CRATON. Commentary. the Search for a Unifield Field Theory

7/27/2019 CRATON. Commentary. the Search for a Unifield Field Theory.

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M. Craton

Commentary: the search for a unified field theory

In: New West Indian Guide/ Nieuwe West-Indische Gids 63 (1989), no: 1/2, Leiden, 135-142

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MlCHAEL CRATON

COMMENTARY: THE SEARCH FOR A UNIFIED FIELD THEORY

The conference sessions of which the foregoing articles are the fruit werededicated to the discussion of the interrelationship of changing laboursystems and technologies in Caribbean sugar plantations between 1750and 1900. What made the exercise frustrating and incomplete as well aschallenging and important was that it clearly involved m any more variablesbesides those of labour and technology. However widely labour andtechnology are defined, at least five other related and intertwined factorshave to be considered: the availability and suitability of land; the supplyof capital; the access to m arkets and market prices; management strategies,attitudes and personnel; and finally, changing economie policies - spe-cifically those designed to speed the transition from narrow mercantilistunits to a world-wide free tra de system.In seeking a causal explanation for the complex process of change inCaribbean sugar plantations over 150 years, we are all surely seeking thesimplest possible key; what m ight be called - if the pun be pardoned -a kind of unifed field theory. But besides making sure that we leave outof consideration none of the obtruding factors mentioned above, we mustsurely not look at one place or area in one time period, but at the wholeregion over the whole period of global changes.As for special comparisons and interrelationships, we have gone someway, but probably not far enough. It is not enough to seek similar processesin different places over different time scales; we should seek to show howdevelopments in one area led to, or related to, developments elsewhere,and how all related to global developments. This may seem a crasscommonplace; but nonetheless ignoring it does seem to be the root ofsome of the confusions, for instance, in the W illiams-Drescher debate,as well as in some of our own labour: technology discussions.


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136 MICHAEL CRATONFor example, what was true about the relative importance of economieand hum anitarian argum ents in the 1780s was surely very different from

arguments under the same heads after the British slave trade was abolishedin 1807. And w hat m ight be feit about the relative efficiency ofsl veversusfree wage labour and the value of technological innovation before slaveswere emancipated anywhere and industrialisation had not anywhere gonefar, was surely very different from labour: technology considerations oncethe slave trade had ended and technological changes were ever more widelyavailable.There are also the questions of reasons versus chance or contingencyin the quest for optimisation. We have to decide in a given case whetherplanters did what they knew or thought was best, or what was the bestalternative actually open to them; or whether they did what they thoughtwas best and were proved to be wrong; or whether they optimised rationallyunder certain conditions and were overtaken by events and developmentsthat were unforeseen.We could carry on this line of relativistic and hypothetical argumentad infinitum. But let us turn instead to a more relevant issue. How wellhave we'in the foregoing articles answered some of the questions posed,or reaffirmed or refuted some of the claims made, in the initial positionpaper written by Peter Boomgaard and Gert Oostindie (1989)?Firstly, was slavery inefficint (as well as unjust) as the abolitionistsargued? In other words, were slaves under any circumstances moreproductive than other forms of labour? Were slave plantations ever moreprofitable than the same plantations might have been with freer formsof labour, given that such were freely available? Secondly, was slaveryincompatible with technological change, sustaining a conservative classof owners and retarding progress, as Marxists aver?

Broadly, I take it, Boom gaard and Oostindie's answers to both questionswere N o . But what of areas where slavery did continue because thequest for profits seems to have called for it to do so, at least for a time,as in Puerto Rico and Cuba, as well as in Brazil and the United States?Were these forms of slavery really the same as those that had expired?Or were the alternative labour systems loosely called free - indentured coolies , part-time peasant labourers, migrant workers bound by debtpeonage or other forms of constraint - really no more than slaves, asMichiel Baud (1988) seems to argue? And were the levels of technologicalchange or innovation under formal slavery itself of which several authors,notably Richard Sheridan (1989), have written, really as substantial asthose that came after slavery ended - whether or not emancipation wasthe only reason or not?


