PREFACE'

,·'1"r~tJlldia~ a~d1l1~grohistory.Itis nor a study of the institu~'~~?tlg[~i!Il'y~ry.b.uF?f~~contrjbution of slavery to the de-·~~).9pmell.t;l?f~rjtj~~.9!1Pitaysrn.•..•...-. '··~(lpy·dC;)btsrnust.be acknowledged. The staffs of the foUow-Jfll1 J1ilititqtio/1S Were very kind and helpful to me: British)Vf~ts~onljPublic Record Office; India Office Library; Westflifltn, COl11mittee;' Rhodes House Library, Oxford; Bank oftt,nlJlllHtlRceol'd Qflicc; the British Anti-Slavery and Aborigines('j!f)tvtJ1-IIJl) Sfldery; Friends' House, London; John Rylands.. tbnIrY, M!lnl.lb~!l~er;Central Library, Manchester;' PublicJ ;!liJ:,WV. Ll"e,rpuol~ WiJberforc~"lI!Iuseum, Hull; Library of

J'II:,li(lt,ccA Nnql~l~ol'kJayena; Sociedad Economicade'llVJ(~i~lj~~th:ink the' Newberry u,

... " \ -:,.'ldndl\CSsj?W~l.diJg,Jt possible for me,""i".JiJ;,.~n !tltel·••HbJ,?~j;y.'l6iln wJrh F'(.>undel"S'Library, HowardU'ni'VOt$ltY,,·,·ro'see Si):. Chl1tJcs Whitworth's valuable statistics

. 011. "Stiite oi'the Trilde of Gl'cnt Britain ill its imports and ez-

..ports, progreSSively from the year (697-'773."My research has be,enfacilitated by grants from different

sources: the Trinidad'Govemment, which extended an originalscholarship; Oxford l]niversity, whic~ awarded me two Senior

............Studeritships; the~eit.Fund for the ~tudy of British Colonial, .•....f:IistorY,.\V¥chma~t:it"V()g~a?ts;atld., the ]uliusRosenwald

F()1.lnd~~on, "V~ichilWaJ:dt:dn]erelIowshjps in 1940

and 194z.

:t>~9f9s~0~.t.?W~Il1;.Ragatz oEGeorge,Washington Universityin this'city, Ptofessor Frank W. Pitman of Pomona College,

. ;';Clal'ctrlOm, G.lIifo.rnia,and Professor Melville }. Herskovits ofNo.rehwc:stcl'n Uf!iversity, very kindly read the manuscript andmode mlU1Y N1lggestions, So did my senior colleague at HowardUllivcfsiry, Professor Charles Burch. Dr. Vincent Harlow, nowRhod~'l)l'Ofessor of lmperial History in the University ofLondon, SOpcl"visedmy dOctoral dissertation at Oxford and wasalways very helpful. Finally, my wife Was of great assistancetg~e)ntalciI1g l11Yllott!S311d typirig' the manuscript.

> •. ' .... c.. '. ERIC;WILLIAMS;:F{o'\V~rdF~iversir:y .Washington, D.C ..September 12" 1943

THE ORIGIN

OF

NEGRO SLAVERY

WHEN IN 149%CoLUMBUS, representing the Spanish monarchy.discovered the, New W orId, he set in train the long and bitterinternationalrivalry over colonial possessions for which, afte~four and a half centuries, no solution has yet been found. Portu-gal, which had initiated the movement of interriatidnaLexp~-sion, claimed the new te~:ritoriesont~~,gropttcl that theyJell'within tile scope of a p~pal bullof'~455a'tt~~ri2:inghe~tore":"duce to servitude all infidel peoples. The twQpowers, to avoidcontroversy, sought arbitration and,as Catholics, turned to thePope-a natural and logical' step in an age when the universalclaims of the Papacy were still unchallenged by individuals andgovernments. After carefully sifting the rival claims, the Popeissued in 1493 a series of papal bulls which established a line ofdemarcation between the colonial possessions of the two states:the East went to Portugal and the West to Spain. The partition,however, failed to satisfy Portuguese aspirations and in the sub-sequent year the contending partiesreached~moresatisfac~otycorripr01l1ise in the Treaty.of TordesiU~s, whi~hrectifil:d thepapal judgment to permit Portuguese ownership of Brazil.

Neither the papal arbitration nor the formaltreaty was in:-tended to be binding on other powers, and both were in factrepudiated. Cabot's voyage to North America in 1497 was Eng-

3

-;i' .

\: .:Jl!fi

ORIGIN O)l'NEGRO SLAV~RY, .

..•..be'. o!r,idy ,pl"'~i"n§d_Whenthai ;kg, Ii' reach'fd, ~d<;>oly.then, 'the expellses of·slayery, in ~he form of thecost~tid"",in~,"ce .01 slave;. productive .on<! unproductiVe, ",crodthe "cost. of. hired laborers.· As. Merivale wrote: .<lSlay~labouris dearer than free 't/Jberever .abundan~e of free labour can' be

procured." illl'rom tlle standpoint of the grOWer, the greatest defect ofslavery lies in the 'fact that it ..quickly. ex1:}aUStsthe

soil.1'be

labor supply of low social status, doc,il~ apd c.he~p,can bemait\ttined h\ sUbjeed""only by 'Y""",dc degHd.ti

OR~d

by a.~1>e",te"efforts to ""PP!'1' its intelligence-R~~ ·'of"'?P' and scientifu;, HtnUng are thOfel°re .u.n" ••.••societies. As Jefferson wrote ofVirgillia, "we can buy I1.na~ofn"" bud ch eaper than we can ,tn"ure~n old. 0•• /'''''''·

slave planter. in the picturesque .Mmendat\lre of the South.isa "land-killer." "{'hisserious defect of slavery can be coun~er-balanced and postPoned for a time if fertile soil isp~actical1yunlimited. Expansion is anecessity of slave 'societies; the slayepower requires ever fresh conquests.l~ "Jt.is more profitable,"wro~~ Merivale, "to cultivate afresh soil by the dear labour ofslaves. than an exhausted· one by the. cheap labour, of free-men." 18F rom .Vir~inia and Marylatld. to. Carolina, Georgia,Te"" and the MiddleWe5t, from Batbados to j""',;c. to SaInt .Dotting

u, and th", to cu¥;the logIC w'" inexorablean~ tbe

sam,., It. wa!!.a relay race; the. first .to.. start. p~ssed the. baton,unWillingly we may be sure, to another and then limped sadly

behin.d. . , .

