This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon this content non-commercially, as long as they credit the author and license their new creations under the identical terms. Cite This Work Europeans introduced sugarcane to the New World in the 1490s. For the most part the layout of slave villages was not rigidly organised, as they grew up over time and the inhabitants had some choice about the location of their houses. Once cut, the stalks were taken to a mill, where the juice was extracted. As a consequence of these events, the size of the Black population in the Caribbean rose dramatically in the latter part of the 17th century. His Ten Views, published in 1823, portrays the key steps in the growing, harvesting and processing of sugarcane. McDonald, Roderick A. Finally they were sold to local buyers. The great increase in the Black population was feared by the white plantation owners and as a result treatment often became harsher as they felt a growing need to control a larger but discontented and potentially rebellious workforce. World History Foundation is a non-profit organization registered in Canada. However, plantation life was terrible. The slaves of the Athenian Laurium silver mines or the Cuban sugar plantations, for example, lived in largely male societies. In Barbados for example, the houses on some plantations were upgraded to wooden cabins covered with shingles (thin wooden tiles) and placed in a common yard to encourage family relations to develop. Once they arrived in the Caribbean islands, the Africans were prepared for sale. The copyright holder has published this content under the following license: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike. The major exception to the rule was North America, where slaves began to procreate in significant numbers in the mid-18th . Resistance to the oppression of slavery and ethnic colonialism has made the Caribbean a principal site of freedom politics and democratic desire. The enslaved population soared, quadrupling over a 20-year period to 125,000 souls in the mid-19th century. Other villages were established on steep unused land, often in the deep guts, which were unsuitable for cultivation, such as Ottleys or Lodge villages in St Kitts. An introduction to the Caribbean, empire and slavery - The British Library After emancipation, many newly freed labourers moved away from the plantations, emigrating or setting up new homes as squatters on abandoned estate land. 2 (2000): 213-236. These lessons also eased traders consciences that they were somehow benefitting the slaves and giving them the opportunity of what they considered eternal salvation. Cartwright, Mark. Copyright 2023 United Nations in the Caribbean, Caption: The "Ark of Return", the permanent memorial to honour the victims of slavery and the transatlantic slave trade, located at the Visitors' Plaza of United Nations Headquarters in New York. Slave villages represent an important but little-known part of the Caribbean landscape. On the Stapleton estate on Nevis records show that there were 31 acres set aside for the estate to grow yams and sweet potatoes while slaves on the plantation had five acres of provision ground, probably on the rougher area of the plantation at higher elevations, where they could grow vegetables and poultry. Not surprisingly, the remains of wooden huts, with thatched roofs, would in any case leave few traces on the surface. Although the enslaved Africans were permitted provision grounds and gardens in the villages to grow food, these were not enough to stop them suffering from starvation in times of poor harvests. Information about sugar plantations. The expansion of sugar plantations in the West Indies required a sharp increase in the volume of the slave trade from Africa (see Figure 18.1). He describes the possessions of the enslaved couple; of furniture they have not great matters to boast, nor, considering their habits of life, is much required. The Caribbean was at the core of the crime against humanity induced by the transatlantic slave trade and slavery. The houses measured 15 to 20 feet long and had two rooms. As the historian A. R. Disney notes, "sugar production was one of the most complex and technologically-sophisticated agricultural industries of early modern times" (236). It can also provide insight into their leisure activities, such as smoking and gaming represented by clay tobacco pipes or marbles. Our publication has been reviewed for educational use by Common Sense Education, Internet Scout (University of Wisconsin), Merlot (California State University), OER Commons and the School Library Journal. On Portuguese plantations, perhaps one in three slaves were women, but the Dutch and English plantation owners preferred a male-only workforce when possible. Africans Have Made the Caribbean. Here's why. Michael Tadman, 'The demographic costs of sugar: debates on slave societies and natural increase in the Americas', American Historical Review, 105.5 (2000); B.W. The legacy of the social and economic institution of slavery is to be found everywhere within these societies and is particularly dominant in the Caribbean. Sugar plantations in the Caribbean - Wikipedia As Edwards was a staunch supporter of the slave trade, his descriptions of the slave houses and villages present a somewhat rosy picture. By the middle of the 18th century the slave plantation system was fully implemented in the Caribbean sugar colonies. Eliminating the toxic contaminant of hierarchical ethnic racism from all societies, and allowing them to embrace a horizontal perspective on ethnic and cultural diversity and ways of living, will enable the twenty-first century to be better than any prior period in modernity. The production of sugar required - and killed - hundreds of thousands of enslaved