indenture and the indignities attendant on being estate labourers affected the way in which Creole societies developed in the twentieth century. Undoubtedly, slavery and inden• ture have influenced the social and economic relations of societies in the circum• Caribbean in ways productive of ethnic and class conflict. Yet they have not only been the sources of cruelty and injustice, of acts remembered and resented. By per• sistent resistance to these oppressive regimes, these societies have also endowed themselves with the dignity and self-confidence of free men. During the latter part of the nineteenth century, the impulse towards autonomy which was felt by some of the propertied and educated elites was frustrated by inter• national, political and economic circumstances outside their control. The production of sugar from cane continued to dominate the Caribbean economies, with oil, miner• als and tourism becoming important items in the twentieth century. The influx of

vii Preface

American capital and the gradual diminution of European interests in the Caribbean led to the expansion of American influence in the region from the turn of the century onwards, notably in Cuba, Haiti and Santo Domingo. This was the context in which the movements for self-determination worked, complicated everywhere by racial prejudice and disparities in the ownership of property. In the years following the Second World War, examined in Volume V, the islands and their immediate mainland neighbours have sought a variety of solutions to the problems which arise from societies asserting political autonomy while possessing economies dependent on overseas markets where their goods are pro• tected from competition. Puerto Rico became the 'Estado Libre', a Commonwealth; the French-speaking islands became departments of France; the Dutch-speaking islands, prior to the independence of Suriname, all became part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands; the British islands first flirted with a Federation, then became independent states separately; other states, following periods of military dictatorship, have pursued the path of socialist revolution. Currently, both in the islands and on the continent, there is a growing tendency for policy to be guided by regionalism, by the impulse towards association and co-operation, towards the formation of trading blocs, initially prompted by geographical propinquity. These subregions have recently begun concerted efforts towards recognizing and confirming that their mutual interests will be served by closer association. It is therefore appropriate that the two UNESCO projects of the General History of the Caribbean and the General History ofLatin America are being undertaken simultane• ously. The two histories should be read together as distinct parts of a unified whole, as an element in UNESCO's contribution to regional development through mutual understanding and cultural integration. Every effort will be made for both histories to reach as wide a public as possible in the major languages of the region, through the universities, through the schools by means of specially adapted versions (textbooks and children's books), and eventually through radio and television, plays and films. I wish, in conclusion, to extend my sincere thanks to the Chairman, Rapporteur and members of the International Scientific Committee and to the editors and authors of the various volumes who have come together to participate in this significant enterprise. My thanks also go to the governments and universities which have supported the project and to the Association of Caribbean Historians, so many of whose members have contributed generously to the creation of this work.

Federico Mayor

viii DESCRIPTION OF THE PROJECT

Professor Sir F. R. Augier Chairman of the Drafting Committee for the General History of the Caribbean

The decision to commission a UNESCO General History of the Caribbean, taken by the twenty-first session of the General Conference of UNESCO (1980), was an instance of the change in cultural policy which resulted in a shift in emphasis from the 'common heritage of all mankind' to acknowledging the 'diversity of cultures' and commissioning the histories of Africa, Central Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, as well as a revision of the History of Mankind. In all these cases, the brief of the Director-General was for a history observed from inside the region not from the outside, as if from the ports and capitals of European colonizers. Cultural identity, unity in diversity, and therefore the cultural heritages of the regions, were to inform the themes chosen for the history, giving prominence to those groups, persons and cultures hitherto either excluded from historical narratives, or treated more as objects than as actors in the description of events. By December 1981, when the Working Group for the Preparation of a General History of the Caribbean met in Paris, the ideas and aims expressed by the UNESCO General Conferences of 1978 and 1980 were Widely shared by the twenty scholars, Caribbean and European, whom the Director-General had invited in their personal capacity to break ground for the project. The aspirations of the ground-breakers embraced geography, anthropology, archaeology, ethnography, demography, society, religion, politics, ethnicity, culture, rituals, customs, socio-linguistics, music, dance, festivals, oral tradition, historiography, and cartography. One is tempted to conclude etcetera, and rightly so, beca'use their successors noticed that, in 1981, the Working Group had overlooked gender and the environment. The inclusiveness of their vision of the history of the Caribbean was, no doubt, due to the desire of the twenty schol• ars that the history of its people and their habitat should be written as if observed from inside the region. How was this vision to be made concrete in a few volumes, limi~d to twenty chapters each? How, within that general framework, to deal adequately with the wide diversity of size, ancestry, religion, language, custom, politics? How to set the chrono• logical limits to volumes without cutting off themes artificially? How to integrate the material into a Caribbean narrative and avoid writing history as merely summary accounts of the larger islands? The task was given to the Drafting Committee which first met in Kingston in April 1983. Of its nineteen members, twelve were from the Caribbean and seven from Africa, India, Europe and the Americas. At first, the Committee used the text of the