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CHANG ING SUGAR TECHNOLOGY AND THE LABOUR NEXUS 137Other less central questions put forward by Boomgaard and Oostindiehave surely been aired, though not finally solved. These include, thirdly,the question of the relative abundance of available labour; fourthly, theimportance of the periodicity of labour demand during slavery and after;fifthly, the role of slaves' and other w orkers' resistance to plantation labour,or, in particular, of all workers to cutting cane; and sixthly, the significanceof tariff barriers, or their lack, in the establishment and maintenance ofsugar prices, and thus of the levels of profitability.We have all surely come away with fresh or reinforced ideas about these,and perhaps many other questions. Other differential factors which haveoccurred to me sinc include the significance of the great variations inthe growing cycle of sugar cane and thus the length of the cane cutting

season, between areas with very marked winter and summer seasons andthose like Guyana where cane could be planted at almost any time ofyear and harvested almost continuously; of the difference between mixedcane farming systems based on the Brazilian counterpoint between share-cropping l vr dores or colonos and true plantation slaves, and the moreintensive monolithic slave labour systems preferred by the Dutch, Britishand French; or of the special cu ltural conditions tha t allowed a colonylike Barbados to expand its sugar production to a peak after slavery endedwithout the availability of virgin land, without notable economies of scaleor even substantial technological change.My own chief feeling, though, is that the best place to look for firmeranswers to the questions posed, is in the words and writings of the plantersthemselves - those with greater personal experience, and with more personalinterest, than we as contemporary historians can ever have. The articleI would have liked to offer at this time had I the time to write it wouldhave been called W orthy Park Revisited - being a re-examination andre-evaluation of some of the material concerning a single Jamaican sugarestate which James Walvin and I studied and wrote about between 1968and 1978 (Craton & Walvin 1970; Craton 1978).In particular, I thought to look again at the three persons with verydifferent characters and significantly different roles who gave evidence onbehalf of Worthy Park in the 1848 Parliamentary Inquiry into the crisisfacing the British Caribbean sugar industry. The hope was that each wouldprovide a different facet of the problem of plantation management underchanging conditions. First of these featured actors was George Price, fifthof six sons of the former owner, who had gone out to manage and revivethe struggling family estate in 1843 at the age of 31 with an infusion offresh capital provided by his father-in-law, Lord Dunsany. George Pricemade valiant but vain attempts to mechanise Worthy Park and reorganise


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138 MICHAEL CRATONits labour force, mainly by offering competitive wages. He remained inJamaica for more than 20 years despite the estate's economie collapse,an important figure in local politics and a resolute opponent of GovernorEyre. Second was Thomas Price, George's youngest brother (later, Lieu-tenant-Governor of Dominica and British Honduras), who had alreadybeen to Worthy Park in 1841 and returned in despair. As an absenteeincreasingly gifted with hindsight, he was a severe critic of what he regardedas his bro ther 's visionary expenditure and mismanagem ent, unfairlyblaming him for cutting off the family's Jamaican income. Third wasViscount Ingestre, Worthy Park trustee and mortgage-holder since 1835by virtue of the last will of his brother-in-law, the father of George andThomas Price. He now regretted the family connection which had ledto such disastrous investment, bewailed the way in which his money waslocked up, and would dearly have liked to deploy it elsewhere (BritishSessional Papers 1848: 4963-5170).The planned paper was not written, largely because the counterposedroles of the three dr m tis person e did not come clearly enough throughthe written record. On a re-reading, most of the evidence given beforethe 1848 Commission was found to have been given by Thomas Price,who had far less direct involvement in the running of Worthy Park thanhad his brother George, and whose financial interest was less direct thanViscount Ingestre's. Yet the dozen pages of evidence presented to the 1848Commission did touch on almost all the critical factors mentioned at thebeginning of this essay and discussed in the foregoing articles.Firstly, the evidence showed that at Worthy Park during the 1840s theavailability of suitable landwas not an immediate problem. Though theoriginal estate had optimised its own cane lands since the 1790s, adjacentdecayed or abandoned estates could be, and were, bought up for a song.Had the Prices been otherwise able to create a very large central sugaroperation at Worthy Park, they would have been constrained in time bythe surrounding mountains; in fact their enterprise failed altogether beforesuitable land ran out.Secondly, capita was available to a degree, but what it could achievewas severely limited by labour and technical constraints. Thirdly, tech-nologic l modifle tions were tried, but they failed for reasons unrelatedto whether they could, or did, increase productivity. Fourthly, l bourwasa problem, but chiefly on account of the need to reorganise it efficientlyinto a two-tier system of a small corps of permanent workers and a largerseasonal cane-cutting gang, its availabilitywhenneeded and itscost.Fifthly,imperial policy was an extremely contentious issue, Thomas Price arguingthat the economie situation might be remedied, if narrowly, if the imperial


