Abolition and Plantation Management in Jamaica, 1807-1838

By Dave St Aubyn Gosse

The British Parliament’s decision to abolish the slave trade in 1807 had disastrous implications for plantation societies, such as Jamaica, in regards to the health and the labour of the enslaved population. Many of the Jamaican sugar planters could not accept the fact that the 1807 Abolition Act was a watershed moment which demanded a more conciliatory form of management and a willingness to implement critical labour reforms, such as task work. The failure to introduce these necessary internal reforms resulted in the continuing decline in the plantations’ crude production figures and in their productivity levels, despite the introduction of steam engines on many estates. The numerical strength of the enslaved population was also decreasing, and most important the health of the enslaved Africans was seriously declining. The planters’ failure to also eliminate their ambiguous management structure further hastened their own demise and the profitability of slavery in Jamaica.

• Language: English
• Publisher: The University of the West Indies Press
• Release date: Oct 1, 2012
• ISBN: 9789766404321

Dave St Aubyn Gosse

Dave Gosse is Lecturer in History, Department of History and Archaeology, University of the West Indies, Mona, Jamaica. He specializes in the social, economic and political history of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Jamaica.

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Abolition and Plantation Management in Jamaica, 1807–1838

Abolition and Plantation Management in Jamaica 1807–1838

Dave St Aubyn Gosse

University of the West Indies Press

7A Gibraltar Hall Road, Mona

Kingston 7, Jamaica

www.uwipress.com

© 2012 by Dave St Aubyn Gosse

All rights reserved. Published 2012

A catalogue record of this book is available

from the National Library of Jamaica.

ISBN: 978-976-640-269-3

Cover illustration: Hopeton D. Bartley, Antiquity.

Cover and book design by Robert Harris.

Set in Adobe Garamond 11/14.5 × 27

Printed in the United States of America.

