Expert: Susan Shabetta - 11/16/2004

Question
Peasants are people who must earn most or all of their money from the land around them.  The peasantry emerged despite the lack of financial and physical support from the colonial office and the planters.  It was because they competed with the plantation for labor and to a lesser extent for land that peasantries were complementary to the plantation system. Although the peasants were not given support they still developed.  In Guyana in 1842, there were four thousand free holds.  In 1852, there were eleven thousand one hundred and fifty two free holds estimated being value at one million pounds.  In Jamaica, four years after emancipation, there were two hundred peasant villages and they had one hundred thousand acres of land valued at a cost of seventy thousand pounds.  In Martinique in 1855, seven years after emancipation there were two thousand five hundred and twenty-one peasants.

In Guadeloupe in 1855, there were two thousand seven hundred and thirteen peasants.  By pooling their financial resources, acquired through thrift and industry, ex-slaves could buy abandoned estates, subdivide them, and establish themselves as peasant proprietors.  In Jamaica, some ex-slaves secured the assistance of Baptist Ministers in their attempts to bargain with planters to secure land.  It is estimated that the number of peasant freeholds in Jamaica increased from 2,114 in 1938, to 27, 379 in 1845 and to about 50,000 in 1861.   In Guyana, shortly after emancipation, peasants bought estates for example, “Friendship Estate” which was bought for sixteen thousand pounds by the peasants and “Orange Marshall” estate which was bought for eleven thousand pounds shortly after emancipation.      

The peasantry emerged because of the reluctance of the free persons to work on the plantation.  They possessed greater mobility, that is, they could move and they wanted to determine how their lives would run.  Also, the availability of land was obtained from various methods.  These methods included the ownership of land, rental, lease, squatting and share-cropping.  In the Caribbean, share-cropping was not always used.  

These free persons were not against working the land.  The free persons had a wide knowledge of how to work the land.  These ex-slaves saw market possibilities of how to market their products.  There were greater possibilities of income from working their land.  The peasants had to go all the way to find a new environment for themselves.  The first constraint that the peasants had after emancipation was that they did not have any money.  Land values were rising due to the plantocracy and also in some cases due to the colonial office.

In addition, the colonial legislatures placed embargos on purchasing land, this meant that the peasants had to be able to buy a specified number of land and also very large quantities of land. For example, buying land at two and a half pounds per acre.  This price was called the “upset price”.  This price was agreed to by the colonial office in Europe.  It was estimated that it would take the average laborer sixty-nine years to raise one thousand dollars.  Another barrier was ordinances which made it illegal for more than twenty persons to join together to buy land.  In 1887, land within ten miles of a public road had cost $2.33 for two and a half acres.  Abandoned estates were selling at $2.47.  “Virgin land” in the bush had cost around twenty-four dollars and seventy-one cents.  The maroons cultivated rice on this type of land.  This price of land was used to force the ex-slaves to remain on the plantations.  In order for this land to be developed there was the need for infrastructure such as roads, transportation, irrigation and simple tools.  This issue of infrastructure became a big problem.  There were a lot of battles between the governors who showed sympathy to the peasants and the plantocracy who were opposed to the peasants.  There were also problems associated with the lack of protection of crops.  Research has shown that some planters deliberately destroyed the crops of the peasants.  Animals were allowed to roam freely to eat the crops of the peasants.  In Barbados, fruit trees of the peasants were burnt.

In the French colonies they were laws which stated that free persons had to show identification of employment.  Peasants were considered as not being gainfully employed.  This was a control method.  In Haiti during the nineteenth century, it was called a “dominant peasant society”.

The peasants were able to modify the colonial economies.  In some instances in substantial ways, the peasants took over old land that is, land which was regarded as having lost its primary fertility or because planters who were in debt were not able to afford the land.  In other times the ex-slaves were able to use marginal land or they used forested land which was not in use in sugar production and they were able to utilize this land productively.  In many instances, the ex-slaves had to develop roads, auxiliary services and irrigation services.  This helped to “tame the resources” and made the land habitable for humans.

In Haiti, Belize and the Dominican Republic, the ex-slaves were retaining land for human development.  They were also able to extend the range of farming with regard to the actual crops which were produced.  Before emancipation, the focus was on staple or cash crops for example sugar, coffee, cocoa and indigo.  At this time, little attention was paid to vegetable food crops.  Most of the peasants focus was on production for the local or domestic market, “food first” was their concept.  The Caribbean had become very vulnerable in terms of food consumption.  The economy was focused on exporting what it produced and importing most of its food supplies. The peasants reduced the colonies dependence on imported food by producing local produce.  