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CHANGING SUGAR TECHNOLOGY AND THE LABOUR NEXUS 39

government maintained the sugar price at ten shillings a hundredweightby subsidies, and if it subsidised the immigration of foreign labourers toallow the reduction of the daily rate ofw gesfrom one shilling and sixpenceto twopence or fourpence.But the bottom line, sixthly, was surely theworld sug rprice.This hadreached a catastrophic low in 1846-7, so that even with optimisation andmaximum production, Worthy Park's total income from sugar and rumwas well below the cost of production. In existing circumstances the totalincome was actually less than the wage bill quite ignoring all the othercosts, including that of servicing the standing debt. Under such circum-stances, it was inevitable that capital would migrate elsewhere, and evenrelatively fortunate Jamaican estates like Worthy Park would be forcedto close.What happened in the face of these and similar problems and crises?It depended, of course, on who you were and what were the options,if any, available to you. Firstly, the workers (whose role and behaviourare hardly considered in the foregoing articles) did what they could tofind alternative work or ways of subsisting, or to obtain the best typeof work and the best wages, and to shape and optimise and determineconditions as best they could by forms of industrial action or resistance.

Secondly, the planters and their managers did what they could to adjustand juggle and make new equations. These included changing field andfactory practice as best they could, to get new capital if they could, tomake technological changes as far as their knowledge and means allowed,to diversify (and here the comm ents about the moves towards coffee, co ttonand, later, bananas are very apposite) and, in the last resort, to shut upoperations altogether.For those, thirdly, who provided the capital - absentee family membersor associates like Thomas Price or Lord Ingestre, or faceless bankers -the options and strategies were different again. They might be satisfiedwith local attempts to adjust and reform the labour and technical systems,or to diversify, to cut back production temporarily, or to practise economiesof scale as far as possible. But they were far readier than resident ownersor managers to close down opera tions and switch elsewhere. In many casesthey were only frustrated by the inertial provisions of the existing lawsof inheritance, entail and bankruptcy, which m ade it practically impossibleto dispose of encum bered estates until 1854 (Cra ton & Walvin 1970:208-233).These are the three main levels of human behaviour and practices. Butwe ought also to distinguish three, or even four, other more determinantlevels on the material plane: those of individual plantations, of the larger


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140 MICHAEL CRATONisland or colony units, and of the Caribbean region as a whole - placed,of course, within the total world economy.

For itself Worthy Park staggered on somehow as a sugar producer,until the years of stunning success following World War Two - thoughunder several different owners. This story swritten n Jam aican plantationandSearching for theinvisibleman(Cra ton & Walvin 1970; Cra ton 1978).The island colony of Jamaica as a whole, however, almost ceased to bea sugar producer by 1900, becoming a rather more diversified but stilldesperately poor backwater, notable mainly as an exporter of migrantlabourers at a time when capital migrated to sugar production in Cubaand banana plantations in Central America. Within the island, as VereneShepherd has pointed out in a recent dissertation, cattle pens largely tookover the best former sugar land, and the cattle pen owners turned themselvesinto, or became part of, what Douglas Hall and Verene Shepherd havetermed a penocracy (Hall 1959, 1979; Shepherd 1988).In the context of the wider Caribbean this points up a curious butsignificant development very relevant to our current discussions. WhereasJamaica was one of the greatest sugar producers during the heyday ofslavery, islands like Spanish Puerto Rico and Cuba, and other Spanishmainland colonies, were largely cattle ranches and small scale producersof minor crops. Once Cuba and, to a certain extent, Puerto Rico becamegreat sugar producers, though, the positions were almost reversed, withJamaica reverting to a largely ranching and peasant subsistence economy.Viewing this transition in the widest perspective, it was clearly a localfunction of an age that saw great developments in the internationalisationof capital, the spread of free trade and laissez faire principles, the worldwideorganisation of transportation, processing and marketing, and, not least,the much more efficint organisation of migratory labour on a global scale(Moreno Fraginals 1978; Scott 1985;Zanetti & Garcia 1988).