ix Description of the Project

Report of the Working Group (1981) to elicit the themes significant for Caribbean history. But in the discussion which followed, the form of organization proposed by the Working Group was abandoned and replaced by five themes which would make for a coherent history of the Caribbean region while being consonant with the UNESCO guidelines. These were Autochthonous Societies, New Societies: The Long Sixteenth Century, Slave Societies, The Long Nineteenth Century, The Caribbean in the Twentieth Century, and they became, with slight elaboration, the titles for the first five volumes of the history. The Drafting Committee· also promised to consider adding an annexe containing maps and statistics, and this in time became the sixth volume, Methodology and Historiography of the Caribbean. Volume 1-:Autochthonous Societies This volume relates the history of the origins of the earliest Caribbean peoples, and analyses their various political, social, cultural and economic organizations over time, in and around the Caribbean region. Volume II - New Societies: The Caribbean in the 'Long' Sixteenth Century The subject of this volume is the evolution of Caribbean society through the intrusion of Europeans, and it examines the dramatic changes in politics, society and culture which occurred until 1680. These changes are studied in conjunction with the rapidly dwindling presence of the Amerindians and the increasing numbers of Spanish English, French and Dutch Settlers. Volume III - Slave Societies of the Caribbean The slave societies were more than societies with enslaved Africans, so this volume examines the demographic and economic as well as social and cultural aspects of all those communities which resulted from the establishment of the Caribbean slave systems. Volume IV-The 'Long' Nineteenth Century: Nineteenth-Century Transformations Emphasizing themes rather than chronology, this volume covers the period from the end of slavery (although this varies in time from territory to territory) to the twentieth century. Its major themes are dependent labour groups, especially emigrants from Asia, the development and diversification of local economies, and the emergence throughout the region of varying degrees of national consciousness as well as forms of government. Volume V-The Caribbean in the Twentieth Century The prevalence and persistence of the plantation, the ubiquity of underemployment, the vulnerability of dependent Caribbean economies, popular and labour protests, decolonization and neo-colonialism are all considered in this volume. It also explores the effects of migration, mass communications and modernization on the cultures of local societies. Volume VI - Methodology and Historiography of the Caribbean This volume has three sections. The first examines sources of historical evidence and the techniques used to study them for the purpose of writing Caribbean history. In

x Description of the Project

the second, the historiography of the region is treated thematically, tracing the changes in the interpretation of the past. The third is devoted to the historiography of particular territories and history-writing in all its branches