TO THE LATE

IVY BUCHANAN MAUD WILLIAMS

Contents

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgements

Introduction

1 The Impact of the 1807 Abolition Act

2 Ambiguous Management

3 Worthy Park: Example of Management for Survival

4 The Impact of Abolition on Labour Procurement

5 Health and Reproduction

6 Management Initiatives

Epilogue

Appendix 1: Injustices in the Jamaican Legal System, 1817–1822

Appendix 2: Injustices in the Jamaican Legal System, 1826–1832

Appendix 3: Company for Importing Chinese Workers in Jamaica in 1808

Notes

Selected Bibliography

Index

Illustrations

Figures

2.1 Sugar production in Jamaica, 1800–1838

2.2 Crop accounts on Hermitage estate, 1801–1809 and 1817–1828

2.3 Yearly hogsheads of sugar produced at Golden Grove, 1802–1836

2.4 Amity Hall yearly production of sugar, 1802–1838

2.5 Production figures for Tharp’s eight plantations, 1805–1837

3.1 Worthy Park sugar production, 1800–1838

3.2 Individual jobbing contracts at Worthy Park, 1793–1795

3.3 Mortality by age group at Worthy Park, 1813–1834

3.4 Inventory of food items at Worthy Park, 1813

3.5 Inventory of food items at Worthy Park, 1815

3.6 Food items received from Spring Gardens Pen, 1792

4.1 Summary of ages of Africans at Hermitage estate in 1824

5.1 Sugar production at Mesopotamia plantation, 1799–1835

5.2 Sugar production at Island estate, 1799–1835

6.1 Sugar production at Denbigh, 1806–1837

7.1 Net profits at Goulburn’s Amity Hall plantation, 1805–1825

7.2 Net profits at Tudway’s Jamaican plantations, 1800–1834

Tables

1.1 Account of Trade Between Jamaica and the United States for the Year 1804

1.2 Licensed Imports and Exports of Africans, 1808–1822

1.3 Early Nineteenth-Century Rebellions in Jamaica

2.1 Slave Productivity on Hermitage Estate, 1817–1828

2.2 Slave Productivity at Amity Hall, Selected Years 1803–1836

2.3 Slave Productivity at Tharp’s Sugar Plantations, 1805–1837

3.1 Rate of Productivity at Worthy Park, 1812–1837

3.2 Jobbing Charges in Jamaica, 1793–1799

3.3 Mortality and Fertility Rates of Africans at Worthy Park, 1792–1834

3.4 Health Indicators of Worthy Park’s Enslaved Africans, 1813–1836

3.5 Analysis of Mortality Rates at Worthy Park, 1813–1834

3.6 Average Volume of Sugar at Worthy Park, 1800–1838

3.7 Cost of Maintaining Africans Annually

3.8 Additional Food Items Given to Africans at Worthy Park, 1795

3.9 Land Utilization on Rose Price’s Plantations, 1813

4.1 Division of Africans at King’s Valley Estate, 1 February 1808

4.2 Division of Africans at Amity Hall, 1 January 1825

4.3 Division of Africans at Radnor Plantation, 1825

4.4 Apprentices at Pepper and Bona Vista Pens in 1838

4.5 Enslaved Africans at Pepper and Bona Vista Pens in 1826

4.6 African Women under Forty Years at Amity Hall: Number of Children, 1827

4.7 African Women under Forty Years at Amity Hall without Children in 1827

4.8 Average Prices of Captive Africans, 1793–1799

5.1 Sickness and Mortality on Mesopotamia and Island Plantations, 1801–1826

5.2 Morbidity on Other Jamaican Estates, 1802–1812

5.3 Analysis of Morbidity Listed in Tables 5.1 and 5.2, 1801–1826

5.4 Africans Condemned in the Vice-Admiralty Court up to 31 August 1816

5.5 Enslaved Population of Mesopotamia and Island, 1799–1831

5.6 Increases and Decreases of Enslaved Africans in Five Parishes, 1817–1829

5.7 Increases and Decreases of Enslaved Africans at Bog Estate, Vere, 1803–1817

5.8 Increases and Decreases of Enslaved Africans at Three Estates in Vere, 1825–1831

6.1 Levels of Productivity at Denbigh, 1808–1828

6.2 Amity Hall Production Figures, 1802–1837

6.3 Logwood Production on Penrhyn and Barham’s Plantations, 1803–1835

6.4 Pepper and Bona Vista Crop Accounts, 1826–1838

6.5 Value of Sales at Pepper and Bona Vista, 1826–1835

7.1 Merchants’ Accounts on Tharp’s Plantations, 1815–1833

Acknowledgements

MY RESEARCH WAS CONDUCTED PRIMARILY in the United Kingdom and in Jamaica. I wish to specially thank the staff at the Jamaican Archives: Sophia, Lloyd and Marsha, for their willingness to go beyond the call of duty in finding the necessary materials. I also wish to thank the staff at the Elsa Goveia Library at the University of the West Indies, in particular Joan Vaciana and Frances Salmon. The staff at the Island Record Office and the National Library of Jamaica was also most helpful. In the United Kingdom, I wish to thank the staff at the Surrey Historical Society, especially Mary Macky. At the University of North Wales, Bangor, Ann Lennegan went beyond the call of service to aid my research. I also wish to thank the staff at the Bodleian Library at Oxford University; the staff at the manuscript reading room at the University Library of Cambridge; the staff at the Cambridge County Office; the staff at the Institute of Commonwealth Library; and the staff at the British Library and the Public Record Office.

For my sojourn in London on two separate occasions, my profound gratitude to Sean, Zara, Sadie, Pastors Handy and Harvey, Monique, Phillip, Rhona, Andre, Enid and her family, and Brothers Steele and Campbell and all the other members of the Church of God in Tottenham and Thornton Heath. Their generous hospitality towards my material comforts while conducting research in London was exemplary.

I am also indebted to Professor S.H.H. Carrington, my academic advisor at Howard University, for his excellent advice and critical support from the inception of this study to its completion. I wish to also thank all of the other faculty members of my doctoral committee for offering invaluable support and critique while this book was at the dissertation stage: Drs Tolbert, Medford, Peloso, Knight and Palmer. The Department of History and its chairman, Dr Tolbert, were also most helpful in offering financial aid in travelling to London. The Graduate School’s Sasakawa fellowship in 2002–3 was also useful in my last year of research and writing the dissertation. I also have to thank my fellow graduate students in the Department of History, Howard University, who aided in the process of research and writing, particularly Gordon Gill, who has always been most helpful in photocopying materials and in providing stimulating discussion relevant to the topic

I also express my profound thanks to Professor Patrick Bryan of the Department of History and Archaeology, University of the West Indies, Mona, who provided valuable critique.

Most important is my wife, Deirdre English Gosse, whose constant encouragement and support were vital and whose sacrifice helped in completing the final edition of the manuscript. Last, to McKayla Gosse, my daughter, whose presence inspired me to complete the project. Hopefully, she will become cognizant of her history and her roots.

