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Plantation Production and White “Proto-Slavery”: White Indentured Servants and the Colonisation of the English West Indies, 1624-1645

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 December 2015

Hilary McD. Beckles
Hilary McD. Beckles*
Affiliation:
University of the West Indies, Mona, Jamaica
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Extract

Two dominant features of agricultural history in the English West Indies are the formation of the plantation system and the importation of large numbers of servile labourers from diverse parts of the world—Africa, Europe and Asia. In Barbados and the Leeward Islands, the backbone of early English colonisation of the New World, large plantations developed within the first decade of settlement. The effective colonisation of these islands, St. Christopher (St. Kitts) in 1624, Barbados 1627, Nevis 1628, Montserrat and Antigua 1632, was possible because of the early emergence of large plantations which were clearly designed for large scale production, and the distribution of commodities upon the world market; they were instrumental in forging an effective and profitable agrarian culture out of the unstable frontier environment of the seventeenth century Caribbean. These plantations, therefore, preceded the emergence of the sugar industry and the general use of African slave labour; they developed during the formative years when the production of tobacco, cotton and indigo dominated land use, and utilised predominatly European indentured labour. The structure of land distribution and the nature of land tenure Systems in the pre-sugar era illustrate this. Most planters who accelerated the pace of economic growth in the late 1640's and early 1650's by the production of sugar and black slave labour, already owned substantial plantations stocked with large numbers of indentured servants.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Americas , Volume 41 , Issue 3 , January 1985 , pp. 21 - 45
Copyright
Copyright © Academy of American Franciscan History 1985

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References

1 Professor Nef’s identification of what is now referred to as “proto-industrialization”, in late medieval England, (which was revolutionised during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries) has become a distinct category of historical investigation. In the West Indies, the dismantling of the slave system in the 1830’s led to the rapid development of a black peasantry. Historians have since been trying to discover the historical roots of this class within slave society and have identified what is now termed a “proto-peasantry”. Some slaves, they argued, functioned in the system in a manner similar to the peasants of the post slavery period. They achieved certain “semi-freedoms”, produced foodstuffs for both subsistence and local marketing, engaged in household crafts for local markets, used primitive technology, employed household labour, and achieved low levels of capital accumulation. Of historical importance, also is the need to identify the colonial roots of black chattel slavery. The transition from white indentured servitude to Black Slavery in the mid seventeenth century was more than a qualitative adjustment of the labour market. It was a move along the continuum of labour enslavement. It was upon the system of white servitude that black slavery was imposed—hence, the identification of a “proto-slavery” system in the formative colonial period.

See, Nef, J.U., “The progress of Technology and the Growth of large scale industry in Great Britain, 1540–1640”, The Economic History Review, 1st Series, V., 1934.Google Scholar On the subject of “proto-peasant” activity in the English West Indies, see Handler, J., “The History of Arrowroot and the origin of Peasantries in the British West Indies”, Journal of Caribbean History, 2, 1971, pp. 46–93 Google Scholar; Craton, M., “Proto-Peasant Revolts? The late Slave Rebellions in the British West Indies, 1816–1832”, Past and Present, No. 85, November, 1979, pp. 99–126 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Price, R., “Caribbean Fishing and Fishermen: An historical sketch”, American Anthropologist, Vol. 68, 1966, pp. 1362–1383.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 Between 1640 and 1690, labour was imported to work on West Indian sugar plantations from the British Isles, Africa, China, Madeira and Portugal. For a general survey, see Williams, E., From Columbus to Castro: The History of the Caribbean 1492–1969 (London, 1970,Google Scholar Andre Deutch).

Philip Curtin estimated that some 4,040,000 Africans were imported into the English Caribbean as slaves. See The Atlantic Slave Trade: A Census (London, 1969, University of Wisconsin Press) p. 91.

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H. Beckles estimated that between 1624 and 1750, at least 34,000 indentured servants were imported into the English West Indies; See, “White Labour in Black Slave Plantation Society and Economy: A case study of indentured labour in seventeenth century Barbados” University of Hull, Department of Economic History, unpublished Ph.D Thesis, 1980. See also, Smith, A.E., Colonists in Bondage: White servitude and convict labor in America, 1607–1776 (Chapel Hill, 1947, University of North Carolina Press).Google Scholar

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9 Robert Alsopp to the Lord Proprietor, 12 December, 1628, C.S.P.C., 1574–1660, f.411 Also, King to Governor and Council of Virginia, November, 1628, ibid., f.86.

10 Privy Council to the Earl of Carlisle, January, 1631, C.S.P.C. 1574–1660, f. 124.

11 Additional Manuscript 35865, f.247, British Library.

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58 Ibid.

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76 Ibid.

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