Howard University Digital Howard @ Howard University Faculty Reprints 1-1-1932 The egN ro in the West Indies Charles H. Wesley Follow this and additional works at: http://dh.howard.edu/reprints Part of the Arts and Humanities Commons Recommended Citation Wesley, Charles H., "The eN gro in the West Indies" (1932). Faculty Reprints. Paper 211. http://dh.howard.edu/reprints/211 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by Digital Howard @ Howard University. It has been accepted for inclusion in Faculty Reprints by an authorized administrator of Digital Howard @ Howard University. For more information, please contact [email protected]. THE NEGRO IN THE WEST INDIES BY CHARLES H. WESLEY (Reprinted from The Journal of Negro History for 1932) THE NEGRO IN THE WEST INDIES, SLAVERY AND FREEDOM1 The term “ West Indies” is applied to the group of is­ lands which form a curve extending from Florida south to the northern coast of South America and eastward. They begin in the north nearest Florida with Cuba and the Ba­ hama Islands and end with Trinidad off the coast of South America. Cuba, Jamaica, Haiti, and San Domingo, and Por­ to Rico are called the Greater Antilles. The Lesser Antilles include the smaller islands which seem to be mere dots in the Caribbean Sea. The British West Indies, which will de­ mand our direct attention, are also regarded from the col­ onial point of view as including British Honduras and Guiana on the mainland. Due to the voyages of Columbus and his successors, these islands passed under the control of Spain in the six­ teenth century. The report of their wealth and the steady stream of tropical products which flowed into Europe— sugar, coffee, tobacco, rice, cotton, and pimento—led other nations to look with envious eyes upon these possessions, and in the succeeding periods England, France, and Hol­ land competed with Spain for its tropical trade and finally fought for the control of their colonial empires. Barbados, Antigua, Barbuda, St. Kitts, Nevis, Anguilla, Montserrat, the Virgin Islands group, Jamaica, and the Cay­ mans came under British control during the seventeenth century. All of these were acquired by settlement with the exception of Jamaica which had been taken from Spain, and the Virgin Islands taken from the Dutch. By the Peace of Paris in 1763 Dominica, St. Vincent, Tobago, Grenada and the Grenadines were added to the British Empire. The Peace of Paris was the high-water mark in the development of Britain’s Empire in the West Indies. The term “ Negro” as it relates to the West Indies de­ serves some consideration at the outset. This word is not 1 An address delivered at the sixteenth annual meeting of the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History in New York City, November 10, 1931. 51 52 J ournal of N egro H istory used in the comprehensive sense in which it has been used in the United States. From the earliest periods distinctions have been made as to classes among Negroes, “ Free per­ sons of Color,” “ Free Blacks,” and “ Persons of Color.” There were no fixed traditions in public opinion which held together all persons who had any Negro ancestry, as is the case in the United States. There were gradations of color in the West Indies which tended to form a kind of caste system. The children of a white parent and a Negro parent were known as mulattoes. The children of white and mulatto parents were known as quadroons. The offspring of white and quadroon parents were known as mustees, and the off­ spring of white and mustee parents were termed mustefinos. Officially many persons known to have Negro parents were accepted as white. As a rule, removal by descent from the Negro status had the tendency of assuring a rise in social standing, however artificial this relationship may have been. Persons having Negro blood have regarded them­ selves, and have been accepted as Englishmen, Jamaicans, Barbadians, etc., rather than as British Negroes. A Parish Register of Kingston referred to the persons baptized as blacks or Negro, Sambo, quadroon, mustee, brown, persons of color, and Indian. The thinking elements among the Ne­ gro population in the West Indies, however, have come to realize that the making of such distinctions has been one of the subtle ways in which divisions have developed in their ranks ; and, since the color line has grown more fixed in all parts of the British Empire, for the sake of a group move­ ment upwards for all, they are more willing to apply the term “ Negro” to their number. For, once outside of their own home-islands in either South Africa, London, the British capital, Mississippi, or Alabama, they would find themselves segregated and jim-crowed