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I must consider the decline from the immediate and progressive distress of the planter, continuing to work for returns inadequate to his labor. He will struggle for a while to procure the means of subsistence, and of satisfaction to his creditors and consignees. He will be supported from time to time by the latter, through liberality or from interest - shooting forth another arrow to follow and recover the arrow lost, till the quiver is exhausted, or the archer prudently desists from further attempt. Sir William Young, (planter and Governor of Tobago) The West India Common Place Book, London,: R. Phillips, 1807. 48 In 1928, Lowell J. Ragatz in his ground-breaking book The Fall of the Planter Class in the British Caribbean, 1763 - 1833, stated the case for Jamaica's decline during and after the American Revolution succinctly as being a combination of "a wasteful agricultural system, the rivalry of newly-exploited tropical territories, adherence to a policy of restricted trade after all real justification for it had ceased to exist, vicious fiscal legislation in the mother country, and forty years of intermittent warfare."[i] The abolition of slavery by the British in 1807 sparked an historical debate that has lasted until today as to whether economic or humanitarian causes were at the root of the demise of the English slave trade. The argument contained herein will describe the story of Atlantic Trade and its disruption by the American Revolution. This disruption exacerbated the decline of a system of sugar plantation slavery in Jamaica that became economically outmoded. While it was eventually replaced by industrial capitalism that later took on as its principles free labor and free trade, it forJamaica's glory days were over. The American Revolution In the period 1731-75 sugar production rose 170 percent and the index of London sugar prices rose as well.[ii] The slave trade was always profitable and continued to be so, but the outbreak of war spelled the steady erosion of sugar plantation economics and profits. No bigger example of the economic importance of the North American-Caribbean trade can be found than the acknowledgement of it being the preeminent bargaining chip between the American Colonies and London. The first Continental Congress tried to use that leverage when it decided to close the ports of the thirteen colonies to British Caribbean produce and stop exportation to the islands in September of 1774. The threatened outbreak of war and the disruption of trade with the American colonies worried Jamaican planters considerably. The British West Indies and the American Colonies were of similar social backgrounds and were the geographically closest major British colonial trading partners. The Jamaican House of Assembly knew that hard times were coming and two months later, while professing loyalty to the king, passed a petition and memorial in support of the American Colonies.[iii] The Connecticut House of Representatives passed a vote of thanks in response as well.[iv] The British House of Lords and Parliament were generally infuriated, and although the West Indians retained some influence in London, they had lost much political good will. Eventually the British Caribbean colonies, fearing for their slaves, decided to wholeheartedly cast in their lot with London. "Britain was relieved: in 1773, British imports from Jamaica alone were five times the combined imports from the thirteen colonies."[v] Unfortunately the Revolutionary War resulted in both the sugar and slave trades being substantially diminished. The British Prohibitory Act, passed soon after the initial skirmishes of the war, cut off the traditional supply lines from the American colonies and "it was a current saying at the time that the British ministry had not only lost thirteen colonies but eight islands as well."[vi] The previously high-flying Atlantic trade system was in a shambles. Shortages of food and lumber in Jamaica were almost immediate. Official British policy actively discouraged colonial industry and as a result Jamaican manufacturing was almost non-existent.[vii] This made perfect sense as the mother economy wanted to supply its own colonies. Only Jamaica of all of the islands had extra land to cultivate for food, but it wasn't ever quite enough. The loss of cheap North American provisions caused flour to double in price and beef prices to triple in the war-time period.[viii] From 1763-75, imports to the British West Indies from America were ₤1,702,309 and from 1776-83 they were only ₤160,473.