Systems of Domination after Slavery: The Control of Land and Labor in the British

West Indies after 1838

O. Nigel Bolland
Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 23, No. 4. (Oct., 1981), pp. 591-619.
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Systems of Domination after Slavery:
The Control of Land and Labor in the
British West Indies after 1838
0. NI GEL BOLLAND
ColLqrrtcU t l i ~ ~ r ~ l t y
During our slavery we was clothed. ration, and seported in all manner of respects.
Now we are free men (free indeed), we are to work for nothing. Then we might
actually say, we become slaves again.'
Four years after their "emancipation" in 1838, the former slaves of British
Guiana protested against their conditions and their unfair treatment by the
planters who sought to bind them to labor on the estates. When the planters
introduced certain rules and regulations, which were intended to regulate the
quality and quantity of work, and to reduce labor costs by lowering wages and
abolishing customary allowances of free medical attention, housing, and pro-
vision grounds, the workers complained to the stipendiary magistrates and
stopped work. Such conflicts between planters and former slaves were com-
mon in the British West lndies after 1838. The former sought t o retain full
control over what they still considered to be "their" labor force at as low a
cost as possible, while the latter sought to improve their quality of life by
increasing their income, often through a combination of provision-ground
cultivation and wage labor on the estates. and by organizing a more stable
family and domestic life. Woodville Marshall recently summarized this situa-
tion:
Strikes, sometimes lasting as long as two or three weeks. occurred in most islands:
many ex-slaves refused to surrender their provision grounds and some resisted
violently: and nearly all of them objected to the wage rates. Eventually, a fragile
industrial peace was created on the basis of a few concessions-small wage increases,
a shorter working week for women and guarantees of right to growing crops in event of
e v i ~ t i o n . ~
1 am grateful to the Research Council of Colgatc Univcnity for financing research in London in
1978. and to the official\ of the Archives of Belire. the Rr i t ~\ h Muwum, and the Public Record
Office, London, for their assistance over many years. I wish to thank the many people who have
helpeti me forniulate the ideas which appear in this paper, especially Arnold Sio who criticired an
earlier version. and to ahsolve them from responsihility for its remaining shortcomings.
' Petition from workers on Plantation Walton Hall, British Guiana, to Captain J . A. Allen,
St i pend~ary Magistrate, 6 January 1842. in R(,por.t /rr)ni thr Sr l r ~t Committee ( ? f rlir Hori\r
~ont ; non, oti tlrc, Wcw Intlr~r C'r~lornr\. 1842. Appendix 111.
Woodville K. Marshall, "Commentary," in "Roots and Branches: Current Directions in
Slave Studies." M~chael Craton, ed Hi.\torrc.trl Krfli~c,tion.\ 6: 1 ( 197%. 247.
0010-41 7518114429-257 1 J2. 00 ((3 1981 Society for Comparative Study of Society and History
With few exceptions, however, most histories of the British West lndies
view emancipation in a less critical light than did the former slaves them-
selves, and uncritically conceptualize the post-1838 colonies as "free"
societies in contrast to the slave societies that preceded them. A clear distinc-
tion is rarely made between emancipation as an event (sometimes understood
as occurring in 1834 when slavery was abolished, but more sensibly under-
stood to refer to the termination of the apprenticeship system in 1838), and
emancipation as a human, social condition. It is too glibly assumed that the
former produced the latter. William A. Green' s recent study of emancipation
in the British sugar colonies exemplifies this approach. It is a careful but
conventional history that reflects Colonial Office attitudes and policies, rather
than history from a Caribbean perspective.' For example, Green states,
"Finding a workable arrangement which permitted the survival of the planta-
tion system without sacrificing the liberty of freedmen was clearly the most
difficult and elusive problem of the free ~ o c i e t y . " ~ Green conceives the
"problem of the free society" as a problem of colonial administration
whereas. for the colonized former slaves, the problem was that their liberty
was not yet a reality. In other words, the problem should be defined not in
terms of the survival of the plantations and the prosperity of the planters. but
in terms of the survival and improved living standards of the former slaves.
While the former masters sought new forms of coercion, the former slaves
sought new forms of freedom. The change in legal status changed the terms
of, but did not abolish, their struggle: They were no longer defined as "fc>rced
labor," but they were still defined as a "labor force." Whatever workable
arrangement the colonial administrators were likely t o devise would not re-
solve the real problems of most members of the society but would merely
create a "fragile industrial peace" between social formations whose interests
were incompatible.
It would be inaccurate, of course, to suggest that all the colonies experi-
enced the same situation after 1838, and erroneous t o imply an evolutionary
development in labor systems, but it is essential to examine. critically and
comparatively, the shift from slave t o wage labor as a transition from one
system of labor control to another, each system characterized by its own mode
of struggle. The various attempts to control the former slaves as a labor force
after 1838 met with differing degrees of success. The critical factor which
determined whether or not ex-slaves would emerge as a "reconstituted
pe a ~a nt r y" ~ or would remain dependent upon estate labor is generally consid-
' William A. Green, Ut-itish Sl <r ~v ~ i r t l ( / rlle Gl-e(rt E.\prr-i- Enlrrrl(.ipntiotl: Thir Sug111- C'oIoni~. $
ment , 18.30-1865 (Oxford, 1076). In this connection, see the crltlque of colonial historiography
in Eric Williams. Uririsll Hisrot-iirtlr rrrld the Wr.st 1tldic.s (London, 1966)
Green, Briri.\h Slirr,c> Enlim(.ipirtiotl. 190.
Sec Sidney W. mint^, "The Question of Carihhean Peasantircs: A Comment." Carihhrtrn
Sturlit,s. 1 : 3 ( 1961), 3 1 3 4 : i(lc,m. C'rrrihht~irri Trrrtl,sfi~rnlirrrot1.\ (Chicago, 1074). 132-33.
DOMI NATI ON AI - T E R S L A V E R Y 593
ered to be the availability of land. This factor is usually explained in terms of
favorable or unfavorable maniland ratios or degrees of population density,"
and it is this aspect of the society which is subsequently deemed crucial in
determining the extent to which the masters were able to continue t o control
their former slaves. I intend to show that this explanation is simplistic and
inadequate.
This essay has t wo goals. The first is critically t o examine the prevailing
explanation of the differing degrees of success with which masters controlled
their former slaves in the British West Indies. The second purpose is to
suggest the need to abandon the concept of the antinomy of slavery and
freedom and to seek to promote the comparative study of transition from slave
to wage labor, in terms of varieties of labor control, as an aspect of the
transformation of systems of domination.
The study is in three parts. The first is a summary of the various attempts at
labor control after 1838 in the British West Indies, and of the prevailing
explanations of the differing degrees of success of these attempts. The second
is an account of the interrelationship of the control of land and of labor in
Belize (formerly British Honduras), a case which is neglected in all previous
studies and which cannot be accounted for by their explanations. Finally, the
third part suggests some general and theoretical implications of this study,
including the suggestion that dialectical theory provides the most useful
framework for examining systems of domination.
Colonial societies are not autonomous social realities; they are subject to the
fluctuating demands and interests of the metropolis. Even those people who
appeared to have almost complete and untramelled power in the British Carib-
bean colonies in the nineteenth century, namely. the planter class, were de-
pendent in a number of ways-economically, militarily, psychologically-
upon the mother country. These planters considered that slavery was neces-
sary for their own economic survival and hence, they argued, for the continu-
ing economic value of the West Indian colonies but, as the influence of the
West lndian lobby declined in Westminster, the slave-owning planters were
unable to halt the movement toward abolition. When "An Act for the Aboli-
tion of Slavery throughout the British Colonies" was passed by the British
Parliament in 1833, it changed the legal framework of certain social relations,
' Two recent studies concerned with areas out s~de the British West lntiies whlch itientify
population density as a factor determining the availability of lanti to fornmer slaves, are Polly Hill,
"From Slavery to Freetiom: The Case of Earn-slavery in Nigeria Hausaland." Cornpirt-rrt~~,c,
St~relic,.\ in Soc.ic,r! <rn(l Hi.\rory. IX:3 (1976). 421; anti Eranc~seo Scarano. "Slavery and Eree
1-&or in the Puerto Kican Sugar Economy: I in ( ' ~ t ~ ~ ~ ~ i i t x i f i i . c ~ X I 5 1873.'' Pet-\.pc,c.frr.c,.\ ot1 Slcir-
rrx irl !L'c,~r. Cti)rlcl Plnr~terriotl Soi.irfiec. Vera Rubin and Arthur Tuden, eds. (New York, 1977).
561. Whereas the former suggests that a low density meant land was available. the latter sugge\ts
that a high density llmiteti access to land.
594 0 . NI c r k l B 0 l L A N D
especially labor relations. within the plantation societies of the British West
Indies.
That Parliament took the planters' concerns seriously and decided to
minimize the social impact of the abolition act is evident from the debates
surrounding its formulation and from its final terms. In order to make the
change gradual, and to ensure the continued dominance of the planters and
dependence of the freed slaves, the act included t wo important elements
which were very sympathetic and generous to the slaveowners. One element
was compensation: The act empowered the treasury to raise twenty million
pounds, to be paid to the slaveowners as compensation for their loss of
property. The other element was the provision introducing the system called
"apprenticeship," under which all registered slaves over the age of six years
were initially to become "apprenticed labourers" who would be compelled to
work without pay for forty-five hours each week for the same masters as they
had prior to abolition. The original intention was to apprentice field workers
for six years and others for four. but eventually all were freed in 1838.
