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"Plantations Barbados History."
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Quaker Community on Barbados
Prior to the Quakers' large-scale migration to Pennsylvania, Barbados had more Quakers than any other English colony. But on this island of sugar plantations, Quakers confronted material temptations and had to temper founder George Fox's admonitions regarding slavery with the demoralizing realities of daily life in a slave-based economy-one where even most Quakers owned slaves. Gragg shows how the community dealt with these contradictions as it struggled to change the culture of the richest of England's seventeenth-century colonies.
eBook
Archaeology below the Cliff
First book-length archaeological study of a nonelite white population on a Caribbean plantation
Archaeology below the Cliff: Race, Class, and Redlegs in Barbadian Sugar Society is the first archaeological study of the poor whites of Barbados, the descendants of seventeenth-century European indentured servants and small farmers. “Redlegs” is a pejorative to describe the marginalized group who remained after the island transitioned to a sugar monoculture economy dependent on the labor of enslaved Africans. A sizable portion of the “white” minority, the Redlegs largely existed on the peripheries of the plantation landscape in an area called “Below Cliff,” which was deemed unsuitable for profitable agricultural production. Just as the land on which they resided was cast as marginal, so too have the poor whites historically and contemporarily been derided as peripheral and isolated as well as idle, alcoholic, degenerate, inbred, and irrelevant to a functional island society and economy.
Using archaeological, historical, and oral sources, Matthew C. Reilly shows how the precarious existence of the Barbadian Redlegs challenged elite hypercapitalistic notions of economics, race, and class as they were developing in colonial society. Experiencing pronounced economic hardship, similar to that of the enslaved, albeit under very different circumstances, Barbadian Redlegs developed strategies to live in a harsh environment. Reilly’s investigations reveal that what developed in Below Cliff was a moral economy, based on community needs rather than free-market prices.
Reilly extensively excavated households from the tenantry area on the boundaries of the Clifton Hall Plantation, which was abandoned in the 1960s, to explore the daily lives of poor white tenants and investigate their relationships with island economic processes and networks. Despite misconceptions of strict racial isolation, evidence also highlights the importance of poor white encounters and relationships with Afro-Barbadians. Historical data are also incorporated to address how an underrepresented demographic experienced the plantation landscape. Ultimately, Reilly’s narrative situates the Redlegs within island history, privileging inclusion and embeddedness over exclusion and isolation.
eBook
Pre-Colonial and Post-Contact Archaeology in Barbados
This volume provides one of the most comprehensive overviews of the archaeology of a single Caribbean island yet published. Drawing together scholars from the Caribbean, north America and Europe, all working from a range of disciplines within the broader scope of archaeology, and drawing upon recent and innovative fieldwork, the collected papers touch upon a wider variety of archaeological case studies. Divided into four sections each under the editorial supervision of a specialist scholar, the papers contained in this volume start with an overview of different approaches to the pre-contact archaeology of the island of Barbados and focus upon recent debates and issues surrounding material culture, economic change and site location. Two following sections focus upon recent developments in historical archaeology, looking at a series of urban and plantation case studies, and then the application of scientific techniques to material cultural and ecofactual evidence. The final section considers the social implications of Barbados’ past and recent developments in community heritage, education and management. Extensively illustrated and referenced, this volume considers in detail the historical diversity of archaeological work undertaken on the island, yet will also look forward to examine the key trends and currents that will inform the study of the archaeology of Barbados in the future. With such a rich wealth of material, this is a volume that will have considerable impact upon the wider context of Caribbeanist archaeology, history and heritage studies.
eBook
\The True Temper of It\
This article uses Richard Ligon's opening figure of clay pots found by colonizers on Barbados to develop a theory of the emblematic combustibility figured in the natural history he writes of the island. Clay pots need to be tempered to withstand firing, but, as Ligon states, colonizers don't have this knowledge of tempering, and the bricks they try to make to establish plantations keep exploding. I use the idea of this combustibility to trace various forms of multispecies violence inherent in the monocultural practices Ligon records. From racial slavery to ecocide to land dispossession, this violence registers in emblems that demonstrate an epistemological commitment to that violence, as well as the work of erasure and forgetting necessary for upholding the accumulation of wealth, power, and the fantasy of white innocence inherent in the history of the plantation complex.
Journal Article
The efficacy/inefficacy of accounting in controlling labour during the transition from slavery in the United States and British West Indies
Purpose
– The aim of this paper is to focus on the transition from slavery to wage workers in the American South and British West Indies, and the corresponding nature of the reporting and control procedures that were established in both venues, in order to create a disciplined workforce, and establish regular relations between employees and employers. It seeks to explain the differences in labour control practices between the two regions and to discuss the impact on these practices of accounting and other quantitative techniques c.1760-1870. In particular, it aims to consider the central role played by government in the process.
