Commentary
Newsday
Tensions between planters and enslaved workers in the Caribbean surged to dangerous levels between 1823 and 1833.
The enslaved population demonstrated their intolerance of enslavement with large-scale resistance movements which enveloped the region and threatened to destroy the system that sustained the economic, political and social organisations that kept large landowners in control of the sugar-producing British Caribbean possessions prepared to fight for their “rights.”
With resistance poised to erupt – a threat of uncontrolled mayhem – in 1823, the West Indian lobby presented the British Parliament with recommendations intended to improve the living and working conditions of enslaved Africans on Caribbean plantations and defuse the situation.
Undoubtedly moved by fear of the sordid outcomes of such a regional clash of determined contenders, Parliament accepted the proposals.
The proposals to mitigate enslavement included: laws against flogging in the fields by slave drivers; a limit of three strokes to be applied at any one time, in the presence of creditable witnesses; quarterly records of floggings to be submitted to magistrates required to monitor the situation; Sunday markets should be abolished and the day reserved for religious activity; slave marriages should be encouraged; slave evidence should be accepted in court if a religious or creditable person would vouch for them; the enslaved should be encouraged to buy their freedom and should have the right to own property.
These proposals, which struck at the aorta of the slave system, did not find favour with the plantocracy, who felt they eroded their ability to control their “property” and threatened their livelihood.
The planting community in Tobago was firmly opposed to several aspects of the proposals. Their long-standing concerns about the size of the island’s enslaved population made them reluctant to encourage buying freedom, and the restrictions on floggings were seen as reducing their control over the enslaved population, who were thought prone to laziness, which would facilitate non-performance, with dire consequences for an already tottering plantation system.
During the period dubbed the era of amelioration, Tobago’s slavery proponents sought to give the impression that rigid control over the enslaved population was being released, the experience of slavery was much more benign and improvements were being made in consideration of the welfare of the enslaved. This was part of a last-ditch pro-slavery strategy to swing popular and parliamentary support in favour of a continuation of what they presented as a mitigated form of enslavement.
In 1824 the Tobago Assembly and Council passed a revised version of the slave laws which promised to bring “benefits to the enslaved population,” to ameliorate their condition and to keep them under “proper restraint.”
It is difficult to reconcile the first two objectives of the law with the last, which contradicts them. It is not clear what is meant by “proper restraint,” not only where the planters’ intent was concerned, but also how this would be viewed by the enslaved themselves and the anti-slavery group, and how it would be implemented.
A close examination of the law is instructive. After the promises made in the preamble, the second clause simply classifies infractions of the law as capital offences or misdemeanours. Capital crimes included those listed in the island’s very first slave laws, such as offences against white people and their properties, all compacted into one law for which the punishment was the death sentence. These included setting fire to and destroying estates, encouraging runaways, and striking or poisoning whites and estate animals. Jurisdiction over such matters was given to a special Court of Common Pleas, established for that purpose.
For the other offences, classified as misdemeanours, the Court of Record was established which could give a sentence of corporal punishment.
The staff of both courts were appointed, and their modus operandi clearly stated.
Hence, the old slave laws were not removed; they had been reincarnated.
During the last decade of enslavement, the administration of Tobago passed several pieces of legislation which suggest an overwhelming concern about the spiritual life of the enslaved population. Right after spelling out the process for establishing and staffing the new courts, the revised slave law also said Tobago’s entire enslaved population was to enjoy “benefit of the clergy.” This was a new development.
The planters had been strongly opposed to any religious instruction for the enslaved, for fear it would be difficult to control them once they became exposed to biblical references to the brotherhood and equality of all people. As a result, the Slave Bible, with its elimination of feared information, was used as the medium of religious instruction by the Moravians, who first ventured into converting the enslaved population to Christianity, followed by the Methodists.
But the established church remained aloof, preferring to remain the church of the planter class, with its clergy supported by the colony.
However, when the potential benefits to the church of control through Christianisation were seen, the Anglican church joined the competition for the enslaved as members of its congregation against the Moravians and Methodists, which would strengthen after emancipation.
In keeping with the trend, the Sunday market was abolished so that enslaved Africans could devote Sundays to worship and religious activities. Thursday was declared Market Day in Scarborough and Plymouth. The Africans were allocated one day a week from September-May to take care of their own crops; from May it would be at the discretion of the planter, depending on work demands on the sugar estate at harvest time.
In the final, 1829 act, the Tobago Assembly passed a law asking the church authorities in Britain to add Tobago to the See of the Bishopric of Barbados and the Leeward Islands, to establish spiritual and ecclesiastical jurisdiction over Tobago clergy. This was to apply solely to ecclesiastical matters, and its jurisdiction was not intended to impinge on that of any other court.
The Tobago Assembly and Council made a futile attempt to retain the old slave laws under the guise of amelioration. They created a law posited as a revision of the old law, but was in fact a repackaging of it, while maintaining its intent within the frame of the revised law. There was a deliberate attempt to deceive, with an emphasis on the so-called benefits of the legislation to the enslaved population, after devoting the greater part of the revised law to incorporating age-old practices. These were projected as measures providing alleviation to the enslaved population of Tobago. But this fooled neither the enslaved nor the desperate planters themselves.
The matter was settled by the wholesale rejection of the amelioration proposals by Caribbean planters, leaving the imperial government to pass the law to terminate enslavement in the British colonies in 1833.
