The Redlegs of Barbados

THE REDLEGS OF BARBADOS Btj EDWARD T. PRICE Los Angeles State College Poor white people do not belong in a colonial world of white masters and colored laborers. They not only stand out as anomalies, but are likely to be hard-pressed for survival in a society that has no niche for them, that assumes they will not exist. The poor whites on the other islands of the Lesser Antilles, described by Grenfell Price,1 are mostly living in distinct settlements with some degree of economic self-sufficiency— but Barbados offers no such opportunities. It is not surprising, then, that the once numerous Redlegs have virtually disappeared as a group on Barbados. The term "Redleg" on Barbados probably refers to the sunburn picked up by light-skinned people in sunny latitudes. The name originally drew my attention to the group because of the fact that it is used in South Carolina occasionally to refer to a mixed-blood group (and there probably implies Indian blood). Since South Carolina was settled by Barbadians, I had thought of the possibility that the two Redleg groups, each an anomalous proletariat in a biracial society, might be related. I found no concrete evidence for this, but think it possible that the name in the two places had a common origin. It is said to have been used in Scotland to describe the kilted highlanders, but I have obtained no knowledge of when it was first used in either Barbados or South Carolina. The Barbados Redlegs have also been termed Redshanks and Scotland Johnnies (some of them reside in the island's hilly Scotland District) . The Redlegs are survivors of the heavy white immigration into Barbados during the seventeenth century. Sugar was introduced commercially by the early 1640's and proved so profitable that it quickly surpassed all other crops. Population grew rapidly with the recruiting of labor in Britain and Ireland, and the importing of African slaves. Excerpts from a journal of 1654 illustrate the prevalent themes of the day: "this Hand is the Dunghill whereon England doth cast forth its rubidg . . . manured the best of any Illand in the Inges. . . . But it maintains more souls than any piese of land of the bigness in the wordell."2 Indentured servants came in number; if they survived the merciless treatment, they might receive a few acres for their own at the expiration of the contract. Sometimes the recruiting was forceful: men were shanghaied or, in the language specific to the day and place, "barbadoed." Political prisoners were sent to Barbados, especially during the Civil War and after the Bloody Assizes of 1685.3 Prisoners from Scotland and Ireland were sent to Barbados as late as the Battle of Culloden in 1746. During the seventeenth century many of the farm units were small, and the Europeans outnumbered the slaves, but the heyday of the small proprietor died with the flush of sugar crops on the virgin soils. Before 1700 the whites became so alarmed at the increasing preponderance of negro slaves in the face of white emigration that legal measures were taken to maintain a yoemanry on the island. Every sugar estate was required to maintain a footman for every 20 acres and a horseman for every 40 acres (the ratio seems to have varied from time to time).' The militiamen thus pre1 White Settlers in the Tropics, American Geographical Society ( New York, 1939), pp. 83-100. - Henry Whistler's Journal of the West India Expedition, 1654, Sloane Ms. 3926, British Museum. ( Quoted in series of articles on people of Barbados in the Barbados Advocate, April 11, 1952.) 3 John Camden Hotten, in The Original Lists of Persons of Quality and Others. . . . ( London, 1874) names several hundred of the latter. 4 The Groans of the Plantations (London, 1689), p. 14, "We cannot now be at the Charge to procure and keep White Servants, or to entertain Freemen as we used to do. . . . So that our Militia must fall." 35 62e W 600W 14°N ST. LUCIA ST. VINCENT B BEQUIABARBADOS h _ GRENADA ?2°?^ scribed were each assigned a house and a small plot of land on the estate. The forces saw little activity in maintaining...