Out of a reading of the foregoing articles and our discussions of themat the 1988 Americanists' conference in Amsterdam, I make the followingpreliminary, tentative and personal conclusions. If we look for the singleover-riding principle in the labour: technology equation or the sugarplantation debate at large, we cannot do better than accept the truismthat sugar plantations are ultimate ly in the business of making profits .But beyond that, an only slightly less simple formula gives me slightlymore satisfaction, a t least for the time being: Change (including tech-nological change) was ultimately driven by the quest for profit in the faceof the world sugar price. Change, however, was limited not so much bythe availability of capital or labour as by the availability of plentiful, cheap,fertile and politically unencumbered land since both capital and labour


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CH NGING SUG R TECHNOLOGYAND THEL BOUR NEXUS 141would readily migrateorbecome availabletosuchareas,andon ytosuchareas.

REFERENCES

A D A M S O N , A L A N H.,1972.Sugar without slaves: thepolitical economy ofBritish Guiana1838-1904.NewHaven, YaleU.P.B A U D , M I C H I E L , 1988.Sugar and unfree labour: reflections on labour recruiting in the DominicanRepublic 1870-1940.Paper, ICAAmsterdam.B O O M G A A R D P E TE R O O S T IN D I E , G E R T J., 1989, this issue oNWIG.

B R I T I S H S E S S I O N A L P A P E R S , A C C O U N T S P A P E R S XXIII, 1848. Select Committee on sugarand coffee planting. London.C R A T O N , M I C H A E L , 1978.Searchingfor theinvisibleman:slaves andplantation life in Jamaica.Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press.C R A TO N , M I C H A E L J A M E S , W A L V I N , 1970.A Jamaican plantation: the history of WorthyPark 1670-1970.London, W.H. Allen, Toronto, Toronto University Press.D R E S C H E R , S E Y M O U R , 1977.Econocide: British slavery in the era ofAbolition. Pittsburgh,Pittsburgh University Press.

- , 1986.Thedecline thesis of British slavery since Econocide. Slavery and Abolitionv 3-24.H A L L , D O U G L A S G.,1959.Free Jamaica 1838-1865:aneconomie history New Haven, YaleUniversity Press.

- , 1978.Theflight from theestates reconsidered: the British West Indies, 1838-1842.JournalofCaribbean History x-xi:7-24.M O R E N O F RA G IN A L S , M A N U E L , 1978.Elingenio; complejo economico social cubanodel azcar3 vols., Havana, Ediciones Ciencias Sociales.R O D N E Y , W A L T E R , 1981.A history of the Guyanese working people 1881-1905. Baltimore,The Johns Hopkins University Press.S C H W A R T Z , S T U A R TB., 1985.Sugar plantations and the formation ofBrazilian society 1550-1835.NewYork, Cambridge University Press.S C O T T , R E B E C C A J., 1984.Explaining Abolition: contradiction, adaptation and challengein Cuban slave society, 1860-1886. Comparative Studies inSociety andHistory xxvi:83-111 .


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142 MICHAEL CRATON

- 1985.Slaveemancipation inCuba: thetransition tofree labor 1860 1899. PrincetPrinceton University Press.SHEPHERD V ERENE 1988. Pens and pen-keepersin aplantation-society: aspectsofJamaicansocial and economie history 1740-1845. Unpublished Ph.D.dissertation UniversityofCambridge.SHERIDAN RICHARD B. 1989 this issue oNWIG.W ILLIAMS ERICE., 1944. apitalism and slavery. Chapel Hill North Carolina UniversityPress.ZANETTI OSCAR GARCIA ALEJANDRO 1987.Caminos para elazcar. Havana, EdicionesCiencias S ociales.MlCHAE L CRATOND epartmentofHistoryUniversityofW aterloo W aterloo OntarioCanada N2L 3G 1