Introduction

THE 1807 BRITISH ABOLITION ACT to end the slave trade continues to be a controversial topic of debate among historians. Was its goal economic, humanitarian or a combination of both? In 1806, in events leading to the implementation of the Abolition Act, management reforms within the British West Indies were at the centre of discussions between the Jamaican assembly and the British Colonial Office. The Jamaican planters cautioned the British authorities not to surrender to the humanitarians and pass the dreaded abolition bill, because it would drastically reduce their levels of production and productivity. Their plantations were already in financial distress and the levels of economic protection they enjoyed had to remain.¹

The Colonial Office, in response, stressed the economic necessity of passing the abolition bill, which was aimed at encouraging the planters to implement drastic managerial reforms. These reforms were necessary in the area of health care, especially among enslaved children.² The Jamaican planters were told that the abolition bill was an imperative since it would force planters in the older sugar colonies, like Jamaica, to restructure their operations and become as economically competitive as the newer sugar colonies.³

For the Colonial Office to have introduced management reforms in the discussion on abolition first suggests that the 1807 Abolition Act had an economic motive. Second, it seems to validate the argument of some historians who argue for early decline within the British West Indies.⁴ It is the intention of this study, then, to investigate how the lack of new enslaved labourers after the 1807 Abolition Act affected the Jamaican plantation economy. This study will also investigate the relationship between plantation management and productivity in a time of enormous labour transition. I will argue that plantation management, especially human resources management after 1807, was poor. The planters wasted time fighting political battles with the metropolitan authorities rather than concentrating on the economic implications resulting from the abolition of the slave trade. Instead of restructuring their plantations to face the new economic order that was being forced on them, the Jamaican planters engaged in political propaganda with respect to slavery. In the end, they hastened their own demise. The Jamaican planters, those residing both in Great Britain as absentee owners and in Jamaica as steward managers, failed to make drastic managerial changes regarding labour reforms, as was stressed by the metropolitan office in London.⁵ They didn’t heed the new ameliorative direction of their government, failing to institute the radical changes that were necessary in a competitive world market. Instead, they resisted bitterly, creating a culture of paranoia. This further escalated their desire to control and tighten their grip on the enslaved population rather than becoming more sensitive to their needs.

This study of early nineteenth-century plantation management in Jamaica is centred on the larger context of amelioration. This was one of the most important socio-political reform initiatives promulgated by Great Britain, geared particularly towards its older sugar colonies and beginning in the late eighteenth century.⁶ Entering the early nineteenth century, ameliorative reforms made it necessary for these older sugar colonies, including Jamaica, to resolve the pressing question of slavery, which had run its course and was no longer cost-effective. Metropolitan initiatives such as slave registration, from its beginning in 1812 to its final adoption in 1819; Parliament’s 1823 adoption of amelioration; the abolition of slavery in 1833; the apprenticeship period that followed; and the eventual emancipation of slaves in 1838, were all reforms on the same continuum. They were aimed at implementing social, economic and political changes in the British West Indian colonies. The Jamaican planters’ vigorous resistance to amelioration coupled with the colony’s increasing slave rebellions, which culminated in the Sam Sharpe Rebellion of 1831, contributed significantly to the early termination of slavery in 1833. Most officers of the Crown seem to have preferred a more gradual approach, until the institution of slavery withered away.⁷

In measuring the planters’ levels of success, this study will use the concepts of both crude production and productivity. Historians have used the latter term to describe the overall efficiency of the enslaved Africans and, by extension, the plantations. However, calculating productivity is problematic in and of itself, and even more so when evaluating the contribution of plantation managers in this regard. There are too many incalculable variables that have a significant bearing upon production;⁸ for example, a plantation’s geographical location. This was influenced by the weather, which in turn had an enormous effect on the health of the plantation’s enslaved Africans and its eventual production figures. Other factors included the quality of the soil and the levels of erosion taking place; the kinds of cane planted and their eventual effect on the soil; the plantation’s method of planting; the availability of stock to manure the soil of new cane fields; and the state of the plantation’s infrastructure and technology. Most important was the proper treatment of enslaved Africans and stewardship of their health. After 1807, the number of those reported as unhealthy on plantation lists continued to rise even as new enslaved Africans became harder to obtain.

There are many incalculable factors that econometrics cannot accurately evaluate in examining productivity. Despite this difficulty, however, productivity levels will still be considered, as they provide an idea of the efficiency of a plantation. When levels of productivity are combined with the crude production figures for the plantation’s staples, a picture emerges of the economic health of a plantation. When both concepts are studied together, the relationship between plantation management and production can be better understood. Although most of the plantations that I examined do show evidence of decline in the early nineteenth century, the primary aim of this study is not to discuss the decline thesis; rather, it is to investigate the factors behind such decline and the extent to which the planters’ management affected production.