Design/methodology/approach
– The study forms part of an archival research project, in which the authors have consulted archives in four Southern States (Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, and North Carolina), three Caribbean island nations, formerly British colonies (Antigua, Barbados, and Jamaica), and record repositories the length and breadth of Great Britain. The records of the Freedmen
'
s Bureau (FB), located in the National Archives, Washington, DC, have been likewise visited. These primary sources have been supported by the extensive secondary literature on slavery and its aftermath.
Findings
– In the USA, accounting for labour in the transition from slavery was typically ad hoc and inconsistent, whereas in the BWI it was more organised, detailed, and displayed greater uniformity – both within and across colonies. The role of the British Colonial Office (BCO) was crucial here. A range of economic and political factors are advanced to explain the differences between the two locations. The paper highlights the limitations of accounting controls and economic incentives in disciplining labour without the presence of physical coercion in situations where there is a refusal on the part of the workers to cooperate.
Originality/value
– There is a relatively small volume of secondary literature comparing US and BWI slavery and its legacy. Likewise, the accounting implications of labour-control practices, during the transition from slavery to freedom, are largely understudied. The research also points to a need to assess the decision-influencing capabilities of management accounting systems in other transitional labour settings.
Journal Article
“The Abandoned Lower Class of Females”: Class, Gender, and Penal Discipline in Barbados, 1875–1929
Between 1873 and 1917, the numbers of Barbadian women committed to penal custody on an annual basis surpassed those of men. While women's per capita imprisonment rate was still somewhat below that of men for most of these years, given the wide margins by which women outnumbered men in the population and the labor force, these proportions were nevertheless unprecedented, not only in the British Caribbean but also in other parts of the world. Available figures for Jamaica and Trinidad over sections of the period hover around an 18–20 percent female proportion rate, while in Barbados the rate usually exceeded 50 percent.
Journal Article
Disciplining the Nation: Considering the Privileging of Order over Freedom in Postcolonial Jamaica and Barbados
This article considers the popular preoccupation with order and discipline over freedom in Barbados and Jamaica. I argue that the very emphasis on order and discipline is a mechanism for classing and racing groups thereby constructing their place in society. I draw on the meanings of freedom and order that prevailed in the colonial Caribbean to provide a context in which contemporary understandings emerged and which I argue require interrogation. The article is concerned with contemporary forms of domination as they relate to problems of political order, political obligation and Caribbean pursuits of freedom and justice. En este artículo se examina la preocupación popular por el orden y la disciplina por encima de la libertad en Barbados y Jamaica. Voy a sostener que esta misma insistencia en el orden y la disciplina es un mecanismo para clasificarles a los grupos según clase y raza y así construir su lugar en la sociedad. Me apoyo en los significados prevalecientes de libertad y orden en el Caribe colonial para contextualizar los entendimientos contemporáneos los cuales sostengo requieren interrogatorio. El artículo estudia las formas contemporáneas de dominación relacionadas con problemas contemporáneos del orden político, la obligación política y la búsqueda de la libertad y la justicia para el Caribe. Cet article examine l'obsession populaire avec l'ordre et la discipline sur la liberté de la Barbade et de la Jamaïque. Je soutiens que l'accent même sur l'ordre et la discipline est un mécanisme pour le classement social et la raciale des groupes qui construit ainsi leur place dans la société. Je m'appuie sur les sens de la liberté et de l'ordre qui ont prévalu dans les Caraïbes coloniales pour fournir un contexte dans lequel les interprétations contemporaines ont émergé et que je soutiens exigent de l'interrogation. Le document porte sur les formes contemporaines de domination en ce qui concerne les problèmes d'ordre politique, d'obligation politique et des activités des Caraïbes pour la liberté et la justice.
Journal Article
Subverting the Master's Narrative: Public Histories of Slavery in Plantation America
This article examines public representations of slavery on plantation sites devoted to heritage tourism in the Americas. Plantations of various colonial backgrounds are compared in terms of the narratives they present, finding that the history of slavery is largely hidden in Barbados and Puerto Rico, while addressed more explicitly (although still problematically) in the Brazilian and Cuban cases. The article highlights the importance of tour guides and site administrators in the production of histories of slavery and advocates for a more proactive role of historians in the production of public histories of slavery and for more productive and instructive discussions on this thorny topic.
Journal Article