Apprenticeship afforded "an interval intended to facilitate the creation of
social and economic machinery that would perpetuate the established order. "'
There was widespread opposition to the apprenticeship system from the
apprentices, who wanted complete freedom; many of them considered it a
conspiracy on the part of local elites to keep freedom from them. In St . Kitts,
martial law had to be declared and the militia was also needed in Montserrat;
there was disorder in Essequibo, Guiana, and hundreds demonstrated in oppo-
sition to apprenticeship in Port-of-Spain, Trinidad. In Antigua, the planters
themselves rejected this apprenticeship system. They abolished slavery im-
mediately in 1834, arguing that it was in their own interests to do so. In the
other British colonies, however, the apprenticeship system, until its abolition
on 1 August 1838, provided the planters with a temporary means of control-
ling their labor forces. The planters, feeling betrayed by their imperial parlia-
ment, then sought to devise new ways to control labor.
The masters, for so they still considered themselves, tried a variety of
techniques of labor control after 1838 throughout the British West Indies.
These included enactment of laws t o restrict emigration and "vagrancy,"
various forms of taxation to pressure people into wage labor, and the de-
velopment of systems of police, magistrates, and prisons to punish those who
broke the new labor laws. Several of these techniques had already been tried
in Antigua, and planters elsewhere in the British colonies frequently sought to
benefit from the Antiguan experience. For example, one technique was the
use of contracts t o ensure regular and obedient supplies of labor. The Anti-
guan legislature passed an act on 29 December 1834 to regulate and enforce
labor contracts. Contracts were not required to be written but needed only to
' Green, Brilrth Sltrvc, Emcirrc.rl,rrriorr. 130.
D O MI N A T I O N A F T E R S L A V E R Y 595
be made orally in the presence of two witnesses. If a laborer under contract
absented himself from work, even with a reasonable excuse, he forfeited his
wages for the lost time. and if absent without such an excuse for half a day or
less (a term sufficiently elastic to be used to enforce promptness), he forfeited
the whole day's wages. If absent for two successive days, or for two whole
days within any two week period, the laborer would be liable to a week's
imprisonment with hard labor. Other offenses, such as drunkenness or the
careless use of fire or the abuse of cattle, could be punished with up to three
months' imprisonment with hard labor. The maximum punishment for the
employer, however, for any violation of the contract, was a fine of five
pounds. The British government was still sensitive to the view that the aboli-
tion of slavery should result in "unrestricted" freedom, however, and the
Antiguan act was disallowed, to be replaced in the following year by another
only slightly less severe. The new act provided that verbal or i n~pl i cdcon-
tracts should be for a year, terminable only at a month's notice, and that the
occupation of a tenement should be prima facie evidence of the existence of
such a contract between the tenant and his landlord. Under this contract act,
the Antiguan laborers worked nine hours a day, with one day free in a week or
sometimes only one in every two weeks, for wages of ninepence a day. Not
surprisingly, it has been concluded that "the purely material condition of the
Antiguan labourers showed little real advance over that of the days of slav-
e r ~ . " ~
The Antiguan system introduced another mechanism of labor control which
was adopted, with variations, by many planters elsewhere after 1838. This
mechanism was the wagelrent system, which combined the roles of employer
and landlord on the one hand and those of employee and tenant on the other.
The ex-slaves, who during slavery had generally had access to personal provi-
sion grounds as well as to their family homes, often built by themselves,
discovered that, as free men, they had a rental obligation for access to these
traditionally gratuitious facilities. The employerllandlords were then able to
reduce labor costs by charging rent, or by lowering wages in lieu of charging
rent, and were also able to threaten their laboreritenants with eviction if they
did not work to the master's satisfaction on the estates. The former slaves
frequently desired to continue to occupy the grounds and houses to which they
had had customary rights of usage, supplementing a peasant livelihood with
occasional cash earnings from casual estate labor.' The masters, however,
Douglas Hall, Fi1.e o/'rhe I.eeu,irrrl.s. 1834-1870 (Barbados. 197 I ) , 28; see also Willlam Law
Mathieson, Hrrtr\h Slrr\.c, 1nliinc.rpirtron. 18.38-I849 (London, 1932). ch. I .
For a recent evaluat~on of the motives and interests of the ex-slaves, see Douglas Hall, "The
Flight from the Estates Recons~dered: The Bnt ~sh West Indies, 1838-42," Journcil of ('c~rihhc,cl?i
Hi.\ror-\', nos. 10, 1 1 (1978), 7-24. Hall concludes, "The movement of the ex-slaves frorn the
estates in the imrnedlate post-ernancipation years was not a tlight from the horrors of slavery. It
was a protest against the inequities o f early 'freedom. ' "
needed regular and continuous labor, especially during croptime when cane
was harvested and sugar produced, and asserted their legal property rights
over the houses and grounds in order to extract this kind of labor from their
former slaves. The conflicting interests of the two groups thus clashed in the
wagelrent system: The planters, who continued to depend upon plentiful and
regular supplies of cheap labor, which they were accustomed to controlling in
a coercive manner, and their former slaves, who sought to avoid the persistent
limitations imposed on them in estate work.
The application of the wagelrent system varied considerably from one
colony to another. In Barbados, a house was often occupied rent free on the
condition that the tenant work on his landlord's estate for five days a week.
Those who worked less were fined, and the fine effectively constituted a rent.
In order to prevent the tenants from paying rent with money earned by market-
ing provisions or laboring elsewhere, the planters deducted the rents from
estate wages, thereby obliging the tenants to work for wages on the home
estates, on pain of eviction. Until the mid-1840s in Barbados, rents and
wages were generally associated, with resident laborers being paid 10d. daily
and nonresidents Is. 112d., making the rent effectively 2 112d. daily, but
after 1845 they became increasingly independent. There were wide variations
in the rents charged: In Jamaica, the average was 2s. a week, but it was
sometimes as high as 6s. 8d. per household. In some cases in Jamaica, rent
was charged "per cclpirn against husband, wife, and each of the children, as a
pctzul c.mc.tiotz, to compel labor. " I 0 However, in Trinidad and Guiana former
slaves who worked on the estates continued to enjoy their houses and grounds
rent free, and also had the customary allowances and relatively high wages.
When considering rents as a percentage of wages, there was wide variation
between colonies: In Tobago and Barbados rents were about 20 percent of
wages, in St. Vincent they were 33 percent, in Grenada 35 percent, and in
Jamaica as high as 48 percent.'' There was also great variation in the planters'
ability to collect rents: On Worthy Park estate in Jamaica, 342, more than 10
percent of the total wages, was deducted directly from the laborers' pay in
1839, but in the following year, when the total rent on houses and provision
grounds was assessed at 2,827. attempts to collect it proved futile. "Those
from whom rents were collected proved even less willing to work, and those
who did not work had no money to pay."" In 1842, only 49 8s. was
collected for all rents on Worthy Park.
Above all, the wagelrent system varied considerably in its ability to pro-
mote continuous supplies of reliable labor. In some colonies, the planters
In Joseph John Gurney, Furnili<ir 1.ettrr.c to Hcnr-\ Cl ay of Krntuc.kx llc,sc.rihiri,q ( I Winrcr irl riir
LVc,,\/c..\r 1ndlr.s (New York, 1840). 79.
"
W. Ernanuel Kiviere, "Labour Shortage in the British West lndies after Emancipation."
Journul of C'uribbc~rlrr Hi.storv, no. 4 (1972) 7-8.
" Michael Craton and James Walvin, A Jrml(ric.rrrr I'lrrrtttrtion. Tlre Hisrory of IVorthy Prrrk.
1670-1970 (London. 1970). 217.
I > OMI NAT I ON A t r t K S1 A V I K Y 597
maintained control over labor supplies, but in others the system became
self-defeating; while the threat of eviction may coerce some tenants to work
on the estate, implementation of the threat would throw laborers on the gen-
eral market and alienate them still further from the landlord and would-be
employer who had evicted them. Often, as in Jamaica, the coercive nature of
the tenure arrangements was sufficient to cause the newly freed slaves to
reject the system and flee the estates. Whether they fled or were evicted, the
planters lost their labor force. By the mid-1840s. Jamaican planters had
recognized the failure of the system and grudgingly abandoned it.
Why did the wagelrent system work in some colonies and not in others?
Variations in the success of the system in securing labor supplies for the
estates depended to a large extent on the availability of alternatives for the
ex-slaves. Though some former slaves and field laborers became artisans and
some became small traders," the chief option was peasant farrning on a small
property to produce a variety of crops for family consumption and for sale.
