-
4. Allies of the French
- University Press of Mississippi
- Chapter
- Additional Information
79 Chapter 4 Allies of the French “The Charibs certainly will attempt to rise should any foreign attack be made.” —Governor Valentine Morris, 25 August 1778 St. Vincent’s planters stewed in resentment at the Black Caribs’ continued occupation of the island’s prime sugar country, but they had another pressing concern. The slaves upon whose work the colonial economy depended were not content to stay on the plantation. Too many were simply taking the chance to run away to freedom. A country-born male slave cost £75–£80 in St. Vincent compared with£45–50 for a man imported direct from Africa,1 so the loss of each slave had a significant impact both in terms of the cost of replacement and the labor lost. The government believed that most plantations in St. Vincent were “underhanded ” and the phenomenon of runaways, or marronage, only exacerbated the problem. An official survey of slavery in St. Vincent in the late eighteenth century painted a generally rosy picture of conditions for African slaves. However, it acknowledged that whipping or confinement were legal as punishments and “necessary for the preserving of due authority over them.” It also recognized that some masters exceeded accepted limits, “either from an avaricious or cruel Disposition.” For criminal offences slaves could be tried by justices of the peace (inevitably planters themselves) and sentenced to death for theft of articles worth more than £6. It was conceded that this form of trial was “certainly too summary” but that not more than one or two slaves a year were executed. The work of a plantation slave was hard, particularly during the period between January and June when activity on the sugar estates was at its most intense . The working day lasted from sunrise to sunset with a break between noon and 2 p.m. at the hottest part of the day. During harvest time the day could be extended even further. Sundays were a rest day and slaves were given three days’ holiday a year at Christmastime. Slaves also had an afternoon off a Allies of the French 80 week to grow their own provisions in the steep or broken land on the margins of the plantations on which they worked. Planters might also supplement this with allowances of herring, salt fish, or salt beef. One leading British inhabitant of the time claimed that slaves in St. Vincent were happier and better fed than those in most other West Indian islands because of the abundance of ground provisions, particularly plantains— the views of the slaves themselves are not recorded.2 One testimony by a former slave did, though, describe the life of a field slave on St. Vincent a generation later. “They were obliged to be in the field before five o’clock in the morning ; and, as the slave houses were the distance of from three to four miles from the cane pieces, they were generally obliged to rise as early as four o’clock, to be at their work on time. . . . Before five o’clock the overseer calls over the roll, and if any of the slaves are so unfortunate as to be late, even by a few minutes , which owing to the distance is often the case, the driver flogs them as they come in, with the cart-whip, or with a scourge of tamarind rods. When flogged with the whip, they are stripped and held down upon the ground, and exposed in the most shameful manner.” He added: “The work is so hard that any slave, newly put to it, in the course of a month becomes so weak that often he is totally unfit for labour. If he falls behind the rest, the driver keeps forcing him up with the whip.”3 Even during the two-hour midday break slaves were required to collect grass for the plantation’s cattle. During crop-time (usually January–June) they might be required to work long into the night. “The work is very severe, and great numbers of slaves, during this period, sink under it and become ill.”4 Slaves generally lived in huts of roughly twenty by twelve feet thatched with dried cane-tops, housing three or four people. By law slave owners were bound to supply each male slave with “a pair of drawers and shirt or close bodied frock annually and to each female slave a shift and petticoat.” Despite this largesse there was no getting away from the fact that among slaves imported directly...