Working between the lines: Labor and agriculture on two Barbadian sugar plantations, 1796-97

William and Mary Quarterly

Volumn 63, Issue 3, 2006, Pages 551-586

  Roberts, Justin ^a  

^a JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 60950368334     PISSN: 00435597     EISSN: 1933-769     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Review

References (77)

1. Like sugar plantation histories, abolitionist poetry also stressed theharvest. See, for example, A. Opie, The Black Man's Lament (1826), in Michael Tadman, "The Demographic Cost of Sugar: Debates on Slave Societies and Natural Increase in the Americas, " American Historical Review 105, no. 5(December 2000): 1534.
2. For examples of the stereotypical image of sugar plantations, see Richard S. Dunn, Sugar and Slaves: The Rise of the Planter Class in the English West Indies, 1624-1713 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1972), esp. xiv ("sugar- productionmachines"), 175, 210, 223, 272;
3. Sidney W. Mintz, Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History (New York, 1985), xxiii ("factories in the field"), 21;
4. C. L. R. James, The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L'Overture and the San Domingo Revolution, 2d rev. ed. (New York, 1989), 6-11;
5. Arthur L. Stinchcombe, Sugar Island Slavery in the Age of Enlightenment:The Political Economy of the Caribbean World (Princeton, N.J., 1995), esp. 34, 49, 52-53, 55.
6. J. R. Ward, British West Indian Slavery, 1750-1834: The Process of Amelioration (New York, 1988);
7. B. W. Higman, "Economic and Social Development of the British West Indies from Settlement to ca. 1850, " in The Cambridge Economic History ofthe United States, vol. 1, The Colonial Era, ed. Stanley L. Engerman and Robert E. Gallman (New York, 1996), 297-336;
8. David Eltis, The Rise of African Slavery in the Americas (New York, 2000), 193-223.
9. For examples of the literature on the diversity of Caribbean production, see Philip D. Morgan, "Slaves and Livestock in Eighteenth-Century Jamaica:Vineyard Pen, 1750-1751, " William and Mary Quarterly, 3d ser., 52, no. 1(January 1995): 47-76;
10. Verene A. Shepherd, "Diversity in Caribbean Economy and Society fromthe Seventeenth to the Nineteenth Centuries, " Plantation Society in the Americas 5, nos. 2-3 (Summer-Fall 1998): 175-87;
11. S. D. Smith, "Sugar's Poor Relation: Coffee Planting in the British West Indies, 1720-1833, " Slavery and Abolition 19, no. 3 (December 1998):68-89;
12. Shepherd, ed., Slavery without Sugar: Diversity in Caribbean Economy and Society since the 17th Century (Gainesville, Fla., 2002);
13. For studies of individual plantations, see J. Harry Bennett, Bondsmen and Bishops: Slavery and Apprenticeship on the Codrington Plantations of Barbados, 1710-1838 (Berkeley, Calif., 1958);
14. Michael Craton and James Walvin, A Jamaican Plantation: The History of Worthy Park, 1670-1970 (London, 1970);
15. Richard Dunn, "A Tale of Two Plantations: Slave Life at Mesopotamiain Jamaica and Mount Airy in Virginia, 1799-1828, " WMQ 24, no. 1 (January1977): 32-65;
16. Craton, Searching for the Invisible Man: Slaves and Plantation Life in Jamaica (Cambridge, Mass., 1978);
17. Jerome S. Handler, Frederick Lange, with Robert V. Riordan, Plantation Slavery in Barbados: An Archaeological and Historical Investigation (Cambridge, Mass., 1978);
18. B. W. Higman, Montpelier, Jamaica: A Plantation Community in Slavery and Freedom, 1739-1912 (Mona, Jamaica, 1998). The 1796-97 work logs are part of the Newton Family Papers in the University of London Archives. The Newton log isfiled as MS 523/110. The Seawell log is filed as MS 523/111. There is also a1797-98 work log for Seawell filed as MS 523/121 and one for Newton as MS523/122. The extant 1797-98 logs for Newton and Seawell have no accompanyingreports and cover slightly different portions of the year. The 1796-97 Newtonlog spans 357 days from May 5, 1796, to Apr. 26, 1797. The 1796-97 Seawell logspans 366 days from Apr. 25, 1796, to Apr. 25, 1797. The reports on buildings, lands, and slaves are filed as MS 523/288-92.
19. On the late-eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century agriculturalimprovement movement, see Otis P. Starkey, The Economic Geography of Barbados: AStudy of the Relationships between Environmental Variations and Economic Development (New York, 1939), 99-112;
20. Drew Gilpin Faust, James Henry Hammond and the Old South: A Design for Mastery (Baton Rouge, La., 1982), 105-36;
21. Pamela Horn, "The Contribution of the Propagandist to Eighteenth-Century Agricultural Improvement, " Historical Journal 25, no. 2(June 1982): 313-29;
