A Concise History of the Caribbean by B. W. Higman

Author:B. W. Higman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2011-03-21T16:00:00+00:00

Society

The abolition of slavery fundamentally altered the legal and social relations of the peoples of the Caribbean but it did not, everywhere, transform the social structure built on slavery. Only in Haiti was change truly revolutionary. Elsewhere, the people formerly enslaved, and their children and grandchildren, remained at the bottom of the heap and, well beyond 1870, were forced to struggle up through the rankings as best they could. The principal reason behind this pattern of continuity and persistence was the fact that, with the exception of Haiti and in spite of the importance of rebellion and resistance in ending slavery throughout the region, the legislated abolitions of slavery came from the hands of the slave owners and the imperial governments. The aims and expectations of the imperial governments changed with abolition, often resulting in a mission to mould the peoples of the Caribbean in the shape of their imperial masters. However, this new view of the importance of the colonies did not go together with an interest in encouraging the transformation of social structure or gender relations. Where white men, particularly white men born in Europe, had been at the top of the pyramid as exploiters and wealth-seekers, so they sought to remain dominant in societies that perhaps were less rewarding to capitalist investment but offered opportunities for the maintenance of status and rank derived from the public performance of social control through a model rooted in class as well as race and ethnicity.

In addition to the fundamental contrast between Haiti and the rest of the Caribbean, other significant differences marked the hundred years to 1870. At the beginning of the period, in 1770, all of the societies of the region could be designated slave societies, as discussed in the previous chapter. The revolution in St Domingue saw the first emergence of free communities, but in all the other colonies, slavery persisted for more than half the period, with the next abolition occurring in the British colonies in 1838, followed by the French and the Danes in 1848 and the Dutch in 1863. In all of these colonial systems, the period of freedom, down to 1870, was brief but long enough to offer strong indications of where development was headed. Cuba and Puerto Rico remained slave societies throughout the entire period. Thus, although all of the Caribbean colonies were grounded in the experience of slave society, the period between 1838 and 1870 was unique in holding, contemporaneously, both free societies and slave societies.

The slave societies of the Caribbean changed little in their structure and functioning after 1770. In most places, including Cuba, the more important changes were essentially demographic. The growth of the creole and coloured components of the enslaved populations shifted expectations of mobility within the highly constrained ranks of plantation communities, but the inability of the system of labour management to meet these hopes meant that having a white father or being born in the islands rather than Africa ceased to ensure easy access to manumission or elevation within the hierarchy of occupation and status.

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