2

The Legal Strategies Used To End Caribbean Slavery Slavery is defined as the complete ownership of one person by another (Brace, 2004, 163). The use of slavery by the Europeans in the New World started with the enslavement of the local American Indian peoples by the Spanish during the early fifteenth century. The first formal in importation of African slaves was sanctioned by the Spanish crown in 1502 due to the dwindling American Indian population. This precedent set by this importation would be followed by the other major powers, France and England, to occupy the region. The demand for a steady supply of cheap labor to work on the sugar plantations would cause the number of African slaves who were imported into the Americas to spike dramatically by 1750. The end of the eighteenth century saw the disintegration of the institution of slavery and the nineteenth century saw the abolishment of the system of slavery altogether. The legal strategies that ended slavery in the Caribbean were established 1830s to the 1880s. One can see, based on a thorough analysis of the facts, that the legal strategies to end slavery in the Caribbean took very different approaches towards the abolition of the institution. In order to verify the truth of the thesis statement one must first describe the legal strategies that were used by the main colonial powers in the Caribbean region: France, England and Spain, and then compare them with one another. The English empire was the first of these imperial powers to enact a legal strategy to free the Caribbean slaves of their bondage. This set the precedent for the other major powers in the region to follow. This slavery ending legal strategy was the passing of the Act of emancipation in 1833. This act came into effect on midnight 31 July 1934. This act was also known as the Abolition of Slavery Act.

This act had six conditions. The first was to grant the slaves who were under the age of six their freedom immediately. The second was to mandate that the slaves who were above the age of six had to continue working for their former masters as apprentices on the plantations for six more years in the case of field slaves and four in the case of domestic slaves. The Third condition was to mandate that the former owners of these ex-slaves had to pay for their food,clothing shelter and medical care during this term of apprenticeship. The fourth condition was that to impose the limit of fourty five hour per week on the amount of time a slave should work without pay. This means that the slave had to be paid for any additional hours that he or she worked after this limit. The fifth condition was that the former slave-owners would be compensated for their loss in slave via the payment of 20,000,000 on the condition that the local legislators pass the laws to bring about emancipation. The sixth and final condition was that the term of apprenticeship could be shortened but that no alternative to apprenticeship would be allowed. This act was enforced via the establishment of a system of stipendiary magistrates to supervise its implementation. An Order-in-Council manifesting the regulations that were deemed desirable by the British Government was issued to the crown colonies whilst the other colonies enacted their own distinct versions of emancipation legislation in order to be given compensation. In practice the emancipation act was applied in a manner that deviated slightly from the theoretical plan that was signed by the British Parliament.

The first way in the application of the act differed from slightly from how it was expected to be applied was that the legislative bodies of Antigua and Bermuda decided to abandon the apprenticeship system and granted full freedom to its slaves when the emancipation act came into effect oni on midnight 31 July 1934. The second way in the application of the act differed from slightly from how it was expected to be applied was that of the 20,000,000 that the Parliament voted to grant the Colonies as compensation approximately 16,500,000 was actually paid to the slave owners.1 it is important to note that the compensation money that was given to each colony out the total amount was based on industrial value of the slaves. This value was measured in terms of the ratio of the export quantity to the number of slaves. This of course meant that Britains most recently acquired colonies in the region, Trinidad and British Guiana. It is also important to note that the payment of the portion of the compensation money that was given to each colony to individual slave owners appeared to be affected by the skill of his slaves. The price of compensation for individual slaves ranged from 19 for the inferior field worker to 230 for a Headman in British Guiana.2 The third aspect of the Act of Emancipation that that deviated from the original plan was the length of apprenticeship in the case of field slaves. Instead of being freed in 1840 as would have been the case if the Act of Emancipation was adhered to, the legislative bodies of the colonies decided to grant complete freedom to the slaves in 1838. This was due to the legal decision that to reclassify the estate artisans, who were needed to maintain the plantation machinery, as being domestic slaves, thus granting them complete freedom in 1838. The second reason for this decision was the restrictions imposed by the 1838 amendment to the Act of Emancipation. This amendment forbade the flogging or the use the treadmill of female

apprentices as punishment and gave the power to the Governors to make rules about the treatment of imprisoned apprentices. Burns Theorizes that a third reason for why they fast tracked the emancipation of field slaves is that they wanted to free of the interference of the British Parliament in their affairs. 3

F. R Augier, S.C Gordon, D.G Hall and M. Reckord, The Making of the West Indies, 78th ed. (Harlow: Pearson Education Limited, 1960), 172. 2 Alan Burns, History of the British West Indies, 2nd ed. (London: Allen and Unwin, 1965), 628. 3 Ibid.,632