Thus the availability of land to provide former slaves with an alternative to
estate labor in the form of peasant agriculture has been widely regarded as the
critical element in the success or failure of the system. The availability of land
is then evaluated as a function of the size of the territory. its state of develop-
ment, and the population density. For example, the classic account of British
slave emancipation distinguishes between the "developed" and the "unde-
veloped" colonies and finds that labor remained generally plentiful in the
former and both scarce and hard to control in the latter.14 A recent evaluation
of the planters' success in coping with the labor shortage after emancipation
states that the "territorial heterogeneity" or "territorial diversity" of the
colonies accounts for the variations.I5 Most recently, it has been stated that
"in the free West Indies, the supply as well as the quality of labour was
mainly determined by two factors: population density and the availability of
arable land. . . .Where the ratio of people to arable land was high-as in
Barbados, St. Kitts, and Antigua-estate labour was comparatively plentiful.
Where the ratio was low-as in Jamaica, Trinidad, and British Guiana-
estate labour was scarce. " I h Variations in labor relationships are viewed, in
these explanations, as dependent upon the control of land. which is itself
viewed as a product of geophysical factors and population densities. Thus,
Green distinguishes between "high density colonies," in which "planters
controlled virtually all arable land," and "low and medium density colonies"
where "thc propensity of the freedmen to pursue peasant agriculture on acccs-
sible fertile lands rendered it impossible for most planters. ..to command an
abundant pool of reliable estate labourers. " I 7
I' See Riviere, "Labour Shortage."
'" Mathieson. Bririsl~ .Sl(r~.r Lrnrr?rc.ip(~rrorr.
'' Kiviere, "Labour Shortage." 5 .
I h Green,Hrirr.\h S1oi.c Enr(in<.rpcrriorz, 192
"Ihicl . 192. 194
These accounts of the labor situation and of the circumstances favoring the
emergence of a peasantry in the British West Indies after 1838 arrange the
various colonies on a continuum, extending from those small islands with
high population densities where the planters controlled labor successfully
(Antigua, St. Kitts, and Barbados) to the large colonies where land was
plentiful and population densities were low, where the laborers left the estates
in large numbers and created a substantial peasantry (Jamaica, Trinidad, and
British Guiana). All the other British West Indian colonies (with the notable
exception of Belize, which is not discussed in these accountslx) are viewed as
falling somewhere in the middle of this continuum, exhibiting some retention
as well as some loss of plantation labor (St. Vincent, Tobago, Grenada,
Nevis, Montserrat, St. Lucia, and Dominica).
In Barbados, St. Kitts, and Antigua, the monopolization of arable land by
the planters restricted the growth of a peasantry and limited the independent
cultivation of provisions to the function of supplementing wages earned from
regular estate labor. Though provision agriculture was quite extensive on
these islands, it was on such a small scale as to preclude an independent
livelihood. In Barbados in 1844, about 30,000 persons, or 25 percent of the
population, were employed in agriculture, chiefly as estate laborers. In St.
Kitts in the same year, about 8,000 persons, or 30 percent of the population,
constituted the plantation labor force; in Antigua in 1847, as much as 40
percent of the population regularly provided labor on the estates." The price
of freehold land in these islands was the highest in the West lndies in the
1840s, ranging from 40 to 80 per acre in Antigua, and 60 to 200 in
Barbados. A contemporary visitor commented: "Of the large number of the
labouring class who have purchased freeholds. . . the space of ground they
have been provided has generally been so small and its quality so inferior (the
poorer lands being sold to them) as not to suffice under culture for the support
of themselves and family, being little, if any, more than they were allowed to
have during slavery. ''20 Since neither the size nor the quality of these plots
permitted production beyond the very limited levels used to supplement the
family diet, estate labor for wages remained essential to survival for the
former slaves.
At the other end of the scale are the colonies of Jamaica, Trinidad, and
Guiana, where the loss of plantation labor and the growth of a peasantry were
the greatest. As British colonial office records indicate, the planters in these
colonies were continually hampered by the inadequate or irregular nature of
the labor supply. Of Jamaica in 1842, for example, it was stated that "the
I X In some cases, Belite is deliberntely excluded (Green, Hr ~ r i ~ h dis- Slrrrr Emrrncipolion,
cusses only the sugar colonies), but Be l l ~e is generally neglected In histories of the British West
Indies, perhaps because it is considered an anomaly.
" R~vi er e, "Labour Shortage," 12.
"' John Davy, 7'/1rIlic..Fr Indicz\. hcji~rcz rrnrl since S l ~ i r r Lt ~runci pari ot ~ (London, 1854). 397,
405
DOMI NATI ON AFTER SI. AVI: RY 599
want of continuous labour is still very much felt on many estates as the
Labourers generally work vcry i rrcgul nrl j i , without any regard to the wants or
wishes of their employer^."^' The exodus from the estates continued in
Jamaica through the 1840s and 1850s. In 186 1 it was reported that "there are
possibly forty thousand laborers in all who give transient work to the estates,
but at one and the same time the number actually at work, or the number that
can be commanded, does not average more than twenty thousand. These
twenty thousand laborers, taking them r n rnassr, do not work for estates more
than one hundred and seventy days in the year, sometimes three and some-
times four days in the week. "22 The 40,000 laborers who provided irregular
and transient labor on the estates constituted only 9 percent of the total
population. Of Trinidad it was said in December 1838 that "there is not at
present more than half the force willing to be employed on the sugar estates
that was in operation previous to the first of August last,"" and in 1848
planters could "command" only 19 percent of the labor force they had had
available in 1838. In Guiana it was estimated in 1844 that only 30 percent of
those who had been slaves a decade earlier had continued in plantation labor.
Though about 36 percent of the total population in 1851 worked on planta-
tions, less than half of these were ex-slaves, the majority consisting of re-
cently imported Indian, African, and Portuguese indentured laborers.
Because so much land was available in these colonies, its price per acre was
the lowest in the West lndies in the 1840s: from less than 1 to 50 in Guiana,
between 4 and 20 in Jamaica, and from 1 10s. to 13 in Trinidad. The
great variation in price, especially in Guiana, reflected a wide range of quality
and location, but the generally low prices, combined with relatively high
wages and an initial rapid expansion in the internal marketz4 enabled
thousands of former slaves to purchase land and establish themselves as
substantial peasant producers. In Jamaica the number of freeholds increased
from about 2,000 in 1838 to 27,379 in 1845, and to about 50,000 in 1861. By
the latter date, therefore, there were more peasant producers in Jamaica than
there were people employed in casual estate labor. In Trinidad the number of
proprietors, mostly smallholders, increased from about 2,000 in 1832 to over
7.000 in 1849, while only 3,116 laborers were said to work regularly on the
plantations in 185 1 . In Guiana in 1842 some 15,000 former slaves had settled
on 4.506 acres, 40,000 ex-slaves owned 17,000 acres in 9,797 freeholds in
1848, and by 185 1 there were 1 1,152 smallholdings and 46,368 people lived
in villages which had been formed since emancipation.
It is an undeniable fact that planters were able to continue to control labor in
" T. McCornock. March 1842, encl. in Lord Elgin to Lord Stanley. 6 June 1842, CO
1371263, no. 6, Colonial Office Records, Publlc Record Office, London. (Hereafter cited as CO.)
" W. G. Sewell. 771r Or-(ic,ul of PI-cdc L(rhor rtr t he RI - i r r h Wcsr 1tlrlic.c (London, 1861 ), 265.
" Sir George Hill to Lord Glenelg, I I December 1838, CO 2951122.
24 See Michael Moohr. "The Economic Impact of Slave /Z!nlinciplition in British Guiana,
1832-1852," Ecot ~orni c. Rr ~, i c , ~t . , t f i t t ~ ~ y 2d her., 25:4 (1972). 588-607.
Antigua, St. Kitts, and Barbados to a much greater extent than in Jamaica,
Trinidad, and Guiana. The ascendant explanation of this fact identifies the
availability of land as the crucial factor. Thus, it is argued, the planters'
control of labor in Antigua, St. Kitts, and Barbados stemmed from their prior
control of the land, made possible by a high population density, and, con-
versely, the former slaves' ability to establish themselves as an independent
peasantry in Jamaica, Trinidad, and Guiana was the product of an abundance
of available land, resulting from the low population density. Though this
analysis of the relation between the control of land and of labor (which
ultimately rests upon the factor of population density as the chief determinant
of the degree of success of labor control strategies) appears to be satisfactory,
it is not. The unusual case of Belize, a British settlement in Central America
which was a colony in all but name, does not fit within the continuum
provided, nor does the usual analysis, described above, of the relationship
between control of land and labor in the British West lndies account for the
facts in Belize. If, as is frequently the case, Belize is ignored or dismissed as
an anomaly, we will continue to miss the issues and insights which its study
can provide. After examining the situation in Belize, it will be clear that the
availability of land, though important, is not the only factor, nor is it deter-
mined by population density. And the prevailing explanation for the differing
degrees of success in controlling labor in the British West lndies after 1838
can then be seen to be partial and inadequate. The emphasis on, and the
apparent success of, this explanation has resulted in the neglect of other
factors affecting the systems of domination which emerged after slavery.
