MAPPING MONTSERRAT’S TRANSITION FROM SUGAR TO LIMES: A GEOSOCIAL LANDSCAPE APPROACH

MAPEO DE LA TRANSICIÓN DE MONTSERRAT DEL AZÚCAR A LAS LIMES: UN ENFOQUE DE PAISAJE GEOSOCIAL

CARTOGRAPHIE DE LA TRANSITION DE MONTSERRAT DU SUCRE AU LIMES: UNE APPROCHE DU PAYSAGE GEOSOCIAL

Samantha Ellens

Samantha Ellens Wayne State University, United States [email protected]

This paper uses field-based and archival research to trace the transitions on the physical landscape between the sugar and citrus lime industries occurring on Montserrat. Maps reveal the extent to which sugar production sites and natural resources were repurposed by citrus lime processors, the shifts in land-use accompanying the new industry, and the ways in which the island’s social dynamics (settlement patterns, trade networks, transportation routes) shifted vis-a- vis the new wage-labor economy. In the intermediate years between emancipation and the introduction of limes as a cash crop, the Leeward Islands were no longer competitive in the world sugar market, leading sugar cultivation to dwindle and populations to slowly adjust to new socio-economic conditions. Approaches from landscape and historical archaeology are enlisted to explore the scope and scale of lime production, situating the industry (1852- 1928) within a larger global economy and the construction of local industry-period Montserratian life. Preliminary examination of the island-wide land holdings of The Montserrat Company, the Sturge family’s prosperous lime enterprise, aids in determining the extent to which the inhabitants re-appropriated and restructured the landscape in the post-sugar era to accommodate citrus lime production and the new wage-labor system. Records indicate that the lime industry converted sugar plantation infrastructure to facilitate the production of limes, but the extent to which the new industry drew upon the old is poorly understood. This geosocial landscape approach provides a basis for interrogating the relationships between local and regional dynamics of socio-economic island networks. Keywords: Post-Emancipation Landscapes, Island Economies, Agriculture, Labor

Este documento utiliza la investigación de campo y de archivo para rastrear las transiciones en el paisaje físico entre las industrias del azúcar y la lima cítrica que se producen en Montserrat. Los mapas revelan hasta qué punto los sitios de producción de azúcar y recursos naturales fueron reutilizados por procesadores de lima cítrica, los cambios en el uso de la tierra que acompañan a la nueva industria y las formas en que la dinámica social de la isla (patrones de asentamiento, redes de comercio, rutas de transporte) vis-a-vis la nueva economía del trabajo asalariado. En los años intermedios entre la emancipación y la introducción de las limas como cultivo comercial, las Islas de Sotavento ya no eran competitivas en el mercado mundial del azúcar, lo que provocó que el cultivo

454 de azúcar disminuyera y las poblaciones se ajustaran lentamente a las nuevas condiciones socioeconómicas. Los enfoques del paisaje y la arqueología histórica se alistaron para explorar el alcance y la escala de la producción de cal, situando la industria (1852-1928) dentro de una economía global más grande y la construcción de la vida Montserratian de la industria local. El examen preliminar de la tenencia de tierras en toda la isla de The Montserrat Company, la próspera empresa de lima de la familia Sturge, ayuda a determinar en qué medida los habitantes volvieron a apropiarse y reestructuraron el paisaje en la era posterior al azúcar para acomodar la producción de lima cítrica y la nuevo sistema de trabajo asalariado. Los registros indican que la industria de la cal reconvirtió la infraestructura de plantaciones de azúcar para facilitar la producción de limas, pero el grado en que la nueva industria se basó en el anterior es poco conocido. Este enfoque de paisaje geosocial proporciona una base para interrogar las relaciones entre las dinámicas locales y regionales de las redes de islas socioeconómicas. Palabras claves: Paisajes Post Emancipadores, Economías Insulares, Agricultura, Trabajo

