(British) West Indies - UWI St. Augustine

The Long Shadow of the Plantation:
The evolution of welfare regimes in the (British) West Indies



Catherine Jones Finer
















Paper prepared for Sir Arthur Lewis Memorial Conference

University of the West Indies,
St Augustine Campus.

Sept 25-27, 2008



------------------------------------------------------------------
DRAFT
Not to be quoted without permission.


PREAMBLE

The author is engaged in a comparative study of the evolution of welfare
regimes from within the onetime British Empire. She has two starting
propositions: first, that this Empire amounted to a huge, protracted
experiment in people-moving, mixing and management around the world; and,
second, that it was the sorts and combinations of people present in any one
territory which determined the ways in which that territory was run.

Viewed from this perspective, the islands of the British West Indies have
key points in common for all the particularity of their individual
experience. Destined, the first of them, to be starting possessions in a
world-wide Empire-to-be, they continued unique in one key respect
throughout the British Empire's existence: being the only possessions
virtually devoid of natives (or effectively rendered so at or soon after
takeover); being populated instead by an accumulation of people(s) not
merely imported from elsewhere but imported, most of them, on terms more or
less coercive. From the blatancies of the Atlantic slave trade to the
relative subtleties of contracting out for indentured labour both before
and in the wake of reliance on the slave trade, it is clear that the vast,
vast majority of British 'subjects and objects' in the Caribbean were not
there out of untrammelled free choice. Indeed there had been no thought of
creating viable self-sustaining new societies here for the future; anything
but. The islands were acquired and populated simply in order to supply
Britain/Europe with what, at the time, was much-sought-after tropical
produce.

Nonetheless, despite the glaring lack of intent, these islands were de
facto to serve as testing grounds for the evolution of novel societies from
scratch - or rather from the parts variously thrust upon them. Their story
is here presented under the consecutive headings of Prime Time (c. 1650-
1800); Decline Time (c. 1800-1950); and On Your Own Time (c.1950s - );
before summing-up comment is offered on the sorts of welfare regimes which
have so far ensued.

PRIME TIME: c. 1650-1800

The Ups and Downs of Acquisition and Settlement

The discovery of the Americas as a New World for Europeans to exploit was
not of course an English (let alone a British) achievement. It was between
Spain and Portugal, by the Treaty of Tordesillas. in 1494, that Pope
Alexander VI (himself Spanish) had apportioned rights to the ownership of
this terra incognita (along with the rest of the as then undiscovered
world), by designating everything to the west of a line notionally 370
leagues west of the Cape Verde islands to Spanish overlordship, leaving
everything to the east of it (which in effect included Africa and Asia, as
well as the east coast of South America) to the Portuguese[1]. This was
how the Portuguese ended up eventually with Brazil (an undertaking which
involved nudging the line successively westwards at these latitudes) to
which the Spanish made no objection, having themselves been granted the
freedom of the Caribbean, its islands and the adjoining South American
coast ('The Spanish Main').

Not surprisingly, other seafaring Europeans - especially those not given to
heeding papal dictates in any case by around the middle of the sixteenth
century[2] - were disinclined to take notice of any such Treaty. However
they were not straightway in a position to challenge the Spanish or
Portuguese at their own game of territorial expansion so far from home.
Throughout the sixteenth century the efforts of French, Dutch and English
adventurers (both with and without the overt and covert backing of their
governments) were geared to raiding Spanish bases (when not trading with
them on the sly) - and plundering the cargoes of ships laden with New World
booty in transit back to Spain. In short, this was the age of pirates,
privateers, corsairs, buccaneers[3]... as well as of conquistadores. . In
1536. for instance, "in one encounter alone, an expedition from Dieppe took
nine Spanish ships out of just over 20, which were carrying Peruvian gold
back to Spain....[this being] one of a classic series of skirmishes between
small groups of corsairs in highly manoeuvrable ships, and the heavily
manned, weightily defended treasure flotas and galeones of rhe Spanish
Crown". (Watts 1987:129).