Slavery. in the Caribbean has. been. too .nar~owly .i~eritifiedwith the Negro. A racil,\ltwist has. thereby been. given to whatis basiS,lIr an economicphenomenon.SIav<ry was ,nOt borno!racism: rather, racism was, the consequence ofslavery.Unfreelabor in the New World was brown, white, black, and yelloW;

Catholic, Protestant and pagan.. . ...' .'Thefirstinstance of slave trading and slave labor d~veloped

in the New World -involved, racially, not. the Negro buttheIndi~. The Indians rapidly succumbed to the excessive labord~mandedof them, the insufficient diet, the white man'S dis-

C::A.pj~,Ati$rvi ANI»iSLAvERY

dle cla$S~ith itsriew-fo\lnd~octtine·' ~f freedom, la~er propa~gate~the arg1lment that itwas.ingener~,pridel,\nd love ofpower ~Ilthemaster'that led to slaveryaI)d. that, .in thoseC?U11trieswhere slaves were employed, f.reeJabol'.<would •.~~...tn~re .'i· pr?fitllble. Universaliexperieace. demonstrated -:co~"clusivelY. that· "the .\Yorkdone

iby. slaves, though it appears .to

cost onlytheir IllaintenaI)ce, is in the end the dearest ofany.Ap~r~()l)whocaqacquireJ10property can have noother'~"tere.st than eo eat I,\S rtlQ.ch,and to .labonr as little as possible;" 11

Adam SIllith thereby treated asap abstract propositi0ll: whjJtis.a specific question of time, place; labor and soil. Theeco-n()micsuperiorityofJr,ee hired labor over slave is obvious eventothesla"e owner. Sll,\ve labor is given,reluctantly, it. is tin-skilful,itlacksversatility~12 Other. thingsbeingeq~al,:fl'ee menwould be preferred. But .~theearlystagesof colonial devel-opment, other ~hingsarenot equal. Whet} slavery is adopted, .It is not adopted as.tIle,choiCe over f.reeJabot; there is no choiceai:aU'The reasons for slavery, wtQteGibbon Wakefi~ld; "areno~mora1, ~Uteconomical circumstanccs;,theyrelateo9t tovice and virtue, but to. production." 18 With the limited P9PU-,lation of J!utope mthe. sixteenth; century" the free laborersnecessary to cultivate the staple crops of .sugar,t()bacco.andcotton in theNC\w Worldc~tild not have been supplied inquantities adequate to>permitlarge-scal~production.Slaverywas necessary for· thi!ijand to get·.slaves. the Europeans turnedfirst to the aborigines and then to Africa.

Vnder certain c~curnstances slavery, has some obvious ad-vantages. In thecultivati()n of crops likesugar,cot1;on sndtobacc(), w~ere tile .cose C)f·production isappreciably~educ~donllir£rer units; theslaveO\VIler,>with his large-scale produc-tion and his organized$~ve gang, can make m?reprofitlibleuse of the land ehan the small farmerorpeasantprop~ietor.For, such staple crops, the vast profits can well stand t~~greatereXpense of inefficient. slave .lahor.14.Whereallthe kno~Jedg~required is simple and a matter of routine, constancy~nd co-operation in)abor-slavery-is essential, until,)}" importllti<)OOf new recruits and breeding, the popula~ion hasr~achedth(lpoint of density and the .Iand avllil;able for'~ppr()prilltio.l hq.'1

8 CAPITALISM AND SLAVERY

-~es,alld~h~ir,inabillty to adjust tlt,emselves to the new way~("li('1 4~~to .• life o(Jib",),. <holt constitution andt~~p~tl1JlJ(l?t .'\Vere, ill7adapted .to. the rigors of plantation

i~Ul~ety'f¥F~r~lld~9rt{z writes: "To subject the Indian to~heIllil1~,to,their.monotonous, insane and severe labor, with-ollttrib,al~ens~, without religious ritual, : • . Was like takinga""ay-fl"O,mhim the meaning of his life. • • . It Was to enslavenot only hisniuscJes but' also his Collective spirit. "111

The visitor to Ciudad Trujillo, capital of the Dominican Re-public (the present-day name of half of the island formerlycalled .f!ispaniola) 'iyill see a statue of Columbus, with thefigure of an Indian Woman gratefully writing (so reads thecaption) the name of the Discoverer. The story is told, on theother hand, of the Indian chieftain, Hatuey, who, doomed todie for resisting the invaders, staunchly refused to accept theChristian faith as the gateway to salvation when he learnedthat his executioners, too, hoped to get to Heaven. It is faxmore probable that Hatuey, rather than the anonymous woman, 'representecf contemporary Indian opinion of their new over-lords.

England and France"in,their colonies, followed the Spanishpractice of enslavement .of the Indians. There was one con.spi~uo:usdifference..-theattempts of the Spanish Crown, how-everin~ifective, .to restrict' Indian Slavery to those who reo~ ~'~"<W'qu-.;";'F<yand '0 ,he,.wulike Qu-ib,on 'he'~P~9io:u~ple~.th~t,they~ere cannibals. From the standpoint ofth(lnri~i~hgOY~~entrndian slavery, unlike later NegroslavcfY which involved Vital imperial interests, was a purelycolonial ma,~ter.AS Lauber writes: "The h01l1egovernment Wasinterest(ld in colonial slave' conditions and legislation only whenthe- African slave trade Was involved. . . . Since it (Indianslavery) was' never sufficiently extensive to interfere withNegro slavery and the slave trade, it never received any at-tention from the home government, and so existed as legal be-cause never declared ilIegal."20

But Indian slavery never W8$ extensive in the British do-minions. Ban~gh, writing' of Virginia, says that popular senti-ment had never "demanded the SUbjection of the meJian race

ORIGIN OF NEGRO SLAVERY

per, se, as was practically the ,'c~e,.with the Negro in thefirsrslave act of 1661, but only ofaportionof it, and that admittedlya very small portion. . .. In the case of the Indian .'. • slaveryWas viewed as of an occasional nature, a p~eventive~nalty"and. not as a normal and permanent condition." ~~In the NewEngland colonies Indian slavery was unprofitable, for,slayery,of any kind was unprofitable because it was unsuited to .the di- "versified agriculture of 'these' colonies, Iii, addition: t~e Indianslave was 'inefficient. The SpaniardS discovered that one, Negrowas worth four Indians.22 ~ prominent oflida1in:Hispam6lain- "'sisted in 1518 that "permissio~,be;,given tob.dngNegroes, a racerobust ~orlabQr, itist~ad,of}iatives~·s6 weak. that they can 'onlybe employed in tasks requiring~ttle:eridi1ran~e, such as taking.care of maize fields o~f~~~"28 TIt~ f~ture'.staples~fthe NewWor1cf,~uga:r and cott:on,reqll:4"e~ strength, which theIndianlacked;: and demanded" the robuS!:,"cotton nigger",'as'rngat's,need' of strong mules pfoMce4 ii\,Lo~~na~ the epithet"sUgarmules," 'According to La~ber,:"When cortfpaxed'~Viith S1lJl)S .

paid for, Negroes at the same time 'and place the prices of,lri~iai:l$la.v~ axe fO\lp.d to:hare been. consi~etably Iowe~.",2.