Cet article utilise la recherche sur le terrain et l'archivage pour tracer les transitions sur le paysage physique entre les industries du sucre et de la chaux d'agrumes sur Montserrat. Les cartes révèlent la transformation des sites de production de sucre et des ressources naturelles par les transformateurs de citron vert, les changements dans l'utilisation des terres accompagnant la nouvelle industrie et les changements de la dynamique sociale de l'île (schémas de peuplement, réseaux commerciaux, voies de transport). vis-à-vis de la nouvelle économie salariée. Dans les années intermédiaires entre l'émancipation et l'introduction du limes comme culture de rapport, les îles Sous-le-Vent ne sont plus compétitives sur le marché mondial du sucre, entraînant une baisse de la culture sucrière et une lente adaptation des populations aux nouvelles conditions socio- économiques. Des approches du paysage et de l'archéologie historique sont utilisées pour explorer la portée et l'échelle de la production de chaux, situant l'industrie (1852-1928) au sein d'une économie mondiale plus vaste et la construction de la vie locale de Montserratian. L'examen préliminaire des propriétés foncières de la Compagnie de Montserrat, l'entreprise prospère à la chaux de la famille Sturge, aide à déterminer dans quelle mesure les habitants se sont réappropriés et restructurés à l'ère du sucre pour accueillir la production de citron et de chaux. nouveau système de travail salarié. Les dossiers indiquent que l'industrie de la chaux a converti l'infrastructure des plantations de canne à sucre pour faciliter la production de chaux, mais la mesure dans laquelle la nouvelle industrie s'est inspirée de l'ancienne est mal comprise. Cette approche du paysage géosocial fournit une base pour interroger les relations entre les dynamiques locales et régionales des réseaux insulaires socio- économiques. Mots clés: Paysages Post-Emancipation, Economies Insulaires, Agriculture, Travail

This paper presents a preliminary examination of the land holdings of The Montserrat Company, the prosperous lime enterprise established in 1869 by the Sturge family to start the commercial production of lime juice on the island of Montserrat. The first Joseph Sturge, a prominent Quaker abolitionist who had visited the island in 1836 to assess the conditions under the apprenticeship system introduced at the time of emancipation in 1834, purchased a sugar estate in 1857 with the idea of demonstrating the viability of using wage-labor (Fergus 1996). It was to be under the directorship of his son, Joseph Sturge II, that the enterprise would grow to become the largest property holder in Montserrat, with limes taking the lead among exports during the latter half of the 19th-century.

This research stems from previous work I have conducted as a member of the Survey and Landscape Archaeology on Montserrat (SLAM) project. It represents the start of my dissertation

455 project, which questions the transformative impacts of the citrus lime industry during the transition from slave-based to wage labor systems. I will examine patterns of land use and population movement pertaining to questions of economic transition, methods of transferrable technology, and mobility, as well as the extent to which the new industry transformed tastes, created new trade markets, and impacted the quality of life for the island's laborers. It will develop in the next year through my work on Montserrat and comparisons with the labor on Dominica.

The introduction of competing alternative global methods of sugar production during the 18th-century (cane vs beet) meant that the Leeward Islands were no longer competitive in the world sugar market (Sheridan 1974:181-183). In the years following emancipation, sugar cultivation continued to dwindle and populations slowly adjusted to new socio-economic conditions. On many islands, a post-plantation economy subsequently struggled to emerge. In Montserrat, sugar production had been in decline since 1735, having consistently ranked amongst the lowest producers in the Leewards Islands because of its small size, mountainous terrain, and the absence of a good harbor (Hall 1971:ix; Sheridan 1974:181-183).

Following the British abolition of slavery in 1834, the social and political climate ensured the continuation of African-derived labor for an ever-expanding capitalism in latter half of the 19th century (Higman 1995; Olwig 2014). In order to create a “smooth transition,” British Parliament decreed that all formerly enslaved able-bodied workers should remain on estates as part of an “apprenticeship” system for several years so that they could learn the system of wage- labor (Antigua being an exception having transitioned to immediate emancipation on August 1, 1834) (Delle 2014:68). Over the next decade, a complex set of factors including economic depression, disease, mass emigration of labor, and lingering damage from an 1843 earthquake further combined to drastically impair Montserrat’s island infrastructure and the prosperity of its inhabitants (Davy 1854:420). Several attempts at alternative export crops developed, including failed ventures in silk production through importations of silk worms from France and Italy.

In the following decades, from the 1850s into the early 20th century, lime production would increase and contribute to major transformations in both the socioeconomic and environmental landscapes of the island. During this period Montserrat limes became famous, appearing in British advertisements and utilized in the global perfume and beverage markets inspiring the industry also to develop on nearby Lesser Antillean islands (Fergus 1982). The Sturge family’s prosperous lime enterprise, the Montserrat Company, is an important chapter in the island’s plantation history. By 1878 The Montserrat Company’s lime plantations covered over 600 acres, containing some 120,000 trees (Jackson 2014:56). Around this time, Jane Richardson Sturge writes “No lovlier sight could be seen than these orchards when the trees are laden with their bright fruit, the air being pervaded with the fragrance of the blossom” (Sturge n.d.). Mapping the development of the Montserrat Company can aid in determining the extent to which the new industry re-appropriated and restructured the landscape in the post-sugar era to

456 accommodate citrus lime production and the new wage-labor system. However, the transition from sugar to lime was not a clear-cut process.

