HISTORY OF THE WEST INDIES (1660- 1830) HIST 2003 Student Number 810100382 Question # How accurate is it to conclude that there was economic diversity in the West Indies by the onset if the nineteenth century?

A great amount of work has been done on the economic development of the West Indies, albeit in the context of dominance of sugar production and slavery. In the same vein, when one associates the occupational activities of the enslaved, it is done in the context of the sugar plantation. This concept, as the historical record will show, forms the economic framework that suggest that the economic conditions in the West Indies were varied and diverse by the onset of the nineteenth century. There exist several economic conditions that facilitated the economic diversity in the West Indies prior to the nineteenth century and more so, even before sugar was enthroned as the cash crop of the West Indies. It is believed that before the dominance of sugar, the West Indian Islands struggled to develop a sustainable economic activity. Like their Portuguese counterparts in Brazil, they planted tobacco, cotton, cocoa, coffee, indigo and pimentos. It is also felt that their transformation to sugar was a result of their failure to yield profits from these other areas of economic endeavor. This belief is erroneous since West Indies planters in the early seventeenth century made profits from the production of tobacco from the time of its introduction in the middle of the sixteenth century. Tobacco as a cash crop fuelled the French and British interest in the west Indies especially during the boom years 1620s to 1630

where a tobacco planter could make on average 200 . The switch to sugar was a result of the interplay between the forces of demand and supply in the European tobacco market whereby the price of tobacco plummeted due to overproduction in Virginia, where planters reaped a bumper harvest. This response to falling prices will again initiate economic changes to the West Indian planters as sugar prices begin to fall in the latter half of the eighteenth century. Apart from the production of tobacco in the early seventeenth century, Edward Braithwaite remind us that even when sugar became enthroned in the latter part of the seventeenth century, towards the end of the century (1792) the Jamaica Assembly estimated that there were about four thousand resident cultivators on properties not exceeding 500 acres each and that their contribution to society was not negligible.i The resident cultivators engaged in the cultivation of crops that were introduced earlier in the formation of colonies. They cultivated cotton cocoa, indigo pimentos and coffee which in 1727 was introduced on a plantation scale in Jamaica. Subsequently, other Antillean Islands Cuba and St Domingue began to produce coffee after blight in 1670 to 1671 destroyed cocoa plantations on the south central districts of Jamaica and St Domingue respectively. Coffee soon prospered in all French islands and in some British islands. In St Domingue there was a coffee boom after 1763 and like cocoa, it did not require much labour especially since one had to wait five years to begin harvesting the bean. The fact that coffee facilitated mixed cropping, planters were able to combine coffee with provisions or tobacco or grown in half cleared forest. (The need to provide shade for young trees.). Towards the end of the eighteenth century in St. Domingue, there were many medium size coffee plantations and few big ones.ii Another crop that contributed to the diversification of the West Indies prior to the onset on the nineteenth century is Indigo. This

crop, like tobacco but unlike coffee and cocoa was a quick crop. It depended on rainfall and suffered more from weeds than most other West Indian staples. It can be harvested between two to five times yearly and the labour requirements and production expenses were much less. Above all, it suffered less from the tropical hurricanes that flatten sugarcane fields and carried away mills during the rainy season June to December.iii Although Christopher Jeaffereson a planter of Nevis switched from indigo to sugar, like everybody else; but in a few years he observed the price of sugar to be unsatisfactory while the price of indigo was rising.iv He believed that between sugar and indigo, the latter is the better crop bearing in mind the topography, climatic and economic benefits; Indigo like other West Indian staples gave way to sugar production. However, small pockets planters whose acreage did not accommodate sugar continued to produce indigo up into the nineteenth century. The growth of pens and livestock production created a symbiotic relationship with the sugar plantations. They supplied draught animals for the mills, manure for the cane plants, beef, milk, eggs and poultry for the planters table as well as the merchants and others who resided in the urban areas of the colony. They also exported hide to the markets of Europe. Many Plantations set aside portions of their land for ranching cattle and the rearing of pigs, fowls and other draught animals. In Jamaica particularly where some large plantations with acreage exceeding three thousand acres, sugar cultivation and cattle ranching coexisted. In many instances however, many pen keepers engaged solely in animal husbandry where they bred and supplied the various plantations with draught animals and a variety of meats. Ranching and animal husbandry continued throughout the period under review even when crop production failed or when prices fell.

