Power and Resistance in Caribbean Slavery, 1624–1853

Introduction: The Complex Legacies of Caribbean Slavery

Although abolished for what appears to be a long time, slavery remains very much an issue in the collective cultural conscience of today. The sheer inhumanity of treatment, and the often violent reactions it provoked, still elicit considerable emotion in many hearts. However, brutality is not the only issue that slavery brought about. There are many complex economic, cultural, gendered, and other issues that resulted from the relationship between the oppressive forces and the oppressed. These complex forces — and the various forms of power exerted both by slave owners and by their slaves — are the focus of this study.

Specifically, this paper explores the historiography of slavery in the Caribbean from the seventeenth century to the nineteenth century (1624–1853). It considers the economic basis and motivation for slavery, which often took precedence over simple humanity. Economic gain lay at the heart of the frequently cruel treatment of enslaved people by Europeans, who located their power in their economic prowess and capacity for commercial development. Issues such as skin color, medical and scientific attitudes, slave gender roles, slave resistance to white power, and social factors all informed the power relationship. For slaves, by contrast, power tended to reside in their cultural knowledge and their ability to survive in an often hostile natural world. The result was a clash between two different forms of power: economic progress on one side, and native ways of living and knowing on the other.

It is also worth noting that the European drive toward economic growth produced oppression through slavery not only for Africans, but also for immigrants and indigenous peoples throughout the world. It is an interesting but little-known fact, for example, that Chinese workers played a significant role as enslaved laborers in the economy of the British West Indies. In addition, the oppression suffered by enslaved people frequently took the form of sexual oppression, with white slave owners fathering mixed-race children with female slaves.

During the centuries in question, European imperialism ushered in a new era of economic growth that could only be achieved through the use of enslaved labor. The large sugar plantations and the ever-expanding Atlantic slave trade lay largely at the foundation of this economy. What Europeans at the time perhaps failed to reckon with was that the masses would not submit indefinitely to oppression. In addition to their cultural and native propensity for survival, enslaved people possessed an additional source of power relative to the European economy: their numbers.

Although slavery in the early twentieth century was a subject that historians tended to avoid, this attitude has largely changed, and recent scholarship has brought to light a significant body of knowledge. Slavery in the French, Danish, and British West Indies, as well as the Caribbean as a whole, is addressed in this study. The governments of these colonial powers tended to sacrifice moral principle for economic reward, largely ignoring their own sense of human decency in favor of expanding their empires. Enslaved peoples suffered the consequences of this unabated greed and quest for power. It is nonetheless significant that, while Europeans were cruel and acquisitive in their treatment of those they enslaved, enslaved people also exerted considerable influence and power over their white owners. White slave owners wielded economic power; the power of enslaved people resided in the combination of their cultural values, their knowledge of the native environment and its potential dangers, and their capacity to survive.

The paper is organized around four areas of inquiry: (A) Slavery in the British West Indies; (B) Slavery in the Danish West Indies; (C) Slavery in the French West Indies; and (D) Slavery in the broader Caribbean.

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