The rise of racial slavery in the Caribbean

1. The rise of racial slaveryin the Caribbean MS0.2 Professor David Lambert 11-12, 28th February 2017

2. Lecture structure • The social construction of race • Pseudo-scientific racism • The Caribbean origins of race: • Barbados in the 17th century • Jamaica in the 18th century

3. Gender is socially constructed Scholars use the concept of gender to denote the perceived differences between and ideas about women and men, male and female. Fundamental to the definition of the term ‘gender’ is the idea that these differences are socially constructed. What it means to be man and what it means to be woman, the definitions or understandings of masculinity and femininity, the characteristics of male and female identities – are all the products of culture. Rose, What is Gender History? (2010), p.3.

4. ‘The four races of man’ (early 20th century)

6. The rise of racial slavery: My 1st claim Race is socially constructed

10. Race and the body

11. Race and lineage

12. ‘[T]he definitive and insidious feature of racism [is]…its grounding in the human body and in lineage, which thus defines it as inescapable, a non-negotiable attribute that predicts socio-political power or lack of power. This idea has a relatively recent history…It was not until the eighteenth century that race took on a consistently judgmental connotation, indicating differences among peoples meant to describe superiority and inferiority and implying an inheritance of status that was inescapable’. J. Chaplin, ‘Race’ in Armitage and Braddick, eds, The British Atlantic world (2002), p. 155.

13. The rise of racial slavery: My 2nd claim ‘Race’ is socially constructed…but it really matters

14. 19th century pseudo-scientific racism

15. Darwinism

16. Imperialism

17. Anthropometry

18. ‘The four races of man’ (early 20th century)

19. Eugenics

20. The rise of racial slavery: My 3rd claim Pseudo-scientific ideas about race became prominent in the 19th and 20th centuries

21. ‘[T]he definitive and insidious feature of racism [is]…its grounding in the human body and in lineage, which thus defines it as inescapable, a non-negotiable attribute that predicts socio-political power or lack of power. This idea has a relatively recent history…It was not until the eighteenth century that race took on a consistently judgmental connotation, indicating differences among peoples meant to describe superiority and inferiority and implying an inheritance of status that was inescapable’. J. Chaplin, ‘Race’ in Armitage and Braddick, eds, The British Atlantic world (2002), p. 155.

22. The Caribbean

23. The Caribbean

24. ‘Discovering’ the Caribbean

25. The Caribbean

26. Barbados in the mid 17th century

27. Richard Ligon, History of Barbados (1657) • Barbados had been settled by the English in 1620s. • Ligon was a Royalist exile from the English Civil War. • Visited Barbados in late 1640s during the early years of the ‘sugar revolution’. • One of most important 17th century eye-witness accounts of the Caribbean. • This saw the development of large ‘plantations’ in Barbados where sugarcane was grown for export.

28. Richard Ligon,History of Barbados (1657) ‘The Island is divided into three sorts of men…Masters, Servants, and slaves’: • ‘Masters’ – ‘Gentlemen’; ‘planters’ • ‘Servants’ – ‘Christian servants’ • ‘Slaves’ – ‘Negro slaves’

29. Racial slavery: terminology 1 The word ‘negro’ means ‘black’ in Spanish and Portuguese. It was used to refer to Sub-Saharan Africans and people of this descent. The term should only be used when quoting historical sources in which it appears. Historians and others tend to use ‘of African descent’ to refer to such people, e.g. ‘Most labour on Caribbean plantations was undertaken by people of African descent’. The term includes those from Sub-Saharan Africa and their descendants born elsewhere.

30. Racial slavery: terminology 2 Today, ‘enslaved’ is generally used in preference to ‘slave’ because it acknowledges that enslavement is something done to people not the basis of their identity, e.g. ‘There were around 20,000 enslaved people in Barbados in 1655’ not ’There were around 20,000 slaves in Barbados in 1655’. Language is one of the means through which race has been socially constructed. As historians, we should be especially careful with how we use language in our writing and in class.