Despite the fact that Belize was a very large and largely unoccupied territory,
the masters were able to control both land and labor to a degree comparable to
that in the small, densely populated islands. Their monopolistic control of
land was certainly one way in which the masters were able to control labor,
but their control of land requires an explanation. Excluding the islands of the
barrier reef, Belize consists of about 8,600 square miles of land. In the 1830s
the population did not rise above 4,000 persons, so that the density was very
low+ne person for every two square miles, approximately. According to the
generally accepted ideas of the relationship between population density and
the control of land and labor, and the influence of that relationship upon the
emergence of a peasantry after emancipation, Belize should belong at one end
of the continuum, along with Jamaica, Trinidad, and Guiana, but this is
clearly not the case.
The history of the British settlement at Belize differs in many respects from
that of the rest of the British West in die^.'^ Initially settled by buccaneers and
See 0. Nigel Bolland, Thr Formrrriot~ o/ ir ('olr,nirtl .Socic,t\ Hc, /r;c, . / rom ('r,nt/uest ro
('ro,rzt~ ('o/o?~\. (Baltimore, 1 977).
2'
pirates in the seventeenth century, Belize became an important source of
logwood in the first half of the eighteenth century. The logwood cutters
imported African slaves after 1720 and by the end of the eighteenth century
the settlement' s population consisted of almost three thousand persons, three
quarters of them slaves, only a tenth of them white, the remainder being "free
people of color." When the logwood trade declined in the 1760s, it was
replaced by the extraction of mahogany, in searching for which the settlers
penetrated the interior and drove back the indigenous Maya.
The shift from logwood to mahogany extraction entailed an increase in the
size of economic enterprises, because mahogany cutting required more land,
more capital, and more slaves. As a result, ownership became increasingly
concentrated, and the number of white settlers declined. By the beginning of
the nineteenth century, a handful of settlers dominated the entire political
economy of Belize, owning most of the land and people, controlling all of the
trade. import and export, wholesale and retail, and also controlling the judi-
cial, legislative, and administrative organs of the settlement, called the
Magistracy and the Public Meeting.
The British government had played little part in the emergence of this
settlement. apart from providing military and naval assistance against periodic
threats from both the Spanish and the slaves. By treaties of 1763, 1783. and
1786. Britain had acknowledged Spanish sovereignty, the British settlers
having only limited usufructory rights to natural produce. After the Spanish
were defeated at the Battle of St . George' s Cay in 1798 they made no further
attempt to control the territory. As Spain declined and lost its Central Ameri-
can colonies early in the nineteenth century. Britain slowly assumed colonial
authority over Belize. One important consequence of the early status of Belize
was the absence of any agricultural development. cultivation being limited t o
the growing of slave provisions. Another consequence was the unusual system
of land t e n ~ r e , ' ~ whereby the principal settlers simply allocated land to them-
selves, claiming de facto freehold rights through their "location laws. '' When
the Crown' s representative, Superintendent George Arthur, tried in 18 17 to
challenge the legitimacy of this system, he failed to restructure the pattern of
landholding. though he did succeed in proclaiming all remaining unclaimed
land as Crown land, to be distributed henceforth only by the ~uperi nt endent . ~'
This belated assertion of the Crown' s authority regarding disposition of un-
claimed land could affect only the remote areas of the south and west, much of
which was mountainous or thickly forested and unsuitable for agriculture.
Though Superintendent Francis Cockburn requested in 183 1 that Arthur' s
recommendations regarding a more equitable distribution of land be irn-
'' See 0. Nigel Bollund and Acsad Shomun. L,~ncl in Re11:r. 176s-1871: The Ori,qin. of L(mtl
Tct7lrt.c. I ' se, iirld L)i\irrbiarion ir~ 11 De[ ~rrt l er~i El.onomy (King\ton, 1977).
'-See encl. In "Report of the Comml\sioner\. . . 27 July 1820." George Arthur to Earl
Buthurst, 13 Septemher 1820, CO 123129.
602 0 . NI GEI HOLI A N D
~ l e me n t e d , ~ ~ this was never achieved, and it was not until the 1850s that the
system of land tenure was regularized. The Laws in Force Act of 1855 (18
Vict., c. 22, cls. 2, 3) provided retroactive legitimacy to ownership of land
that had been appropriated prior to 1817 under the old location laws, thereby
confirming the extreme concentration of land established during the preceding
century. When finally, after two centuries of settlement, the British govern-
ment asserted its sovereignty in the mid-nineteenth century, declaring
"British Honduras" a colony in 1862, it chose not to disrupt the old structure
of monopolistic land ownership. In fact, as a decline in the mahogany trade
and in the power of the settler elite progressed after the middle of the
nineteenth century, the concentration of land ownership and its alienation to
metropolitan capital increased to the point where one British company, the
Belize Estate and Produce Co. , Lt d. , owned about half of all the freehold land
of the colony.
At the time of emancipation, therefore, a handful of large Belize
landowners-many of which were partnerships between original settlers (who
claimed the land under their own "location laws") and London merchants
(who provided capital and controlled the trade)-owned virtually all the land
in the north and center of the settlement. leaving the remaining remote and
largely nonarable areas of the southwest in the hands of the Crown. The
mahogany trade suffered from a trade cycle and at the time of emancipation
was experiencing its biggest, but also its last, boom, exporting a peak of
nearly fourteen million feet of mahogany in 1846. The mahogany lords were
unable to reorganize their enterprises or to introduce new techniques to make
their laborers more productive; in fact, the methods of felling and trucking
mahogany trees hardly changed until mechanization was introduced in the
twentieth century. Unlike many of the sugar planters in the West Indies. who
were already experiencing prolonged depression and curtailment of produc-
tion, resulting sometimes in backruptcies and abandonment of estates, or who
were able to operate with a smaller but more productive labor force by intro-
ducing new technology, the mahogany lords were eager to expand production
using the old methods and thus needed to increase, or at least to maintain, the
size of their labor force.
The supply of labor had always been the chief production problem for the
mahogany lords of Belize. They acquired the land gratuitously in most cases,
but labor was scarce and expensive because Belize was remote from major
slave markets and because a great premium was placed on strength and fitness
in the business of mahogany extraction. Early in the nineteenth century. the
value of a recently imported African was stated t o be between 120 and 160
Jamaican currency, but a "seasoned" slave was worth 200 to 300." An
'X Francis Cockhurn to Lord Goderich, 10 April 1831, AR, R6. Archives of Belize. Belmo-
pan, (Hereafter cited as AB. )
2q Captain G. Henderson, An Account of tire British Set t l c~r~~r~nt (London, of Horzd[rrrrs. . . .
1800). 60.
TABLEI
Population of Belize, by Color and Stc~tu., , 1829-39
- - - - -- ~- - -
Free Colorer1
Whiras cmd B1trt.k~ Slnvas
\OIJK[ I : Cen\us of Bel i ze.
estate of thirty-one slaves, four of whom were described as "very old,"
realized 9.7I 0in 1820,anaverageofover300per slave.30Whenthevalue
of slavesin thesettlementwas assessed in 1835,the estimate was230,840,
or an average of about 115 per slave, and the portion of the 20 million
compensation fund that was set aside for the proprietors of Belize was
101, 958 19s.7 i/2d.3' Theper-slave rateofcompensationin Belize,536s.
9 Il 2d. , was higher than for any British sugar colony (British Guiana: 51
17s. I 112d.;Trinidad:50 Is. 1114d.;Barbados:20 13s.8 114d. ; Jamaica:
195s. 4 314d.).Thoughthe censusfiguresof the 1830sareunreliable, they
suggestthatthenumberofslavesmayhavebeendecreasing(seeTable I), and
certainly the number of adult male slaves was viewed by the masters as
inadequate.
According tothe slaveregister of 1834there werejust undertwothousand
slaves in Belize. 62 percent of them male. At age forty years or more.
however, men outnumbered women by ten to three, while under the age of
fortythey outnumbered womenbyonlyseventosix.Thiscanbeexplainedby
thefactthatduringtheyears when slaveswere imported, before the abolition
of the trade in 1807,there was apremiumonyoung men whocouldbecome
mahogany cutters.Theslaveregister listby occupationshowsthat 795slaves
were woodcutters, and over half of these were forty years old or more (see
Table2). Sincethe masters could command only a small and aging groupof
slaves in the 1830s. they sought other ways to augment the labor force,
including the acquisition of "liberated" slaves from illegal slavers and the
coercion of members of the legally free population into wage labor.
'" "S'lle\ negro\ E\t of P C Wall," 29 Augu\t 1820,CO 123140
" 7July 1835. CO 3181117
I 88 158 144 244 121 39 795
5or KC L Slave regl\ter. Arch~ve\ot Bellre, Belmopan
In 1834 a Public Meeting decided that they needed 1,800 Africans cap-
tured from slaving ships; a petition was sent to the British Secretary of State in
1835 requesting that 825 of the Africans captured at Havana be sent to Belize,
to be apprenticed for "the Cutting of Mahogany" for a period of eight to
sixteen years, "or at the option of the Employer. ""Accordingly. 459 "liber-
ated" Africans arrived in BelizeJJ during 1836, but many died of cholera, 5
were drowned, and 2 committed suicide. After a year only 357 were alive,
and only 229 of those were male.34 The intent behind this importation of
Africans, whose status was to be virtually that of slaves, was to increase the
labor supply and also to make their present apprentices more tractable after
emancipation:
The introduction of the 5uccessive Cargoes of African5 which have arrived i n the
Settlement, will tend to depreciate the services of the apprentices after August next,
and will render it the more necessary for the latter to conduct themselves with in-
creased act~vity and attention, to enable them to obtain employ~nent.~'
However, this attempt to augment the labor force in the 1830s met with very
limited success and it certainly did not fulfill the hopes or satisfy the needs of
the masters.