The Indian reserveir; too, •was' 'limit~d;, .the: Afdcan, ,ipex..hausclble:N'egroes t~~efo~ew¢te~tolen~nAiricato w~rkthe'Ian,dss~dle~: ,fJ,'omthe' ind~a~i i~.Aineric;~ .• Thtj' voyages of·Pripc~' Henry. th~.1'JavjgatoJ,'coJnpleinented:tho~e ofCOlum~~~,W¢~:.Mri~an:his~()ry bec:a9l~ the.c9mplem~n:t of 'Westlndian.

,., .'. " . .. . ... ". . ...

. Th~ immediate successor of the Iridian, however, was not theNegro' but' the poor white. These white servants Included avariety of types. Some were indentured servants, so' called be-cause, before departure from the homeland, they had signed acontract, indented by law, binding them to service for a stipu-lated time in return for their passage. Still others, knownas"redemptioners," arranged with the captain of the ship to payfor their passage on arrival or within' a specifiedtime there-after; if they did not, they were sold by the captain to the .highest bidder. Others were convicts, sent out by the deliberatepolicy of the home' government, to. serve for a specified period ..

This emigration was In rune with mercantilist theories of the

10 CAPITALISM AND SLAVERY

day' which strongly advocated putting the poor to industriousand useful labor and favored emigration, voluntary or involun-tary, as relieving' the poor rates and finding more profitableoccupations abroad for idlers and vagrants at home. "lnden-turedservitude," writes C. M. Haar,"was called into existence'by two different though complementary forces: there was botha positive attraction from the New World and a negativers,pplsiol1 fJ:'()rnthe Qld," 25 In a state paper delivered to James Iin r6o(SBacon emphasized that by emigration England wouldgain "a double commodity, in the avoidance of people herejandinma}{ing use of them there." 26

This ,tempOrary service at the outset denoted no inferiority.or degraqation. Many of the servants were manorial tenants .tI~eing from. the irksome restrictions of feudalism, Irishmenseeking freedom from the oppression of landlords and bishops,Germans running away from the devastation of the ThirtyYears'Wa;. They transplanted in their hearts a burning desireforIalld, an ardenr passion for independence. They came to theland of opportunity to be free men, their imaginations power-fully wroug~tupol1 bv g-Iowing and extravagant descriptionsinthehomecountry.2·C It was only later when, in the words

..of Dr. Williamson, "all ideals of a decent colonial society, ofa. better and greater. England overseas, were swamped in thepursuitofanjmmediate gain,"!!8 that the introduction of dis-reputable elements became a general feature of indenturedservice.

A r~gular traffic developed in these indentured servants. Be-tween 1654 and 1685 ten ,thousand sailed from Bristol. alone,chiefly for the West Indies and Virg-inia.lIO In 1683 white serv-ants represented <me-.sixthof Virg-inia's.Population. Two-thirdsof the iinmigTants to Pennsylvania during the eighteenth cen-tury were white servants; in four years 15,000 came to Phila-delphia alone.' It has been estimated that more than a Quarterof a' million persons were of this class during the colonialperiod,80 and that they probably constituted one-half of allEnglish immigrants, the maiority going to the middle colonies.sl

As commercial speculation entered the picture, abuses creptin. Kidnaping was encouraged to a great degree and became

:~'

ORIGIN

. a regular business in such towns as London and Bristol. Adultswould be plied with liquor, children enticed with sweetmeats,The kidnapers were called "spirits," defined as "one that takethupp men and women atld .children·andsells them .on ..ashippto be conveyed beyond the sea.". The captain of a ship tradingto Jamaica would visit the Oerkenwell HOQSeot Correction,ply with drink the girls who.had been inlprisonedth~reas djs...orderly, and "invite" them to go to the West Irtdies.82 The/temptations held out to the unwary and the credulous were soattractive that, as .the mayor. of Bristolcomplained, husb~nds .were induced to forsake their wives, wives their husbands; andapprentices their masters, while wanted criminals found on thetransport ships a refuge from the arms of the law.lIB The wavf!of German immigration developed the "newlander," the .labofagent of those days, who traveled up and down the Rhine Val':'ley persuading the feudal peasants to sell their belongings andemigrate to America, recei'vinga .commission for' each ..enri..grant.s. .

Much has been written about the trickery these "newlanders"were not averse to' ep1ploying.8G But whatever the deceptionspractised, it remains true, 'as Friedrich Kapp has' written, that"the real ground for the emigration fever lay in the unhealthypolitical. and economic conditions. ., . .The misery and oppres;'sion of the conditions of the little (German) states promotedemigration much more dangerously and continuously than theworst 'newlander.' "88 ..

Convicts provided another steady Source of white labor. Theharsh feudal laws of England recognized three hundred capitalcrimes. Typical hanging offences included: picking-a pocketfor more than a shilli~g; shoplifting to the value of fiveshlll-ings; steaIing a horse or a sheep; poaching rabbiesona gentle-man's estate.a7 Offences for which the punishment prescribedby law was transportation comprised the stealing of cloth, burn':'ing stacks of corn, the maiming and killing of cattle, hinderingcustoms officers in the execution of their duty, and' corruptlegal practices.S8 Proposals made in 1664would have banished.t()the colonies all vagrants, rogues and idlers, petty thieves, gipsies,and loose persons frequenting unlicensed brothels.89 A piteous

CA~ITALISM AND SLAVERY,

petition in 1667 prayed for transportation instead of the deathsentence fora wife convicted of stealing goods valued at three$hillings and four penee~4C!,In1745 transportation was the pen-alty for the theft of a silver spoon and a gold watch.'l One yearafter the emancipation.of the Negro slaves, transportation wasthep'enalty for trade union 'activity. It is difficult to resist the 'conclusion that there was some connection between the lawand the labor needs ,of the ,plantations, and the marvel is thatso few people endedupin'the~colonies overseas.

Benjamin Franklin opposed this' "dumping upon the NewW odd of the outcasts of the Old" as the most cruel insult everoffered by one nation to another, and asked, if England wasjustified in sending" her convicts to the colonies, whether thelatter were justified in sending to England their rattlesnakes in 'exchange?'2 It is, not clear why Franklin should have beenso sensitive. Even if the convicts were hardened criminals, theg.re~~in<:reaseof indentured servants and free emigrants wouldhave tended to render the convict .influence innocuous, as in-creasing quantities of water poured in a glass containing. poison.Without co~victsthe early development of the Australian' col-oniesinthe nineteenthc~ntury would have been impossible.Only a few of the colonists" however, were so particular. Thegeneral attitude was summed up' by a contemporary: "Their,labor would be more, benefici.linlin infant settlement, than 'their vices could' be pernicious." 48' There was nothing Strangeabout this attitude. The great problem ina new country is theproblem of labor, and convict labor, as .Merivale has pointedout,wasequiyalent to a free' present by the government to the

, settlers without burdening the latter with the expense of im-portation." The governor of VirginIa in 161 I was willing to,welcome convicts reprieved from death as "a readie way tofurnishuswith men .and not allways with the worst kind ofmen."4lI1n~ West Indies were prepared to accept all and sun-dry, even the spawn of Newgate and Bridewell, for "no goale-bird [sic) can be so incorrigible, but there is hope of his con-formity here, as well as of his preferment, which some havehappily experimented." 48.

