Barbados: An Instance In Defining English Freedom And African Slavery, 1649-1670s
Introduction
Many British servants that found themselves in the new world working as servants went there mysteriously. In fact, some of them were simply serving their jail terms when some powerful people decided to take them to the new world to work for the British farmers on the colonies as servants. Others did not understand what was going on until they found themselves working for their masters in the new world.[1] Based on this fact, many British servants that worked for their masters in the new world never chose to be servants and they did not even choose their destinations.[2] Despite this fact, their masters in the new world treated them somewhat fairly by regarding them as servants rather than slaves. They also allowed them to serve for a specified period before they could allow some of them to go back to England. However, even though their masters treated them this way, these people suffered terribly such that they could not withstand the working conditions in the new world. Consequently, once they went back to England on the expiry of the time they had to work for their British masters in the colonies, the freed servants petitioned the British parliament to fight for their rights as well as the rights for their colleagues left behind in the colonies.[3]
This problem started as illustrated in one of the pamphlets the research proposal intends to use as its primary source for the proposed research study. With respect to this pamphlet, the British police force arrested some unidentified British people in 1654 at a Salisbury uprising, they convicted those people in 1656 and later sailed them that year to Barbados to work as servants.[4] Once the convicted British people went back to England at the expiry of the time they had to work for their masters in Barbados, some of these people petitioned the British parliament to fight for their rights and the rights of their colleagues left behind in the colonies.[5] They challenged the violation of their rights in the colonies and the manner in which they were forcibly sailed to the new world to work as servants.[6] Once they succeeded to petition the British parliament, the British colonial masters in the colonies released the British servants. As a result, the British servants in the colonies found their freedom while black slavery became a common feature in the colonies.
This research proposal proposes a research study that will evaluate the end of the British servitude in the new world and the subsequent slavery among the black people. The study proposes to use Barbados as a case study that defined the freedom for the English people while it defined slavery among the black people. The study intends to show that the British servants did not choose to work in the new world as servants, but through some mysterious ways, they found themselves working as servants in the new world. Consequently, once the period to work as servants in the colonies expired and some of them returned to England, they petitioned the British parliament to fight for their right; hence, the freedom for the British servants.[7] On the contrary, the booming slave trade of the time resulted to black slavery in the new world as a way of replacing the white servitude. The proposed study will demonstrate the insufficiency of the economic explanations for the transition from white servitude to black slavery. It will also demonstrate how the definition for the British rights and the exclusion for the black people in the definition for these rights affected the supply-demand equation for the labor force.
The purpose of the study
The purpose of this study is to evaluate the scenarios that defined the freedom for the British servants that worked in the colonies and how their freedom led to slavery among the black people with respect to the influence of the sugar plantations in the new world.[8]
Problem statement
Historians use different methods in evaluating the emergence of the British servitude in the new world and its subsequent abolition. Some of them use documented data to make their arguments while others use other methods to do the same. While all these methods are good, the conclusions of the research studies differ in one way or the other. In fact, some historians use some questionable methods in explaining the emergence and the eradication of the British servitude in the new world thereby they end up with inconsistent arguments. Nevertheless, the use of credible primary sources can give a better understanding of the emergence and abolition of the British servitude in the new world. In this regard, while the intention of this research proposal is not to question the method that historians use in evaluating this aspect, the research proposal intends to identify the gap among different methods historians use in evaluating and explaining the emergence and the eradication of the British servitude in the new world. After which the proposed research study intends to use credible primary sources to breach the gap among the different literatures on this issue.
Scope of the research
In terms of geographical region, the proposed research study will limit itself to Barbados, which is a critical region in the new world in terms of what it experienced during the slave trade. The island is among the first regions the British colonial masters settled once they discovered the new world. On the other hand, the proposed research study will evaluate the British servitude and slavery among the black people in Barbados only, but it will relate its finding with the findings from other regions in the new world. This will enable the study to conduct an intensive research on the British servitude in the new world and its consequences.