At its first meeting, the Drafting Committee also made three decisions which should be noticed here: it appointed editors for the five volumes and the proposed annexe; it decided that since it had provided in some detail the contents of Volumes II and III, the editors could complete work on the contents of their volumes and name the authors by the end of 1983; it acknowledged that the contents of Volume I needed detailed elaboration and agreed that the editor should have the help of a workshop of specialists to provide the details. Nevertheless, the Committee proposed that Volumes I, II and III should be published first and together and set July 1986 as the date for the final submission of manuscripts to UNESCO. Provisional calendars for producing histories in several volumes and with chapters from scores of authors are not dates that are likely to be met. As has been the case with other multi-volume histories, inviting the most competent historians to be editors and authors has also meant taking the risk that the publication of the work will be long-delayed, since such persons normally have many other commitments. The estimates made in April of 1983 were soon wildly out. The first meeting of the Bureau of the Drafting Committee scheduled for September 1984 was held in May 1985. The new date proposed for the submission of manuscripts of Volumes I, II and III was December 1987. Volume III, which is to be published in 1997, was submitted in 1992. When the General History of the Caribbean was first proposed, there were just enough historians who had researched their topics across the barriers of language. Ten years later, the existence of the Association of Caribbean Historians has made possible a substantial increase of our comparative knowledge of the region's past. At its meetings, papers on similar topics and related themes pertaining to different terri• tories, are presented in the languages of the Caribbean, thus giving historians access to the results of research done across the barriers of language. To that extent these six volumes can be said to be a work in progress, a marker towards a fully integrated Caribbean history.

xi LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS

JInARy McD. BEcIWlS (Barbados) is Chairman of the Department of History, and Professor in Caribbean Economic and Social History in The University of the West Indies, Cave Hill campus, Barbados. He is the author of numerous books including White Servitude and Black Slavery in Barbados, 1627-1715 (1989), 'Natural Rebels': A Social History of Enslaved Black Women in Barbados (1989), A History of Barbados: From Amerindian Society to Nation State(1990). He is also an editor of the journal of Caribbean History..

CATHEIUNE A. Cmusn!N (USA) obtained her doctorate in the Department of History of the johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland, USA. She continues to work on the political, social and economic impact of tropical forest conservation in Costa Rica during the twentieth century.

MIcaAm. CaATON (Canada) is Professor of History at the University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. He is the author of several publications including A jamaican Plantation (1970), Sinews ofEmpire (1974), Searcbingfor tbe Invisible Man (1978), A History oftbe Babamas (1989), and Breaking tbe Cbains (1990).

Sn.VIA W. DE GIIooT (The Netherlands) has published extensively on the history of Suriname, with an emphasis on Maroon societies, including From Isolation towards Integration, The Surinam Maroons and their Colonial Rulers (184~ 1863) (1977) and A Corps ofBlack Cbasseurs in Surinam (forthcoming).

DAVID &115 (Canada) received his Ph.D. from the University of Rochester in 1979. He is currently Associate Professor at Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada, where he teaches Comparative Slavery and Atlantic History. He is the co-editor with James Walvin of The Abolition of the Atlantic Slave Trade (1981), and author of Economic Growtb and tbe Ending of the Transatlantic Slave Trade (1987) which was the winner of the Trevor Reese Memorial Prize for 1990 (Institute of Commonwealth Studies, London). He has authored and co-authored numerous articles in such schol• arly journals as the American Historical Review, Economic History Review, Hispanic American Historical Review, journal of Economic History, and the journal of InterdisCiplinary History.

SrANU!Y L ENGERMAN (USA) is John H. Munro Professor of Economics and Professor of History at the University of Rochester, New York, USA. He is co-author (with Robert W. Fogel) of Time on tbe Cross: The Economics ofAmerican Negro Slavery (1974), and co-editor of several books including Between Slavery and Free Labor (1985) (with Manuel Moreno Fraginals and Frank Moya Pons), Long-Term Factors in American Economic Growtb (1986) (with Robert E. Gallman), Quantitative Economic History

xii List of Contributors

(991) (with N. F. R. Crafts and N. H. Dimsdale), Without Consent or Contract: Technical Papers on Slavery (1992) (with Robert W. Fogel), and The Atlantic Slave Trade (1992) (with J. E. Inikori).

GAD IIEuMAN (UK) teaches in the Department of History and the Centre for Caribbean Studies at the University of Warwick, United Kingdom. He is the author of Between Black and White: Race, PolitiCS, and the Free Coloreds ofjamaica (1981), editor of Out ofthe House ofBondage: Runaways, Resistance and Marronage in Africa and the New World (1986), and co-editor of Labour in the Caribbean: From Emancipation to Independence (1988). He is also co-editor of Slavery and Abolition: A journal of Comparative Studies, and is currently completing a study of the Morant Bay Rebellion in Jamaica.