The political and civil disturbances in England between, 1640 '

,'~

J.'

ORlGINOFNEGRO SLAVERY 13

and 1740 augmented the supply of white servants. Political and, religious nonconformists paid for their unorthodoxy by trans-portation, mostly to the sugar islands. Such wasthefste ofmany of Cromwell's Irish prisoners, who were sent to the WestIndies;" So thoroughly was this policy pursued that an activeverb was added to the English language-to '.'barbadoes"a per-son.48 .Montserrat became largely an Irish colony,40 and'tb,eIrish brogue is still frequently heard today in many parts of theBritish, West Indies. The Irish, however, were poor servants.They hated the English,werealwaysready to aidEnglan.~'~enemies, and in a revolt in the Leeward Islands in 168950we canalready see signs of that buriUng indignation which, accordingto Lecky, gave W~ington~orne of his best soldiers.1Il Thevanquished in Cromwell's, Scottish campaigns were treated likethe Irish before them, and Scotsmen came to be regarded as"the general travai1lers and soldiers in most foreign pans."62Religious intolerance sentmore workersto the plantatioI1S~I~1661 Quakers refusing to take the oath for the third time wereto be transported; in 1664transponati0J:l' to any plantation ex-cept Virgipia or New England, or a fine of one hundredpounds was decreed for the third offence -forpersons over ~-teen asSembling in groups of five, or more under pretence 'ofreligion:n Many of Monmouth's adherents were sent to Bar-bados, with orders to be detained as servantS for ten years. Theprisoners were granted in batches tofavorit:e co~rtiers; whomade handsome profits from the traffic in which, it is alleged,even the Queen shared.~ A similar policy was resorted to afte,rthe Jacobite risings of the eighteenth century.

The transportation of these white servants shows in its traelight the horrors of the Middle Passage-not as somethingunusual or inhuman but as a part of the age. Tile emigrantswere packed like herrings. According to Mittel!)erger"eachservant was allowed about two feet in width and six feet inleilgth in bed.55 The boats were small, the voyage long, thefood, in the absence of refrigeration, bad, disease inevitable. A

'petition to Parliament in 1659 describes how sevent)r..;twosetv ..ants had been locked up below deck during the whole voyageof five and a half weeks, "amongst horses, that their souls;

CAPITALUAi AND ..SLAVERY

throug'h heat and.steam und!;:r the tropic, fainted in them."GO

Inevi~bJy abuses crept into the system and Fearon was shockedby' "the' horrible picture of human.su1fering which d1is livingsepulchre" of an emigrant vesselinPhilade~phia afforded.G~Butconditions even for the free paSsengers were not much better inthose days, and rhe comine~t'of.a Lady of Quality describinga voyage' from Scotland to the West. Indies ona ship. full ofll'lderituredservants shou1d~anish anyideas that the horrors of,the slave shipareto be accounted for by the fact that the vic~rims were Negroes. "It isbardljt possible," she writes, "to be-lievethat,humannature could be so dep~ved, as to treat fellowcreaturesin such a manner for SO little gain."~8

The transportation of servants and convicts produced apow~rfulveSted interestin England. When the Colonial Board'Wascreated in 1661,notthe least important of its duties Wasthe control of thetradeinindenturedservants. In 1664 a com-mission Was appoirited,headed by the king's brother, to ex-amine and report upon the exportation of servants. In

1670

anact prohibiting the transportation of English prisoners overseaswas. rejected; another. bill against the stealing of children cameto nothing. Inthe.transportationoffelons, a whole bierarchy~from courtly sec!etariesand grave 'j\ldges down to the jailorsand turnkeys, insisted on having a share in the spoils. 3D It, hasbeen suggested that it Was humanity for his fellow countrp;men and men of his own color which dictated the planter'spreference for the Negro slave.~~Of this humanity there is nota trace in the records of the. time, at least as far as the planta-tion colonies and' commerci;d production were concerned. At-tempts to register emigrant servan~ and regularize the proce-dureof transportation-thereby giving full legal recognition tothe system--wereevaded. ·1Qe leading merchantS. and. publicofficials Were all involved in the' practice~ The penalty for. ma

ll-

stealing was exposure in the pillory, bUI:' no missiles from thespectators were tolerated. Such opposition as there was camefrom the masses. It.was enough to point a finger .at a woman inthe streets of London and call her a "spirit" to start a riot.

TlU._ the ••",.rion in England when JeffreY. "me to A,.! ,Bristol on his tour of the West to clean up the remnants of 'IJ

ORIGIN OF NEGRO SLAV!RY IS

Monmouth's reb,ellion.Je1i'reys has been handed down topos..terity as a "butcher," the tyrannical deputy of. an arbitraryking, and his legal visitation is recorded in the textbooksas the"Bloo~y Assizes." They had one. redeeming. feature. Jeffreysvowed. that he had come to Bristol with a broom to sweep thecity, clean, and' his wrath fell on the kidnapers who. ipfeste~the highest municipal offices. The merchants and justices.wer.ein the habit of straining the law to increase .thenumber offelons who could be transported to the sug~rplantatiol1s'theyowned in the West Indies. They would terrify petty offenderswith the prospect of hanging and then induce themto pleadfor transportation. Jeffreys turned upon the mayor, complete inscarlet and furs, who was about to sentence a' pickpocket totransportation to Jamaica, forced him, to the great astonish-ment of. Bristol's worthy citizens, to enter the prisoners' dock,like a common felon, to plead guilty or not guilty, and hectoredhim in characteristic language: "Sir, Mr. Mayo,r, you Imeane,Kidnapper, and an old Justice of the Peace on the bench ..•. Idoe notknowe him, an old knave: he goes tothe tavemeand

. for a pintof sack he will bind people servants to the Indies atthe taverne. A kidnapping knave! Lwill have his ears off, beforeI goe forth of towne ••.. Kidnapper, you, I mean, Sir•..• Ifitwere not in respect of the sword, which is over yo~ head, I

o would send you to Newgate, you kidnapping knave. You lifeworse than the pick-pockett who stands, there. '.' . I hear thetrade of kidnapping.is o( great request. They. can discharge afelon or a traitor, provided they will go. to Mr. Alderman'splantation at. the West Indies." The mayor was fined onethousand pounds, but apart from the loss of dignity and thefear aroused in their hearts, the merchants lost nothing=-theirgains were leftInvlolare." .