The peasants added to the range of jobs and possibilities and diversified food in the markets.  Legislation was passed in the colonies preventing the peasants from growing main cash crops.  The peasants planted ground provisions which consisted of roots and tuber, cassava, yams, potatoes and carrots.  They also grew vegetables.  A wide range of vegetables and citrus fruits such as bananas and piñatas.  Bananas were grown and pioneered by the peasants in Jamaica and this crop was a peasant crop originally.  Arrowroot became a very important crop in St. Vincent and nutmeg was produced in Grenada by the peasants.  Ginger, coconut, coconut oil and rice were produced by the peasants.  Rice became very important in Guyana and Suriname.  Their activities diversified the basic monoculture pattern of cultivation in the West Indies.  Also, the profits from provision cultivation provided more laborers with the means to desert the estates for the new villages and for independent small scale cultivation.  By 1852, in British Guiana there were more than 11,000 new freehold properties with an estimated value of one million pounds.  Peasant activity modified the charter of the original pure plantation economy and society.  The peasants were the innovators in the economic life of the community.  Besides producing a great quantity of and variety of subsistence food and livestock, they introduced new crops and or reintroduced old ones.   Cash crops were generally sold through   producers while surplus food was sold in the village or town markets by the peasants themselves or through middlemen hagglers.   Arrowroot became a very important crop in St. Vincent and nutmeg was produced in Grenada by the peasants.  Indian corn and maize was big crop after the emancipation period.  Corn and cassava were considered as hunger breakers.  Ginger, coconut, coconut oil, and rice were produced by the peasants.  Rice became very important in Guyana and Suriname.  The pig was kept widely by the peasants and to a lesser extent chickens.  After emancipation, cattle rearing became important for milk, meat and manure.  Cattle, sheep and goats became important.  Fishing which was done by the peasants became important in the diversification of the economies.  These activities made “spin offs” available, for example, these activities amplified the markets and created money. For example, milk was produced into butter and cheese.  There became a link between the rural and urban communities because of amplification of markets.. The peasants grew cotton, sugar, coffee and cocoa in some jurisdictions but the peasants did not like this because it created competition for the planters.   In Trinidad, Jamaica and British Guiana subsistence farming was profitable and estate labour was only supplementary work.  Small scale trading activity was a welcome outlet for ex-slaves in Barbados Antigua and St. Kitts who had been denied the opportunities for establishing peasant settlements available to their counterparts in other territorities.  In 1841 in Barbados, the development of huckstering cut down the demand for articles from established dealers.  The peasantry flourished despite the policy of the local and metropolitan government.  Where land was available either for purchase, rent or lease many ex-slaves sought that option and established themselves as peasant farmers.  There is evidence that planters sold land to ex-slaves on the periphery of the estates.  This was often done to secure a pool of labour on the estates even if that labour was not available on a continual basis. In Jamaica, ex-slaves were often assisted in their desire for some independence from the estate labour market by the work of missionaries for example William Knibb and James Phillipo giving evidence before the 1842 Select Committee.  Knibb identified a strong Baptist effort to provide some alternative to estate residence.  

In some cases, Baptist missionaries bought land from estates, which was then resold to ex-slaves.  In other cases, Baptist church members pooled their resources and bought land which was later sub-divided into village lots.  In Trinidad and Antigua, these crops were encouraged to be grown.  Peasant cultivation played an important role in the production of cocoa in Trinidad.  Ground provisions which were grown by the peasants were exported on a large scale in Jamaica.  In Jamaica during the 1850's, the peasants contributed about ten per-cent to their economy. Later, this increased to thirty-nine percent of the total economy.  This meant that by 1890, the peasants had contributed by about three quarters to the Jamaican economy.

According to Professor Woodville Marshall, the peasants also contributed by paying taxes.  The whole community was required to pay taxes.  Indirect taxes increased significantly   in the post-emancipation period.  Peasants contributed to the fixed and liquid assets of the economies.  They also made the economy less vulnerable to outside forces.
According to Professor Woodville Marshall, small scale trading activity was a welcome outlet for ex-slaves in Barbados, Antigua, and St. Kitts who had been denied the opportunities for establishing peasant settlements available to their counterparts in other territories.  Peasantry flourished despite the policy of the local and metropolitan government to curtail the activities of the peasants.  At times the metropolitan indifference provided the planter who was in control of colonial legislature with a rubber stamp as it was sanctioning acts of injustice against the ex-slaves.  There were burdensome regulations which applied to the Crown Lands and heavy taxation on smallholdings.

The peasants contributed to Caribbean economies by diversifying their economies.  This helped build up their infrastructures. Furthermore, land which might have been poor for sugar production turned out to have been good for other crops such as cassava which would thrive on very poor soil.  Ground provisions tended to do quite well on soil which was not good for sugar.  The peasants also played an important role in “Capital Formation”.  There was fix capital for example buildings and capital in the form of money.  Furthermore, bananas and cocoa grown by the peasants provided foreign exchange for the economies.  The peasantry played a significant role in the maintenance of social and economic stability, especially in rural areas.  Small-scale rural producers cultivated crops for subsistence and sale using family labor.  The peasants provided supplemental sources of income, as families could not survive solely on plantation wages.  More importantly, they provided stability and structure to family life.