Although sugar had been a dominant crop on Montserrat since its inception in 1650, the island had consistently been occupied with several other exports including molasses, rum, cotton, indigo, lime juice, and allspice (Wheeler 1988:24). Estates experimented, switched, and diversified their crops in response to several factors and the lime industry itself experienced repeated setbacks due to blight and natural disasters before its ultimate demise following destruction from an 1899 hurricane. Maps can only struggle to articulate this complexity, as they tend to capture a snapshot of the spatial distribution of archaeological remains that creates a very static perspective of the past, among several other issues inherent in using historical maps as documentary sources (Seasholes 1988). Landscapes such as these are constructed through an array of spatial elements that are sometimes visible and sometimes not visible on the landscape. Developing a geosocial landscape approach considering the diverse relationships and social negotiations embedded in the past is needed, through incorporating cartographic, material, and documentary evidence. This type of analysis, merging spatial and social processes, will promote a more fluid articulation of the landscape.

The Sturge family became the largest landholders on the island and limes became its main industry, beginning in the 1860s (Wheeler 1988) (Figure 1). Through their lucrative enterprise, the Sturges eventually owned nearly half of the land on the island with estates at Olveston, Woodlands, the Grove, Richmond, Fryes, Isles Bay, O'Garro's, Brades, Tar River, Elberton and Fogarty's (Fergus 1983:11). The spatial layout of the activity and settlement patterns directly related to the lime industry conveys the shifts in land-use that accompanied the new lime industry and the ways in which the island’s social dynamics were altered in response to the new wage labor economy, reflected in the settlement patterns, trade networks, transportation routes, and institutional resources established by way of the Montserrat Company and the Sturge family.

Socioeconomic stratification and a paternalistic attitude was in effect on the island between the managerial groups of the Montserrat Company and their laborers. Attempts at social control are apparent in many historic documents relating to the period. For instance, an 1887 memorandum is concerned with the “the maintenance of a high standard of morality” on the part of company officers and the morality of the “coloured people” and tenants, striving to maintain levels above the West Indian norm, “which is low” (Sturge 1887). The Company also refused to partake in the production of spirits, perhaps an indication at how the Sturges’ Quakerism may have intersected with aspects of everyday life (Chenoweth 2017). Limes were considered a good Quaker crop. Marketed as an alternative to alcohol, lime juice appealed to the teetotaler tendencies of Quaker ideals (Fergus 1983:11). In 1870, the Sturges established Olveston Elementary School to educate the children of their estate workers. This was the island’s first nondenominational school, complimented as “a model of what is desirable for our laboring classes” (Marshall 1875). The remark, as expressed by one of Her Majesty’s Inspectors, suggests

457 some prevailing assumptions concerning the destiny of laborers’ children, namely their mobility beyond wage-labor (Fergus 2003:33).

In the early 1870s, the success of the Montserrat Company had allowed members of the Sturge family to construct a summer home retreat known as “The Cot” overlooking the town of Salem. The laboring class did not exactly reap the same benefits of the change in industry, and opportunities other than working on the estates decreased as lime cultivation expanded across the island. The Sturges held no objection to the laborers securing freeholds around the estates, claiming that “while such settlements may render the people independent at times they will in the long run keep labor on the island which would otherwise leave it” (Sturge 1887). In this post- slavery landscape, opportunities for independence and resettlement were shifting the colonial arrangements of class and labor. By the 1930s, there was almost no available land left for public purposes. The Montserrat Company sold the Grove Estate to create a botanical station in 1932, also donating Sturge Park in 1936, to the Government of Montserrat (Fergus 1983).

Developing a geosocial approach which combines spatial and documentary evidence will be useful for my work on the lime industry in part because many of the ways in which the lime industry repurposed the sugar infrastructure at the estate level is not readily visible on the landscape. As the following case study will demonstrate, even though a major shift towards lime production would drastically alter the agricultural efforts of the island and have subsequent socioeconomic implications, the industry itself left only ephemeral archaeological traces on the estate complexes themselves due to the extent of transferrable technology carried over from sugar. This means that I must be more dependent upon integrating historical data for framing the archaeology of the lime industry rather than through more traditional methods.

During the 1850s Joseph Sturge senior had returned to Montserrat to begin commercial investment in island exports. Through the “Encumbered Estates Act of 1854”, which enabled the sale of properties laden with complicated debts, he bought Bransby’s sugar estate in 1857 with a goal towards demonstrating the economic viability of employing paid labor rather than using an enslaved workforce (Fergus 1996:65). By 1858, he had combined this estate with another and renamed it Elberton after his birthplace back in England. He died 2 years later and the estate passed on to his daughter Sophia Sturge (Wheeler 1988). Nevertheless, numerous members of the Sturge family continued to buy additional estate land at low prices for this enterprise.