According toone explanation, Jeffreys' insults were the resultof intoxication or insanity.o2 It is not improbable that they wereconnected with a complete. reversal of' mercantilist thought onthe question of emigration, as a result of the internal develop-ment of Britain herself, By the end of the seventeenth centurythe stress had shifted from the accumulation of the preciousmetals as the aim of national economic policy to, the develop-

I6/c::A.~I'rALISM AN'DSLAVERY

rnent. of industry within the country,thepr'0njotionof em-'pl()Yrnent and the encouragement of exports. The mercantilistsarguedt~at thehest way to reduce costs, and thereby competewirh other cOuntries, Was to pay low wages, which a large pop-ulatiO.lltendedtoensure. The fear Of overpopulation.at ,the be-ginning of the seventeenth century gave way to a fear of under,..popUlation in the middle of the same, century. The essential ,condition of colonization~migrati~n from the home country

'7'-n0vv-ran counter to the. principle that national interest de,.manded a large population at home. Sir Josiah Child denied thatemigration to America had" weake~ed.E~gland, ,but he was-forced to admit that in this. view he Was in a minority ofpos~sibly one in a thousand, while he endorsed the general opinionthat "whatever tends to the depopulating ofa kingdom rends tothe impoverishment of it."GBJeffreys'unusual humanitarianismappears less strange and may be attributed rather to economicthan to spirituous cO,nsiderations. His patrons, the Royal Family,h~d already giVen thek.patronage to the RoYal African Com-pany and the Negro slave trade. For the surplus population'needed to people the colonies in the New World the British hadturned ..to Africa,and by r680they already had>positiveevi_dence, jnBarbados, that the African was satisfying the neces-sities of production better than the European. '

The status of these servants became progressively Worse inthe plantation' colonies. SerVitude, originally a free personalrelation based on voluntary contract for a definite period of ,service, iulieu of transport !Ition and maintenance, tended topass into a property relation which asserted a control of vary_ing extent over the bodies and liberties of the person duringservice as if.he were a thing.ff Eddis, writing onrhe eve of the'ReV'0iution, found the servants groaning "beneath a Worse thanEgyptian bondage." 8G In Maryland servitude developed into aninsti~tion approaching in some respects ch~ttelslavery;.8 OfPennsylvania it has been said that "no mattethow kindly theymay have been treated in particular cases, or how voluntarilythey may have entered into the relation,as a class and when.once bound, indentured seryantswere temporarily Chattels."8'Ortthesugar plantations of Barbados the servants spent their

-lri:h.~ __

ORIGIN' OF ~~GRO' SLAVERY

time "gri~ding at, the mills and attending the furnaces, ordigging in this scorching island;" having nothing to feed on(notwithstanding their hard labour) but po~atoe roots, nor todrink, but water with such roots washed in it, besides the breadand tears of their own a(Hictions;, ~ing bought and soldsdllfrom one planter to mother; or attached as horses arid beastsfor the debts, of l=heir masters, being whipt at the, whippingposts (as rogues.) for, their masters'pleasure, and sleeping. insties worse than hogs in England .... "te As Professor Harlowconcludes, the weight of evidence proves incontestably thatthe conditions under which white' lab9r was procured andutilized in Barbados were "persistencly severe,' occasionally dis-honourable, and generally a disgrace to the English pame~"8tI

English officialdom •. however, took the view that servitudewas not.too bad, and the servant in Jamaica was better off thanthe husbandman in Erigland. "It is a place as grateful to you fortrade as ;my partof the 'World. .It is not so odious.as it isrepresented.t'f? But there-was some sensitiveness on the ques-tion, The Lords of Trade and Plantations, in 1676" opposed theuse of the word "servitude"as a mark ofbondage and slavery,and suggested "service" instead.l1 The 'institution was not af-fected by the change. Thehopehas been expressed that thewhite servants were sparedthe lash So liberally bestowed UP0rttheir Negro comrades.P They had no such good fortune, Sincethey were bound ~or a limited period, the planter had lessinterest in their welfare than in that of the Negroes who wereperpetual servants and thereforeP'the rmost useful appurte-nances" of a plantation.P Eddis found the Negroes "almost inevery instance, under more comfortable circumstances than themiserable European, over whom the rigid planter exercises aninflexible severity." l' The servants Were regarded, by theplanters as "white trash," and were bracketed with the NegroesM laborers. "Not one of these colonies ever was or ever can bebrought to any considerable improvement without a supply ofwhite servants and Negroes," declared the Council of Mont-serrat in 1680.15 In a European society in which subordinationwas considered essential, in which' Burke could speak of theworking classes as "miserable sheep" and Voltaire as "canaille,"

18 CAPITALISM AND SLAVERY

and Linguet condemn the worker to the USeof his physicalstrength alone, for "everything would be lost once he knewthat he had a mind" 78_in such a sOciety it is unnecessary toseek for apologies for the condition of the white servant in thecolonies.

Defoe bluntly stated that the white servant Was a slave.'lTHewas not. The servant's loss of liberty Was of limited duration.

.the Negro Was slave for life. The sen'ant's status could notdescend to his offspring, Negro children took the status of themother. The master at no time had absolute control over theperson and liberty of his servant as he had over his slave. Theservant had rights, limited but recognized by law and insertedin a contract. He enjoyed, for instance, a limited right toproperty .. In actual law the conception of the servant as apiece of property never went beyond that of personal estateand never reached the stage of a chattel or real estate. The lawsin the colonies maintained this rigid distinction and visited co-·habitation between the races with severe penalties. The servantcould aspire, at the end of his tenn, to a plot of land, though,as Wertenbaker points OUt for Virginia; it was not a legalright, 78 and conditions varied from colony to colony. The serfin Europe could therefore hope for an early freedom inAmerica which villeinage could not afford. The freed servantsbecame small yeomen farmers, settled in the back country, ademocratic force in a society of large aristocratic plantationowners, and, were the pioneers in Westward expaqsion. ThatWas why Jefferson in America, as Saco in Cuba, favored the in-troduction of European servants instead of MClean slaves-astending to democracy rather than aristocracy.78

The institution of white servitude, however, ~ad grave dis-advantages. Postlethwayt, a rigid mercantilist, argued that whitelaborers in the colonies would tend to create rivalry with themother Country in manufacturing. Better black slaves on ~plantations than White servants in indnstty, which would en- "'$>,'\} ~courage aspirations to independence.8o The supply moreoverWas beCOming increasingly difficult, and the need of the planta-tions outstripped the English convi~tions. In addition, mer-chants were involved in many vexatious and costly proceedings

ORIGIN OF NEGRO SLAVERY· 19-

arising from people signifying their willingness to emigrate,ac-cepting food and clothes in advance, and then sueing for un-IawhIl detention.81 ,lnde~tured servants were not forthcomingin sutlicient quantities to replace those who. had served theirterm. On the plantations, escape was easy for the white servant;less easy for the Negro who, if freed, tended, in self-defence, tostay in his locality where he was well known and less likely tobe apprehended as a vagrant or runaway s~Ye. The servant ex-pected land at the end of his contract; the ~egro, in a strangeenvironment, conspicuou,s by his color and features, and igno-rant of the white man's language and ways. could be keptpermanently divorced from the land. Racialdifferences made iteasier to justify and rationalize Negro slavery, to exact: themechanical obedience of a plough-ox ora cart-horse, to demandthat resignation and that complete moral and intellectual sub-jection which alone make slave labor ~ssible. Finally, and thiswas the decisive factor, the Negro slave was cheaper. Themoney which procured a white man's services, for ten yearscould buy a Negro for life.&! As the, 'governor of Barbadosstated, the Barbadian planters found by experience that "threeblacks work better and cheaper than one white man."sa