Literature review
According to Handler and Pohlmann, Barbados was the British colony that had the highest number of slaves in the late seventeenth century. The number of the slaves in the island was 32,800 in the mid 1670s.[9] In comparison to other five British colonies in the Caribbean region, this number was double the total number of black slaves in the five colonies during this time. Based on this number of slaves, Barbados is an ideal plantation-slave society for the two researchers and for this research proposal as well.[10]
Galenson evaluates the transition from white servitude to black slavery in the new world in two stages. In the first stage, he evaluates it as a transition from servant hood to slavery in an unskilled fieldwork. In the second stage, he evaluates it as a transition from the unskilled fieldwork to a skilled fieldwork whereby the trained black slaves replaced the white servants.[11] This explanation contrasts Beckles’ explanation for the same. Beckles’ explanation attributes the transition to the already established structures in the labor market and the market forces.[12]
Galenson starts by claiming that before the large-scale farming of sugar started in Barbados, the demand for the labor force on the island was low. At the same time, the demand for labor force was chiefly for the unskilled workers.[13] Given the low demand for the labor force in Barbados, the indentured white servants met the demand. Galenson continues to say that at the introduction of the large-scale farming in Barbados, the annually cost of hiring the white servants was lower than that of acquiring slaves. However, as time progressed, the demand for the labor force continued to rise until the white servants could not meet the demand.[14] The white servants could not meet the rising demand for labor force in Barbados because their supply was inelastic in comparison to the supply of the slaves. At the same time, the cost of hiring the white servants surpassed that of acquiring slaves because the supply of white servants declined.[15] The decline in the supply for the white servants increased the wages for the white servants such that the sugar plantation owners acquired slaves rather than hiring servants. While addressing the transition process from this perspective, Galenson also acknowledges that some white servants obtained their freedom thereby they returned to England.[16]
As the above scenario took place, the black slaves that formed the majority of unskilled laborers acquired some skills and became skilled workers. Consequently, as the cost of hiring white skilled servants rose, the cost of hiring skilled slave workers declined.[17] This increased the demand for black slaves. Galenson evaluates the end of white servitude and the subsequent emergence of black slavery in Barbados from this perspective.
On the other hand, while evaluating the way the demand for labor force in the sugar plantations transformed the labor system in Barbados, Beckles claimed that the new system of acquiring labor force gave the British farmers the experience they required in enslaving the black slaves.[18] In this case, Beckles attributes the transition of the labor system to the role the white indentured servitude played in changing the attitude and the approach of the British farmers in adopting the black slaves. According to him, the white servitude established the features that British farmers required in embracing black slaves on their farms.[19] This is in contrast to Galenson who attributes the change of the labor system to the rising cost of hiring white workers and the rising supply of slaves. In this case, Beckles attributed the change to the market forces that forced the British farmers change their method of acquiring labor force. Beckles claims that the market forces determine the type and the nature of labor force. In this response, Beckles links the market forces to the black slavery other than the cost of hiring the white servants.[20]
According to Beckles, black labor was uncommon among the British farmers. In addition, slavery was also uncommon among the English social culture.[21] This was the case because the British farmers were unfamiliar with the slave-like relations with their workers in the production of agricultural commodities.[22] On the contrary, British farmers opted to contract white servants to work on their farms as opposed to recruiting slaves. One notable thing is that during this time British farmers did not practice large-scale farming. However, when things changed and large-scale farming became a common phenomenon among the British farmers, the British farmers had to embrace slavery on their farms.[23] In this case, the British farmers started looking for black slaves rather than contracting white servants because they needed to satisfy their demand for more workers.[24] Beckles claims that by this time many features that were necessary for the transition from the British servitude to black slavery were already established. He also claims that the market forces that dictated the type of labor the British farmers adopted in their farming practices was also at play and they dictated a change as well.[25]
The current literature on the emergence and abolition of the British servitude attribute the abolition of the British servitude to the market forces and other economic factors. Beckles attributes the abolition of the British servitude to the market forces that forced the British farmers to shift from contracting white servants to practicing black slavery.[26] On the other hand, Galenson attributes the changes to the supply and demand factors for the labor force. Galenson also attributes the change to other economic factors such as transport cost.[27] With respect to this literature review, it is true that some of these factors contributed significantly to the transition from the British servitude to the black slavery, but these are not the only aspects that can explain the transition. In this regard, the research proposal proposes a research study that will breach the gap between the current literatures that evaluate the transition. The proposed research study distances itself from the economic factors and the market forces, which do not appear relevant to the transition, and capitalizes on the political structures. The proposed research study intends to demonstrate that the British servants fought for their freedom through petitions rather than relying on the market forces and economic factors to have their freedom.
Methodology
The proposed research study will rely heavily on two primary sources to show that the end of the British servitude in Barbados came from the petitions of some freed British servants to the British parliament rather than from the economic factors. The first primary source by Marcellus Rivers is a petition to the British parliament. In this petition, Rivers challenges the British parliament to fight for the rights of the British citizens exploited by powerful British citizens in the new world. The petitioners in this primary source were victims of the Salisbury uprising that led to the arrest, conviction and subsequent deportation of some white servants to the Barbados. Once the British parliament debated the petition, the debate became controversial thereby led to the creation of two new laws that saw the British servants in Barbados fight for their rights. The second primary source is also a petition in form of a letter to the House of Commons demanding for the abolition of slave trade in the new world.[28] These two sources will act as the basis for the proposed study and together with the secondary sources; the study will demonstrate that economic models alone cannot explain the transition from the British servitude to slavery in Barbados. In this regard, the two primary sources address themselves to Barbados thereby help the research study to narrow its scope to Barbados rather than evaluating the state of slavery in the entire new world.