The landowners had more success in coercing members of the legally free
population into cutting mahogany as wage laborers. As early as 1790, a
classification of settlers by property, occupation, and color, indicated that
about 30 percent of the free persons (whites and of "mixed Colour" with little
or no property) were "employed by Wood Cutters and others" as clerks and
laborer^.'^ Owing to the Spanish treaty restrictions on agriculture, the ex-
treme concentration of land ownership, and a monopolistic control of trade,
the mahogany exporters were able to keep "the people poor and totally
dependent upon them. "" Many of the free colored were refugees from the
"
E'r;lnc~sCockhurn t o Secretary of State, 21 January 1835. AB. K6.
" J . G. Anderson to Lord Glenelg, 10 August and 20 December 1836, CO 123148.
l4
W~l l i amGow t o Alexander Macdonald, 1 March 1838. CO 123153.
" lhlil. I February 1838. CO 123153.
'' CO 12319. See also 0. Nigel Bolland. "The Social \tructure and Social Relations of the
Settlement in the Bay of Honduras (Beli7e) in the 18th century," Jorrrnirl (fC' i ~ri hhrrrn Hi st orv,
no. 6 ( 1973). 40.
" Letter from Edward De\pard, I I January 1788. CO 12316.
DOMI NAT I ON A F T E R SI . AVERY 60s
Mosquito Shore who arrived in Belize in 1787 and were denied land by the
magistrates. who were the principal landowners. The superintendent com-
plained that the refugees "are entirely excluded from any means of gaining a
Subsistence, unless they will become the Servants of these Legislators. "M
Since slaves continued to escape from the settlement into the interior or
across the borders (especially after adjoining Spanish territories became inde-
pendent and abolished slavery) and since after 1807 escapees could not be
replaced by the slave trade, the masters sometimes improved their treatment
of the slaves or granted manumission. The very high rate of manumission in
Belize (573 manumissions between 1808 and 1830, or about one fifth of the
slave p ~p u l a t i o n ~~) suggests that the masters preferred a free black laborer to a
runaway slave. The landowners thus resorted to manumission while devising
the means to control this increasing free population, which by 1838 was as
numerous as the slaves.
The free people of color always occupied an intermediate and ambiguous
social position in Belize, as elsewhere in the Caribbean.40 (The expression
"free people of color" generally included the free colored, who were of
mixed race, and the free blacks, though distinctions were often made between
these two subcategories.) Though legally free, they were denied many of the
civil rights and social privileges accorded to whites and, although a few were
quite wealthy slaveowners. the majority remained poor and economically
dependent. A law passed in 1805 excluded "free persons of colour" from
possessing a logwood works unless such persons also possessed "four able
negro men slaves." and that at a time when the logwood trade was perma-
nently depressed. Such economic restrictions, combined with exclusion from
the judicial institutions and from commissions in the militia, and property and
residence qualifications for the Public Meeting which were double those for
whites, confined these people to an inferior social and economic position.
When, under pressure from Britain, an act was passed to grant full civil rights
to the free colored in 1830, an attempt to extend this to free blacks was
defeated.
In addition to the free colored and black populations, the masters employed
members of the Carib. or Garifuna. community which had established itself in
the south, and also "foreigners," that is. Spanish-speaking migrant or immi-
grant laborers. In 1833, the current superintendant pointed out that "the Free
Labourer and Slave work together. but tho' with the Gangs for months to-
gether, it would be impossible to discover the one from the other unless they
were separately pointed out. "4' A report from the same year stated: "There
'* Edward Despard to Lord Sydney, 24 August 1787, CO 12315.
'' Returns by George Westby, 15 December 1823, CO 123134, and 3 1 December 1835, CO
123137; and Franci\ Cockburn to Lord Goder ~ch, 25 April 1831, CO 123142.
"' See David Cohen and Jack Greene, eds. , Nrirhrr S1rrl.r nor Frczcz (Baltimore, 1972); and
Jerome Handler, The Unuppropri<~terl Proplr (Baltimore, 1 074)
''
Francis Cockburn to Lord Stanley. 29 October 1833. AB, R6.
are no gangs at present employed in cutting mahogany exclusively composed
of Slaves, half of each gang being free labourers. . . the freeman and slave
labour together side by side, are subject to the same restraint and management
in every respect, eat, drink. and sleep together. . . . It is however necessary to
remark that the free labourers alluded to, are for the most part foreigners. "42
In 1836, it was noted that between twelve and fifteen hundred "foreigners and
free Labourers are hired annually for the Mahogany Works, and they are by
no means sufficient to answer the demand."43 The total work force in the
mid-1 830s was probably about 2,000 men, consisting of around 800 appren-
tices and 1.200 free laborers. half of the latter being colored or black Creoles
and Garifuna and the remainder being "foreigners."
Though it has been shown that the masters obtained a mixed labor force to
cut mahogany in the 1830s, consisting of slaves or apprentices, free colored
and black laborers, "liberated" African apprentices, Garifuna, and Spanish
migrant laborers, it remains to be seen how the owners maintained control
after emancipation in 1838. Though most of this population was still, in a
general sense, dependent upon those few individuals and companies that
dominated the economy of Belize. this circumstance does not indicate the
specific means by which the labor force was controlled and disciplined. The
monopolistic concentration of land ownership was clearly one way in which
the mahogany lords had, since the eighteenth century, deprived the poor
members of the free population of an independent livelihood and thereby
made them dependent upon wage labor. This strategy continued to be effec-
tive after 1838. However, given the very low population density, it is neces-
sary to explain how the concentration of land ownership was maintained. It
will now be argued that the control of labor, through a combination of tech-
niques and circumstances unique to Belize, was actually one of the ways by
which the masters maintained their monopolistic ownership of land and
thereby inhibited the development of a peasantry, such as occurred in other
"low density" colonies.
The employers used a system of labor laws and practices designed to keep
their laborers under very firm control. At the heart of this system was a labor
contract which worked with a combination of "advance" and "truck" sys-
tems to bind the laborer to his employer by keeping him in permanent debt.
These practices, which originated in relation to the free laborers prior to
emancipation, were certainly an effective mechanism of control long before
they became incorporated into the laws of the settlement in 1846.
An attempt to regulate the practices of hiring laborers having failed in
1830.j4 a committee was later established, on the superintendent's recom-
mendation. to consider proposals for "regulating the relative duties of Master
42 Memorial to Franei\ Cockburn, from minute\ of Public Meeting, 26 October 1833. CO
123144
" J . C . Antlerson to Secretary of State. 28 April 1836, AB. Rh.
44 Minutes of Public Meeting, I March 1830, CO 123141
and Servant. "4F As emancipation neared, it was necessary to prepare a
smooth transition in labor relations, and this led to an examination of existing
practices of hiring labor. The report of the clerk of the court to the superinten-
dent makes it clear that the contract system had existed prior to emancipation,
and the clerk emphasized the inadequate legal protection for laborers which
that system contained:
The employment of Household and all other servants. whether Journeymen or
otherwise, within the Town of Belize, is regulated upon much the same principle as in
England. The great bulk of the Lower Classes, however, and almost all the Charibs
and Spaniards who resort to the Settlement, are employed in the Mahogany Works in
the Interior, and with them it is the practice to enter into Contract by which they hire
themselves generally for six or twelve months. This is usually done at the commence-
ment or middle of the year, when the servant goes before a Magistrate. & volunteers a
Contract for his services.
It is in the enforcement of these Contracts, however, that the great evil lies. There is
no law on the subject further than what custom has sanctioned. That custom has been,
that where the Servant has failed in his Contract, the Master has had the power to bring
him up at once on Warrant, and have him summarily punished by Imprisonment and
public Whipping. If however the breach of Contract lay with the Master,-If for
example. the Master was deficient in the payments he had contracted to make to his
servant. the Servant could only sue the Master as in the matter of a common debt.
To send the Servant into Court for the recovery of his wages amounts to an absolute
denial of justice to him. People in his condition are not supposed to possess the means
of their remaining for months at Belize to prosecute their suits for those very earnings
which would enable them to reside there for a little. They only add to their embarrass-
ment by being debarred from leaving the Town and entering into another contract.*
When, again under pressure from Britain, the settlers of Belize concurred in
the superintendent's request to terminate the apprenticeship system on 1 Au-
gust 1838, the Public Meeting hastily approved some regulations for resolving
disputes over wages and other contractual matters between "Masters and
Servants." Not only could the employer take his employee to court for "ab-
senting himself from his duty, or for unruly and disobedient conduct," but the
employee could also take his employer to court before three magistrates
empowered to fine the employer for "unlawfully withholding any wages due
to such complainant. "It was further stipulated "that every servant or labourer
shall be henceforth hired in writing," and the contract was to be registered at
the office of the clerk of court, "in order to remedy the great evil and
inconvenience which has of late arisen to masters or employers by reason of
labourers engaging themselves to several individuals at or nearly the same
time to work for and during the same periods. and receiving considerable
advances from each person on account of their wages. "47
That the law was primarily oriented toward controlling the laborers is
"'
(hid , 6 November 1837, CO 123/50.
