The emancipation of the British West Indies refers to the abolition of slavery in Britain's colonies in the West Indies during the 1830s. The British government passed the Slavery Abolition Act 1833, which emancipated all enslaved people in the British West Indies. After emancipation, a system of apprenticeship was established, where emancipated Africans were required by the various colonial assemblies to continue working for their former masters for a period of four to six years in exchange for provisions. The system of apprenticeship was abolished by the various colonial assemblies in 1838, after pressure from the British public, completing the process of emancipation. These were the steps taken by British West Indian planters to solve the shortage of supply of exploited labourers created by the emancipation of the enslaved Africans in 1838.
Anti-slavery movement and emancipation policy Religious, economic, and social factors contributed to the British abolition of slavery throughout their empire. Throughout European colonies in the Caribbean, enslaved people engaged in revolts, labour stoppages and more everyday forms of resistance which enticed colonial authorities, who were eager to create peace and maintain economic stability in the colonies, to consider legislating abolition.Claudius K. Fergus, Revolutionary Emancipation: Slavery and Abolitionism in the British West Indies (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2013), 170. The Haitian Revolution in the French colony of Saint-Domingue, the most successful slave uprising in the Americas, heightened British sensitivities to the potential outcomes of insurrection. In addition to slave revolts, Enlightenment schools of thought and evangelism led members of the British public to question the morality of slavery and the slave trade and during the 18th and 19th century there was a surge of abolitionist agitation. Religious figures played a prominent role in the crusade against slavery. Anti-slavery societies such as the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society (BFASS) circulated pamphlets about the cruelties and inhumanity of slavery, and petitions with hundreds of thousands of signatures were sent to the British Parliament, many of which came from women's organizations.Richard Huzzey, Freedom Burning : Anti-Slavery and Empire in Victorian Britain (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2012), 7.Marika Sherwood, After Abolition: Britain and the Slave Trade Since 1807 (London: I.B. Tauris, 2007), 147. Collectively, these men and women politicized slavery and placed pressure on the British government to abolish it. Developments in capitalism also contributed to emancipation. Some scholars, including Trinidadian historian Eric Williams, have claimed that with the emergence of capitalism, slavery was no longer profitable, and as such increased support for abolition beginning in the late 18th century.
British abolitionists saw partial success in their efforts when the government passed the Slave Trade Act 1807, abolishing the slave trade. After passage of the act, these reformers continued to press for the abolition of slavery itself. The British government formally abolished slavery in its colonies with passage of the Slavery Abolition Act 1833. The legislation went into effect in August 1834 whereby all enslaved people in the British Empire were considered free under British law. After long and heated debates in Britain, the government agreed to compensate West Indian planters for shifting from enslaved to free labour, allotting £20 million for this purpose.Steven Hahn, "Class and State in Postemancipation Societies: Southern Planters in Comparative Perspective", The American Historical Review 95, no. 1 (1990): 84. However, enslaved people were not compensated. In fact, the Abolition Act transformed the enslaved into "apprentices", except in the cases of Antigua and Bermuda where the colonial governments rejected apprenticeship and fully emancipated enslaved people in 1834.James Latimer, "The Apprenticeship System in the British West Indies." The Journal of Negro Education 33, no. 1 (1964): 52.
Apprenticeship
Policy and conditions The Slavery Abolition Act 1833 established a system of indentured servitude or "apprenticeship" that required formerly enslaved people to continue to work for their former owners as apprentices. The gradual emancipation measure was implemented to ease the transition from slavery to freedom for enslaved people and former slave masters but it was in large part a result of concerns about emancipation's effect on West Indian sugar production.Sherwood, After Abolition (2007), 148. As stipulated in the emancipation act, field hands were apprenticed for a period of six years, household labourers were to work for four, and children under the age of six were immediately freed. All apprentices' names were to be placed on a registry that served as documentation of their required service.
Apprentices were required to work no more than 45 hours per week without compensation and were paid for any additional labour.Henrice Altink, "Slavery by Another Name: Apprenticed Women in Jamaican Workhouses in the Period 1834–8." Social History 26, no. 1 (2001): 41. Policy makers reasoned that the opportunity for some paid labour would teach enslaved people how to be industrious. In return for unpaid labour, formerly enslaved people received food, housing, clothing and medical treatment from their employers though the Act did not specify precise quantities. Apprentices were prohibited from working on Sundays. If financially able to pay the remaining years of their service, an apprentice could purchase his or her own freedom.
