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The Caribbean Plantation Economies

The sugar economies of the English, and from 1707 British, Caribbean colonies, worked by indentured servants and enslaved Africans, taxed by Parliament and by the island assemblies, and preyed on by pirates whose markets and recruits they also supplied.

Also writtenthe Plantations (the Act for preventing frauds and regulating abuses in the plantation trade of 1696 speaks in its first clause of any colony or plantation belonging to His Majesty in Asia, Africa or America); the British sugar Colonies (the phrase the planters used in the Antigua assembly in December 1717, as the Surveyor-General of the Customs reported the debate)

Fourteen thousand pounds sterling was what Richard Ligon thought a man needed for sugar. Less would not settle him in a sugar work: five hundred acres, servants and slaves, an ingenio and the housing round it. The sugars going out when he arrived were bare muscovado, so moist and ill cured that they were hardly worth the freight home.1,2

The estate and the people on it

Ligon divided the island into three sorts of men: masters, servants and slaves. The enslaved and their posterity were their masters' for ever, and were kept with greater care than the servants, who were his for five years only by the law of the island. So the servants had the worse lives. Hard labour, ill lodging, a slight diet.3,4

He had seen an overseer beat a servant about the head with a cane until the blood followed. Not long before he left the servants laid a plot: a day appointed to fall upon their masters and cut all their throats, and so make themselves masters of the island. Eighteen of the leaders were put to death for an example.5,6

The law that carried the sugar

Under the Act for preventing frauds and regulating abuses in the plantation trade, after 25 March 1698 no goods might be brought into or carried out of any colony except in ships built in England, Ireland or the plantations, wholly owned there and navigated by a master and three quarters of a crew from them.7

A governor who neglected the oath to enforce those laws, or was wittingly negligent in his duty, was to be removed and forfeit a thousand pounds sterling. Every colonial law or custom repugnant to the Act was declared illegal, null and void. Customs officers in the islands might enter houses and warehouses to search for and seize, and answered for frauds, connivances or concealments as English customs officers did under the Act of Frauds, which is how the Act gave them the rest of their powers. The assemblies taxed the same traffic themselves, Barbados at five shillings a head on every enslaved person landed.8,9,10,11

Masters, servants and the enslaved

The Barbados act for the good governing of servants says what the island thought it was: much of its interest and substance lay in the servants brought to it and in their labour during their term. Those under eighteen with no contract made in England served seven years, those above it five, and each had four hundred pounds of muscovado sugar for wages. Man and wife brought over in one ship were to be sold together, and not severed.12,13

The act for the governing of Negroes, passed on 8 August 1688, calls the enslaved people brought to the island "of Barbarous, Wild, and Savage Natures" in its preamble. None might leave the plantation on a Sabbath or holy day or any other, except those in livery who waited on the family, or on a ticket naming the hour of return.14,15

For a second blow struck at a Christian the act ordered the offender severely whipped, his nose slit, and burned in the face with a hot iron. It gave every enslaved person clothes once a year, drawers and caps for men, petticoats and caps for women.16

Planters, factors and assemblies

Sugar, cotton and ginger were the three staple commodities of Barbados, Governor Kendall wrote on 22 August 1690, but sugar was what they depended on; the heavy tax laid on it in the late King's reign had been destructive to the poor planters, and twenty plantations were laid desolate by it. With freight dear and provisions scarce after drought and war, unless relief came from Old or New England the commoner sort and the slaves must starve.17,18

The Council and Assembly of Jamaica complained to James II of the Royal African Company's factors. Some thousands of enslaved Africans had been landed in six years and few had fallen to the planters' share, the factors grasping all into their own hand. A full third of the net proceeds of the island's produce, the address reckoned, passed into the Royal Exchequer.19

Mr Dunbar of the customs sat in the Antigua assembly of December 1717 while it debated a bar on foreign sugar. The planters urged that importation lowered the price and overstocked the English market, and that an open trade with the French supplied their rivals with provisions and enslaved labour, to the manifest injury of all the British sugar Colonies. The traders answered that a free trade made the island "a good mart for negroes, provisions and other goods".20,21

Where the pirates came in

An act of Barbados of 25 November 1675 provided that goods liable to the four and a half per cent duty, once water-borne and then cast away or taken by enemies or pirates, might have the like quantity shipped again custom-free.22