31. Richard Ligon,History of Barbados (1657) ‘The Island is divided into three sorts of men…Masters, Servants, and slaves’: • ‘Masters’ – ‘Gentlemen’; ‘planters’ • ‘Servants’ – ‘Christian servants’ • ‘Slaves’ – ‘Negro slaves’

32. Richard Ligon,History of Barbados (1657) ‘The slaves and their posterity, being subject to their Masters for ever, are kept and preserved with greater care then the servants, who are theirs but for five years, according to the law of the Island. So that for the time, the servants have the worser lives, for they are put to very hard labour, ill lodging, and their diet [is] very sleight’.

33. The rise of racial slavery: My 4th claim Before the ‘sugar revolution’, racial divisions were not central to Caribbean societies

34. Growth of plantations in Barbados

35. Population of Barbados, 1655-1830

36. The trans-Atlantic slave trade(16th to 19th centuries)

37. Barbados Slave Code (1661) • Established that enslaved people were to be treated as property • Denied them basic rights under Common Law • Granted slaveholders great powers • Served as the basis for the slave codes adopted in other English colonies: e.g. Jamaica (1664) and South Carolina (1696)

38. The Caribbean

39. Jamaica in the mid 18th century

40. Charles Leslie, A New History of Jamaica (1739) • Jamaica had been seized by the English from Spain in 1655. • The island had its ‘sugar revolution’ in the late 17th century. • By the 18th century, it was Britain’s most important and valuable colony in the Caribbean, surpassing the much smaller Barbados.

41. Charles Leslie, A New History of Jamaica (1739) ‘This Island contains three Sorts of Inhabitants, Masters, Servants and Slaves’: • ‘Masters’ – ‘Gentlemen’; ‘planters’ • ‘Servants’ – ‘white servants’ • ‘Slaves’ – ‘negro-slaves’

42. Charles Leslie, A New History of Jamaica (1741) ‘The Condition of the Blacks is indeed worse because their Servitude is perpetual…The most trivial error is punished with a terrible whipping. I have seen some of them treated in that cruel manner, for no other Reason but to satisfy the brutish pleasure of an Overseer, who has their punishment mostly at his direction. I have seen their bodies all in a gore of blood, the skin torn off their backs with the cruel whip’.

43. Population of Jamaica, 1700-1830

44. Laws on slavery inmid-18th century Jamaica • ‘No Slave shall be free by becoming a Christian…’ • ‘If a Negro-slave strikes any Person, except in Defence of his Owner's Person or Goods, he shall for the first Offence be severely whipped by Order of a Justice of Peace; for the second, by the like Order be severely whipped, his or her Nose slit, and Face burnt in some Place; and for the third Offence, left to two Justices, and three Freeholders to inflict Death or what other punishment they think fit’.

46. The rise of racial slavery: My 5th claim Bodily violence was central to racial slavery

47. Edward Long, The History of Jamaica (1774), volume 2. A defender of the Caribbean planters, Long gave one of the most elaborate and extreme justifications of racial slavery. ‘[T]hey are void of genius and seem almost incapable of making any progress in civility or science. They have no plan or system of morality among them. Their barbarity to their children debases their nature even below that of brutes. They have no moral sensations; no taste but for women; gormondizing; and drinking to excess; no wish but to be idle’.

48. Take home messages • Race is a socially constructed form of identity, but that doesn’t mean it is unimportant • Race is focused on the body and grounded in lineage • Pseudo-scientificideas of race became prominent in the 19th and early 20th centuries • But one of the key contexts for the emergence of race was the colonial Caribbean, especially in the late 17th and 18th centuries • Racial difference became central to Caribbean colonies – and entwined with slavery – after they had gone through ‘sugar revolutions’

49. The rise of racial slaveryin the Caribbean MS0.2 Professor David Lambert 11-12, 28th February 2017