The peasantries could have been said to represent the actualization of emancipation or the meaning of emancipation.  Emancipation did not mean freedom from labor.  What these former slaves did with their legal freedom and with their mobility that the legacy gave them, was not to seek short term gratification, but rather to establish a basis for a claim to the land which would guarantee escape from plantation residence as well as to provide for themselves opportunities for self expression, family consolidation, upward social mobility and improved standards of living.

The creation of the first ever Free Village at Rock Hall was the spearhead in the creation of the community aspects of our civil society as well we have come to know it, and laid the foundation for the emergence of a truly indigenous economy in Barbados.  One hundred and sixty-three years ago some intrepid Barbadian ex-bondsmen and women met to conclude purchases of land from the Rock Hall estate, thus creating for themselves a condition of Emancipation in Action.   In 1841, the ex-slaves in Barbados created a new village called Rock Hall and thus proclaimed to the world that they were now fully citizens of, and stakeholders in the new Barbados which was emerging out of the ashes of the old slave order.  Their affirmative action was a daring anomaly in the early 1840s, for it occurred a mere three years after full freedom from the bondage of chattel slavery had been declared by an act of the Imperial Parliament in Britain.  That act, the Termination of Apprenticeship Act of July 1838, set free over eight hundred thousand persons of African stock in the British Caribbean, but it left them in a condition of continued dependence on the sugar plantations.

In Barbados, especially, the eighty-four thousand ex-slaves had to face several constraints to their legal freedom.  The limited availability of land space, the sense of flux in the society after the relative but oppressive stability of slavery, and the determination of the planters of Barbados' five hundred and eight estates not to lose their labour supply conspired to limit employment and economic possibilities.  To compound this, a complex series of laws served to restrict the numbers of laborers permitted to engage in occupations outside the plantations and to reduce the mobility between plantations, while a located labourer system bound the ex-slave worker to the estate by linking tenure of plantation housing to labour force performance on the same plantations.

This illiberal system in which the plantation owner was now both landlord and employer of ex-slave labour threatened to reverse the gains of legal emancipation and to disenfranchise the already powerless ex-slaves who had nowhere to turn, and only Samuel Jackman Prescod  to speak and write in the newspapers on their behalf.  As if to make an impropitious situation more bleak, the draconian sections of the Masters and Servants Act of 1840 transformed Barbados into a tropical medieval society in which every plantation owner was monarch of all he surveyed, and the lord of all living entities.

Furthermore, the daily wage for agricultural labourers in Barbados declined from twenty cents in 1838 to fourteen cents in 1847-1848; the lowest in the British West Indies, except for Tortola and Montserrat.  It was against this social and economic landscape, where Barbados was a heaven for the white elite, purgatory for free coloured, and hell for blacks and poor whites, that this first free village at Rock Hall was established.  The Rock Hall peasants became what late Sir Alexander Hoyos has termed “quiet revolutionaries”.  They set out a distinctively different community for their times.   They proceeded to construct homes out of the stone hewn from St. Thomas hills and in a shape that was once part African and part Caribbean, with sloping roofs on gables, squared walls and functional rather than elaborate windows and doors.  Those plots, none exceeding two acres in area, became in effect our first small farming enterprises, and small businesses, for many of the newly freed villagers produced for own their consumption as well as for the market.  In this first peasant village were also established social practices which came to shape the features of modern Barbados.  This was the way in which the first generation after Emancipation developed a vibrant community, showcasing the potential of free villagers, while preparing themselves for the responsibilities of citizenship.  History records that in the 1848 elections the voters from Rock Hall helped to unseat the sitting members and to replace them with members of the Samuel Jackman Prescod's Party.  This example was emulated by the residents of the later St. Michael villages in the 1920s and 1930s and they solidly supported Chissie Brathwaite and the Democratic League.

In time the development of Rock Hall came to mirror the development of the society at large.  Its residents graduated from small functional houses to larger ones over time. Some have migrated to other parts of Barbados taking with them that determination and quiet pride and industry with their legacy from 1841.  

Answer
Dar Mr. Bayley, in several read-throughs I didn't catch any instances of run-on sentences, sentence fragments or other major problems with sentence construction.  

I also don't see gross errors of punctuation.  

I do notice you make little, if any, use of more subtle marks of punctuation than commas and periods which might help to indicate relationships between your ideas, such as joining related structures with semi-colons or using colons or dashes for listing or separation purposes or adding information as appropriate within parentheses, for example.  Just as a suggestion to continue to improve your writing skills, you might want to consider further studying and practicing the uses of such marks in order to improve the clarity and readability of future efforts.

Thanks for sharing your interesting essay!
Hope it helps a bit,
Susan Shabetta