The Sugar Barons (64 page)
Barbados stuck with sugar. When, in 1902, the price fell sharply yet again, widespread malnutrition appeared on the island, with an infant mortality rate reaching nearly half of live births in some places. When this was reported in London, Joseph Chamberlain, British Secretary of State for the Colonies, labelled the West Indian islands, formerly so prosperous, as the ‘Empire’s darkest slum’. An American journalist who visited Barbados at this time wrote, ‘The island has always been and still is run for the whites … it is a heavenly place to live for the white man who can ignore the frightful misery of the negroes.’
Barbadians have improved their lot by emigration and a fierce attachment to education. The island is now relatively prosperous, although, as elsewhere in the region, many assets are in the hands of foreign interests or the tiny white minority. Other parts of what was the sugar empire are in a less happy situation. In general, throughout the smaller islands, the
dominance of sugar has been replaced in modern times by a reliance on the shifting sands of tourism and offshore banking. The latter has attracted unsavoury characters and ‘beyond the line’ financial shenanigans, including fraud and money-laundering linked to mainland drugs cartels. Tourism, for its part, has, for some, awkward resonances with the region’s history. In the large plantation-house-style hotels, the tourists are almost all white, the waiters, the cleaners the gardeners, the servants are all black.
The legacy of the sugar barons is most vividly shown in Jamaica, which was perhaps the most violently brutal of the British slave colonies. Jamaica has much to be proud of: it has world-beating sportsmen and women, and is probably the most influential place on earth in terms of modern music. But it has barely half the per capita GDP of Barbados and twice the infant mortality rate. Sadly, corruption and crime are endemic, and the island has a staggeringly high murder rate that demonstrates scant regard for life and respect over riches and status. If you venture away from the cool of the beach and the safety of the closely guarded tourist resorts, Jamaica seems chaotic, damaged, angry; still, as in the days of Ned Ward, ‘Hot as Hell, and as wicked as the Devil’.
Abbreviations
B. Arch. | Barbados Archives, Black Rock, Bridgetown, Barbados |
BL | British Library, London |
Cal Col | Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series, America and the West Indies |
J. Arch. | Jamaica Archives, Spanish Town, Jamaica |
JBMHS | Journal of the Barbados Museum and Historical Society |
JCBL | John Carter Brown Library, Providence, Rhode Island |
Journal | Journal of the Commissioners for Trade and Plantations |
LNHA | Redwood papers, Library of the Newport Historical Association, Newport, Rhode Island |
MSS Beckford | Beckford papers in the Bodleian Library, Oxford (MS Eng lett.) |
PRO | Public Record Office, Kew, London |
TD | Thomas Thistlewood’s Diary, Lincolnshire County Archives, Monson 31/1-37. Used with permission of Lincolnshire County Archives |
Introduction ‘Hot as Hell, and as wicked as the Devil’
It was January 1697: for clarity’s sake, for all dates before 1752, the year is taken to start on 1 January. | |
‘with one Design, to patch up their Decay’d Fortune’ and following quotes: Ward, |
1. White Gold, 1642
‘The great industry and more thriving genius of Sir James Drax’. Scott, ‘Description of Barbados’, 249. | |
far from prying eyes, he planted a new crop: Southey, | |
‘ingenious spirit’: Foster, | |
the canes … had rooted in seven days: Deerr, | |
A French visitor at the beginning of the seventeenth century: ibid., 1:105. | |
as the language of the sugar factory – | |
‘being eternall Prolers about’: Thomas, | |
‘… Discovery of the Art he had to make it’: ibid., 13–14. | |
‘Sir James Drax engaged in that great work’: Scott, ‘Description of Barbados’, 249. | |
‘the disbersing of vast summes of money’: Foster, | |
‘the Model of a Sugar Mill’: Anon., | |
‘and by new directions from Brazil’: Ligon, | |
£5 per hundredweight: Sheridan, |
