Reshuffling the pack : the transition from slavery to other forms of labor in the British Caribbean, ca. 1790-1890

Abstract

Analysis of a century of (evolutionary) socio-economic transition in the British Caribbean. According to the author, this process demonstrated aspects of a continuum, rather than sharply marked phases and abrupt changes. Before the abolition of slavery slaves behaved as proto-peasants and proto-proletarians and many aspects of slavery survived the abolition.

Towards the arboreal side-effects of marronage: Black geographies and ecologies of the Jamaican forest

“…Black food production and marketing, therefore, created an important "breach in the slave system" (Mintz, 1983:113). What was meant to be a system of added exploitation became one of Black economic agency, especially for Black women, an unintended effect (Besson, 2003;Craton, 1994;Soluri, 2006;Sweeney, 2019).…”

“…Reading the Maroons into environmental history, clarifies what I call the arboreal side-effects of marronage as central to the Black ecologies of Jamaica. The anticolonial ecologies cultivated by the Maroons in resistance to colonialism have been little examined (Besson, 2002; Connell, 2020; Favini, 2018). This is part of a broader gap in the literature on Caribbean conservation and environmental history where Black Caribbean people are concerned.…”

‘A spirit of independence’ or lack of education for the market? Freedmen and Asian indentured labourers in the post‐emancipation Caribbean, 1834–1917

“…These continuities between the pre-and the postemancipation period have constituted the traditional explanation for the fact that the effects of slave emancipation did not come up to expectation. 3 Downloaded by [University of Illinois Chicago] at 18:06 13 October 2014…”

Detrimental Determinists: Applied Environmentalism as Bureaucratic Self-Interest in the Fin-de-Siècle British Caribbean

“…Most were sugar-producing colonies, and the composition o f their human populations reflected the trans-Atlantic slave trade that had provided and replenished the region's enslaved labor forces from the early 1600s until the early 1800s. After emancipation in the 183Os, free blacks in the region established themselves on the land as free villagers, sharecroppers, peasants, rural proletarians, and itinerant laborers, roles that often differed from one place t o another (Mintz 1974:146-156;Craton 1992;. Yet a combination of small island size, the ongoing domination o f plantations, and rigid political control maintained an overall power structure in the region similar t o that during slavery.…”