Alongside with the introduction and conclusion, the proposed research study will comprise of three main chapters that will address the end of the British servitude in Barbados in totality. The introduction part will cover a brief history of Barbados and the way black slaves and British servants settled in Barbados. The introduction part will also evaluate a historical background of how the settlement of the slaves in Barbados became a problem to the contracted British servants.[29] Based on this historical background, the proposed research study will establish its thesis then proceed to establishing it in three main chapters.
The first chapter of the study will set the outline of the study by evaluating and outlining the way the British servants found themselves in Barbados. This chapter will briefly evaluate the origins and settlement of the white servants in Barbados. It will also evaluate how the demand for the white servants developed in Barbados and why the African slaves did not settle in Barbados during this time. Upon establishing the origins and the demand for the white servants, the chapter will then proceed to establishing the reasons that attracted white servants to Barbados as well as the methods used to settle the white servants in Barbados.[30] The last part of this chapter will introduce the idea of freedom among the white servants by illustrating the way they sought it by migrating. It will also evaluate what freedom meant in the new world. The chapter will focus mainly on the last part that will be the focus of the research study.
The second chapter of the study will focus mainly on the conditions of the white servants in Barbados. It will analyze the way the British colonial masters treated the white servants when the African slaves started settling in Barbados. This will be a brief illustration of the similarities of the white servants and African slaves in terms of how the British masters treated them. With regard to this equal treatment, the proposed study will show how it resulted to the petition. This will be in relation to the establishment of some laws in Barbados that resulted to the differences between the two groups. In this regard, the chapter with reference to the primary sources will evaluate the contribution of the petitions in defining the freedom for the white servants while majority of the black people became slaves. As a result, the proposed study will distance itself from economic factors because they did not define the English freedom in Barbados. In the same chapter, the study will evaluate the white servant’s laws in other parts of the new world especially in the North America. In particular, the chapter will compare and contrast the white servant’s laws in Barbados with the ones in Virginia.
The third chapter will stress on the effectiveness of the petitions in defining the freedom for the white servants by evaluating the various slave code acts enacted in Barbados during the proposed period. The two main acts that will be the basis for the proposed research study will be the act of 1652 and the slave code of 1661.[31] With reference to these two acts, the chapter will analyze the rebellion that resulted from the servants and its subsequent results. By so doing, the proposed research study will establish how the British servants found their freedom while the black people became slaves. This will be in contrast to what economic factors propose to be the cause of the transition from the British servitude to black slavery in Barbados.
Expected outcomes
It is my expectation that the proposed research study will breach the gap among different literatures that analyze the end of the British servitude in Barbados and the subsequent slavery among the black people. It is my hope that the proposed research study will be in a position to convince historians that the end of the British servitude in Barbados did not only result from the economic factors and market forces, but it also resulted from the petitions made to the British parliament by the freed white servants.[32] If possible, the research study will transform the argument behind the black slavery and the end of the British servitude. Above all, it is my expectation that the proposed research study will illustrate Barbados as an island that defined freedom among the British servants while it defined slavery among the black people in the new world.
Bibliography
Amussen, Susan Dwyer ,Caribbean Exchanges : Slavery and the Transformation of English Society, 1640-1700 (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2007).
Beckles, Hilary McD, ‘Plantation Production and White “Proto-Slavery”: White Indentured Servants and the Colonization of the English West Indies’, 1624-1645, The Americas, 41.3 (1985), 21-45.
Beckles, Hilary McD, ‘A “riotous unruly lot”: Irish Indentured Servants and freemen in the English West Indies, 1644-1713’, The William Mary Quarterly, 3rd series, 47. 4 (1990), 503-522.
Blackburn, Robin, The Making of New World Slavery: From the Baroque to the Modern, 1492-1800 (London: Verso, 1997).
Craton, Michael, Testing the Chains: Resistance to Slavery in the British Caribbean (Ithaca, 1982).
Davis, David Brion, Inhuman Bondage: The Rise and Fall of Slavery in the New World (New York; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008).
Davis, David Brion, The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture (Ithaca, N.Y. ; London: Cornell University Press, 1966).
Galenson, David W., ‘White Servitude and the Growth of Black Slavery in colonial America’, The Journal of Economic History, 41.1 (1981), 39-47.