It was not until the seventeenth century (in the wake, not least, of
England's morale-boosting 'defeat' of the Spanish Armada[4]) that there was
serious merchant backing in London for the establishment of settlements in
the Caribbean[5]. Nor, by this time, were the English alone in this
ambition (though they were the most strenuous in its pursuit [6]).
Nevertheless, this particular territorial rivalry was to remain in a sense
insulated from mainstream European concerns throughout the seventeenth
century, being still considered 'beyond the line' to which contemporary
European treaties were expected to pertain[7]. Hence the headlong histories
of so many islands in the Leewards and Windwards (the easternmost, nearest,
smallest island possibilities for novice Europeans which were also reckoned
to be at a safe enough distance from the Spanish - see below) whose
'ownership' was to change hands sufficiently often, in some cases, as to
leave not one but two or three European languages embedded in the local
patois.. Figure 2.1 summarises the 'occupational history' of a cross-
section of territories in this respect.

Figure 1
Of the three relatively big players to be: Barbados was the first English
acquisition destined never to change hands thereafter (until independence).
Jamaica was by far the largest - and most notoriously turbulent -
acquisition (taken from Spain). Trinidad (not linked administratively with
Tobago until 1894) was the final and second largest acquisition (eventually
taken from Spain, after a belated, Spanish-sponsored drive from 1783 to
build up its hitherto lamentable lack of population by, in effect,
encouraging any neighbouring European - and ostensibly Catholic -
foreigners to come in and settle it for and between themselves[8]). For the
rest, the Leewards and Windwards (ie. the Lesser Antilles, to which neither
Barbados nor Trinidad & Tobago geologically belong - Watts 1987:12) stand
as a fourth, 'default', group of small islands - their original saving
grace being their dearth of attraction to the Spanish, save as potential
watering points (as well as possible sources of trouble) for ships en route
to & from Hispaniola, Mexico and Peru (eg Dunn 2000: 17)..

The idea of establishing agricultural settlements in the New World
specifically geared to the cultivation of tropical produce for European
markets was novel. Neither the Spanish nor the Portuguese had started out
with any such ambition (eg. Watts: 136) - any more than had the English
raiders and traders of the sixteenth century - though the Portuguese were
to be the first, by the mid-sixteenth century, to appreciate the
possibilities of developing northern Brazil as a great sugar producing
region for export to Europe. It was a leap into the dark for all concerned.
In the seventeenth century English case, "Both investors and settlers
alike embarked upon a huge gamble that it would eventually succeed, even
though a tough initial phase of hard experimentation was unavoidable"
(Watts: 136). The very first experimental settlement was pitched in
mainland North America (Virginia 1607) rather than in the Caribbean, but it
was the arrival in England of the first tobacco crop from that colony in
1613 which apparently swung the interest of investors into "purse
adventuring" the establishment of further agricultural colonies (Watts 135)
even in the Caribbean - that "Wild West of the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries, promising far more in the way of glamour, excitement, quick
profit, and constant peril than the prosaic settlements along the North
American coast." (Dunn: 9-10).

The earliest would-be colonists were certainly a mixed bunch. Those able to
buy or lease their own plots of land on St Kitts or Barbados were more
likely from the middling, moderately wealthy 'yeoman' classes of England
(with a little something to invest) than from the ranks of the aristocracy.
Indeed in the opinion of one early experienced Governor:

The great majority of European colonists left Great Britain very young,
without education, rarely of any position in Society - having only one
object that of making money as rapidly as possible (Governor Henry Light
to Lord John Russell, 19.04.1840. C.O.111/167. no. 53; quoted from Green
1976:3).

The far greater numbers who came out on terms of indenture - viz. between 3-
5 years potential hard labour in return for their passage out + keep + the
possibility of an eventual land grant for themselves, that is until the
land ran out (Watts: 149; Dunn: 53 re the original 10 acres promise for
the first English indentured) - ranged from the hopeful poor to the alleged
hardened criminal; quite apart from the numbers of 'slave' Irish soon
deported out at Cromwell's command (eg Kelleher 2001). In short, they
hailed from a multitude of backgrounds most of which - to judge from the
sailings lists available - had little to do with agriculture (eg Watts:
150). That so many of those with any sort of a choice should have thought a
venture like this worth undertaking at all, says much abo