The colonist had a need that currency could not satisfy; the need to eat. Therefore, the small land holding colonist who saw the West Indies as his home would sooner lose the taste for European foods and adopt and or develop a taste for West Indian foods. Consequently, the rise of the provision sector would demonstrate the extent of the diversification of the West Indian economy as the growing of corn, plantains, sweet potatoes, peas, cassava, yams and many other root crops and fruits made their way to the tables of the planters. The English relished none of this food. Casader a bread I approve not of, the report of an Barbados Clergyman. v However, the fact that significant numbers of planters viewed the living situation in the west indies as a temporary one, it did not deter them from importing the weevil infested wheat flour that they were accustomed to. On the other hand, the rise in the provision sector proved advantageous to the planters as they allotted land to the enslaved to grow their provisions. The French even gave the Saturdays off to tend the provision plots, from which the surplus was marketed. This ability to grow food to be consumed domestically resulted in significant savings for the planter who spent less for the upkeep of the enslaved. This was the case of John Pinney on the family plantation in St Thomas To make the feeding of his negroes the first charge upon his estate every year he planted enough potatoes and other ground provisions to supplement his negroes rations for six months in the year.vi Planters who like John Pinney, invested in the development of the provision sector reaped the benefits of healthier slaves, who in turn are able to produce more than one who is under fed and malnourished. The result is a significant saving meaning lower cost of production and higher profits. The presence of the merchants class in the West indies suggest that there was a need for those who would engage in the exchanging of good produced in the west Indies for those desired from Europe. Subsequently, merchants and craftsmen some of

whom were enslaved provided vital support for the West Indian economy as they were the go between the planters and the metropolis. Denmarks West Indian colonies showed a rise in urban enslaved populations between 1758 (1,422 enslaved) and 1803 (3,308 enslaved). This growth of in the number of enslaved populations in Ferdericksted and Christiantsed was a direct result of their expansion as service ports for the prospering plantations; of their role as free trade ports and centers for the distribution of and exchange in overseas trade.vii Again, the British settlers in the Bay of Honduras were involved in the cutting and extraction of logwood and mahogany from the Yucatn. In 1798, Spanish defeat saw Belize being renamed British Honduras. But from as early as 1724, the British have used enslaved African for the extraction of timber. This was seasonal unlike those in the Antillean plantations. The cutting of mahogany used a gang system ranging from ten to fifty men each. In each gang one is expected to find a hunts man whose is responsible to find the trees to be felled. The axe-men were highly skilled and worked singly or in pairs. The less skilled were to cut the branches and clear the track for the cattlemen who loaded the logs onto carts. In this economic activity, again unlike the Antillean plantation system, the women tended provision plots or were confined to domestic works in the urban areas as the males would at times spend significant amount of times in camps nearer to the works sites. It would be accurate to conclude that there was economic diversity in the West Indies by the onset of the nineteenth century. However, diversity was already embedded within the economic fabric of the West Indies. The rise of sugar to economic prominence and the monoculture practices of the majority of the quick rich profit seeking colonist do not translate to all of those in the West Indies, especially those who saw this part of the globe as their home.

i ii

Hall, Douglas. Slavery, Freedom and Gender, University Press, Jamaica, 2003, Print. Pares, Richard. Merchants and Planters, Cambridge, London, 1970, Print.

iii

Pares, Richard. A West-India Fortune, Longmans, London, 1950,Print.iv

Pares, Richard. A West-India Fortune, Longmans, London, 1950,Print.v

Dunn, Richards. S. Sugar and salves, rise of the planter class in the English West Indies,vi

Pares, Richard.( John Pinney on plantation management) A West-India Fortune, Longmans, London, 1950,Print.vii

Sheppard, Verene, A. Slavery without sugar.