Chapter 1 of this study will outline the economic, political and social contexts of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Chapter 2 will examine the plantation management structure as practised in Jamaica. Chapter 3 will take a closer look at Worthy Park, one of the more productive plantations in Jamaica, to determine the extent to which its management practices affected production. Chapters 4 and 5 will show how the lack of good leadership made it difficult for the planters to procure and maintain enslaved labour. Chapter 6 will examine management initiatives and the production of other commodities, to determine how those planters faced with declining profits from sugar diversified their operations and the effect this had on their overall production.

This study theoretically builds on the work of historians who have highlighted the role of economics in the understanding of both the 1807 abolition of the slave trade and the eventual abolition of slavery. Such scholars include Eric Williams, who argues in Capitalism and Slavery that the economic motive was the principal concern of both abolition and emancipation. Williams’s work represents the first significant challenge to historians of slavery who were more sympathetic to the humanitarian cause.⁹ Other supporters of Williams’s thesis include Barbara Solow. Solow argues that the abolition of the slave trade in 1807 came at a time when the trade would no longer have a negative impact on the British economy. She indicates that if abolition had taken place half a century earlier, it would have devastated the British economy.¹⁰ William Darity Jr agrees, arguing that not only was the plantation system no longer valuable in furthering the interests of British industrial capitalism, but there was a fundamental transition in the thinking of Britain’s governing elite, who were moving away from the principles of mercantilism towards the laissez-faire principles of Adam Smith. As an example, he cites the sugar manufacturers in Great Britain who joined in support of the abolitionist movement out of the desire to protect an important element of the British economy.¹¹ There are, however, very strong critics of the Williams thesis, chief among them being Seymour Drescher. In Econocide: British Slavery in the Era of Abolition, Drescher argues that Britain was altruistic in abolishing the trade at the precise time the country stood to gain significant profits from it.¹²

The debate surrounding the economic decline of the planter class in the British West Indies is much wider, however, than that of the Williams school versus that of Drescher. There are other significant social and political realities that contributed to this decline. One such factor, which has been understated by Caribbean historians, is that of poor plantation management in an era that called for bold, creative leadership. Most planters could not transcend their racist and sexist stereotyping of Africans, which compromised their management. As a result, they refused to treat the enslaved Africans as a highly intelligent workforce that could be motivated to work without the whip. This prevented them from adopting critical management reforms. The low fertility rate among enslaved women is a case in point. Most planters never saw this as a management failure. Instead, they chastised the enslaved women in their correspondence as barbaric, crude and uncivilized. In their view, the enslaved women could not do any better since it was in their nature. Such an ideology inhibited plantation growth.

Eugene Genovese said it best when he stated, in The Political Economy of Slavery, [The] debate over a seemingly economic question cannot be understood unless studied in its political context, the main feature of which was the intention of the rural slaveholders to maintain their hegemony at all costs.¹³ This can be clearly seen in the Jamaican scenario. The majority of Jamaican planters, despite the withering of the economic protection that they badly needed and the decreasing sugar prices in London in the early 1800s, nevertheless refused to adhere to ameliorative reforms. As a result, they resisted important and necessary discussions centred on labour reform and property rights, much to their detriment. This was because slavery was more than an economic institution; it was also a social and political reality that was deeply embedded in the very fabric of colonial life. In refuting the argument that Cuban planters had little emotional attachment to slavery in the 1870s and thus pushed for abolition, Rebecca Scott argues that while this might have been true for a few planters, the majority maintained a high degree of control over their workforce and inhibited rather than facilitated emancipation.¹⁴ This was true in Jamaica as well.

To understand fully the need for this important study of plantation management and its relationship to production, the following historiography has to be examined. The literature on plantation management falls into three categories. First, there are older works, which more or less approach the aspect of management in the manner of a manual or textbook and describe the ideals of management. The Jamaica Planter’s Guide by T. Roughley is an example of this type of book. Roughley gives advice on the care and handling of enslaved Africans, the planting of provision grounds, the season to plant and the kinds of items to be planted.¹⁵ A similar work is Dr Collins’s Practical Rules for the Management and Medical Treatment of Negro Slaves in the Sugar Colonies. Collins describes himself as a professional planter and divides his work into two parts. Part one gives practical advice on the seasoning of enslaved Africans, and on their diet, clothing, labour and discipline. Part two gives medical advice on the care and handling of the sick, including establishing hospitals and treating individual cases of fever and other illnesses.¹⁶ The works of well-known planters such as Edward Long and Bryan Edwards are also most instructive. In the first volume of The History of Jamaica, Long offers twelve points for the management of estates and laments the lack of available manuals to encompass what experience taught older Jamaican planters. He saw sugar planting in Jamaica as extremely difficult in comparison to many of the other sugar islands because of the constant changes in climate, soil and conditions.¹⁷ Edwards, on the other hand, in the second volume of The History, Civil and Commercial, of the British Colonies in the West Indies, makes three recommendations to Jamaican planters which could strengthen amelioration and lead to increased production. First, he advocates the abandonment of gang work in favour of task work, which meant paying the enslaved Africans cash for extra plantation work. Second, he recommends the institution of slave courts adjudicated by enslaved Africans to cultivate distributive justice. Third, he insists that the Sabbath day of rest for the enslaved Africans be rigidly enforced.¹⁸