James Walker t o Alexander Macdonald, 12 February 1838, CO 123152.
j7 Minutes o f Public Meeting, 0 July 1838, encl. in Alexander Macdonald to Lord Glenelg, 28
Augu\t 1838. CO 123153.
indicated by the way it was applied shortly after emancipation. Though a
general amnesty had released all prisoners from jail on 1 August, the jail had
103 prisoners only a few months later. Nine prisoners were listed as "runa-
ways," and twenty-four were guilty of insolence, disobedience, or breaking
an agreement. A typical example of the severity of sentences appears in the
case of Pedro Chabia, who was sentenced to "six months' imprisonment with
hard labor on the Public Works" for a "breach of contract. " 4 Wh e n the labor
laws were amended in the 1850s, the penalty imposed on a "servant" who
failed to fulfill a contract after receiving advances was reduced to three
months of imprisonment with hard labor but, among other repressive mea-
sures, the amended law allowed the employer, or his agent, to apprehend a
laborer without warrant and remove him forcibly to his designated place of
work.4" It is clear from these labor laws that the struggle between former
masters and slaves was continuing, although in new forms.
Central to effective control of the labor force was the practice of paying
wages in advances. The hiring period for mahogany work, which was a
seasonal occupation, was generally during the Christmas holidays, when both
employers and laborers congregated in the town of Belize. The advance
system was ostensibly designed to permit the laborer to purchase his supplies
prior to going to the forests for the season, an experience that had beerr
compared to "a long confinement on shipboard. The employers knew that
the advances they gave were rarely used for purchasing supplies but were,
instead, spent on "keeping Christmas" in the festive fashion traditional in the
settlement. This was often the only time that the mahogany workers spent
with their families, kin, and friends before the long, arduous, and isolated
season in the mahogany camps, so they were motivated to spend lavishly on
gifts and luxuries. The result was that the laborers then had to purchase their
supplies on credit and at exhorbitant prices from the employers' stores in the
forests, a practice known as the "truck" system. Frequently, laborers were
paid a mixture of "cash and kind," the goods being regularly inferior and
overvalued. Sometimes laborers never saw any wages, as the company book-
keeper would simply reduce their debts by the amount of their earnings.
Often, the balance of the wages a worker received in the forest was insuffi-
cient to meet his expenses, he ended the season in debt to his employer, and
had to work off the debt in the following season. The effect of the combina-
tion of the advance and truck systems, therefore, was to bind the laborer to his
employer by keeping him eternally in debt.
Voices were periodically raised against the advance and truck systems, but
without effect. Some blamed the scheme upon the Yucatecan refugees who
4X Alexander Macdonald's report, 8 April 1839, CO 1231.55.
4y
"An Act to amend the Law relating to Contracts for Hire and Service," 18 V~ct . , c. 12,
Li~ir..sof rllr .Srttlcmcnr of R~.iti.\h Hl~niilrrir.\ ( 1857)
'O Henderson, Account of British Settlement. 7.5.
DOh l l NAT l ON AF TER S LAVERY 609
settled in Belize after the Guerra de las Castas began in 1847.Certainly the
system was used onestatesto thenorth of Belize, whereMaya laborers were
"overwhelmed withdebt [andwere]regarded. incourseoftime, as aportion
ofthe value ofthevariousranchosorEstates onwhich theyliveandw ~ r k , " ~ '
but the systemhad been used in Belizelongbefore that. It was only withthe
depression in the mahogany trade in the second half of the century that the
employers,perceivingthe supplyof labortobe more than sufficient fortheir
needs, let the system decline somewhat: "Since the abandonment . . . of the
mahogany works the Truck System has been in some measure given
up.. . . Employers are anxious to doaway with the system altogether, and
have made comparatively trifling advances this year." 52 Nevertheless, a
lengthy description of the colony' s prevailing employmentpractices a dozen
years later showsthat the system persisted:
Thefirst principle in this system.. . isthe advanceofthreeormoremonths' wages
at the time of hiring. The labourer engages himself some time during the Christmas
holidays for the ensuing year at say nine dollars per month. But he hasjust entered
upon,orisin the height of,his fewweeks' annual festivity, andhe andthe woman he
lives with, and the children, if any,require money "to keep Christmas." He applies
for.andisgrantedfourmonths'advanceofwages: probably takingthreetobeginwith.
and spendingitout, returningforanothermonth's advance.Butby hisagreementheis
bound totake half of his wages in goodsfrom his employer, whokeeps in his storea
stock of suchgoods ashis hands require,andofacertainly ~nferior quality. Firstofall
thereisanundueadvantageontheemployer's si de. . . theevilofhispurchasingin the
dearestmarket. instead ofbeing allowedtotakehis moneywherehelikes, isthe lesser
one only; the greater is that he receives these goods and the cash in the middle of a
saturnaliaof dissipation, andtheconsequences arethe hard cash disappearslikebutter
before the sun,finding its way intothe tillsoftherumsellers. Thegoodsarenext sold
at one half what he is charged for them; that money, or the greater part of i t also
disappears,andanotheradvance follows.Thelabourerhas thereforetostarthisyear's
engagementthree. four, or even five months in debt. On the works the samerule of
half goods half cash ispursued, but he seesnomorecash although hegetsgoods.The
bookkeeper ofthegang keeps hisaccount,debitingsomuch foreverydayhe isabsent
from work, even for sickness. and exacting fines rigorously, the contract being in
every way a tight one for the labourer. It is hardly necessary to add that when his
season's work is over he finds himself in debt when he comesdown to Belize for his
Christmas spree. At notime is he capable of understanding his accounts clearly,and
the time chosen for settling his year's accounts is when he is enjoying a continuous
carousel . . . the systemis amost pern~cious one in every way."
Thesystemwas,of course,backed by thepowerof thepolice, courts, and
prisons. A seriesof magistrates' reports in 1870showsthat a largeproportion
of their work consisted of enforcing the labor laws, called "hlasters and
Servants" Acts, and this meant, almost entirely, disciplining the laborers.
'' Edwin Adolphus to Jame\ Longden, 1.5January 1870,AB, R105.
'' Francis Cockburn t oJames Longden. 24 February 1870.AH. R106.
" Archibald Robertson Gibb\. Rrirrsh Hondu~- ~r . \ : ( ~nr i Dr s~. r r pt i ~, e .4n Hi . \ ~or i ( . ~r l , I wounI of
r i ~c Col o~~v. / r or r r / I $ Sc~t~lrnrcnr. 1670 (I.ondon, 1883). 176-78.
Thus, the magistrate at Corozal decided 286 cases under the labor laws in
1869,all of them constituting discipline imposed upon laborers: there were
245 punished for "absenting themselves from work without leave," 30for
"insolence and disobedience." 6 for "assaults on masters and book-
keepers," and 5for "entering into secondcontracts before the expiryof the
periodofformerones. In 1868and 1869,there were 146casesbrought by
masters against their servants atthepolice court in Belize.Only oneof these
cases was dismissed; a common punishment among the others was three
months' imprisonment with hard labor. In the same period, ten cases were
brought by servants against masters, only one of which resulted in punish-
ment, namely, a two dollarfine.5$
Thehigh incidence of absenteeism, "neglect of work," and disobedience
shown in the magistrates' records isevidenceof persistent dissatisfaction and
discontent among the laborers and of continuing labor problems forthe em-
ployers. Similarly,theseverity of the sentencesagainst laborers andthelack
of casesresulting inpunishment of employersdemonstratethat the laborlaws
andthe magistrates whoenforced themwereinstruments of theemployersfor
controllingand disciplining the labor force.
Theconsequenceof this system of laborcontrol was that the formerslaves
remained dependent upon and indebted to their masters. Belize was a small
settlement with an undeveloped internal market (the Sunday markets having
been abolished by the 9 July 1838 Public Meeting which agreed to end
apprenticeship)sotherewaslittleincentiveforthegrowthofanydomestically
orientedagriculture.Infact,themerchantsofBelize,manyofthemalsobeing
big landowners, benefited fromthe advancesystem and were opposedto the
developmentof locally produced foodsorof a self-sufficient peasantry. The
great reliance upon importedfoodthat characterized theperiod of slavery has
remainedafeatureof Belize,muchtotheadvantageofthecommercialsector.
With regard to land, the mahogany lords were able to maintain their
monopolistic control and to legalize their vast landholdings in the mid-
nineteenth century. When freehold land was sold, it was sold by the small
settlerstothe large companies, thereby further concentratinglandownership
and excluding the former slaves. Crown land, originally granted free, was
priced at& 1 peracrein 1838in ordernot "to discouragelabourforwages"56
and was chiefly in remote locations and of poor quality, therefore not an
attractive orpractical proposition forformer slaves who may have wished to
become independent peasant farmers. No Crown land was sold in the period
upto 1 855,57 and by 1868thetotal amountof Crownland soldsinceemanci-
Edwin Adolphus to James Longden, 15January 1870,AB, R105.