But the experience with white .servitude had been invaluable.Kidnaping in Africa encountered no such difficulties as wereencountered in England. Capmins and ships had the experienceof the one trade to guide-them in the other; Bristol, the centerof the servant trade, 'became one of the centers of the slavetrade. Capital accumulated from the one financed the other.White servitude was the historic base upon which Negroslavery was constructed. The felon-drivers in the plantationsbecame without effort slave-drivers. "In signi1icant numbers,",writes Professor Phillips, ''the Mricanswere latecomers, fittedinto a system already developed." M

Here, then, is the origin of Negro slavery. The reason waseconomic, not racial; it had to do not with the color of the IJN'laborer, but the cheapness of the labor: As, compared withIndian and white labor, Negro slavery was eminently superior."In each case," writes Bassett, discussing North Carolina, "it

CAPITAtI'SMAN'D SLAVERY

W3s> a survivld ofthetittest. Both Indian slavery. and whiteservitude were to gopoWn before the black man's superiorendurance, docmty, and labor capacity."81 The features of theman, his hair, color and dentifrice, his "subhuman" charac-teristics so' widely pleaded, were only the later rationaJi7..ationsto justify, a simple economicJact:that the colonies needed labor'and ',resorted, to Negro labor' because it was, cheapest and best.This was n()t a theory, it was a practiCal concIusiondeducecl

' from the personal experience of the planter. He would havegone to' the moon; if necessary, for labor. Africa was nearerthan the nioon, nearer too than the more populous countries ofIndia and China; But thei.rturn was to come.

This ~hjte' seiyjtUde is of cardina] 'importance for an under-standing 'of the development of the New World and the

, Negro's place in. that development. I~ completely explodes theold .myth t!!tat the whites could not stand the strain of manuallabor in the cIiIllateof the ~ew World and that, for thisreason' and this reason alone, the. European powers had re-coi!rse .to African$.The .argurnenr is quite untenable. A Missis-sippi dictUrnwj}) have it that ,"only, black met},and mules can,face the-sun in July~" Brit the, whites faced the sun .for well

' ov.er a' hundred years' in :Barba4os, and the Salzburgers, of'Geofg1aindignantly denied that rice cultivati,ot} was harmfulto" them. 8~ .The Caribbean islands' are well within the tropicalzone, bue their climate is mote eq1,lablethan tropica~,the tern-pet;ltUrerarely exceeds 80 degrees though itremairis uniformthe whole year round, and they are exposed to the gentle windsfrom the sea. The, unbearable' humidity, of an August day insome parts of the. United States has no equal)n the islands.Moreover only the southern tip of Florida in the United Statesis actuaUy,tropical, yet Negro labor flourished in Virginia andCarolina. The Southern parts of the United States are not hotterthan South Italy or Spain, 'and de Tocq\leville asked why theEUropean could not work there as welLas in those two COUn-tries?'87.WhenWhitneyinvented his cotton gin, it was conti ..dently expected that cotton would be produced by free labor onsmall farms, and it was,iniact, so produced.8s Wher,e the whitefarmer was ousted, the enemy was not the climate but the slave

~r

ORIG,INOF NEGRO SLAVERY 11

"'. until theplan~tiQn,an4the whitttiai'tller¢ovedwes.nvar... " '.expllndingplantation sent him on his wanderings again. Wtit-ingin 1857, Weston pointed outthat labor in the fields of theextreme South and all the heavy outdoor workin New Orleanswere performed by whites, without any ill consequences. "Nopart of the C9ntinen~,b()rdersoftheGulf of ,Mexico,"Jtewrote, "and non~. of the islands wlJich ,separate it from' theocean, need be abandoned to the 'barbarism of negro slavery/'soIn our own time we who have witnessed the dispossession ofNegroes by white sharecroppers in the South ~d the massmigration of Negroes from the South to the colder climates ofDetroit. New York;,P~ttsburgh and other industrial ,cent~r~ofthe North, can no longer accept the convenient rationalizationthat Negro .labor was employed on the slave plantations be-cause the climate was too rigorous for the constitution of thewhite man.

A constant and steady emigration of poor whites from Spainto Cuba, to the very end of Spanish dominion, characterize~Spanish colonial policy. Fernando Ortiz has drawn a strikingcontrast between the role of tobacco and sugar in Cuban his-tory.: Tobacco was a free white industry intensively cultivatedon small farms; sugar, was. a ,black slave industry extensivelrcultivated .on large plantati()ns.Hefurther compared, the" freeCuban tobacco industry with its slave Virginiancounterp~.1!0What determined the difference was not climate but theeco-nomic structure of the two areas. The whites could hardlyhave endured the tropical heat of Cuba and succumbed to thetropical heat of Barbados. In Puerto Rico, the jfbaro, the poorWhite, peasant,isstill the. basic'typ~, demonstrating. in thewords of Grenfell 'Price, how erroneous is the belief thataftetthree generations the white man cannot breed in the tropics.o1Similar white communities have survivedin the Caribbean, fromthe earliest settlements right 'down to our own times, in theDutch West Indian islands .of S~ba.andSt.Martio. For s()mesixty years Frenchsettlershave lived in St. Thomas nor.onlyas fishermen 'but as agriculturalists, forming- today the "largestsingle farming class" in the island;92 As Dr. Price concludes:"It appears that northern whites can retam a fair. standard for

22 CAPITALISM AND SLAVEI\Y

generations in the trade-wind tropics if the location is free fromthe worst forms of tropical disease, if theeconomic.retu.rn isadequate, and if the community is prepared to undertake hard; .physical work." 98 Over one hundred years ago a number ofGerman emigrants settled in Seaford, Jamaica. They survivetoday, with no visiblesi8"s of deterioration, fJatlycontradict_ing the popular belief as to the possibility of survival of thenorthern white in the' tropics.94 Wherever, in short, tropicalagdcUlture remained on a small farming basis, whites not onlysurvived but prospered. Where the whites disappeared, thecause Was not the climate but the supersessionof the smaIl farmby the large plantation,. with itsconseqllent demand for a largearid steady supply of labor.

The climatic theory of the plantation is thus nothing but arationalization; In an excellent eSsay on the subject ProfessorEdgar Thompson writes: "The plantation is not to be ac-

-counted for by climate. It is a political institution.!) It is, we.might add, more: it is an economic institution. Thedimatic. theory "is part of an ideOlogy which .rationalizes and natural-izes an existing social and economic order, and this everywhereseems to be an order in which there is a race problem."96

The history of Australia clinches the argument. Nearly halfof this island' continent lies within the tropical zone. In part ofthis tropical area. the state of Queensland,. the chief crop issugar. When the industry began to develop, Australia had achoice of two alternatives: black labor or White labor. Thecomlllonwealth began its sugar cultivation in the usual' way~with imported black labor from the Pacific islands. Increasingdemands, however, were made for a white Australia policy, andin' the twentieth centurp- non-white immigration was pro-hibited. It is irrelevant to' consider here that as a result the costof. production of AUstralian sugar is prOhibitive, that the in-dustry is artifici~l. and survives' only behind the Chinese wallof AuStralian· autarchy. AUstralia was wiUing to pay a highprice in orderto remain a Whiteman's country. Our sole con-cern here with the question is that this price was paid from the

.pockets of the AuStralian consumer and not in the physical de-generation of the Australian worker.