[ix] In a period of low demand, the cost of producing sugar rose substantially due to such factors as food shortages that also led to increased slave mortality.[x] In consequence of a scarcity of merchant shipping, rum and molasses gave way to sugar being increasingly shipped directly home, and war-time duties had the effect of raising prices and decreasing demand for it.[xi] In fact in 1779 Parliament levied a tax of 5 percent on the Customs and Excise duties on colonial products imported directly into Britain; the duty on a hundredweight of sugar went from 6s 4d in 1775 to 6s 8d in 1779; then up 5d in 1780; and in 1781 it was increased to a total of 11s 8 ½ d. A year later it was raised again to 12s 3d.[xii] Exports declined in the war years due to decreased shipping which was a direct result of increased privateering, a number of hurricanes and spells of dry weather. Casks of sugar from Jamaica to England in 1774-5 numbered 51,218, in 1777-78 they were 33,856 and after the 1780-81 hurricanes only 30,282 casks were exported between 1782 and 1783.[xiii] The entry of France into the war in 1778 as allies of the Americans only worsened Jamaica's position. They lost another food and lumber source and faced the very real possibility of attack. The planters cited below constantly bemoaned the need for defensive troops and then the gnashed their teeth at the subsequent expense of feeding and housing them in Kingston and other towns. Historian John J. McCusker's data conclusively shows that the rate of population growth in the islands in the 1780s "was much slower than in earlier decades" although he tries to explain this negative economic indicator away by announcing that increased productivity and output obviates the data.[xiv] It seems more likely that Jamaican planters simply described a declining rate of growth in slaveholding as a direct result of less commodity demand and lower prices. The rate of population decline was factored in slaves not in their white masters. In 1778 there were 205,261 slaves to 18,420 whites in Jamaica, and by 1787 that ratio had declined to 210,894 slaves to 25,000 whites.[xv] The Planters' View The once untouchably wealthy sugar kings were now experiencing dwindling returns from properties that were increasingly leveraged by creditors. The management of Jamaican plantations became increasingly difficult because of the nature of a "near-monoculture stage of production".[xvi] The only deviations from sugar production were cattle, a bit of rice and indigo, and some plantation produce grown for food. Two different sets of plantation papers offer alternately upbeat and fatalistic accounts which allow a glimpse into the thoughts and some of the economic issues facing Jamaican planters. They are indeed predominately pessimistic, worrying about the potential for disaster before and during the war. Thomas Thistlewood (1721-1786) was a British estate overseer and small landowner in Western Jamaica. He wrote a 10,000 page diary which has now become the basis of at least four books. He became the overseer of the Egypt sugar plantation near Savanna la Mar in the early 1760s. The diary is extremely useful for his understanding of the social and economic world around him. Mr. Thistlewood mentioned lending his neighbor Mr. Cole The Present State of Great Britain and Her North American Colonies, in August of 1775.[xvii] This cross-lending of political tracts is a firm indication that planters took active note of the outside world and its effect on them. Throughout his narrative, whatever money he seemed to make above and beyond sugar production, was put down to his ownership of "pens" which provided periodic cattle sales for local food. By early September of 1778, Thistlewood noted that in Savannah la Mar "Martial law was proclaimed in the town last Friday, and an embargo laid on all ships and vessels, even to a plantain boat."[xviii] This was a direct result of France joining the American Colonies in the war. Only a week later heavy winds damaged his crops and his first journal entry for September 18th was: "We shall nearly have a famine."[xix] The cultivation and purchase of food was always on his mind. The arrival of a fleet from Cork in late May of 1779 was a major celebratory event: Thistlewood reports buying a large amount of food, cloth, stores and a day later, 61 lbs of tallow candles.[xx] Weather was always a worry for planters in Jamaica and on October 1st 1780 Thistlewood described the worst of a series of hurricanes in the period: "...then my dwelling house began to go, and about sunset the wind coming from the south...being then I think at its height...tore in pieces the remainder of my house dispersing it in different ways." The next day he related that the "face of the earth looks as it does at home in winter, after a week's Black Frost."