B. W. HIGMAN (Australia) is Professor of History at the Australian National University and former Head of the Department of History at the Mona, Jamaica campus of The University of the West Indies. His book Slave Populations and Economy injamaica, 1807-1834 (1976) was awarded the Bancroft Prize in 1977; his Slave Populations in the British Caribbean, 1807-1834 (984) won the Elsa Goveia Prize of the Association of Caribbean Historians. He is also the author of jamaica Suroeyed: Plantation Maps and Plans ofthe Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries (988).

FIlANIWN W. KNIGHT (Jamaica) is Leonard and Helen R. Stulman Professor of History, and former Director of the Latin American Studies Program at the Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland, USA. His publications include: Slave Society in Cuba during the Nineteenth Century (1970), The African Dimension of Latin American Societies (1974), The Caribbean: The Genesis of a Fragmented Nationalism (1978, 1990), Africa and the Caribbean: The Legacies of a Link (1979), co-edited with Margaret Crahan, The Modern Caribbean (989), co-edited with Colin A. Palmer, and Atlantic Port Cities. Economy, Culture and Society in the Atlantic World, 1650-1850 (991), co-edited with Peggy K. Liss.

CoUN A. PALMER (Jamaica) formerly William Rand Keenan, Jr. Professor of History at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill also served as chairman of the depart• ments of History, and African and Afro-American Studies. He is presently Graduate Professor in the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. His publications include Slaves of the White God. Blacks in Mexico (1976), Human Cargoes. The British Slave Trade to Spanish America, 1700-1739 (1981), The Modern Caribbean (1989), co-edited with Franklin W. Knight, and Passageways: An Interpretive History of Black America (1993).

MARY TUIINER (Canada) is Professor of History at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. Her publications include Slaves and Missionaries: the disintegration of jamaican Slave Society, 1788-1834 (1982), The Baptist War and Abolition (1982), and Chattel Slaves into Wage Slaves (1988),

xiii LIST OF TABLES

Table 1.1 Muster records, 1689 26 Table 1.2 Mortality rate of the slaves carried in the Royal African Company's ships, 1680-88 29 Table 2.1 Caribbean populations, 1750, 1830, 1880 48

Table 2.2 Estimated net slave imports, 17~1870 (in 'OOOs) 60

Table 3.1 Estimated plantation output, 1770 113 Table 3.2 Estimated plantation output, 1850 117 Table 4.1 Freedmen, whites and slaves at the end of the eighteenth century 144

Table 4.2 Growth of the freedmen population in the nineteenth century 158

xiv PLATES

1 Subversive rebel message from Barbados, 1683 2 Toussaint Louverture, architect of the free state of Haiti (probably 1802) 3 Private in the Fifth West India Regiment, 1814 4 Leonard Parkinson, last Jamaican Maroon rebel, 1796 5 The French trying to exterminate the Black Army, post-I800 6 General Henri Christophe at a Court Martial 7 Training bloodhounds in French St Domingue in the late eighteenth century 8 The Black Army taking revenge on the French in St Domingue 9 Maroon ambush, Dromilly Estate, Jamaica, 1795 10 A slave being hung alive 11 A rebel slave armed and on guard 12 Eastern Maroons negotiating their treaty in St Vincent 13 El Cimarron 14 Dance 15 ReligiOUS worship 16 Sunday morning in town 17 Free market in Falmouth, Jamaica, c.1840 18 From Harper's Weekly Punishing slaves in Cuba, 1868 19 Certificate for slave sale in Cuba, 1814 20 The Kalinda, or stick dance, Dominica (probably nineteenth century) 21 Three scenes from Cuba: i) Semi-mechanized sugar manufacture, c.1850 ii) Cart for transporting canes, c.1860 iii) Slaves dancing, c.1865 22 Boiling house, c.1800 23 Cutting, cleaning and stacking sugar-canes manually

xv The Caribbean

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