In search of free labor

James Epstein

doi:10.1017/CBO9780511760204.008

6 - In search of free labor

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012

James Epstein

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James Epstein: Affiliation:
Vanderbilt University, Tennessee

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“A guiltless, bloodless colony”

Trinidad held a pivotal place in debates over the abolition of the British slave trade; it came to represent an experimental space for reimagining colonization in the West Indies. For abolitionists, who in the wake of the French and Haitian revolutions were in retreat, Trinidad with its large, fertile, and underdeveloped land posed a crucial test for preventing the spread of slavery. The government's policy of restricting grants of land following the island's conquest in 1797 had done little to arrest the rapid growth of slavery. Once it had been ceded to Britain in 1802, however, the government of Henry Addington had to chart the future development of the new colony; it was required to decide whether this recently won frontier would be opened to the full force of the slave trade and the ambitions of planters desirous to develop untapped lands for sugar cultivation.

Behind the scenes abolitionist leaders, principally William Wilberforce, applied pressure on the government on this urgent matter. It was left to George Canning, one of William Pitt's young disciples, to introduce a motion in the House of Commons to limit the spread of slavery to Trinidad. Reminding Parliament of its former pledge – resolved in 1792 and reconfirmed in 1797 – to enforce the gradual abolition of the trade, he warned that Trinidad's transformation into a major sugar colony could initiate a new phase in the Atlantic slave trade. He calculated the staggering scale of human misery were Trinidad's vast, fertile lands to be cleared and made ready for cultivation to the same level as Jamaica: 1 million new slaves, or nearly double that of the entire slave population of the British West Indies, would be poured “into the forests and morasses of Trinidad, to perish yearly, and yearly to be supplied by fresh importations.” He appealed to the Commons to view Trinidad “in a different light”; unencumbered by the vested interests of British planters, it offered the chance “for the establishment of a guiltless, bloodless colony.” Canning framed his speech masterfully, appealing to the determination of Providence: “This day is a day of tests; I trust we shall all abide the trial.”

Type: Chapter
Information: Scandal of Colonial Rule
Power and Subversion in the British Atlantic during the Age of Revolution
, pp. 184 - 221

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511760204.008 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2012

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