In the second category of management literature, we find several publications aimed primarily at examining the larger issue of plantation production. The work of Lowell J. Ragatz is one such example. Ragatz is extremely critical in refuting the traditional humanitarian argument and implicitly establishing an economic paradigm. In The Old Plantation System in the British West Indies, he argues that Caribbean plantations were designed to produce artificial wealth and thus could not resist serious economic competition and drastic changes in world market prices.¹⁹ In The Fall of the Planter Class in the British Caribbean, Ragatz refutes the claims that abolition and emancipation destroyed the British West Indian planter class. He argues instead that its decline began with the Seven Years’ War (1756–63) and was accelerated because of improper management, as the planters’ eighteenth-century wealth was mainly a result of the high price of sugar in the international market.²⁰ In Absentee Landlordism in the British Caribbean, 1750–1833, Ragatz’s indictment of management is even more explicit, as he shows the direct link between planter absenteeism and decline. Ragatz states that because of the planters’ enormous mid-eighteenth-century profits they were able to retire in luxury in England, and in doing so they left a weakened infrastructure in the existing plantation system in the British Caribbean. Added to this, the inexperience of the next generation of planters reduced their competitive edge, resulting in lost ground in the international sugar trade.²¹ It was Ragatz’s work that provided the ideological underpinnings for Williams’s economic critique and for supporters of the decline thesis.²²

B.W. Higman’s Slave Population and Economy in Jamaica, 1807–1834, with its emphasis on the productivity of the Jamaican plantation, extended the debate from the role of British West Indian economies in its larger international context to an internal examination of the plantation system. Higman shows how abolition in 1807 affected the changing demography of the Jamaican slave system, which in turn impacted its overall economic performance. He argues that Jamaican economic decline was also attributed to internal factors.²³ As a result, issues relating to plantation life, such as health, fertility, nutrition, population, structural composition of the slaves, and their effect on the economy had to be examined.²⁴ Another critical work in this category was J.R. Ward’s British West Indian Slavery, 1750–1834. Ward argues that by the early 1900s, the British public had come to associate economic progress with industrial development; the British West Indian planters failed to meet this expectation with their primitive agricultural methods and they could not eliminate the cruel and inhumane treatment of enslaved Africans because of slave labour.²⁵ On the other hand, Ward argues that absentee management in Jamaica was to be blamed for the failure of the Jamaicans to procure a natural increase in enslaved Africans, unlike the planters in Barbados. He estimates the productive capacity of enslaved Africans on Jamaican sugar estates to have risen by 35 per cent, or 0.4 per cent annually, from 1750 to 1830. Ward even indicates that Jamaica’s per capita output in 1830 approached that of Great Britain around the same time and that the material conditions of the enslaved Africans improved to the point where it was comparatively better than that of manual workers in the very early stages of the industrial revolution in Great Britain.²⁶

As a result of the important studies in this second category, further studies related to plantation slavery and management arose. Among such works in this third category, centred on management, is Heather Cateau’s dissertation, Management and the Sugar Industry in the British West Indies, 1750–1810. Her work could be considered one of the first major studies to investigate the role of plantation management in the British West Indies. She argues that from 1750 to 1810, planters throughout the British West Indies rapidly adopted necessary innovations for the survival of their industry.²⁷ Selwyn H.H. Carrington has also examined some aspects of management and production in a chapter entitled New Management Techniques: Adjusting to Decline in his recent publication, The Sugar Industry and the Abolition of the Slave Trade, 1775–1810. Carrington concludes that by the end of the eighteenth century, planters in the British West Indies had to face the reality that an in-depth restructuring was needed. Most estates then adopted the Modified System of Management, as practised in Barbados.²⁸ Carrington further elaborates on the nature of such management restructuring in an article in the Journal of Caribbean History. He shows that better-qualified managers were chosen who could exercise greater professionalism and who were paid an annual salary rather than the regular commission.²⁹ He also argues that the planters implemented technological changes only when the opportunity was afforded them. Changes such as the introduction of the steam engine to replace or supplement the windmill were considered. Most significant, however, was the attempt at planter amelioration, which was