Handler, Jersome S. and Pohlmany, John T., ‘Slave Manumission and Freedom in Seventeenth Century Barbados, The William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd series, 41.3 (1984), 390-408.
Jordan, Winthrop D. and Omohundro Institute of Early American History & Culture, White Over Black: American Attitudes Toward the Negro, 1550-1812 (Chapel Hill, [N.C.]: University of North Carolina Press, 2000).
Klein, Herbert S, African Slavery in Latin America and the Caribbean (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986).
Richardson, W. Strictures on the slave trade, and their manner of treatment in the West-India islands: in a letter to the Right Hon. William Pitt, in the House of Commons, for an Abolition thereof, by Mr. Wilberforce (London: Harvard University, Houghton Library, 1790).
Rivers, Marcellus, England’s slavery, or Barbados merchandize (London: printed in the eleventh year of England’s liberty, 1659).
Sheridan, Richard, Sugar and slavery; an economic history of the British West Indies, 1623-1775.
Sandiford, Keith Albert, The Cultural Politics of Sugar: Caribbean Slavery and Narratives of Colonialism (Cambridge, UK ; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000).
Smith, Abbot Emerson, Colonists in Bondage: White Servitude and Convict Labor in America 1607-1776(New York: Norton, 1971).
Steinfeld, Robert J, The Invention of Free Labor: The Employment Relation in English and American Law and Culture, 1350-1850 (Chapel Hill, 1991).
Tomlins, Christopher, Freedom Bound: Law, Labor and Civic Identity in Colonizing America, 1580-1865 (Cambridge University Press, 2010).
[1] Rivers, Marcellus, England’s slavery, or Barbados merchandize (London: printed in the eleventh year of England’s liberty, 1659), p. 1.
[2] Beckles, Hilary McD, ‘A “riotous unruly lot”: Irish Indentured Servants and freemen in the English West Indies, 1644-1713’, The William Mary Quarterly, 3rd series, 47. 4 (1990), p. 506.
[3] Rivers, p. 1.
[4] Ibid., p. 2.
[5] Ibid., p. 2.
[6] Tomlins, Christopher, Freedom Bound: Law, Labor and Civic Identity in Colonizing America, 1580-1865 (Cambridge University Press, 2010), p. 4.
[7] Rivers, p. 2.
[8] Sheridan, Richard, Sugar and slavery; an economic history of the British West Indies, 1623-1775.
[9] Handler, Jersome S. and Pohlmany, John T., ‘Slave Manumission and Freedom in Seventeenth Century Barbados, The William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd series, 41.3 (1984), p. 391.
[10] Ibid, p. 391.
[11] Galenson, David W., ‘White Servitude and the Growth of Black Slavery in colonial America’, The Journal of Economic History, 41.1 (1981), p. 39.
[12] Beckles, Hilary McD, ‘ Plantation Production and White “Proto-Slavery”: White Indentured Servants and the Colonization of the English West Indies’, 1624-1645, The Americas, 41.3 (1985), p. 23.
[13] Galenson, p. 40.
[14] Ibid. p. 40.
[15] Ibid, p. 41.
[16] Ibid, p. 41.
[17] Ibid, p. 41.
[18] Beckles, p. 23.
[19] Ibid, p. 23.
[20] Ibid, p. 23.
[21] Ibid, p. 23.
[22] Amussen, Susan Dwyer ,Caribbean Exchanges : Slavery and the Transformation of English Society, 1640-1700 (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2007). P. 46.
[23] Klein, Herbert S, African Slavery in Latin America and the Caribbean (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986). P. 164.
[24] Sandiford, Keith Albert, The Cultural Politics of Sugar: Caribbean Slavery and Narratives of Colonialism (Cambridge, UK ; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000). P. 176.
[25] Beckles, p. 24.
[26] Ibid, p. 23.
[27] Galenson, p. 41.
[28] Richardson, W. Strictures on the slave trade, and their manner of treatment in the West-India islands: in a letter to the Right Hon. William Pitt, in the House of Commons, for an Abolition thereof, by Mr. Wilberforce (London: Harvard University, Houghton Library, 1790).
[29] Craton, Micheal, Testing the Chains: Resistance to Slavery in the British Caribbean (Ithaca, 1982). P. 105.
[30] Smith, Abbot Emerson, Colonists in Bondage: White Servitude and Convict Labor in America 1607-1776(New York: Norton, 1971). P. 43.
[31] Steinfeld, Robert J, The Invention of Free Labor: The Employment Relation in English and American Law and Culture, 1350-1850 (Chapel Hill, 1991). P. 95.
[32] Rivers, p. 1.