22. David Watts, The West Indies: Patterns of Development, Culture, and Environmental Change since 1492 (Cambridge, 1987), 384-92;
23. Sarah Wilmot, "The Business of Improvement": Agriculture and Scientific Culture in Britain, c. 1770-c. 1870 (Bristol, Eng., 1990).
24. See Richard Ford, "A New Map of the Island of Barbadoes ..., "1681, in Tony Campbell, The Printed Maps of Barbados: From the Earliest Times to1873 (London, 1965), plate 5, no. 8. Seawell plantation no longer exists. Asmall section is still being used for cane, but most of the land has become partof the Barbados airport (Grantley Adams International Airport), formerly knownas Seawell Airport. One of the two Newton mills was in disrepair in 1796, butlumber had been purchased to repair it ("Report on the Buildings at Newton" June 24, 1796, MS 523/290). Bryan Edwards's map differentiatedbetween more and less significant plantations or sugar works (see Figure I).
25. For the full map, see Edwards, "Map of the Island of Barbadoes; forthe History of the West Indies, " 1794, in Campbell, Printed Maps of Barbados, plate 19, no. 44 .
26. These average annual profit rates are for 1792 through 1798. See J. R.Ward, "The Profitability of Sugar Planting in the British West Indies, 1650-1834, " Economic History Review, new ser., 31, no. 2 (May 1978): 210;
27. Ward, British West Indian Slavery, 48.
28. For more on the economic struggles of Barbadian planters and therenaissance, see Starkey, Economic Geography of Barbados, 99-112;
29. Higman, "Economic and Social Development, " 317;
30. Eltis, Rise of African Slavery, 197-204;
31. On the reputation of Barbadian planters, see Samuel Martin, An Essay upon Plantership ..., 4th ed. (London, 1765), 7.
32. On Bourbon cane, see J. H. Galloway, The Sugar Cane Industry: AnHistorical Geography from Its Origins to 1914 (Cambridge, 1989), 96;"Report on the [Newton] Lands, " MS 523/289. The conventional opinionis that Otaheite and Bourbon cane are the same, yet Starkey suggests they wereactually two different varieties of cane.
33. For more on the efficiency of motion, the increased production per laborhour, and the psychological oppression of gang labor, see Robert William Fogel, Without Consent or Contract: The Rise and Fall of American Slavery (New York, 1989), 72-80.
34. For the best description of the gang system, see Philip D. Morgan, "Task and Gang Systems: The Organization of Labor on New World Plantations, " in Work and Labor in Early America, ed. Stephen Innes (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1988), 189-220.
35. On child gangs, see Hilary McD. Beckles, Natural Rebels: A Social Historyof Enslaved Black Women in Barbados (New Brunswick, N.J., 1989), 106-7.
36. B. W. Higman, Slave Populations of the British Caribbean, 1807-1834(Baltimore, 1984), 161 ("the backbone"), 164, 170.
37. "Report on the Negroes of Seawell Plantation, " MS 523/292.
38. Jennifer Morgan, Laboring Women: Reproduction and Gender in New World Slavery (Philadelphia, 2004), 144-65. There were a disproportionate number ofwomen in the total plantation population due, in large part, to the strikinglylow number of male infants and toddlers. The young males, valued for theirpotential as craftsmen and supervisors, had likely been sold elsewhere. Forprecise numbers of males and females, see Table II.
39. On holing techniques, see Galloway, Sugar Cane Industry, 100-102;
40. Thomas Kerr, A Practical Treatise on the Cultivation of the Sugar Cane, and the Manufacture of Sugar ([London, 1851]), 17-19;
41. Higman, Slave Populations of the British Caribbean, 162.
42. Mintz, Sweetness and Power, 21;
43. Richard B. Sheridan, Doctors and Slaves: A Medical and Demographic History of Slavery in the British West Indies, 1680-1834 (Cambridge, 1985), 192("able"). For first gang annual labor percentages, see MS 523/110, MS523/111.
44. Arrowroot may have been grown as a cash crop in the eighteenth-century West Indies. See Jerome S. Handler, "The History of Arrowroot and the Origin of Peasantries in the British West Indies, " Journal of Caribbean History 2 (May 1971): 46-93.
45. For the contemporary reference to the use of cattle and dung in Barbados, see Martin, Essay upon Plantership, 7.
46. Sometimes the task "molding pens" was listed as "crowningpens" - putting a cover over the pen for shade. On the use of sheds orcovers in fly-penning, see Martin, Essay upon Plantership, 9-10. There was onemonth without "molding pens" at Seawell: February 1797 (MS 523/111).Fold-coursing was used extensively with sheep in medieval Europe.
47. See Richard K. Ormrod, "The Evolution of Soil Management Practicesin Early Jamaican Sugar Planting, " Journal of Historical Geography 5, no. 2(April 1979): 161.