An anonymous paper on the sugar trade, read at the Board on 22 July 1724, complained that the station ships had left the headlands always unguarded, and that the pirates had "risen up like mushrooms under the very noses of our said men of war, for near nine years". Encourage sugar works abroad, it argued, and free the planter from fear of disobliging governors.23

The Duke of Portland wrote from Jamaica on 25 July 1723 that great numbers of people who used to get their livelihood in trading vessels were starving, leaving the island, and joining the pirates; he blamed the captains of the men of war. Governor Hart, visiting Anguilla the next year, found it first peopled by men who had fled Barbados for debt or crime, and since increased by pirates come in on acts of grace, married and settled.24,25

No plantation account, inventory or letter book stands behind this page. The Codrington estate accounts among the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel's papers, the wills and inventories proved in Barbados and Jamaica, and the naval office shipping lists at Kew would settle what an estate was worth. No figure has been found for the value of shipping or cargo taken by pirates here between 1690 and 1725. The Barbados laws quoted here are the London compilation of 1721, not the assembly's rolls.

What the evidence does not settle

Barbados duty date

  • The Barbados 4.5 percent duty's 1663 date is not established

Cape Coast 1722 disposal figures

  • Cape Coast 1722 disposal figures sum to 156, not 272

Robert Lowther's governorship terms

  • Whether Robert Lowther held one governorship term or two

Each line is one question with its own grade, taken from the register where a claim carries it. Nothing here is graded as a whole.

Sources for this record

Every statement above that rests on a checked claim carries a small number; the numbers lead here. Each entry gives what is claimed, how far the record supports it, and where it comes from.