and accepted as a little less than the equals of others whose faces are fairer. The wealth of the West Indies depended upon agricul­ ture. Tropical conditions seemed to make the economic sys­ tem based upon European free labor impossible. Forced T he N egro ih the W est I ndies 53 labor first of the Indians and then of the Africans gradually developed. Fertile land was abundant in all of the islands, and an economic system arose, built upon the production of tropical commodities by slave labor. Europe could furnish the capital, and a labor supply alone was needed. The native Indians and the Indians from the North American continent were pressed into service but it was found that they were too few in number to furnish a large supply of laborers and that they could not maintain the hardships of forced labor without additions to the active number of workers.2 European traders were familiar with the value of Negro slaves, for the traders with Africa between 1420 and 1430 had brought back to Europe, and especially to Spain and Portugal, the first African slaves. In 1504 there is the first mention in the Spanish records of Negroes in the new world. In 1516 Las Casas returned to Spain and favored the use of Negro slaves to replace the declining natives of Spanish America. Within twenty years following the discovery of America, Negroes were first brought to the West Indies in large numbers.3 The story of the Negro masses in the West Indies is one of struggle under a ruthless system of exploitation by the few of the many. The profitable production of sugar re­ quired a larger and more effectively organized labor supply than any other agricultural product in the West Indies. The concentration of laborers into gangs under an overseer or head driver was the basis of the West Indian system of sugar production. Negro slavery furnished a large and con­ tinuous labor supply for these tasks. Negroes from the dif­ ferent tribal stocks in all stages of development and of vary­ ing innate abilities were seized upon to furnish the needed supplies. The exact number of Negro slaves who were transported 2 Edwards, Bryan. The History Civil and Commercial of the British Colonies in the West Indies, Yol. I I ; Herrera, Historia General, dec. I., lib. IX , chap. 5, p. 45. 8 Bourne, E. G. Spain in America. 54 J ournal of N egro H istory to these islands may never be known. It has been estimated that from 1680 to 1786 the number imported into the British West' Indian colonies was 2,130,000. This represented a yearly average of 20,095J From 1735 to 1763 the yearly average export of slaves by the English from the Gold Coast alone was 13,000.4 5 The records and the contemporary correspondence show that the islands were generally in need of slaves and that they used all the slaves they could obtain. The demand seemed to be greatest in Jamaica, which was due to the large amount of uncultivated land and the export of slaves from the islands.6 Millions of Africans were carried into the West Indies during the hey-day of the Slave Trade. The transportation of slaves continued on a large scale to 1807 when the slave trade was abolished. One hun­ dred and eighty-five ships which had the capacity of carry­ ing 50,000 slaves were dispatched from Liverpool alone during the last sixteen months of the legal existence of the slave trade.7 The clandestine trade was carried on for years following the abolition. About one-half of the Negro slave population on the sugar estates was engaged in field work. The other half comprised the artisans, herders, domestics, watchmen, nurses, the aged and the children. Every week day except Sunday and every other Saturday was a worldng day. The slaves in many colonies were permitted to have lands upon which they raised yams, bananas, cocoanuts, and vegetables. They also kept hogs, fowls, and cattle. Clothing, fish, rum, and molasses were issued as regular allowances on each plantation. The plantation Negroes lived in their own houses which were some distance from the “ Big-House.” In this respect this system resembled the Manor of the Middle Ages and the typical American plantation of the South. It is highly probable that the economic condition of some of 4 Edwards, Bryan, op. cit., II, p. 55. 6 Pitman, F. W . Development of the West Indies, p. 70. 6 Ibid., pp. 79-85. 7 Williams, Gomer, History of the Liverpool Privateers, p. 678. T he N egro in the W est I ndies 55 the Negro slaves in the West Indies during the Eighteenth Century was advanced beyond that of the majority of the European peasants of the same period.78 In the town the Negro slaves were employed as servants, porters, carpenters, coopers, blacksmiths, masons, and cop­ persmiths.