48. Donald Woodward, "'An Essay on Manures': Changing Attitudes to Fertilization in England, 1500-1800, " in English Rural Society, 1500-1800:Essays in Honour of Joan Thirsk, ed. John Chartes and David Hays (New York, 1990), 252 ("timidly round the dung-heap");
49. James Grainger, Sugar Cane: A Poem in Four Books, in Thomas Krise, ed., Caribbeana: An Anthology of English Literature of the West Indies, 1657-1777(Chicago, 1999), 180.
50. Richard Grove, Green Imperialism: Colonial Expansion, Tropical Island Edens, and the Origins of Environmentalism, 1600-1860 (New York, 1995). 5, 116-20;
51. Grainger, Sugar Cane, 180;
52. Thomas Roughley, A Jamaica Planter's Guide (London, 1823), 401.
53. For the third gang workdays, see MS 523/111. Child gangs were equippedwith butcher knives to help them cut the grasses needed for fodder. See Bennett, Bondsmen and Bishops, 14. Usually historians describe third gang slaves doing"lighter labor."
54. See, for example, Marietta Morrissey, Slave Women in the New World:Gender Stratification in the Caribbean (Lawrence, Kans., 1989), 73.
55. Few historians describe slave craftsmen doing anything more thanspecialized and skilled labor. Even fewer historians have described craftsmenworking in the fields. See Richard S. Dunn, "'Dreadful Idlers in the Cane Fields': The Slave Labor Pattern on a Jamaican Sugar Estate, 1762-1831, "Journal of Interdisciplinary History 17, no. 4 (Spring 1987): 805;
56. Hilary McD. Beckles, "Creolisation in Action: The Slave Labour Élite and Anti-Slavery in Barbados, " Caribbean Quarterly 44, nos.1-2 (1998): 108-28;
57. For "a Field Negroe and Mason, " see "Report on the[Newton] Negroes, " MS 523/288. Plantation manuals emphasized these kinds ofrational economic choices. Tasks were often discussed and compared in terms ofhow "expensive" they were in relation to labor resources. See, forexample, Martin, Essay upon Plantership, 4, 16.
58. For the opportunity-cost argument, see Stinchcombe, Sugar Island Slavery, xiii, 52. Dunn makes a similar observation.
59. See Dunn, Sugar and Slaves, 67.
60. For the quotation, see David Beck Ryden, "Does Decline Make Sense?The West Indian Economy and the Abolition of the Slave Trade, " Journal of Interdisciplinary History 31, no. 3 (Winter 2001): 351.
61. For Martin's attitude toward provisions, see Samuel Martin, An Essay upon Plantership, 2nd ed. (London, 1750), 13.
62. On Martin's success and background, see Richard Sheridan, "Samuel Martin, Innovating Planter of Antigua, 1750-1776, " Agricultural History 34, no. 3 (July 1960): 126-39.
63. Richard B. Sheridan, "The Crisis of Slave Subsistence in the British West Indies during and after the American Revolution, " WMQ 33, no. 4(October 1976): 615-41.
64. Watts, West Indies, 393-95;
65. William Cronon, Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecologyof New England (New York, 1983);
66. See John Vandermeer, The Ecology of Intercropping (Cambridge, 1992).
67. Agriculturalists maintain that crop diversity through intercropping, successive stage cropping, or crop rotation is the key to sustainableagriculture. See Thomas A. Lyson and Rick Welsh, "The Production Function, Crop Diversity, and the Debate between Conventional and Sustainable Agriculture, " Rural Sociology 58, no. 3 (Fall 1993): 424-39.
68. Donald Q. Innis, Intercropping and the Scientific Basis of Traditional Agriculture (London, 1997), 34-35.
69. For an example of Native American intercropping in New England, see Carolyn Merchant, The Columbia Guide to American Environmental History (New York, 2002), 25.
70. For an example of intercropping on fruit tree farms continuing throughthe nineteenth century in England, see Joan Thirsk, Alternative Agriculture: AHistory from the Black Death to the Present Day (Oxford, Eng., 1997), 175.
71. For African intercropping, see Paul Richards, Indigenous Agricultural Revolutions: Ecology and Food Production in West Africa (London, 1985), 23, 30, 39.
72. For William Belgrove's observation of Barbadian intercropping, see Belgrove, A Treatise upon Husbandry or Planting (Boston, 1755), 18.
73. For contemporary references to "trenching, " see "The Cultivation and Manufacture of Sugar in America, " The London Magazine: The Gentleman's Monthly Intelligencer, June 1769, 319;
74. For the Roughley quotation, see Roughley Jamaica Planters Guide, 399.
75. Ward, Economic History Review 31: 201;
76. On the importance of Guinea corn, see "Report on the [Newton]Lands, " MS 523/289. On the late-seventeenth-century replacement of foodcrops and provision grounds with cane fields, see Dunn, Sugar and Slaves, 54, 59, 67, 116.
77. Stinchcombe, Sugar Island Slavery, 55.