Figure 1.--Here a sceme on St. Kitts preparing cane for replanting about 1900. How this replicated condiruins during the skave era we are npt sure. We suspect that conditions were more relaxked. This dies not look like a large cane field. We di not think many blacks owned land, and this is not sybsistence farming. Abolition changed the economics of sugar. It was no longer enornously profitable to the planters. For a time they imported other workers, but in the long run few wanted to work for the wages that the planters could offer. On St. Kotts this was Portuguese wirkers from Madiera. On other islands it was Asians, osten from British controlled India. Most of the former slaves on St. Kitts and other islands turned to subsistence farming.

The first important crop grown by the settkers was tobacco, but was soon replaced by sugar. French Govenor Phillippe de Longvilliers de Poincy introduced sugar as a more profitable crop than tobacco (1640). This was in part a result of the Dutch Portuguese War (1601-63). The Dutch invaded Brazil and develoed expertise in sugar cultivation and production. It was the Dutch that introduced plantation sugar agriculture based on slave labor to the Caribbean. While small, St. Kitts and Nevis were ideal for growing sugar, a fabulously proftable crop making St Kitts and other small Caribbean islands a target of great power rivalry. Sugar plantations were established by the English and French using enslaved Africans. The first group of enslaved Africans was arrived on St. Kitts almost immeduiately after English and French settlement began. It is believed that they came from a Spanish vessel involved in the slave trade (1625). The Spanish had found on Hispaniola (their first Caribbean colony) that enslaved Amerindians rapidly perished. They turned to captive Africans for labor, launching the Atltanic slave trade. The enslaved Africans on St. Kitts and other Caribbean sugar islands labored under horific, brutal conditions. Sugar cultivation at the time was only possible with slave labor. Sugar was labor intensive and necesitated very difficult work which is why slave labor was required. The Act for the Better Government of Negroes and Other Slaves was passed (1711). It was designed to discourage slaves running away and ro prevent free persons did not aid them or hiring them. Similar acts were promulgated on other islands. These settlements were subject to attack by the English, French, and Spanish, mostly on St Kitts with condiderable damage to the economy, meaning the sugar operations. Tiny Nevis became increadably for a short time the most valuable possession in the British Empire. English and French planters made great fortunes, One example was the English Marsham family. The British Abolitionist Movement began to grow in the late-18th century. Another slave act was passed on the Islands -- the Act to Prevent Mutilatiomn of Enslaved (1783). The Act prohibited the mutilation of enslaved workers. Violations could be punished by fines of £500 and 6 months imprisonment. Planters who could not pay the fine were liable to 12 months imprisonment. The mutilated slaves were to be forfieted. They were used by Island authorities and publicly sold at auction. One Abolitionist activist reports that this was the first law in the British West Indies that afforded enslved people a measure of legal protection against their ownerss. [Stephen] And there were actual procecutions. Jordan Burke was indicted for wounding a slave named Clarissa. He was fined £50. Wadham Strode was fined £100 for injuring another slave named Peter. Notice that this did not mean terriblepounishment like whipping were orohibited--only mutalations. The British Abolitionist movement finally achieved the end of the Slave Trade (1807). This meant that planters could no longer import captive Africans. The Act immediately affected British colonies like St Kitts, but it would take years for the British Royal Navy aided at times by the fledling United States Navy to actually end the international slave trade. The first register (census) of slaves on the islands was conducted (1817). The free coloureds (term at the time for peoole of African ancestry) of St. Kitts petitioned the Island authoriies for the end of the legal 'disabilities' to which they were subject. Act 524 granted the free coloureds the right to civil rights, privileges and immunities of other free citizens (1830). The British Parlimment at long last passed the Emancipation Act (1833). Emancipation was declared on the Islands (1834). The gradual nature of the Act resulted in disturbances on St. Kitts. Plantation workers refused to work in pprotest against Apprenticeship schemes. Rhe Apprecteships were unwirkabke and ebded (1838). The Masters and Servants Acts was passed (1849). This finally ended slavery on St. Kitts.

Sources

Stephen, James.

Created: 6:52 PM 4/24/2020
Last updated: 6:52 PM 4/24/2020