  1. Richard Ligon states that less than fourteen thousand pounds sterling will not settle a man in a sugar work, on a plantation of five hundred acres with a proportionable stock of servants, slaves, horses, camels, cattle and assinigoes, an ingenio and all other housing belonging to it. Very likely Strong evidence, short of proof. Period printed description: Richard Ligon, A True and Exact History of the Island of Barbadoes (London, 1657), the passage of advice to intending planters
  2. Ligon states that at the time of his arrival the sugars made on Barbados were bare muscovadoes, few of them merchantable, so moist and full of molasses and so ill cured that they were hardly worth bringing home for England. Very likely Strong evidence, short of proof. Period printed description: Richard Ligon, A True and Exact History of the Island of Barbadoes (London, 1657), the account of the beginnings of sugar-making
  3. Ligon divides the island into three sorts of men, masters, servants and slaves, and states that the slaves and their posterity are subject to their masters for ever and are kept and preserved with greater care than the servants. Very likely Strong evidence, short of proof. Period printed description: Richard Ligon, A True and Exact History of the Island of Barbadoes (London, 1657), the account of the number and nature of the inhabitants
  4. Ligon states that the servants are their masters' for five years only according to the law of the island, and that for that time the servants have the worse lives, being put to very hard labour, ill lodging and a very slight diet. Very likely Strong evidence, short of proof. Period printed description: Richard Ligon, A True and Exact History of the Island of Barbadoes (London, 1657), the account of the number and nature of the inhabitants
  5. Ligon states that he had seen an overseer beat a servant with a cane about the head until the blood followed, for a fault not worth the speaking of. Very likely Strong evidence, short of proof. Period printed description: Richard Ligon, A True and Exact History of the Island of Barbadoes (London, 1657), the account of the usage of the servants
  6. Ligon states that the servants' conspiracy appointed a day to fall upon their masters and cut all their throats and so make themselves masters of the island, and that eighteen of the principal men in it were put to death for example to the rest. Likely More likely than not on the evidence we have. Period printed description: Richard Ligon, A True and Exact History of the Island of Barbadoes (London, 1657), the account of the servants' combination
  7. The Act for preventing frauds and regulating abuses in the plantation trade enacts that after 25 March 1698 no goods or merchandise whatsoever shall be imported into or exported out of any colony or plantation belonging to His Majesty, except in ships of English, Irish or plantation build wholly owned by the people of those places and navigated with the master and three fourths of the mariners of the said places only. Confirmed Directly supported by the record. Statute: Statutes of the Realm, vol. 7, pp. 103-107, An Act for preventing Frauds and regulating Abuses in the Plantation Trade (7 and 8 Will. III c. 22), section I
  8. The same Act enacts that a governor or commander in chief who neglects to take the oath to observe the plantation trade laws, or is wittingly or willingly negligent in his duty, shall be removed from his government and forfeit one thousand pounds sterling. Confirmed Directly supported by the record. Statute: Statutes of the Realm, vol. 7, pp. 103-107, An Act for preventing Frauds and regulating Abuses in the Plantation Trade (7 and 8 Will. III c. 22), section III
  9. The same Act declares all laws, by-laws, usages or customs in practice in any of the plantations which are in any wise repugnant to it or to the trade laws it recites illegal, null and void to all intents and purposes whatsoever. Confirmed Directly supported by the record. Statute: Statutes of the Realm, vol. 7, pp. 103-107, An Act for preventing Frauds and regulating Abuses in the Plantation Trade (7 and 8 Will. III c. 22), section VIII
  10. The same Act gives the officers who collect the revenue and inspect the plantation trade power to enter houses or warehouses to search for and seize prohibited or uncustomed goods, and makes those officers subject to the same penalties and forfeitures for corruptions, frauds, connivances or concealments as officers of the customs in England. Confirmed Directly supported by the record. Statute: Statutes of the Realm, vol. 7, pp. 103-107, An Act for preventing Frauds and regulating Abuses in the Plantation Trade (7 and 8 Will. III c. 22), section V
  11. An act of Barbados enacted by Sir Bevill Granville laid a duty of five shillings current money of the island on every Negro or other slave imported to the island and landed there, payable by the merchant or consignee to the island treasurer within thirty days. Likely More likely than not on the evidence we have. Printed colonial statutes: Acts of Assembly, passed in the island of Barbadoes, from 1648 to 1718 (London, 1721), An Act for laying a Duty on Negroes and other Slaves imported to this Island, No. 516
  12. The Barbados act for the good governing of servants recites that much of the interest and substance of the island consists in the servants brought to and disposed of in it, and in their labour during the term they have to serve. Likely More likely than not on the evidence we have. Printed colonial statutes: Acts of Assembly, passed in the island of Barbadoes, from 1648 to 1718 (London, 1721), An Act for the good Governing of Servants, and Ordering the Rights between Masters and Servants, No. 21, preamble
  13. The same act provides that servants under eighteen who made no contract in England shall serve seven years and those above eighteen five years, that each shall receive four hundred pounds of muscovado sugar for wages at the end of the time, and that man and wife brought over as servants in one ship shall be sold and disposed of together and not severed. Likely More likely than not on the evidence we have. Printed colonial statutes: Acts of Assembly, passed in the island of Barbadoes, from 1648 to 1718 (London, 1721), An Act for the good Governing of Servants, No. 21
  14. The preamble of the Barbados act for the governing of Negroes of 8 August 1688 describes the enslaved people brought to the island as of barbarous, wild and savage natures, and such as renders them wholly unqualified to be governed by the laws, customs and practices of our nations. Likely More likely than not on the evidence we have. Printed colonial statutes: Acts of Assembly, passed in the island of Barbadoes, from 1648 to 1718 (London, 1721), An Act for the Governing of Negroes, No. 329, passed 8 August 1688, preamble