OI\IGINOF NEGI\O SLAVEI\Y 23

Labor in the Queensland sugar industry today is whollywhite. "Queensland," writes H;·L. Wilkinson, "affords the onlyexample in the world of European colonization in. the tropicson an extensive scale. It does more; it shows a large Europeanpopulation doing the whole of the workof its civilization fromthe meanest service, and most exacting manual labor, tomehighest form of intellectualism." 88 To such an extent has scienceexploded superstition that Australian scientists, today arguethat the only condition on which white men and women canremain healthy in the tropics is that they must engage in hardmanual work. Where they have done so, as in Queensland,"the most rigorous scientific ·examination," according to theAustralian Medical Congress in 1920, "failed to show any or-ganic changes in white residents, which enabled them to be dis-tinguished from residents of temperate climates."s,

Negro slavery, thus, had nothing to do with climate, Itsorigin can be expressed in three. words: .in the Caribbean, Sugarjon tl).e mainland, Tobacco and COtton. A change in the eCO-nomic structure produced a corresponding change in the labotsupply. The fundamental fact was "the creation of an inferior Asocial and economic organization of exploiters and exploited.""8 ~Sugar, tobacco, and cotton required the large plantation .andhordes of cheap labor, and the small farm ofthe ex-indenttiredwhite servant could not possibly survive. The tobacco of thesmall farm in Barbados was displaced by the sugar of the largeplantation. The rise of the sugar industry in the Caribbean wasthe signal for a gigantic dispossession of the small farmer. Bar-bados in 1645 had I1,2od small white farmers and 5,680 Negroslaves; in 1667 'there were 745·large plantation owners and82,023 slaves. In 1645 the island had 18,300 whites fit to beararms, in 1667 only 8,300.89 The white farmers were squeezedout. The planters continued to offer inducements to new-comers, but they could no longer offer the main inducement,land. White servants preferred the. other islands where theycould hope for. land, to Barbados, where they were sure therewas none.IOO In desperation the planters proposed legislationwhich would prevent a landowner from purchasing more land,

24 CAPITALISM AND SLAVERY

compel Negroes and servants to wear dimity manufactured inBarbados (what would English mercantilists have said?) toprovide employment for the poor whites, and prevent Negroes

. from being taught to trade.IOl The governor of Barbados in16

95drew a pitiful picture of these ex-servants. Without fresh meator rum, "they are domineered over and used like dogs, and thisin time will undoubtedly drive away all the commonalty of thewhite people." His only suggestion Was to give the right toelect members of the Assembly to every white man owningtWo acres of land. Candidates for election would "sometimesgive the poor miserable creatures a little rum and fresh pro-visions and such things as would be of nourishment to them,"in order to get their Votes---and elections were held everyyear.

I02It is not surprising that the exodus continued.

The. poor whites began their travels, disputing their way aUover the Caribbean, from Barbados to Nevis, to Antigua, andthence to Guiana and Trinidad, and ultimately Carolina. Every-where they were pursued and dispossessed by the same inexo-rable economic force, sugar; and in Carolina they were safefrom cotton only for a hundred years. Between 167

2and '7

08

thewhite men in Nevis decreased by more than three-fifths, theblack population more than doubled. Between 167

2and '7

27

the white males of Montserrat declined by more than two,.thirds, in the same period the black population increased morethan eleven times. loa "The more they buie," said the Barbadians,referring to their slaves, "the more they are able to buye, for ina yeare and a halfe they will eame with God's blessing as muchas they cost." 104 King Sugar had begun his depredations, chang-ing flourishing commonwealths of small farmers into vast sugarfactories owned by a camarilla of absentee capitalist magnatesand worked by a mass of alien proletarians. The plantationeconomy had no room for poor whites, the proprietor. or over-seer; a physician on the more prosperous plantations, possiblytheir families,these were sufficient. "If a state," wrote Weston,"could be Supposed to be made up of continuous plantations,the white race would be not merely starved out, but literallysqueezed out."105 The resident plante~, apprehensive of thegrowing disproportion between whites and blacks, passed De-

ORIGIN OF· NEGRO SLAVERY1S

ficiency Laws to compel absentees, under penalty of fines, tokeep white servants, The absentees preferred to pay the fines.In the West Indies today the poor whites survive in the "Red-.legs" of Barbados, pallid, weak and depraved from in-breeding,strong rum, insufficient food and abstinence from manual labor.For, as Merivalewrote, "in a .country where Negro slavery .prevails extensively, no white is industrious." 106 . . .

It was the triumph, not of geographical conditions, as Har-· low contends.v" but of economic. The victims rwere theNegroes in Africa and the small white fanners. The increase of .

· wealthfor the few whites was as phenomenal as the increase 01misery for the many blacks. The Barbados crops in':16so,over a twenty-month period, were worth over ..three fl#Ilion·pounds,108'about fifteen millions in modern money .. 111:166.6Barbados was computed to be seventeen times as rich as it, had

.been before the planting of sugar. "The buildings in 1643 were.mean, :with things only for necessity, but in 1666, phtte,:je:wels.· and .household stuff were estimated at £5'00,000, their buildings

very.fairand beautiful; and their houseslike castles, t~eirsugarhouses .:and negroes huts show themselves. from the sea like SO

many small towns, each defended by Its castle." 109The price of.land skyrocketed. A plantation of.five .hundred acres. whichsold for::.f4OOin 1640 fetched £7,000 for-a half-share in 164a.l10·The estate of one Captain Waterman, comprising eight hundred .acres, had at one time been split up a~ong no less than forty ..'proprieters.P! For sugar was and is essentially a capitalist uno.dertaki~g;involving not only agricultural operations but thecrude stages of refining as.welt A report on the French sugarislands stated that to make ten hogsheads of sugar required asgreat an expenditure in beasts of burden, mills and utensils asto make a hundred.ll2 James Knight of Jamaica estimated thatit required four hundred acres to start a sugar pl~ntation.118According to Edward Long, another planter and the historianof the island, it needed £5,000 to start a small plantation ofthree hundred acres, producing from thirty to fifty hogsheadsof sugar a year, £14,000 for a plantation of the same size pro-ducing one hundred hogsheads.v+ There could be only twoclasses in such a society, wealthy planters and oppressed slaves.