[xxi] Although Thistlewood would ultimately rebuild, 1780 was his watershed, and his health and that of his plantation steadily declined thereafter. Simon Taylor was born in Jamaica in 1740, and began his career as an attorney for absentee planters. He became a sugar planter in his own right and at his death in 1813 he was reputedly the richest man in Jamaica. He was active in Jamaican politics and society, being Member for Kingston in the Jamaican Assembly, 1763-81, Chief Justice of the Court of Common Pleas and Lieutenant Governor of Militia. He produced a trove of letters written and received between 1770 and 1835 relating to his Jamaican estates and business interests. The letters of Simon Taylor show a tycoon who was an integral part of the domestic politics of Jamaica. On November 19th 1774 he noted: "Indeed the North American matters give me real Concern. I wish they were settled and how it is possible for them to be settled I cannot conceive."[xxii] Taylor oversaw his friend Chaloner Arcedekne's estate as one of his many business ventures. In a long January 1775 letter to his absentee landlord friend in England he noted "...I am sorry that the Sugars did not fetch so good a price as they used to."[xxiii] Then at the end of the very long letter he acknowledges the economic outcome of those lower sugar prices: "If I understand right the intention was to putt on 20 Negroes a year added to those you bought of Kelly in order to enable you to keep up the Estate and do your own work. The fall in the price of Sugars made me defer the Purchase untill I hear from you and the money saved from jobbing will help pay for them and the Negroes may be your own."[xxiv] This type of conservative war-time thinking was common for most planters in Jamaica. Taylor describes his thoughts to Arcedekne on the Americans in June of 1775: "In regard to our Situation I am in great hopes that good will arise from evil. We can do tolerable well without America. We have land enough for provisions lumber etc. except white oak staves. It is very true that they will come dearer but still we can gett them but then the Money that used to be paid the Americans will rest among us and not be carryed to Hispaniola to purchase Sugar Molasses and Coffee there to smuggle into America to the ruin of our Colonies."[xxv] Yet in July of the same year he noted the additional duties on sugar and the lack of demand for additional slaves: "I shall be sorry to find that the Government should have any thoughts of a 4 ½ p.ct. duty on our produce...this Country would at this present juncture be absolutely ruined by such a tax first from the low price of our produce last year and then by the excessive great quantities of Negroes that have been imported within these last two years and the number of Bills that have come back protested."[xxvi] And then in September of 1775 the enormity of the situation hits for Taylor who sought to reassure Arcedekne in London: "If they continue their non-importation or exportation you are provided for two years with Lumber, and need be under no apprehensions about Provisions notwithstanding...that you have able Negroes who with working only two hours in his Grounds on a Sunday morning but by that small piece of labour will gett as much provisions as will satisfy himself and family for a week." He notes that he will not buy the 20 slaves as requested, "untill we see the fate of the American disputes and what effect they have taken on the Value of our Produce."[xxvii] In Jamaica, plantation owners provided little food to slaves. Planters distributed only a meager protein ration, usually salt herring, and expected slaves to obtain the rest of their food from their provision grounds. In good times slaves could keep any profits.[xxviii] But Taylor certainly knew that there were often bad times as slaves were exponentially susceptible to bad weather and the economic downturns of their owners. There is no doubt that "serious reductions in food arising from the war led to great suffering of the slave population."[xxix] Jamaica was better off than most of the islands, but it simply was not profitable for a plantation owner to allow much time for slaves to grow produce independently.[xxx] The Jamaica Mercury/Royal Gazette Kingston, Jamaica had at least two weekly newspapers, all being small four-page issues that were half filled with advertisements from merchants with new stock, confiscated cargos, estate sales, slave sales or rewards for the return of runaway slaves. One served as the administration organ, the other for the opposition.