No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
Caribbean Plantations and Indentured Labour, 1640–1917: A Constructive or Destructive Deviation from the Free Labour Market?*
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 June 2011
Extract
In surveying the negative effects of the expansion of Europe it seems difficult to find an area which was worse affected than the Caribbean. The autochthonous population of Amerindians had been decimated on a scale unknown elsewhere. Rather than becoming an attractive refuge for migrant Europeans, the Caribbean became the home of plantation agriculture, which ruthlessly destroyed the existing environment and small scale farming. To top it all, the Caribbean plantations needed a constant influx of labourers. The success of Caribbean exports created a paradox: the region was in constant and increasing need of manpower while at the same time the number European migrants was decreasing rapidly
- Type
- Articles
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © Research Institute for History, Leiden University 1997
References
1 Watts, David, The West Indies: Patterns of Development, Culture and Environmental Change since 1492 (Cambridge 1987) 219–223.Google Scholar
2 Dunn, Richard S., Sugar and Slaves: The Rise of the Planter Class in the English West Indies, 1624–1713 (New York 1973) 67–74.Google Scholar
3 Galenson, David, White Servitude in Colonial America: An Economic Analysis (Cambridge 1981) 3–19Google Scholar and Gemery, Henry A., ‘Markets for Migrants: English Indentured Servitude and Emigration in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries’ in: Emmer, P.C. ed.. Colonialism and Migration: Indentured Labour Before and After Slavery (Dordrecht 1986) 33–54CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Frederic Mauro, ‘French Indentured Servants for America’ in: Emmer ed., Colonialism and Migration, 83–104; B.H. Slicher van Bath, ‘The Absence of White Contract Labour in Spanish America during the Colonial Period’, in Ibid., 19–32 and Günter Moltmann, ‘The Migration of German Redemptioners to North America, 1720–1820’ in: Ibid., 105–124.
4 Carl, and Bridenbaugh, Roberta, No Peace Beyond the Line: The English in the Caribbean, 1624–1690 (New York 1972) 18.Google Scholar
5 Bean, Richard N. and Thomas, Robert P., ‘The Adoption of Slave Labor in British America’ in: Gemery, Henry A. and Hogendorn, Jan S. eds, The Uncommon Market: Essays in the Economic History of the Atlantic Slave Trade (New York 1979) 377–398.Google Scholar
6 Solow, Barbara, ‘The Transition of Plantation Slavery: The Case of the British West Indies’ in: Daget, Serge ed., De la traite à l'esdavage, actes du Colloque International sur la traite des Noires, Nantes 1985 1 (Nantes/Paris 1988) 89–110.Google Scholar
7 Beckles, Hilary McD., White Servitude and Black Slavery in Barbados, 1627–1715 (Knoxville 1989) 125–134.Google Scholar
8 Patrick Manning, Slavery and African Life: Occidental, Oriental, and African Slave Trades (Cambridge 1990) 92–99.
9 Eltis, David, Economic Growth and the Ending of the Transatlantic Slave Trade (New York/Oxford 1987) 185–204.Google Scholar
10 Walvin, James, ‘The Propaganda of Anti-Slavery’ in: Walvin, James ed., Slavery and British Society, 1776–1846 (London 1982) 49–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
11 Davis, David Brion, The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution (Ithaca/London 1975) 346–356.Google Scholar
12 Farley, Reynolds and Allen, Walter R., The Color Line and the Quality of Life in America (New York/Oxford 1987) 162, 163.Google Scholar
13 Mandle, Jay R., Patterns of Caribbean Development: An Interpretive Essay on Economic Change (New York 1982) 37–52.Google Scholar
14 Lane, Ann J. ed., The Debate over Slavery: Stanley Elkins and his Critics (Urbana/Chicago/London 1971).Google Scholar
15 Fogel, Robert William, Without Consent or Contract: The Rise and Fall of American Slavery (New York 1989) 60–113.Google Scholar
16 Ward, J.R., British West Indian Slavery, 1750–1834: The Process of Amelioration (Oxford 1988) 192.Google Scholar
17 Fogel, Robert William and Engerman, Stanley L., Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery (London 1974) 144–157 and 238–239.Google Scholar
18 Ward, British West Indian Slavery, 262.
19 Higman, B.W., Slave Populations of the British Caribbean, 1807–1834 (Baltimore/London 1984) 303–307.Google Scholar
20 Craton, Michael, Walvin, James and Wright, David eds, Slavery, Abolition and Emancipation: Black Slaves and the British Empire (London 1976) 310–315.Google Scholar
21 Drescher, Seymour, Eronocid: British Slavery in the Era of Abolition (Pittsburgh 1977) 65–91.Google Scholar
22 David Eltis, ‘Abolitionist Perceptions of Society after Slavery’ in: Walvin ed., Slavery and British Society, 195–213.
23 Engerman, Stanley L., ‘Economic Adjustments to Emancipation in the United States and British West Indies’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History XII (1982) 191–220CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Engerman, Stanley L., ‘Coerced and Free Labor: Property Rights and the Development of the Labor Force’, Explorations in Economic History 29 (1992) 10.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
24 Lovejoy, Paul E., Transformations in Slavery: A History of Slavery in Africa (Cambridge 1983) 146Google Scholar, 147 and Clarence-Smith, W.G., ‘Emigration from Western Africa, 1807–1940’ in: Emmer, P.C. and Mörner, M. eds, European Expansion and Migration: Essays on the Intercontinental Migration from Africa, Asia and Europe (New York/Oxford 1992) 197–210.Google Scholar
25 P.C. Emmer, ‘Immigration into the Caribbean: The Introduction of Chinese and East Indian Indentured Labourers between 1839 and 1917’ in: Emmer and Mörner eds, European Expansion and Migration, 251.