'' Francis Cockburn to James Longden, 24 February 1870,AB, R106.
'6 Lord Normanhy to Alexander Macdonald. 22 April 1839,AB, R15.
'' William Stevenson to SirHenry Barkly, 30July 1855,AB, R48.
pation was saidtobe "utterly insignifi~ant."' ~ Apart from somesquatters on
river banks, and the Garifuna and Maya subsistencecultivators in the south
and north, respectively, there was virtually no peasantry in Belize in the
mid-nineteenth century. Onthe contrary, the structureof landownershipbe-
came increasingly concentrated and the majority of the population remained
landless and wholly dependent upon the merchant and landownerelite.
Theabilityof thiselitetocontinuetocontrolthe landmustbeexplained,in
part, by theireffectivenessin continuing tocontrol the laborers afteremanci-
pation. Unlike the formerslavesof Jamaica, Trinidad,andGuiana,many of
whomlefttheestatesandbecame independent peasantproducers,themajority
of the formerslavesin Belizecontinuedto work forthemasters inmahogany
gangs. The indebtedness induced by the combination of advance and truck
systemsprovided the means to maintain asubmissivelaborforce,disciplined
now through law enforcement by police, magistrates, and prisons. This sys-
tem of domination, which trapped the laborers in a form of debt servitude,
was unknown in the rest of the British West Indies but was successfully
applied in Belize, despite the existenceof a low population density and vast
areasof unused landwhich wouldotherwisehave favoredthedevelopmentof
an independent peasantry.
In 1888ahandbook onthe colony criticised the predominant employment
practices:
It iswell knownthat a system has prevailed in thecolony unchecked. . . of labour-
ersbeing kept in debtby theireniployersforthepurposeof securinga continuanceof
their labour, assuch labourers consider themselves bound t oserve until such debt is
extinguished. Advantage has been t aken. . . tokeepthem in debt by either supplying
them with goodsor drinkforthepurpose, andtheythusbecomevirtually enslavedfor
life."
Half acenturyaftertheinstitutionof slavery hadbeendeclaredabolished,the
laborers of Belize were far from being emancipated. Despite the change in
legal status, the free laborer, like the slave, remained "completely at the
mercy of his employer" and "virtually enslaved for life," as aresult of this
truly pernicious system of labor control.
Examination of the Belize case indicates the necessity to study the interrela-
tionship of the control of land and the control of labor as two aspects of a
system of dominationwhich persisted long afterslavery was declared illegal.
At this point, wecan examinetwo connected and moregeneralissues which
Jame\ Longdento Sir John Grant,6Mu c h 1868.AB, R98
'' Llnd\dy W. Bn\ t owednd P h ~ l ~ p Wnght. B I h e H<rrrdhooX o/ Atrtrth Hot7dicr<ri for 1888-
89 (London. 1888). 199
have been raised by this study, namely, the use of dialectical theory and the
critique of the concept of the antinomy of slavery and freedom.
First, we should reconsider the theoretical framework within which systems
of domination are examined. The fact that most historical writing lacks any
explicit theoretical framework does not mean that it does not have an implicit
one, which generally is based upon two assumptions concerning the nature of
social action-that it is rational and that it is individualistic. In other words,
this theoretical framework implies that, under certain given conditions. indi-
viduals will choose to act in certain predictable ways. This framework views
labor control, and social action in general, as a series of relations between
individuals, rather than as a social institution or as an aspect of a system of
relationships which is already in operation.
Functionalism is most frequently invoked as the framework alternative to
this "rational individualism" because it appears to meet the problem of exam-
ining institutions as ongoing structures. However, though functionalism is not
so reductionist, it avoids the question of the historical origins of social struc-
tures. When an institution is studied in terms of its function, that is, in terms
of the part it plays in maintaining a systemic whole, the problem of examining
the origins and the transformation of the institution remains.
Yet another framework exists in the comparative method which approaches
problems of function and change by comparing specific factors and variables
in a quasi-experimental manner. However, the fact that one can compare only
those phenomena which have shared qualities produces the danger that the
search for commonalities may be at the expense of drawing on the uniqueness
of specific sociohistorical situations. When factors are isolated from their con-
texts, in order that they may be compared, they lose their particular meaning.
In this way, then, overreaching comparisons may lose sight of the real mean-
ing of what is being compared, and the result is ahistorical theory and abstract
generalizations. Of course, we must always make comparisons, but when the
search for universals makes a "methodology" out of the comparative method,
then the tail is wagging the dog, and the quest for increasingly sophisticated
techniques overwhelms the concern for understanding the meaning of specific
historical structures.
In contrast to these approaches, dialectical theory is critical in that it iden-
tifies the conflicts that produce change in social structures and it emphasizes
the importance of studying all factors as part of a historical "totality" which
the factors affect but from which they also derive their meaning. Dialectical
theory consequently offers an important corrective to some of the possible
extremes of the comparative method as well as an alternative theoretical
framework to those of rational individualism and functionalism. These points
may be illustrated by our present example, in which it may be seen that
arbitrary abstraction of certain factors from the totality induces explanations
that are deterministic, monocausal, and reductionist, and that dialectical
theory provides a preferable framework.
While it is incontrovertible that the abolition of slavery in 1834 and of
apprenticeship in 1838 changed the forms of domination that had prevailed in
the British West Indies, it is necessary to distinguish between the ideological
claims made for the new system and its reality. One of the illusions of the
period is that, with the end of apprenticeship in 1838, labor power suddenly
was freed as a commodity, but the fact is that labor power. like land, was not
freed from the very real constraints of existing and persistent power struc-
tures. The uncritical acceptance of this illusion is compatible with the rational
individualist approach which considers land and labor as two separate and
distinct variables, abstracted from the sociohistorical totality which gives
them their real meaning. In this approach, the availability of land is deter-
mined by the degree of population density, and the latter is the factor that is
taken to account for variations in the effectiveness of attempts to control
labor. This conceptualization, which is characteristic of the explanations ordi-
narily advanced for the differing degrees of success with which masters con-
trolled their former slaves after 1838, is doubly flawed: First, it fails to take
into account the real continuity of structural constraints which remained undis-
turbed through the apparent change in systems in 1838 and, second, it arbitrar-
ily separates and abstracts "land" and "labor" and makes their control de-
pendent upon the supposedly objective factor of population density. Such a
conceptualization constitutes a "hollow abst r act i ~n"~~' which fails to take into
account the dialectical interrelationships between land, labor, and population
within a particular historic mode of production and, consequently, expla-
nations based upon such a conceptualization are deterministic and
monocausal. Further, by attempting to explain social relations in terms of a
nonsociological variable, namely, population density, these explanations are
also reduct i oni ~t . ~' The density of population, while it is certainly a socially
relevant factor, is not itself a social phenomenon; that is. it specifies nothing
about social relationships, but only about the numerical distribution of people
in space. Hence, all explanations which rely upon this factor to account for
varieties of systems of labor control, or indeed of the division of labor or any
other structure of social relations, are essentially reductionist.
Friedrich Engels to Conrad Schmidt, 27 October 1890, in TIlc ..M<rrtEn, yaIs Rc<rrler-.Robert
C. Tucker, ed. ( New York, 1972), 647.
" To explain variation\ in the systems of labor control In tenns o l the detennining factor of
population density is actually Durkheimian. In 1903 Durkheim defined what he called "the
material \ubstratum of soclety." "What i \ ~ t , " he wrote, "which forms the main \uhstance of
soclety, if it is not social space plus the population whlch occupies this space' ?. . . a society is of
greater or lesser density. " See Anthony Giddens, ed. , Ernila Durkheim: Selec.ted writing.^ (Cam-
hridge, 1972). 83. It is this concept of "material density" which underlies Durkhelm's explana-
tion of the development of the division of labor and hence, also, hi\ conception of the historical
development of societies
In contrast to these theories, dialectical theory promotes examination of the
interrelationship of social factors. including cultural and political. as well as
of economic and demographic aspects, in the totality of a social system,
which is conceived as an ongoing and changing structure of relationships.
Moreover, generalizations concerning the interrelationship of such factors are
valid only within the limits of the particular system to which they give rise, as
Marx made clear with regard to the special "law of population peculiar to the
capitalist mode of production. "h2 When "land" is considered in this
framework. it is not as a geophysical determinant of social life, but as a factor
which is itself socially produced and defined. It is in this sense, therefore, that
the dialectics of "historical materialism" are less materialistic, as well as less
deterministic, than those theories that abstract land and population statistics
from their sociohistorical contexts.
