The Planter Class and British West Indian Sugar Production, before and after Emancipation

Bibliographic Data

ID3469656
AuthorsW A Green (Holy Cross College, corresponding author)
Year1973
Volume26
Issue3
Pages448-463
Publication date1973-08-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe Economic History Review (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0013-0117 • E-ISSN: 1468-0289
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/j.1468-0289.1973.tb01946.x
OpenAlexW2020065471
LanguageEN
Citations received17

U ^ NTIL recent times, the old planter class in the British West Indies suffered censorious and contemptuous treatment from historians. The traditional view of the planters in the age of slavery was derived from the polemical works of nineteenth-century abolitionists who denounced them as coarse, stubborn conservatives guilty of brutalizing their slaves by unconscionable attachment to crude and anachronistic techniques. Recent research into the affairs of West India sugar estates, beginning with Richard Pares's A West India Fortune (I950), has provided a different portrait of the planters. Pares' study of the Pinney plantations in Nevis and the recently published history of Worthy Park Estate,Jamaica, by Craton and Walvin' suggest that planters were not uniformly callous toward their servants or reactionary and unimaginative in their agricultural techniques. Instead, these studies offer ample evidence of the resourcefulness of many West Indian proprietors, their meticulous care of plantation property, and their capacity for intelligent innovation. Modes ofproduction in the sugar industry were constrained as well as sustained by slavery, but innovation was not blindly abjured. Controversies raged between groups of planters over the most effective techniques of cultivation. Men learned their vocations from one another and from hard experience in cultivating the land. The character of soils varied from one district to another and even within the confines of single estates. Different cane pieces demanded different treatment, and the sugars produced from varying soils required distinctive handling in the boiling process to assure that they travelled well on the sea voyage to England. Universal remedies for the problems of the estates glibly pronounced by contemporary Britons offered little aid to practical planters, for as one Jamaica governor acknowledged, an excellent planter in one district may be entirely unqualified to manage estate in another.2 In many cases, technological innovations recommended by European critics were impeded or precluded by climatic and topographical conditions which those critics failed to appreciate or chose to ignore. This article re-examines the system of production in the British Caribbean in attempt to afford additional new perspectives to the old criticism and to provide further testimony to the energy and determination with which many West Indian planters responded to the challenge of emancipationY

Agricultural economics · Biology · Class (philosophy) · Economics · Emancipation · Geography · Macroeconomics · Political science · Politics · Production (economics) · Sugar · Sugar production · Caribbean history, culture, and politics · Cuban History and Society · Food Science · Law · Migration, Ethnicity, and Economy · Philosophy

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