The Broken Trident

“Any radical movement can be easily managed. All that is necessary to control it is to open occasionally the trap-door between masters and slaves and let the leaders of discontent come up into paradise” -Nietzshe

As one BLP blogger quoted. As our history has show us it is the influential, the highly educated and members of the socially elite that have lead this country. In these times of political corruption it is even more important for us as a nation to look back at our origins, not as far back as Africa per say, but to the origins of this country and what it was founded on.

Private English capital, with the Crown’s blessing, financed settlement in 1627. Market conditions for its first commercial crop, tobacco, enabled the accumulation of quick profits, which were later utilised to finance the shift to sugar production in the 1650s, after large scale, high quality Virginian tobacco production caused a glut on the European market and prices plummeted.

In the first decade, when settlement was tenuous, the first Barbadian settlers encountered no opposition from Spanish or French rivals, nor was there a native Amerindian presence to overcome. In fact, the opposite occurred. Amerindians were brought from Guiana (Guyana?) in order to instruct the early settlers in survival skills, such as knowledge of local foods and preparation methods, and the most effective ways of clearing dense tropical forest. The Dutch were also helpful in nurturing the young colony. A locally elected legislature or House of Assembly was formed in 1639, which along with a nominated advisory Council and the Crown’s representative, the Governor of the island, ruled the island in tandem with the state sanctioned religion, the Anglican Church. (…)

The climate and soil conditions in Barbados were perfect for the growing of this sweet grass (cane). In a short space of twenty years, the economic phenomenon known as the Sugar Revolution transformed the face of Barbados forever. Tropical luxuriance gave way to a carefully controlled garden-like appearance of the entire island, as almost complete deforestation occurred. Not only was nature subjected to man’s tight control, but profound demographic and economic changes created a whole new society.

Sugar demanded labour and this poured into Barbados in increasingly large numbers, quickly making the island not only the most populated of England’s overseas colonies, but also one of the most densely populated places in the world. Initially whites from Britain were brought in, either as indentured servants or prisoners. For example, after the Somerset uprising, many West Country men were exiled or “barbadosed” by Judge Jeffreys. Nearly 7000 Irish were transported to the island during the Cromwellian period.

Barbados quickly acquired the largest white population of any of the English colonies in the Americas. In many respects, Barbados became the springboard for English colonisation in the Americas, playing a leading role in the settlement of Jamaica and the Carolinas, and sending a constant flow of settlers to other areas throughout the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.

However as the cost of white labour in England went up, planters, on the advice of Dutch and Sephardic merchants, turned to West Africa for their source of manpower. Black slaves were imported in large numbers from the Gold Coast region in particular, especially from what is today the country of Ghana. The Asante, Ewe, Fon and Fante peoples provided the bulk of imports into Barbados. Nigeria also provided slaves for Barbados, the Yoruba, Efik, Igbo and Ibibio being the main ethnic groups targeted.

It is estimated that between 1627 to 1807, some 387 000 Africans were shipped to the island against their will, in overcrowded, unsanitary ships, which made the Middle Passage a synonym for barbaric horror. Over time, many of these individuals were re-exported to other slave owning colonies, either in the West Indies or to North America. However, and this is especially true for the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, the high mortality rate among slaves working on the sugar plantations necessitated a constant input of fresh slaves in order to maintain a work force.

The island shifted from having a majority white population to having a majority black population. This would have profound social and cultural consequences. It also brought into play issues such as internal security, and the need for a legal and policing system to control the large servile population, who could be expected to resist their status as slaves in a wide variety of ways.

Despite the pervasive nature of creolisation on Barbados, it is a mistake to conclude that West African cultural patterns were stripped from the black population. This erroneous opinion is widespread and based on the notion that planters deliberately applied a policy of deculturation in order to guarantee themselves a docile work force. The truth is quite the opposite. Planters argued that African cultural retentions, particularly those that permitted socialisation, for example the Saturday night dances and Sunday activities commonly referred to in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as ‘plays’ made the slave population more contented with their lot and willing to work harder and create greater profits for their owners. It is only after emancipation in 1834, that we see an organised effort to acculturate slaves to European patterns, an effort which was spear-headed by the Anglican Church.

There is other information here, but I want to skip ahead to this:

As a result, Barbados was the only one of the British islands which supported the passage of the act abolishing the slave trade. Put bluntly, Barbadian planters recognised that the island had a growing slave population which would guarantee on going sugar production, whereas the other territories would be hampered in their economic development, if denied access to slave labour. This was especially true of the newly conquered territories such as Trinidad, Essequibo, Demerara and Berbice. Barbadian abolitionism therefore was economically driven, although in all fairness, one should point out that there were influential white Barbadian abolitionists such as John Alleyne and R.B. Niccols, Dean of Middleham, who were genuine in their concerns and efforts.

The picture therefore which Barbados presents in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries is one of initial and rapid change after settlement, first of all in the natural arena with rapid and almost total deforestation, followed by demographic change as large numbers of Africans were brought into the island to provide labour for the sugar industry. The sugar economy quickly made the island very wealthy, and the port of Bridgetown became, along with Boston and London, a key link in the English Atlantic world. By the mid eighteenth century, newer colonies in the Caribbean, such as Jamaica, had surpassed Barbados in terms in economic importance, although the island still retained its position as one of England’s leading overseas colonies. At this point in time, Barbados was a stable, mature slave society, tightly controlled by its resident native white elite class, with functioning institutions of its own, and a specific character and identity which stamped it as undeniably and uniquely Barbadian.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/empire_seapower/barbados_01.shtml

Slavery and Economy in Barbados By Dr Karl Watson

We have a lot of work to do people, does this not seem all to familiar?

The question is if sugar made the island rich, and we turned away from sugar what makes it rich now?