[xxxi] The Jamaica Mercury generally took the side of Crown interests, although with a noticeable parochial bent. News of the American Revolution and the British Parliament were copied often verbatim from other sources, both British and American. Letters to the editor could be heated and at times intemperate. Practical letters on economics are few and center on ship captures and cargo sales. However, On June 5th 1779 a planter wrote a letter to the editor: "Within the last four days a scandalous Imposition has take place in the Beef Market - from 7 ½ the butchers have dared to raise the price of beef to 10 d per lb in direct defiance of law."[xxxii] Certainly rising prices were a source of profound annoyance. For our purposes indications of local sentiment can also be seen in asides taken from articles such as this editorial on "Lord North and the Bungling of the Budget" on May 3rd 1779: "...besides the enormous expense incurred by going on with the American War, which has destroyed all trade and credit..."[xxxiii] And a follow up on the same issue with Lord North debating Mr. Fox in Parliament, who queried: "Was the absurd war with America going on, or was it to be relinquished? Do you intend to give up America?"[xxxiv] Over the course of 1779 and into 1780 the paper continued a series on the history of the American Revolution. Anonymously signed letters were printed in response and many suggest lackluster support: "It is the behaviour of the British Nation in general [I wish] to arraign; inconsistency having marked every step of their conduct since the commencement of this ominous war."[xxxv] As mentioned, the paper was royalist, and as such, this editorial of April 27th 1780 strikes a surprisingly parochial cry for peace: If we are at war in America, we have not the burden if a continental war, that sink, in which our treasure has disappeared without any hope of return. We may suffer some losses now, for what people are uniformly successful in war? The profits and losses of war can only be eliminated on the day which concludes a peace. Let us be unanimous that day cannot be long distant, disadvantageous, or dishonorable."[xxxvi] Summary A combination of the American War and usurious British policy teamed up to greatly distress the Jamaican planters. There were periods of slave famine: a committee of the House of Assembly in 1787 found that of a slave population of 256,000 more than 15,000 slaves had died of malnutrition, some historians place the number as high as 24,000.[xxxvii] Additionally, "by the end of the 1780s the value of many West Indian plantations had declined significantly."[xxxviii] The plantation system was showing signs of age and weakness. The Caribbean system of slavery could not adjust to the new economic system, and was destined to be eclipsed by the Second British Empire. The war created a new commercial system that was simply not as lucrative for sugar producers. The economy never adjusted and decline was inevitable. Incapable of evolving to meet the dynamism of finance capitalism, the old system lost its relative profitability and sources of capital gravitated toward new technology and mass production techniques further dooming slavery economics. Yet some historians such as Kenneth Morgan hold out that plantation slavery was still quite profitable. They cite soil exhaustion as a "red herring" and technical improvements increasing productivity in Jamaica "by 35 percent between 1750 and 1830, allowing owners to achieve economies of scale."[xxxix] While there was indeed an overall West Indian economic expansion after 1783, it did not help the island of Jamaica in any significant way, and better economies of scale creating higher production numbers did not obviate British tax policies, higher production costs and most of all lower prices for sugar, which led to increasing levels of plantation debt. "Several estimates were made at the end of the eighteenth century showing the high cost of slave labor and illustrating the improbability of retrieving investments in this activity."[xl] The debt situation deteriorated to such an extent that creditors couldn't sell properties and so debt-ridden planters were forced to continue on running estates they only nominally owned. The post-war sugar monoculture still depended on imported food and supplies to function. Imports did increase, but remained expensive on a relative basis particularly if bought through the French-held islands. This new system for Jamaica in which American ships could only indirectly trade, had "an adverse effect on the viability of the sugar colonies - especially the slaves in those colonies."