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TheNieuwe West-Indische Gids ~ New WestIndian Guide is a direct continuation of thejournal of the same name (formerly De West-Indische Gids,founded in 1919) which waspublished by M artinusNijhoff,The H ague, until 1973.NieuweWest-Indische Gids/New West IndianGuide does not accept responsibility for theviews expressed in its pages; such responsibility rests exclusively with the auth ors.The N.W.I.G. publishes articles and book reviews relating to the Caribbean region in thesocial sciences and humanities. With a few exceptions, the language of publication is English.Authors should submit their manuscripts toprof. H. HOETINK, (Brediusweg 56, 1401 AHBussum, The N etherlands, or to Prof. RICHARD PRICE (Institute of International StudiesUniversity of M innesota, Minneapolis MN 55455, USA.). Correspondence regarding bookreviews should be sent to D r. MICHEL ROLPH TROUILLOT (D ept. of Anthropology, D ukeUniversity, D urham N C 27706, USA.).Authors will receive 25 free offprints of their article and 15 free offprints of their bookreview.Subscriptionpriceper volume in Hfl. 50/US 27 (individuals), Hfl. 100/USS 54 (librariesand institutions) Hfl. 11 postage added (surface mail). P ayment in D utch guilders shouldbe made to Foris P ublications Holland, P .O . Box 509,3300 AM, D ordrecht, The N etherlandsor to Foris P ublications USA, P .O . Box 5904 Providence R I02 903 USA.

INSTRUCTION S FO R AUTHO RSAll contributions should be double-spaced throughout, with ample margins, and should besubmitted in two copies.N otes should be numbered consecutively and typed at the end of the article.Bibliographical references should be included in the text itself in parentheses, and shouldindicate author's last name, date of publication, and (if relevant) page mimbers e.g.,(van Lier 1949: 25). Full bibliographical information should be listed after the notes asReferences,as in the following exam ples:for books:HARTSINCK, JANJACOB, 1770.Beschrijving vanGuyana of de WildeKust in Zuid-Amerika.Amsterdam, G errit Tielenburg.WHITTEN , NO RMAN E., Jr. &JO HN F . SZWED eds.), 1970.Afro American anthropology. N ewYork, The Free P ress.forjournalarticles:HERSKOVITS, MELVILLEJ ., 1931.O n the provenience ofthePortuguese in Saramacca Tongo.West-Indische Gids 12 :545-57.forcontributionstoeditedbooks:BASTIDE, ROGER, 1974. The present status of Afro-American research in L atin America.In Sidney W. Mintz (ed.), Slavery, colonialism, and racism.N ew York, N orton, pp. 111-23.Photos and line drawings should be submitted in the form of glossy prints, with captionstyped on a separate page.


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Vol.63,no. 3 41989

NIEUWEWEST-INDISCHEGIDS

NEW W EST IND IA NG U I D E

FORIS PUBLICATIONSDordrecht - Holland/Providencc - U .S. A.

forSTICHTING NIEUWE WEST-INDISCHE GIDSUtrecht The Netherlands

in collaboration w ith The Program in Atlantic History Culture and Society ofThe Johns Hopkins University Baltimore M D . U S A

ISSN 0028-9930


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NIEUWE WEST-INDISCHE NEW WEST INDIANGIDS GUIDEonder redactievan editedby

H. HOETINK managing editor), RICHARD PRICE, SALLY PRICE, H.U.E.THODEN VAN VELZEN, MICHEL-ROLPH TROUILLOT book reviews), L.J.WESTERMANN-VAN DER STEEN.P.WAGENAAR HUMMELINCK honorary editor).

CONTENTSARTICLESKENNETH M. BILBY

Divided loyalties: local politics and the play of statesamongtheAluku 143W l M H O O O B E R G E N

Aluku 175RICHARD SALLY PRICEWorkingfor theMan:a Saramaka outlook onKourou 199DIANE VERNONSome prominent featuresof Ndjuka medicine 209MICHELE BAJ STROBELAt home witha prospector in French Guiana:asketch 223

B O O K R E V I E W SNarratlve of a flve years expeditioa against the revoited Negroes of Surinamin Guianaon the Wild CoastofSouth-America from the year 1772to the year1777 by John Gabriel Stedman. EditedbyRichardand Sally Price reviewedby Raytaond T. Smith) 237Reitt naar Swinamen. door den Capitein John Gabriel Stedman met plaatenen kaarten naar het Engelsch Jos Fo uiain e, editor reviewed byRichard Price) 241The overthtow ofcolonial slavery 1776-19 48 by Robin Blackburn; Economiegrowthand the endlngof the nansaantic slave trade byDa vid Eltis reviewedby RobortL Paquette) 242The British We st Indies during the American Revolution by Selwyn H HCarrington reviewedbyJackP G reene) 251Patrieios y plebeyos: burgueses anesanos y obreros. as relaciones de closeenetPuerto Rtcodecambiodesigto byAngel O Quintero Rivera reviewedby H Hoetink) 253

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CRATON. Commentary. the Search for a Unifield Field Theory