Caribbean History From
Colonialism to Independence
AM217
David Lambert
Lecture: The world the slaves
made
Tuesday 24th November,
11am-12pm
The world the slaves made
1. Life as a slave:
– Olaudah Equiano’s Interesting Narrative (1789)
– The History of Mary Prince (1831)
– Defining slavery
2. African-Caribbean cultures
3. Economic lives:
– Provisioning and huckstering
– Urban spaces
4. Cultural and spiritual lives
Olaudah Equiano, or,
Gustavus Vassa, the African
Mary Prince
Chattel slavery
• A ‘slave’ (or enslaved person) is…
– forced to work through mental or physical threat
– owned or controlled by an ‘employer’, usually through mental
or physical abuse or threatened abuse
– dehumanised, treated as a commodity or bought and sold as
‘property’
Enslaved labour as ‘commodities’
Chattel slavery
• A ‘slave’ (or enslaved person) is…
– forced to work through mental or physical threat
– owned or controlled by an ‘employer’, usually through mental
or physical abuse or threatened abuse
– dehumanised, treated as a commodity or bought and sold as
‘property’
– physically constrained or has restrictions placed on his/her
freedom of movement
– the children of enslaved women also become the property of
the slaveowner
Patterns of slave trading
Patterns of slave culture
• There were a wider variety of slave cultures in the
Caribbean, shaped by factors such as:
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geography (big vs small islands; lowlands vs highlands)
economy (sugar-dominated vs diversified)
setting (terrestrial vs maritime; urban vs rural)
temporal changes (frontier vs mature phases)
timing, magnitude and coastal origins of African slaves
birth and death rates of enslaved Africans
demographic mix of whites, blacks, and coloured people
gender ratios
the constraints set by the masters’ power and institutions
religious structures
imperial frameworks
Field slaves
Skilled artisanal slaves
Domestic slaves
Working for the master
Provision grounds & slave gardens
Sunday marketing, Trinidad, c.1830
Urban slavery
• The proportion of slaves living in urban areas varied across
the region. For the late eighteenth century:
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St Domingue (France), ~5%
British islands, ~10%
Dutch and Spanish islands, ~20%
St Thomas (Danish), ~40%
• The urban enslaved population contained a higher
proportion of women and people of ‘mixed race’
• Urban slaves usually outnumbered by white and free
coloured people
• Life for urban slaves was very different from that of
plantation slaves
Charlotte Amalie, St Thomas
Market, St. Domingue, 1770s
Paramaribo, Suriname, c.1831
Marketplace, Antigua, 1806
African-Caribbean cultural forms
African-Caribbean cultural forms
Religious and spiritual practices
• Caribbean slaves were routinely incorporated into
European religious practices in some parts of the region
• In the British Caribbean, this came later and usually
involved missionary churches
• In addition, many slaves practiced religious and spiritual
forms with (West) African origins, e.g.
- Obeah
- Santería
- Vodou
• These were usually stigmatised by Christian religious
figures and suppressed by the colonial authorities
Obeah (or ‘Obi’)
• Refers to folk magic and religious practices derived from
West African, and specifically Igbo, origin
• Obeah practitioners made charms, predicted the future and
were involved in oath-making
• Obeah practices were also directed against slaveholders
• First documentary evidence for ‘obeah’ is from early 18thcentury Jamaica, in relation to the Maroons
• Made illegal in Jamaica after Tacky’s Rebellion (1760)
• There were also later laws passed against specific Obeahrelated practices (e.g. Barbados, 1818)
Obeah
Obeah (or ‘Obi’)
• Refers to folk magic and religious practices derived from
West African, and specifically Igbo, origin
• Obeah practitioners made charms, predicted the future and
were involved in oath-making
• Obeah practices were also directed against slaveholders
• First documentary evidence for ‘obeah’ is from early 18thcentury Jamaica, in relation to the Maroons
• Made illegal in Jamaica after Tacky’s Rebellion (1760)
• There were also later laws passed against specific Obeahrelated practices (e.g. Barbados, 1818)
Vodou
• Vodou refers to the branches of a
West African ancestor-based
religious tradition.
• Brought by enslaved Africans to
St. Domingue (Haiti) from the
Guinea Coast of West Africa.
• Vodou survived the brutal
‘modernisation’ of the plantation
system, although the traditions
have changed with time.
• One of the largest differences,
however, between African and
Haitian Vodou is that the
transplanted Africans of Haiti were
obliged to disguise their loa or
spirits, as Roman Catholic saints,
a process called creolisation.
Maintaining and re-making
African cultural forms
At the same time that the masters were vigorously
attempting to acculturate their slaves as part of the
process of subordination, the slaves themselves
resisted the dislocation of the Middle Passage by
the retention of African languages, beliefs, folklore,
music, customs and crafts…
Michael Craton, ‘Forms of resistance to slavery’
(1997), p. 233.