As examined in the light of dialectical theory, it is clear that the control of
land and the control of labor in Belize were but two aspects of an interrelated
totality. of a changing but persistent structure of domination. The amount of
arable land which is available is not determined simply by the size of the
territory. nor by the population density. Moreover, while the quantity of
potential arable land is affected by technology (including aspects such as land
clearance and irrigation capacity, as well as the types of crops and cultivating
tools available), technology does not determine the quantity that is actually
available, nor to whom it is made available. The availability of land is primar-
ily determined by the power structure. In Belize, the unavailability of land to
former slaves was the consequence of a policy to limit land ownership to a
minority in order to make the majority more dependent. However, the ability
of the landowners to enforce their monopolistic claims did itself depend on the
degree to which they controlled the laborers. That the control of each aspect
was a means for the further control of the other indicates the inadequacy of
conceptualizing them as independent variables. The examination of the Beli-
zean case suggests, therefore, that a dialectical analysis of the dynamics of
domination in the rest of the British West Indies may also prove fruitful. We
should examine the "land factor," not as a geophysical fact determined by
~naniland ratios, as has been the tendency hitherto, but as a social aspect
which is affected by such factors as available technology and, especially, the
distribution of social power. At the same time, land influences the mainte-
nance of that power structure by enabling those who control it to multiply their
resources at others' expense.
The second point, implied in the previous statement, is that the study of the
interrelatedness of the control of land and of labor as key aspects of a structure
of domination suggests the need for a more critical examination of the real
b' Kdrl Mdrx. Capitol, I , In 7hr Mort-tngrlr R~udrlr. 2d ed . Robert C Tucker, ed (New
York, 1978), 422 23
meaning of the terms "emancipation " and "freedom " for the postslavery
period. These are ideological terms. the use of which promote and perpetuate
illusions about the nature of an epoch whose real characteristics are those of a
system of domination. M. I . Finley has persuasively argued that the "simple
slave-free antinomy" has been "harmful as a tool of analysis"63 and that it is
necessary to distinguish among the kinds of servitude that exist between
slavery and freedom, yet this antinomy persists in the historiography of
nineteenth-century Caribbean societies. If historians are to be anything other
than representatives of the Colonial Office and the planter class, self-
confessed or otherwise, we should commence a critical reevaluation of these
concepts in relation to the changes which occurred in the mid-nineteenth
century.
While not denying that the change in legal status of the majority of the
population, and their subsequent attainment of some limited civil rights, con-
stituted an important social event, it is nevertheless clear that the social
condition of "full emancipation" or entry into the "realm of freedom" was
not, and arguably has not yet been, achieved. As has been seen in Belize.
some nineteenth-century colonial administrators and apologists themselves
recognized the likeness of the post- 1838 system of labor control to slavery. as
did the Guianese workers quoted at the beginning of this paper, and we should
do no less. If we can emancipate ourselves from the slavery!freedom anti-
nomy we may better examine and understand the continuities (as well as
changes) in structures of social relationships. and in particular the continuities
in the structure of power, in the nineteenth century.
The comparative study of systems of labor control could benefit from a
classificatory scheme which would be capable of distinguishing among
categories along a broad spectrum of "unfreedoms," including slavery, serf-
dom. and debt peonage, as well as remunerated tribute labor, indentured
labor, convict or captive labor, coerced wage labor, and so-called free wage
labor. Finley has recently criticized the inadequate conceptualization of types
of labor and has sought to distinguish sharply between, on the one hand, the
various forms of compulsory labor and, on the other, hired labor, "which
implies the conceptual abstraction of a man's labour power from the man
himself. "-Slavery, in which the luhoix~rhimself is the commodity, and free
labor for wages, in which 1riDor power is the commodity, are thus at the
extreme poles of systems in which some people labor involuntarily for others.
W. Kloosterboer has termed as "compulsory" that labor in which "the
labourer cannot withdraw if he so wishes without being liable to punishment,
and or for which he has been accepted without his willing consent to it."h5
"3 M. I . Finley, "Between Slavery and Freedom," Chml~urtrtivc. Studics in Society and f l i s-
t ory, 6:3 (1964), 236.
" M. I . Finley. /Iriciertt Slnvc,ry rid Modern Ideology (New York. 19XO), 68-69.
6i W. Kloosterboer, 1nr.oIuntnn~ Lohour srncc the /tholition o f Slavery (Leiden. 1960), 2.
616 0. N I G F L BOI I . AND
However, such contract labor, performed under the threat of penal sanction,
and wage labor which, despite the absence of direct external compulsion, is
compelled as a means of survival, may both appear as involuntary in the
minds of the laborers. Moreover, Arnold J . Bauer has recently emphasized
that debt does not always mean bondage and that cash advances may be seen
by some workers as an "indirect wage increase" in the form of credit ex-
tended without interest.hh Such credit, then, can indicate the weakness of the
en~ployer in a situation of labor shortage, while in the situation where the
employers are powerful, such advances can tie the laborers to an enterprise
against their wills. Any such classificatory scheme, therefore, must take ac-
count not only of the cultural definitions of such concepts as "ownership,"
"property," and "work" in the legal system of the ruling class, but must also
take account of the meaning of the labor system for the laborers.h7 While it is
necessary to avoid undue abstraction of these concepts from their social con-
text, which would result in comparison of unequals and overgeneralized ahis-
torical theorizing, there is clearly a need for a more systematic conceptualiza-
tion of types of labor control, based on an adequate theory of structures of
domination.
If we abandon the simplistic slaverylfreedom antinomy, productive com-
parisons of change in the forms of compulsory or coerced labor can be made,
provided that these comparisons take into account the specifics of changing
structures of domination and avoid attempts to create universalistic evolution-
ary sequences.h8 We may then usefully pose the question: How do we account
for the fact that in some situations of labor shortage the workers are able to
increase their benefits in terms of greater freedom and better remuneration,
while in others the employers exercise ever more powerful coercion, in the
form of violence or bondage? Or, similarly, why does an expanding economy
sometimes result in the greater hegemony of the ruling class, while at other
times it provides an opportunity for workers to win more concessions'? These
questions requirc a comparative analysis of historical specifics within a
framework of dialectical theory.
In conclusion, the critique of domination in the British West Indies in the
nineteenth century must analyze the interrelationship of land control and labor
" Arnold J . Bauer, "Rural Workers in Spanish America: Prohlcms of Peonage and Oppres-
sion," Ni.sl~unic Arnericcm Hi,rori(.ul K~ ~ i e i t , , 59: I (1979). 36-48.
67 Further, the interests of t h o e who control the labor should also be considered. in order to
distinguish, for exatnple. between labor for the public good and labor for private profit. The
duration of the labor control system is another variable, ranging from a temporary duty, which
may be accepted in unusual and extreme conditions such as wartime, through long contracts or
lifetime bondage. to slavery as an inherited status.
hX For the series oC changes that took place in systems of labor control in sixteenth- and
seventeenth-century Mexico, see Silvio Zavala. iVrw Vir~t.l~uint.s or1 rhr Spanrsh Colon~zrrtion o/
Ant~,l-ictr(Philadelphia. 1943). 93-103, and Charles Gibson. The it:tc.rs under Sprini.\h Rule: A
fll.,rorv o f ' t i ~r I nd~anso f thr V ~ ~ I l c v 1.51 Y - of Meriro. I N1 0 (Stanford. 1964). 220-56.
control. The system of labor control must be examined in a wide variety of
aspects, including the wagelrent system, the advance and truck systems.
contracts and taxation, sponsored and indentured immigration and restrictions
on emigration, vagrancy laws, and the role and function o f the magistrates,
police, and prisons. In addition. the structure o f the political system, with its
restricted franchise and colonial administration, and the ideological role of
ministers and missionaries in churches and schools should be examined. We
need. also, to examine the race factor, to ascertain the degree to which the
persistence o f the powerlessness and rightlessness of the former slaves was
related to their racial identity and the extent to which the dominant structure
was sustained by racist ideology. A11 these aspects are dialectically interre-
lated with the responses of the laborers, which included a variety of tech-
niques o f withdrawal from and resistance to the coercive system, in the form
o f task-work gang" strikes, absenteeism, noncooperation at work. and the
creation of mutual aid societies. "free villages." and independent peasan-
tries, and even emigration.
To say that freedom or full emancipation was not attained after 1838 is not
to deny that there were important changes. However. we must learn to exam-
ine and distinguish between forms of coercion which exist within systems in
which labor is legally free, just as we need to distinguish between varieties of
legal bondage. Frederick Cooper has recently drawn attention to "how much
richer and more precise studies o f forms of agricultural labour that can be
called 'slave' have been, cornpared to forms of labour that can be called
' free,' "and has pointed to the "great need to understand economic and social
structures-of which direct coercion was only a part-that defined the options
that ex-slaves had. Above all, what we need to accept is that domination
persists even while the relations o f domination change. and that the status of
legally free people often may be depressed into various kinds of dependency
and unfreedo~n. By rejecting the simple antinomy of slavery and freedom. we
can view the nineteenth century as a period o f transition from one system of
domination to another, each involving different forms of labor control. This
perspective encourages further comparative analysis o f the transition frorn
slave to wage labor systems in the Caribbean area, as well as in the United
States. Brazil, and elsewhere.
Finally, to reject crudely dete~minstic theories and reductionist expla-
nations is not to abandon all theory in favor of the descriptive study o f
historical particularities. I hope 1 have shown the contrary: that the application
of dialectical theory provides a superior analytical base for comparative
studies. An important part of such an analysis, which has been neglected
hitherto, will be the examination o f the laborers' resistance to the coercive
system. as important in wage as in slave labor societies. As the negation of
hq breder~ck Cooper. "Commentary." In Craton. "Roots and Branchc\," 82
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