[xli] From an economic point of view, the burden of debt for planters was really a variable based on the movement of commodity prices. Unfortunately, world sugar prices continued to decline both during and after the American Revolution. If the real cost of doing business was steadily rising and commodity prices concurrently falling, the inevitable must be then assumed. Jamaica's days of immense wealth were over. Endnotes [i] Lowell J. Ragatz, The Fall of the Planter Class in the British Caribbean, 1763-1833; A Study in Social and Economic History. (New York, London: The Century Company, 1928) vii [ii] Richard Sheridan, "The Wealth of Jamaica in the Eighteenth Century" in Economic History Review, (Vol. 18, No.2, 1965) 296 [iii] Richard Sheridan, "The Jamaican Slave Insurrection Scare of 1776 and the American Revolution" in The Journal of Negro History, (Vol. 61, No. 3, Jul., 1976) 290 [iv] Ragatz, 142-3 [v] Hugh Thomas, The Slave Trade. (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1997) 284 [vi] Eric Williams, Capitalism and Slavery. (Chapel Hill: Univ. of N. Carolina Press, 1944) 22 [vii] Ragatz, 16 [viii] Richard Sheridan, "The Crisis of Slave Subsistence in the British West Indies before and after the American Revolution" in William and Mary Quarterly, (3rd Ser., Vol. 33, No. 4, Oct. 1974) 622 [ix] John J. McCusker, "Growth, Stagnation, or Decline? The Economy of the British West Indies, 1763-1790" in Hoffman, Ronald. (ed.) The Economy of Early America: The Revolutionary Period, 1763-1790. (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1988) citing Jamaica Board of Trade Papers, 299 [x] Selwyn Carrington, The Sugar Industry and the Abolition of the Slave Trade, 1775-1810. (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2002) Carrington is West Indian-born, and has the best modern support for the decline argument. [xi] Ragatz, 165 [xii] For a detailed examination of the slowing of sugar exports and the rise in taxation see Selwyn Carrington, The Sugar Industry and the Abolition of the Slave Trade, 1775-1810. (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2002) 51-58 [xiii] Carrington, 55 [xiv] McCusker, 291 [xv] Sheridan, "Wealth of Jamaica" 297 [xvi] Richard B. Sheridan, Sugar and Slavery; An Economic History of the British West Indies, 1623-1775. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974) 378-79 [xvii] Douglas Hall, In Miserable Slavery - The Papers of Thomas Thistlewood in Jamaica 1750-86. (London; New York: Macmillan, 1989) 239 [xviii] Ibid., 259 [xix] Ibid., 260 [xx] Hall, 265 [xxi] Ibid., 277 [xxii] Betty Wood, and T.R. Lynn Clayton, "The Letters of Simon Taylor of Jamaica to Chaloner Arcedekne, 1765-1775" in Martin, (ed.) in Travel, Trade, and Power in the Atlantic, 1765-1884. Cambridge, UK; New York, NY, USA: Cambridge University Press for the Royal Historial Society, 2002. 138 [xxiii] Ibid., 139 [xxiv] Wood, 146 [xxv] Ibid., 148 [xxvi] Ibid., 149 [xxvii] Ibid., 152 [xxviii]Roderick A. McDonald, The Economy and Material Culture of Slaves: Goods and Chattels on the Sugar Plantations of Jamaica and Louisiana. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1993) 18 [xxix] Jacob M Price, "Reflections on the Economy of Revolutionary America" in Hoffman, Ronald. (ed.) The Economy of Early America: The Revolutionary Period, 1763-1790. (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1988) 319 [xxx] Sheridan, "Crisis of Slave Subsistence" 621 [xxxi] David Douglass and Alexander Aikman, both born in Scotland, were printers in Charleston, South Carolina when the American colonies revolted. Having very pronounced loyalist sympathies, they left America and established themselves in Jamaica writing the Jamaica Mercury, which after 1780 was called the Royal Gazette. [xxxii]Jamaican Mercury, (Vol. 1, No. 9, June 5, 1779) [xxxiii]Jamaican Mercury, (Vol. 1, No.2, May 3, 1779) [xxxiv] Ibid., (Vol. 1, No.6, May 29, 1779) [xxxv] Ibid. [xxxvi]Royal Gazette, (Vol. 11, No. 54, April 27, 1780) [xxxvii] Sheridan, "Crisis of Slave Subsistence" 632 [xxxviii] Carrington, 285 [xxxix] See Kenneth Morgan, Slavery, Atlantic Trade and the British Economy, 1660-1800. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000) 51, for a thorough discussion refuting the decline theory. He joins others such as Seymour Drescher in his book Econocide. [xl] Carrington, 279 [xli] Sheridan, "Crisis of Slave Subsistence" 641 |
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