z6 CAPITALISM AND SLAVERY

The moral is reinforced by a consideration of the history of "Virginia, where the plantationeco~omy was based not an$)lg~r !:>Uton tobacco.The~selU'ches of Professor Wetten-bilker have exploded the legend that Virginia from the outsetWas an aristocratic dominion. In the early seventeenth centuryabout two-thirds of the ,landholders had neither $laves nor in-dentured servants. The strength of the colony lay in its numer-ous white yeomanry; Conditions became worse as the marketfor t~bacco Was glutted by ~patlish competition and the Vir-gitlians demanded in wrath that something be done about"those petty English plantations in the savage islands in. the

' ~est Indies" through which quantities of Spamshtobacco' re;lch(ld England.Ius None the less, though prices continued tofaIl, the exports of Virginia and Maryland increased more thansix times between 1663l1.l1d 1699. The explanation lay in two"\V()rds+Negroslavery, which cheapened the COstof produc-

,tion: Negro slaves, one~twentieth of the population in ,16

70

,

were one-fourth in 1730., "Slavery, from being. aninsigniticantfactor.in.the economic life of the colony, had become the veryfoundation Upon which it was estabIjshed." There was Stillroom in Virgitlia, as there Was not in Barbados, f()r the smallf:U-lller,butlandwas useless to him if he could not competewith slave labor. So the Virginian peasant, like the Barbadian,Was squeezed out. "The Virgitlia which had formerly been solargely- fheland of the Iittlefarmer,had become the'land ofMasters and Slaves. For aught else there was no room."U6

The whole future history of the Caribbean is nothing morethan a d~1:ting of th~j's and.a crossing:of the t's, It happenedearHer' in, the British and French than in the Spanish islands,where the process was delayed until the advent of the dollar~iplomacy of ou~owntirne. Under American capital we haveWitnessed the transformation of Cuba, Puerto Rico and the

'Dominican Republic into huge sugar factories (though the largeplantation,especially in Cuba,w-as not unknown under theSpanish reg'ime) , owned abroad and operated'by alien labor, onthe British West Indian pattern. That this process is taking placewith free labor and in nominally independent areas (Puerto,RicQexcepted) helps us to see in'its true light the first im,

ORIGIN O!i'NEGROSLAV!tRY 17portation "of Negro slave labor in the British Caribbean-a.phase in the hi!\toryof the plantation. In the words of-ProfessorPhillips, the plantation system was "less dependent upon slaverythan slavery was upon it ...• The plantation system formed, soto speak, the, industrial and social frame of government • . .,while slavery was a code of written laws enacted for that pur-pose.nUT

Where the ,plantation did not develop, as .in the Cubantobacco industry, Negro labor was rare and white labor pre-dominated. The liberal section 'of the Cuban population con-sistently advocated the cessation of the Negro slave trade andthe introduction ,Q£ whitelmmigrants-Saco, mouthpiece of theliberals,called for the immigration of workers "white and free,from all parts of the world, of all races, provided they have awhite face and can do honest labor/'l18 Sugar defeated Saco.It was the sugar plantation, with its servile base,which retardedwhite immigration in nineteenth century Cuba as it had banned

,it in seventeenth century Barbados, and eighteenth centurySaint Domingue, No sugar, no Negroes, In Puerto Rico, whichdeveloped relatively late as a genuine plantation, and where,before theAmerican regime, sugar never dominated the livesand thoughts of. the population as it did elsewhere, the poorwhite peasants survived andthe Negro slaves never exceededfourteen 'per cent of the population.119Saco wanted to "whiten"the Cuban social structure.120 Negro slavery blackened thatstructure all over the Caribbean while the blood ofthe Negroslaves reddened ,the Atlantic and both its shores, Strange thatan article like sugar, Sosweet and necessary to human existence,should have occasioned such crimes and bloodshed! .

After emancipation the British planters thought of white im-migration,even convicts; The governor of British Guianawrote 'in glowing terms in 1845 about Portuguese immigrantsfrom Madeira.121 But though the Portuguese came in largenumbers, as is attested by their strength even today in Trinidadand British Guiana, they preferred 'retail trade to plantationlabor. The governor of Jamaica was somewhat more cautiousin his' opinion of British and Irish immigrants. Sickness hadbroken out, wages 'were too low, the experiment could only

'1'''7F''''<I''''''',·.9", " 1 .n

28 CAPlTALISM AND SLAVER,Y

be partially useful in making an immediate addition to the labor-ing population, and therefore indiscriminate importation wasinadvisable.u2 The European immigrants in St. Christopher be-wailed their fate piteously, and begged to be permitted to re-turn bome. "There is not the slightest reluctance on our part' .to continue in the island for an honest livelihood by pleasingour employers by our industrious labour if the climate' agreed .withus, but unfortunately it do not; and we are much afraidif we continue longer in this injurious hot climate (the West, .Indies) death will be the consequence to the principal part of:us .•.. "128 '

It ,was not the climate which was against the experiment.Slavery had created thepernicious tradition that manual laborwas the badge of the slave and the sphere of intluenceof theNegro. The first thought of the Negro slave after emancipationwas to desert the plantation, where he could, and set up forhimself where land was available. White plantation workerscould hardly have existed in a society side by side with Negro,peasants. The whites would have prospered if small. farms had. 'been encouraged, But the ,abolition CJ1fslavery did not mean the.'destruction of the sugar, plantation; The emancipation of the'Negro and the inadequacy of the white worker put the sugarplanter back to where-he had been in the seventeenth century.He still needed labor: Then he had moved from Iridian to whiteto Negro. Now" deprived of his Negro, he turned back to', 'white and then to Indian, this time the Indian from the East. 'India replaced Africa; between 1833 and 1917, Trinidad im-ported 145,000 East Indians" and British Guiana 238,000. Thepattern was the' same for the other Caribbean colonies. Be- ..tween 1854 and 1883 39,000 Indians were introduced intoGuadeloupe; between 1853 and 1924, over 22,000 laborers fromthe Dutch East Indies and 34,000 from British India werecarried to Dutch Guiana.124 Cuba, faced with a shortage ofNegro slaves,' adopted the interesting experiment of using

·This is the correct 'Vest Indian description. It is quite incorrect tocall them, as is done in this country, "Hindus." Not all East 'Indians are 'Hindus. There are many Moslems in the West Indies.

OR,IGlN OF NEQR,O SLAVER,Y 19

Negro slaves side by side, with indentured' Chinese coolies,121and after emancipation turned to the teeming' thousands ofHaiti andtbe British West Indies -.BetWeen 1913 and 1914Cubaimported 117,000 laborers from Haiti, Jamaica and PuertoRico.128 What Saco wrote a hundred years ago was still true,sixtyye~safterCuba's a\?olition of sla.very~ " '.

Negro slavery therefore was only a solution; in certain his-torical' circumstances, of the Caribbean labor pro\:llem. Sugarmeant labor-at times. that labor has been slave, at other timesnominally free; at times blllck,at other times white or brown ~Nor yellow. Slavery in no way implied, in any scientific sense,the ~feriority of the Negro. Without it the great developmentof the Caribbean sugar plantations, between 1650 and 1850,would have been Impossible.