2. The First Settlements, 1605–41
‘goodness of the island’: quoted in Gragg, | |
carrying some fifty settlers: Davis, ‘Early History of Barbados’, | |
‘a great ridge of white sand’: Colt, ‘Voyage of Sir Henry Colt’, 64. | |
On board the | |
Drax was 18 years old: MacMurray, | |
‘in a cave in the rocks’: Handler, ‘Father Antoine Biet’s Visit’, 69. | |
‘growne over with trees and undershrubs, without passage’: White, ‘A Briefe Relation’, 37. | |
rusted instantly in the warm damp climate: Ligon, | |
‘as hard to cut as stone’: Smith, | |
‘dayly showres of raine, windes, & cloudy sultry heat’: Colt, ‘Voyage of Sir Henry Colt’, 65–7. | |
‘there is such a moisture’: Ligon, | |
with £50 sterling in axes, bills, hoes, knives, looking-glasses and beads: Harlow, | |
‘but not in any great plentie as yet’: White, ‘A Briefe Relation’, 35. | |
‘grew so well that they produced an abundance’: Handler, ‘Father Antoine Biet’s Visit’, 69. | |
‘very ill conditioned, fowle, full of stalkes and evil coloured’: Forbes, | |
‘much misery they have endured’: Smith, | |
in 1600 they landed on the tiny island of St Eustatius near St Kitts: Williams, | |
‘cockpit of Europe, the arena of Europe’s wars, hot and cold’: ibid., 69. | |
‘a country that hath yet her Maidenhead’: quoted in Strachan, | |
between £100,000 and £200,000 each year in gold, silver, pearls and sugar: Appleby, ‘English Settlement’, 88. | |
‘great tobaccoe house that stood to the windward’: Harlow, | |
the Courteens, who had by now sunk £10,000 into their venture: Innes, ‘Presugar Era of European Settlement’, 5. | |
on the pretence of holding a conference: Davis, ‘Early History of Barbados’, | |
‘I cannot from so many variable relations give you an certainty for their orderly Government’: Smith, | |
promptly executed by firing squad. Davis, ‘Early History of Barbados’, | |
‘vntell we haue doone some thinges worthy of ourselues, or dye in ye attempt’: Colt, ‘Voyage of Sir Henry Colt’, 91. | |
‘I neuer saw any man at work … all thinges carryinge ye face of a desolate & disorderly shew to ye beholder’: ibid., 66–7. | |
‘a people of too subtle, bloody and dangerous inclination to be and remain here’: | |
‘an Aromaticall compound of wine and strawberries’: White, ‘Briefe Relation’, 36. | |
‘marvellous swiftness’: Colt, ‘Voyage of Sir Henry Colt’, 67. | |
‘Slowth & negligence … liue long in quiett’: ibid., 66, 73. | |
the 40 or so men he left behind were ‘servants’: Harlow, | |
two or three servants to be sent out, bound to him for three to five years: Innes, ‘Pre-sugar Era of European Settlement’, 17. | |
Some 30,000 indentured servants: Beckles, ‘“Hub of Empire”’, 223. | |
A visitor to Barbados in 1632: Captain John Fincham, in Campbell, | |
a battered chest, a broken kettle, three books and a handful of pewter plates: Dunn, | |
from under 2,000 in 1630 to 6,000 by 1636: Chandler, ‘Expansion of Barbados’, 109. | |
a density of population unrivalled anywhere in the Americas: Menard, | |
Seventy per cent were aged between 15 and 24: Games, ‘Opportunity and Mobility in early Barbados’, 171. | |
incest, sodomy and bestiality prevalent on the island: Handler, ‘Father Antoine Biet’s Visit’, 68. | |
Much of the land was then sold on to William Hilliard: Beckles, ‘Land Distribution and Class Formation’, 138. | |
‘what would the Governor do for a Council?: Davis, ‘Early History of Barbados’, | |
‘granarie of all the Charybbies Iles’: White, ‘Briefe Relation’, 34. | |
‘to buy drink all though they goe naked’: quoted in Gragg, | |
‘Rhenish wine’: Ligon, | |
bitten off by landcrabs as they lay passed out: Thomas Verney, quoted in Campbell, | |
‘… by their excessive drinking’: Gragg, | |
the value of the crop had surpassed tobacco by the late 1630s: Appleby, ‘English Settlement in the Lesser Antilles’, 95. | |
He had 22 on one of his estates in 1641: Beckles, ‘Economic Origins of Black Slavery’, 41. | |
‘in a very low … very much indebted both to the Merchants and also to one another’: Foster, | |
‘The Hollanders that are great encouragers of our Plantacions: Scott, ‘Description of Barbados’, 249. |
3. The Sugar Revolution: ‘So Noble an Undertaking’