The Elberton Estate is in Zone C of the Exclusion Zone (Figure 2), the southern part of the island which has been devastated by the island’s continuous volcanic activity since 1995, and remains in relatively well preserved condition but is buried in thick ash deposits. Much of the landscape is covered with dense tree canopy and undergrowth, obscuring the overall complex. Visibility of individual features ranges from fair to poor depending upon the density of scrub surrounding the area and a thick leaf-litter.

458 Assisted by survey information collected by the SLAM project in 2012 and LiDAR data provided to the project by the Montserrat Volcano Observatory, I examined imagery associated with the estate complex to identify the anthropogenic features on the landscape prior to conducting my own survey of the site in 2016 and subsequent mapping in 2017 (Figure 3). With a small field crew assisting me, I documented and photographed the dimensions and hand- sketched layout of the architectural during the field survey, and we also collected GPS coordinates and high-resolution aerial drone imagery for subsequent digital mapping and analysis. Beau Kromberg systematically captured particular features of interest in a series of photosets which were later used to create a 3D photogrammetric model, portions of which are shown here. In total, 11 buildings and other historic features were identified as associated with the estate works (Ellens 2017).

Elberton serves as a historically documented example of the transitioning of sugar infrastructure for use in the lime industry on Montserrat and has remained relatively well preserved. However, through mapping the site, questions arose as to how this estate shifted from a sugar estate to one of principally lime production and what evidence of lime production remains. There are several historic descriptions that attest to the highly transferrable nature of the sugar machinery towards the production of limes on Montserrat and Dominica. Colonial Reports from 1897 by a Mr. Naftel in Roseau, Dominica attest the scale to which the sugar technology was transferrable to the production of limes in the West Indies. He describes the processes through which concentrated liquor and essential oils were obtained and makes comments upon the fact that “as the same mills, boilers, and stills that are used for sugar can be employed for treating the limes, the industry has to a great extent replaced that of sugar and has now become the principle one on the island” (Naftel 1897:40). Given this statement, the archaeological signatures relating to the period of lime production at Elberton would be extremely similar to signatures that would be related to the sugar era.

Despite an apparent lack of architectural modification, I found that the documentary record lends clues as to how the space was subsequently repurposed and utilized. Many of the features we recorded by survey at Elberton are visible in historic photographs taken in the early 20th-century and are referenced in archival literature for the period of lime production. Late 19th-century documents, three of which date to August 1899 and possibly related to a request to the British Government for loans to assist with repair of hurricane damage, provide an inventory of Elberton Estate including buildings, chattel and livestock. As mentioned previously, many of the structure and machinery components used for sugar would have carried over operation into the lime period as well. . These included two plaster-lined stone cisterns, a stone animal pen, likely used for cattle, and several examples of mill building repair and reuse (Figure 4).

The processing of lime oil was one development associated with lime cultivation which did not carry over from sugar. Obtained by hand, limes were bruised in a saucer-shaped copper vessel called an “ecueller,” fitted with sharp projections on the interior. The oil cells in the rind would rupture on these spikes, and the essential oil would collect at the bottom of the basin and

459 the funnel below. The essence would then be taken to a storeroom, filtered, and bottled for shipment across the Atlantic for use in the perfume and soap industries (Fergus 1982:12). Such work was also gendered, usually performed by Afro-Caribbean women and girls over many hours to extract a sufficient quantity (Royal Botanic Gardens 1894). This process could be completed outdoors, requiring multiple operators and a steady supply of limes to work with, and thus the “ecuelling sheds” referenced in the historic literature and historically documented at Elberton are yet another case of function (but not the actual space itself) being modified.

Such a site showcases a need for adopting more creative interpretive strategies for tracing the transition to the lime industry. Archaeology is a discipline largely concerned with what remains; as the bricoleurs of history, we piece together the past using a fragmentary and varied record. Despite major functional changes that the lime industry brought to estates, the archaeological signatures associated with these changes are tenuous, as has been demonstrated at Elberton. In the Caribbean more generally, the combination of spatial and archival data is proving effective at exposing subtle yet significant information regarding changes associated with cultural and economic landscapes on several islands. Problematizing the ephemeral nature of the lime production, both because of its brief period of existence and the fact that its material traces are difficult to pin down, calls for the development of more integrative ways for understanding the social changes associated with these post-emancipation industries.

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460 1983 Montserrat, Emerald Isle of the Caribbean. Macmillan Caribbean.

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462 Figure 1. Extent of The Montserrat Company’s property holdings across the island of Montserrat by 1892.

463 Figure 2. Location of the Elberton Estate on Montserrat.

464 Figure 3. Map of the identified features associated with the Elberton Estate complex.

Figure 4. Interior North view of the plaster-lined cisterns (left); Northeast corner of the cattle enclosure located to the south of the main estate complex (middle); and repairs done with bricks to the northeast wall of the main mill building (right). (Samantha Ellens, 2017).

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