The Caribbean by Stephan Palmié

Author:Stephan Palmié [Palmie, Stephan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Published: 2011-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

23

Peasants, Immigrants, and Workers

The British and French Caribbean after Emancipation

GAD HEUMAN

The emancipation of slaves in the Caribbean was a complex process. Across the region, it took place at different times and in different ways. In the Anglophone Caribbean, emancipation occurred in 1838 and was preceded by a system of apprenticeship that severely curtailed the rights of former slaves. With the onset of full freedom, free people often sought to leave the estates where they had toiled their entire lives. Although emancipation occurred 10 years later in the French Caribbean, the process was similar. It was not simply a case of ex-slaves associating work on the plantations with slavery; their flight from the estates was also a response to the oppressive policies of the planters in the immediate aftermath of emancipation. But recently emancipated people were able to survive outside the plantation system, partly because they had behaved like a peasantry during slavery.

The Development of a “Proto-Peasantry”

From the earliest stages of plantation society, Caribbean planters often set aside land for their enslaved people to grow much of their own food. This had significant economic advantages for the planters: it meant that they could make great savings on feeding their slaves. Since the land planters provided for this purpose was often hilly or marginal, planters were making full use of their estates at very little cost to themselves.

While the economic advantages for the planters were apparent, there were also significant benefits for the enslaved population. Slaves could grow what they liked on their provision grounds, thereby varying their diet and improving their standard of living. In time, the enslaved produced surpluses on their land and developed a system of markets to sell and to trade their produce. This has been described as the “internal economy”; it was the slaves’ own economy as opposed to that of their masters, which was directed at producing sugar and other commodities for export. In the process of creating the “internal economy,” the enslaved were carving out areas of relative freedom within the institution of slavery. According to anthropologist Sidney Mintz, enslaved people were therefore behaving like a “proto-peasantry” (Mintz 1974, 184–94).

In time, customary practice meant that the planters were reluctant to interfere in the provision grounds of the enslaved. Planters therefore did not supervise the labor of the enslaved on the provision grounds. Moreover, while planters continued to own the land, it was the slaves who regarded it as theirs and were able to pass it on to their heirs. This practice could take surprising forms. For example, in Martinique a planter described having a problem with some manioc that enslaved people had planted in one of his cane fields, which he had left uncultivated for a year. When the planter decided to make use of the land for growing cane, he realized that he would have to buy the slaves’ crop. But since the enslaved demanded too high a price, the planter had to wait until the slaves had harvested the manioc before planting his cane.

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