Africans. Plantation life and labor were difficult and . Making money from Caribbean sugar plantations was not easy, and men like Simon Taylor had to face many risks. Sugar and Slavery : An Economic History of the British West Indies World Slavery and Caribbean Capitalism: The Cuban Sugar - JSTOR Provision grounds were areas of land often of poor quality, mountainous or stony, and often at some distance from the villages which plantation owners set aside for the enslaved Africans to grow their own food, such as sweet potatoes, yams and plantains. Nevertheless, the plantation system was so successful that it was soon adopted throughout the colonial Americas and for many other crops such as tobacco and cotton. These plantations produced eighty to ninety percent of the . Their houses were little different from those of the white servants at the time. Wars with other Europeans were another threat as the Spanish, Dutch, British, French, and others jostled for control of the New World colonies and to expand their trade interests in the Old one. 04 Mar 2023. The enslaved Africans supplemented their diet with other kinds of wild food. An infestation of tiny insects would descend on the luscious green sugar plants and turn them black. The location of the provision grounds at the Jessups estate, one of the Nevis plantations studied by the St Kitts-Nevis Digital Archaeology Initiative, is shown on a 1755 plan of the plantation. In this way, black enslavement became the primary institution for social and economic governance in the hemisphere. Science, technology and innovation are critical to responding to this pressing need. Additionally, the hours were long, especially at harvest time. Irish immigrants to the Caribbean colonies were not slaves - they were a type of worker known as indentured servants. Furnishings within were always sparse and crude, most occupants sleeping in hammocks, or on the earth floor.. Examining the archaeology of slavery in the Caribbean sugar plantations. There were the challenges of growing any kind of crops in tropical climates in the pre-modern era: soil exhaustion, storm damage, and losses to pests - insects that bored into the roots of sugarcane plants were particularly bothersome. Find out what the UN in the Caribbean is doing towards the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals. The Caribbean is home to the Haitian Revolution, which produced the worlds first black freedom state and the subsequent proliferation of constitutional democracies. Higman, Barry W. Slave Populations of the British Caribbean, 1807-1834 Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1984. While colonialism has been in retreat since the nationalist reforms of the mid-20th century, it persists as a political feature of the region. 1674: Antigua's first sugar plantation is established with the arrival of Barbadian-born British soldier, plantation and slave-owner Christopher Codrington Within just four years, half the island . The main source of labor until the abolition of slavery was African slaves. Part of the National Museums Liverpool group. Plantation owners obviously had a much better life than the slaves who worked for them, and if successful in their estate management, they could live lives far superior to anything they could have expected back in Europe. Cartwright, Mark. The scourge of racism based on white supremacy, for example, remains virulent in the region. Sugar and strife. Copyright 2021 Some Rights Reserved (See Terms of Service), Slavery on Caribbean Sugar Plantations from the 17th to 19th Centuries, Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window), Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window), Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window), Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window), Click to share on Skype (Opens in new window), Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window), Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window), Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window), A Supervisors Advice to a Young Scribe in Ancient Sumer, Numbers of Registered and Actual Young Voters Continue to Rise, Forever Young: The Strange Youth of Ancient Macedonian Kings, Gen Z Voters Have Proven to Be a Force for Progressive Politics, Just Between You and Me:A History of Childrens Letters to Presidents. Our latest articles delivered to your inbox, once a week: Our mission is to engage people with cultural heritage and to improve history education worldwide. In the American South, only one . "Life on a Colonial Sugar Plantation." Those engaged in the slave trade were primarily driven by the huge profits to be gained, both in the Caribbean and at home. By the early 18th century enslaved Africans trading in their own produce dominated the market on Nevis. A striking feature of the village area is the dense mass of bushes and trees, including coconut palms. Enslaved Africans were often treated harshly. His paintings mainly depict the British fort on Brimstone Hill, but also show groups of slave houses. Atlantic Ocean. Sugar plantations in the Caribbean were a major part of the economy of the islands in the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries. The abolition of the slave trade was a blow from which the slave system in the Caribbean could not recover. But do you know that in the 18th c. some Caribbean colonies like Jamaica and Haiti (Saint-D. By the time the slave trade fizzled out, following its abolition in England in 1807 and in the United States in 1863, about 4.5 million Africans had ended up as slaves in the Caribbean. Part of a feature about the archaeology of slavery on St Kitts and Nevis in the Caribbean, from the International Slavery Museum's website.
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