The Wages of Slavery: From Chattel Slavery to Wage Labour in Africa, the Caribbean and England

244 Pages·1993·6.105 MB·English

by  Michael Twaddle (editor)

THE WAGES OF SLAVERY
Studies in Slave and Post-Slave Societies and Cultures
CO-EDITORS:
GAD HEUMAN
JAMES WALVIN
THE WAGES OF SLAVERY
From Chattel Slavery to Wage
Labour in Africa, the Caribbean
and England
Edited by
Michael Twaddle
FRANK CASS
First published 1993 in Great Britain by
FRANK CASS & CO. LTD.
2 Park Square, Milton Park,
Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
and in the United States ofA merica by
FRANKCASS
270 Madison Ave,
New York NY 10016
Transferred to Digital Printing 2006
Copyright © 1993 Frank Cass & Co. Ltd.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
The Wages of slavery: from chattel slavery to wage labour in Africa,
the Caribbean, and England I edited by Michael Twaddle.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-7146-4517-6: $35.00
1. Slave labor-Africa-History. 2. Slave labor-Caribbean Area
History. 3. Slave labor-England-History. 4. Slavery-Economic
aspects-Africa-History. 5. Slavery-Economic aspects-Caribbean
Area-History. 6. Slavery-Economic aspects-England--History.
I. Twaddle, Michael.
HD4865.A35W34 1993
306.3'62'09-dc20 93-4011
CIP
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Wages of Slavery: From Chattel Slavery to
Wage Labour in Africa, the Caribbean and
England
I. Twaddle, Michael
331.1109
ISBN 0-7146-4517-6
This group of studies first appeared in a Special Issue, 'The Wages of
Slavery: From Chattel Slavery to Wage Labour in Africa, the Carib
bean and England', of Slavery & Abolition, Vol. 14, No.1, published
by Frank Cass & Co. Ltd.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without
the prior permission of Frank Cass & Co. Ltd.
Typeset by Regent Typesetting, London
Cover illustration: 'Coolie and Negro', from
At Last: A Christmas in the West Indies by
Charles Kingsley (London, 1871).
Publisher's Note
The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint
but points out that some imperfections in the original may be apparent
For Hugh Tinker

Contents
Visicle and Invisible Hands Michael Twaddle 1
From Chattel to Wage Slavery in
Jamaica, 1740-1860 Richard B. Sheridan 13
Alternative Husbandry: Slaves and Free
Labourers on Livestock Farms in
Jamaica in the Eighteenth and
Nineteenth Centuries Verene E. Shepherd 41
Chinese Coolie Labour in Cuba in the
Nineteenth Century - Free Labour or
Neoslavery? Evelyn Hu-de Hart 67
Between Slavery and Freedom:
Apprenticeship in Suriname (Dutch
(Juiana),1863-1873 Pieter Emmer 87
The Transition from Apprenticeship to
Indentured Labour in Mauritius Marina Carter 114
Emancipations and the Economy of the
Cape Colony Robert Ross 131
Struggles over Labour Conditions in the
Plantations of Sao Tome and
Principe Gervase Clarence-Smith 149
Murgu: The Wages of Slavery in the
Western Sudan Paul E. Lovejoy 168
Forced Labour in a Missionary Context:
A Study of Kasanvu in Early
Twentieth-Century Uganda Holger Bernt Hansen 186
Labour and Coercion in the English
Atlantic World from the Seventeenth
to the Early Twentieth Century David Eltis 207
Notes on Contributors 227
Index 229

Visible and Invisible Hands
MICHAEL TWADDLE
Was indentured labour 'a new system of slavery'? Addressing the British
Parliament in 1840, Lord John Russell said that he would be 'unwilling to
adopt any measure to favour the transfer of labourers from British India
to Guiana .... I am not prepared to encounter the responsibility of a
measure which may lead to a dreadful loss of life on the one hand, or, on
the other, to a new system of slavery'. None the less, starting in Mauritius
1
and spreading later to the West Indies, Natal and Fiji, the abolition of
chattel slavery within the British Empire in the 1830s was followed by the
spread of indentureship to other European powers' colonies too, to
places like like Suriname and Sao Tome and Principe considered later in
this volume.
The conference at which earlier drafts of papers published in this
volume were presented2 was concerned less with the 'whys' of this massive
set of social transformations than its 'haws'. The 'whys' have been set
forth, at least for British-administered colonies and a number of other
territories, by Hugh Tinker in his magisterial account of A New System of
Slavery: The Export of Indian Labour Overseas 1830-1920 and by several
other writers.3 The conference on 'From Chattel to Wage Slavery: The
Americas and Africa' at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies of
London University on 9-10 May 1991, on the other hand, was more
concerned with work practices before and after the abolition of chattel
slavery - the nature of the working week, subsistence and surplus for
slaves and free persons, labour negotiations and confrontations, and the
differing patterns of transition to new labour regimes. An earlier sym
posium on The Slaves' Economy had illuminated the extent to which
slave owners in the Americas depended upon their slaves for production,4
and discussion of this subject was continued in a number of papers at the
conference (a number of which will be published elsewhere).5 Earlier
writings on slave resistance in the Americas also remained much in mind,"
as too did the valuable work of Douglas Hall and Sidney Mintz on the
development of an internal marketing system, important not only for
slaves' self-esteem but for the growth of a peasantry in Jamaica.? The
opening chapters in this volume by Richard Sheridan and Verene