The British government designated Crown-appointed magistrates to oversee the newly implemented labour system and these officials were tasked with protecting the interests of free people of color.Kathleen Mary Butler, The Economics of Emancipation : Jamaica & Barbados, 1823–1843 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995), 20. Fearful of the response that conditional emancipation might elicit from the formerly enslaved, the colonial authorities created police districts to maintain societal order. Within each district were houses of correction and workhouses that were operated and supervised by the chief magistrate and five justices of the peace who were frequently also planters who had enslaved people. Freedpeople could be sent to labour in workhouses for failure to work on the plantations or breaking other duties specified in the Abolition Act. Emancipation legislation banned planters' use of the whip and the state formally took on the responsibility for disciplining labourers. However, planters could use the remanding of apprentices to workhouses as a means of exercising control over the formerly enslaved.Fergus, Revolutionary Emancipation (2013), 175.
The conditions within workhouses were grim and apprentices were subjected to hard labour and regular physical punishment. Treadmills were common features in these spaces and consisted of "wooden steps around a hollow cylinder on which a prisoner was made to step as the mechanism turned."Thomas Holt, "The Essence of the Contract: The Articulation of Race, Gender, and Political Economy in British Emancipation Policy, 1838–1866, in Beyond Slavery: Explorations of Race, Labor, and Citizenship in Postemancipation Societies (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000), 57. The mechanism did not serve to produce any material good but the officials insisted that exhaustively running on the mechanism for several minutes reformed and disciplined prisoners. Widespread support for the use of treadmills also came from West Indian planters who were convinced that the formerly enslaved would not produce the same outputs if they were not adequately disciplined with corporal punishment.Altink, "Slavery by Another Name" (2001): 45. Photographs that depict the treadmills of the Jamaican workhouses illuminate that this punishment was not restricted to men. Women, who made up a majority of the field labour population in Jamaica and other colonies, were frequently sent to the workhouses and subjected to the treadmill.Holt, "The Essence of the Contract" (2000), 58.
Apprentice experiences and resistance Once news of the Abolition Act made its way to the colonies, emancipated Africans rejoiced and celebrated their freedom. However, the realization that emancipation would be gradual had a sobering effect. The formerly enslaved protested the system of apprenticeship and demanded immediate, unqualified freedom. Because they had long laboured under slavery and performed the same tasks under apprenticeship, they denied the need for a transitional, supervised labour system. Freed people were eager to restructure their lives and devote time to family. They also sought to choose their own work hours, employers, and the type of labour they performed. Many apprentices across the West Indies refused to return to work and went on strike.Caroline Quarrier Spence, "Ameliorating Empire: Slavery and Protection in the British Colonies, 1783–1865", PhD diss., Harvard University, 2014, 263. For their failure to work, many were arrested, flogged under judicial authority, and sent to prison.
Circumstances under apprenticeship were far from ideal for all labourers, but women often faced particular challenges. In the years leading up to emancipation, former masters offered incentives to pregnant women and new mothers for bearing children, because by law, women's offspring became the property of the master, thereby producing more wealth for their owner. Under apprenticeship, however, planters were no longer afforded access to women's children and consequently employers ceased to offer women "indulgences". Women were now expected to work while pregnant and with small children, though other emancipated Africans demanded that these women be exempt from arduous field labour.Bridget Brereton, "Family Strategies, Gender and the Shift to Wage Labor in the British Caribbean", in Pamela Scully and Diana Paton (eds), Gender and Slave Emancipation in the Atlantic World (Durham: Duke University Press, 2005), 144.
In some cases, apprentices' protests were effective for producing reforms to the apprenticeship system. In Trinidad, apprentices were granted a five-day work week, masters became required to care for freed children, and workers were compensated for labour performed on a Saturday.Fergus, Revolutionary Emancipation (2013), 178.
A small number of apprentices attempted to purchase their freedom with some managing to successfully do so. Apprentices were appraised in the local courts and high prices hampered enslaved people's ability to free themselves, given their lack of access to material wealth, which was being systematically withheld from them. However, planters' awareness that apprenticeship's abolition was on the horizon led some to settle on a lower price for manumission outside of the courts. This ensured that planters saw some financial gain. They also hoped that such negotiations would encourage apprentices to continue labouring once freed.Spence, "Ameliorating Empire" (2014), 266–267.
James Williams' A Narrative of Events and the anti-apprenticeship campaign