26 Foner, Eric, Nothing but Freedom: Emancipation and its Legacy (Baton Rouge/London 1983) 22.Google Scholar
27 Emmer, Pieter C., ‘The Price of Freedom: The Constraints of Change in Postemancipation America’ in: McGlynn, Frank and Drescher, Seymour eds, The Meaning of Freedom: Economics, Politics and Culture after Slavery (Pittsburg/London 1992) 30Google Scholar. Michael Craton, ‘The Transition from Slavery to Free Wage Labour in the Caribbean, 1780–1890: A Survey with Particular Reference to Recent Scholarship’, Slavery and Abolition 13/2 (August 1992) 60, suggests that plantation managers forced the system of ‘jobbing gangs’ upon the freedmen.
28 Engerman, Stanley L., ‘Servants to Slaves to Servants: Contract Labour and European Expansion’ in: Emmer, P.C. ed., Colonialism and Migration: Indentured Labour Before and After Slavery (Dordrecht 1986) 270–276.Google Scholar
29 Emmer, ‘Immigration into the Caribbean’, 255–258.
30 Emmer, “Immigration into the Caribbean’, 252.
31 Omvedt, Gail, ‘Migration in Colonial India: the Articulation of Feudalism and Capitalism by the Colonial State’, Journal of Peasant Studies, 7 (1980) 185–212CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Yang, Arnaud A., ‘Peasants on the Move: A Study of Internal Migration in India”, Journal of Interdisciplinary History 10/1 (1979) 37–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
32 Emmer, ‘Immigration into the Caribbean’, 253, 254.
33 Meagher, Joseph Arnold, ‘The Introduction of Chinese Laborers to Latin America: The “Coolie” Trade, 1847–1874’ (Unpublished PhD thesis, University of California, Davis, 1975) 307–346Google Scholar; Tinker, Hugh, A New System of Slavery: The Export of Indian Labour Overseas, 1830–1920 (Oxford 1974) 334–367Google Scholar and Ismael, Joseph, De Immigrate van Indonesiërs in Suriname (Leiden 1949) 66–76.Google Scholar
34 Knerr, Béatrice, ‘South Asian Countries as Competitors on the World Labour Market’ in: Clarke, Colin, Peach, Ceri and Vertovec, Steven eds, South Asians Overseas: Migration and Ethnicity (Cambridge 1990) 173–196.Google Scholar
35 Meagher, ‘Introduction of Chinese Laborers’, 68–83.
36 Tinker, A New System of Slavery, 61–115. Singaravélou, Les indiens de la Caraibe I (Paris 1987) 44–54.
37 P.C. Emmer, ‘The Meek Hindu: The Recruitment of Indian Labourers for Service Overseas, 1870–1916’ in: Emmer ed., Colonialism and Migration, 188–195.
38 Tinker, A New System of Slavery, 275.
39 Emmer, ‘Immigration into the Caribbean’, 258–259.
40 Emmer, ‘Immigration into the Caribbean’, 259–262; Loudon, Thomas, ‘Chinezen in Cuba: Contract met de Dood?’ (MA-thesis Department of History, University of Leiden, 1996) 35Google Scholar; McDonald, John and Shlomowitz, Ralph, ‘Mortality on Chinese and Indian Voyages to the West Indies and South America, 1847–1874’, Social and Economic Studies 41 (1992) 203–240.Google Scholar
41 Tinker, A New System of Slavery, 177–235.
42 Ralph Shlomowitz, ‘Reflections on Punishments and Rewards in Coercive Labour Systems: Comparative Perspectives’, Slavery and Abolition 12/2 (1991) 97–102; Emmer, ‘Immigration into the Caribbean’, 265, 266. However, Lai, Walton Look, Indentured Labor, Caribbean Sugar: Chinese, and Indian Migrants to the British West Indies, 1838–1918 (Baltimore 1993) 127–129 sees no decline in the number of prosecutions.Google Scholar
43 Shlomowitz, Ralph and Brennan, Lance, ‘Epidemiology and Indian Labor Migration at Home and Abroad’, Journal of World History V (1994) 47–67Google Scholar; Breman, Jan, Labour Migration and Rural Transformation in Colonial Asia (Amsterdam 1990) 7–19.Google Scholar
44 Emmer, P.C., ‘The Great Escape: The Migration of Female Indentured Servants from British India to Surinam, 1873–1916’ in: Richardson, David ed., Abolition and its Aftermath: The Historical Context, 1790–1916 (London 1985) 266.Google Scholar
45 McNeill, James and Lai, Chimman, Report to the Government of India on the Conditions of Indian Immigrants in Four British Colonies and Surinam (London 1915).Google Scholar
46 Emmer, ‘Immigration into the Caribbean’, 269, 270.
47 Unfortunately, the study of labour migration within Asia has produced many opinions, but little comparative statistical evidence as exemplified by Breman, Labour Migration (see note 43). A comparative research-project directed by Ralph Shlomowitz (Flinders University, Australia) on Indian and Pacific labour migration within and outside Asia has already produced new evidence on mortality of labour migrants within Asia. Shlomowitz, Ralph and Brennan, Lance, ‘Mortality and Migrant Labour en route to Assam, 1863–1924’ and ‘Mortality and Migrant Labour in Assam, 1865–1921’, The Indian Economic and Social History Review 27 (1990) 85–110 and 313–330.CrossRefGoogle Scholar