  15. The same act forbids any master, mistress, commissioner or overseer to give their Negroes or other slaves leave to go out of their plantations on Sabbath days, holy days or any other time, except those who usually wait upon them wearing a livery, or with a ticket under the master's or mistress's hand specifying the time allowed for return. Likely More likely than not on the evidence we have. Printed colonial statutes: Acts of Assembly, passed in the island of Barbadoes, from 1648 to 1718 (London, 1721), An Act for the Governing of Negroes, No. 329
  16. The same act orders that for a second offence of offering violence to any Christian the offender shall be severely whipped, his nose slit and be burned in some part of his face with a hot iron, and requires that all the slaves within the island have clothes once every year, drawers and caps for men and petticoats and caps for women. Likely More likely than not on the evidence we have. Printed colonial statutes: Acts of Assembly, passed in the island of Barbadoes, from 1648 to 1718 (London, 1721), An Act for the Governing of Negroes, No. 329
  17. Governor Kendall wrote to the Lords of Trade and Plantations from Barbados on 22 August 1690 that sugar, cotton and ginger were the three staple commodities but sugar was what they depended on, that the heavy tax laid on sugar in the late King's reign had been extremely destructive to the poor planters, and that twenty plantations were laid desolate by it. Confirmed Directly supported by the record. Calendared state papers: Calendar of State Papers Colonial, America and West Indies, vol. 13, 1689-1692, item 1,034, Governor Kendall to Lords of Trade and Plantations, Barbados, 22 August 1690, pp. 311-312
  18. In the same despatch Kendall wrote that the high price of freight and the scarcity of provisions caused by a long drought and by the war had caused great misery, and that unless the island were speedily relieved from Old or New England the commoner sort of people and the slaves must starve. Confirmed Directly supported by the record. Calendared state papers: Calendar of State Papers Colonial, America and West Indies, vol. 13, 1689-1692, item 1,034, Governor Kendall to Lords of Trade and Plantations, Barbados, 22 August 1690, pp. 311-312
  19. The address of the Council and Assembly of Jamaica to James II states that though some thousands of enslaved Africans had been imported into the island by the Royal African Company within the past six years few had fallen to the planters' share, the factors grasping all into their own hand, and that at a moderate computation a full third of the net proceeds of the island's produce passed into the Royal Exchequer. Confirmed Directly supported by the record. Calendared state papers: Calendar of State Papers Colonial, America and West Indies, vol. 13, 1689-1692, item 295, Address of the Council and Assembly of Jamaica to King James II, sworn 12 July 1689, pp. 106-107
  20. Mr Dunbar, Surveyor-General of the Customs in Barbados and the Leeward Islands and a member of the Antigua assembly, reported that in the debate on barring foreign sugar in December 1717 the planters urged that importation lowered the price on the island and overstocked the market in England, and that an open trade with the French islands supplied their rivals with provisions and enslaved people and helped them fix and extend their settlements, to the manifest injury of all the British sugar Colonies. Confirmed Directly supported by the record. Calendared state papers: Calendar of State Papers Colonial, America and West Indies, vol. 30, 1717-1718, item 495 i, extract of letter from Mr Dunbar to the Commissioners of Customs, Antigua, 20 December 1717, p. 236
  21. Dunbar reports the traders of Antigua as answering that a free trade made the island a good mart for negroes, provisions and other goods necessary for the support of the colonies, and on the easiest terms. Confirmed Directly supported by the record. Calendared state papers: Calendar of State Papers Colonial, America and West Indies, vol. 30, 1717-1718, item 495 i, extract of letter from Mr Dunbar to the Commissioners of Customs, Antigua, 20 December 1717, p. 236
  22. An act of Barbados passed 25 November 1675 provides that goods liable to the duty of four and a half per cent which are cast away or taken by enemies or pirates after being water-borne or shipped in a vessel designed to be transported from the island may have the like quantity shipped again custom-free. Likely More likely than not on the evidence we have. Printed colonial statutes: Acts of Assembly, passed in the island of Barbadoes, from 1648 to 1718 (London, 1721), the act touching goods of the production of this island lost or taken, relating to the four and a half per cent, passed 25 November 1675
  23. An anonymous paper on the sugar trade read by the Council of Trade and Plantations on 22 July 1724 complained that the station ships had left the headlands always unguarded so that the trade was exposed to the pirates and the Spanish guarda costas, that the pirates had risen up like mushrooms under the very noses of the men of war for near nine years, and that sugar works should be encouraged abroad and the planter relieved of all fears of disobliging governors. Confirmed Directly supported by the record. Calendared state papers: Calendar of State Papers Colonial, America and West Indies, vol. 34, 1724-1725, item 276, anonymous paper on the sugar trade, read 22 July 1724, pp. 168-170 (C.O. 388, 24, No. 155)
  24. Governor the Duke of Portland wrote from Jamaica to Lord Carteret on 25 July 1723 that great numbers of people who used to get their livelihood by going to sea in trading vessels were starving and, by their desperate condition, leaving the island, great numbers of them joining the pirates, and he laid the cause at the door of the captains of the men of war. Confirmed Directly supported by the record. Calendared state papers: Calendar of State Papers Colonial, America and West Indies, vol. 33, 1722-1723, item 659 viii, Governor the Duke of Portland to Lord Carteret, Jamaica, 25 July 1723, pp. 314-315
  25. Governor Hart reported to the Council of Trade and Plantations in 1724 that the first inhabitants of Anguilla were men who had fled Barbados and the greater islands of his government for debt or to avoid punishment for their crimes, and that these had since been increased by pirates who had come in upon acts of grace and were married and settled there. Confirmed Directly supported by the record. Calendared state papers: Calendar of State Papers Colonial, America and West Indies, vol. 34, 1724-1725, item 260, Governor Hart to the Council of Trade and Plantations, read 1 October 1724, pp. 143-145