CARIBBEAN ECONOMIC HISTORY || Labour Systems in Postemancipation Bahamas

Labour Systems in Postemancipation BahamasAuthor(s): Howard JohnsonSource: Social and Economic Studies, Vol. 37, No. 1/2, CARIBBEAN ECONOMIC HISTORY(MARCH – JUNE 1988), pp. 181-201Published by: Sir Arthur Lewis Institute of Social and Economic Studies, University of the West IndiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27862934 .

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Social and Economic Studies, Volume 37, Nos. 1 & 2, 1988

Howard Johnson

Labour Systems in Postemancipation Bahamas

INTRODUCTION

The process of transition from slavery to free labour has been extensively studied in the case of the British West Indian plantation colonies. Until recently, however, little interest was shown in the economic adjustments to emancipation in

marginal non-plantation colonies like Belize1 and the Baha

mas2 . This paper examines the diverse labour regimes which were adopted in the Bahamas after emancipation and involves a discussion of the recruitment, organization and control of laabour.

THE EMERGENCE OF POSTEMANCIPATION LABOUR SYSTEMS

With the approach of emancipation, planters in the sugar colonies feared that they would be unable to "maintain cheap labor-intensive production" without slavery.3 In the Bahamas, by contrast, slavery had ceased to be vital to the economy. The collapse of the cotton-based plantation system by 1800 and the failure to find a major agricultural export staple to

replace cotton meant that the slave population in many of the outlying islands could not be profitably employed. On some of the surviving estates slaves were employed in cultivat

ing food crops and raising livestock for the Nassau market.4 These economic activities were often not sufficiently lucra tive to allow slaveowners to properly maintain their slaves. In 1830 Governor James Carmichael Smyth observed:

The slaves are few; are very thinly scattered; & with the exception of those

Islands where there are salt ponds, are of very little value to their owners.

When the owner is poor, the slave is neglected & is deprived of those com

forts, and additional enjoyments, he would and does receive [sic] in better

circumstances.5



182 SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC STUDIES

The decline in the plantation system led some slave owners to sell their slaves to planters in the new sugar colonies

of Demerara and Trinidad after 1807. In one case, a Bahamian

planter migrated, with his slaves, to Trinidad where he estab

lished a plantation.6 David Eltis has estimated that between

1808 and 1825 more than 3,000 slaves were exported from the Bahamas to other British Caribbean colonies.7 Despite the export of slaves, there was still an oversupply of labour

for agricultural activities in the Bahamas. In August 1834

the editor of the Bahamas Argus remarked after 164 liberated

Africans, rescued from a Portuguese schooner en route to

Cuba, were landed in the colony: "It is particularly unfortu nate for this island, that such a number of that class of person should be located here, where there is not sufficient employ

ment for our own peasantry, in consequence of the exhausted state of the soil. . ."8

During the apprenticeship period, impoverished employ ers were more interested in shedding the responsibility for

maintaining the apprentices than in retaining a steady labour

supply. In 1835, for example, provisions were made for prae dial apprentices to maintain themselves under certain condi tions. Instead of working five days for their masters, who

would then supply them with provisions and clothing, praedial apprentices were allowed to cultivate a plot of land for their "own support and maintenance" for two and one-half days per week. These "voluntary engagements" were signed for a

period of one year.9 In the case of apprentices who were

engaged in sea-going activities, the agreement (which was

made for a six-month period) was that the master or his agent would be given two-thirds of the apprentice's earnings but would pay half the cost of a woolen suit for the apprentice. From his share, the apprentice was expected "to maintain, clothe and otherwise support himself."10 The arrangement, as it related to slaves registered as mariners, may be seen as the extension of the system of self-hire, which already existed in Nassau, to the Out Islands.11 As these arrangements indicate, employers were anxious to reduce the costs of main tenance which could exceed the income which their appren tices generated.



Postemancipation Bahamas 183

In the immediate postemancipation years wage labour did not become the principal form of labour organization in the Bahamas. In fact, with the exception of pineapple cultiva tion and salt-raking which were centred on a few islands, employers were unable to offer steady wage employment in the Out Islands. This situation is best explained by the fact that landed proprietors in most islands, withoug a profitable export staple, lacked the operating capital to finance a wage system.12 In 1847, H.F. Cartwright, a stipendiary magistrate in the Out Islands, remarked on "the proprietors of lands not having means or knowledge of an availabe staple article to employ labour."13 As late as 1866, Governor Rawson Rawson wrote about "the Out Islands where the greater part of the population live upon the produce of their fields, with no opportunity of earning wages as labourers."14

In the postemancipation years labour was organized and paid in several ways. First, there was wage labour which was most widely used in New Providence and those islands which

produced salt and pineapples for export.15 Second, labourers were paid in a combination of money wages and kind. This was the scheme under which recently-arrived liberated Africans were employed immediately after emancipation. Up to 1838 some of them had been indentured to local employers for

periods ranging from six months to fourteen years.16 After

1838, liberated Africans were encouraged to sign agreements for one-year periods with their employers. In December 1838,

CR. Nesbitt, the Colonial Secretary, forwarded to stipendiary magistrate, Thomas R. Winder, the "approved scale of provi sions and allowances applicable to the case of Africans recently arrived who are not qualified to make their own bargains":

Weekly. Eight quarts of Corn or an equivalent.

Daily. Six ounces of fish or four ounces of meat, one gill of molasses, or two ounces of sugar, and two ounces of

tobacco, or weekly at the above rate.

Clothing. Two suits of Oznaburgs yearly or more if necessary, one suit of woollen yearly; one blanket yearly, one




straw hat, one cotton handkerchief, one knife; and

necessary cooking utensils.

Wages. One quarter dollar weekly.17

Essentially this arrangement was one which met the subsistence needs of the liberated Africans in exchange for their labour.

It should be noted that the system of paying recently-arrived liberated Africans partly in kind seems to have persisted into

the 1860s. In 1860 employers who engaged Africans over 14

years of age as apprentices "were expected to pay the latter

the current wages usually paid to servants, or mechanics of

similar proficiency, or capacity, after the service of five

years. . ."18

Payment of labour in money wages and kind was also a

feature of contracts signed between proprietors and ex-slaves

to work on their estates. In his directions to Thomas R. Winder

in 1838, on the form which these one-year contracts should

take, CR. Nesbitt pointed out:

In cases in which the remuneration or any part of it is to be made not in

money, but in kind, the contract must specify with all practical precision the nature and amount and quality of the articles to be supplied to the

servant, and the time when and the place or places at which articles are to

be delivered.19

One surviving example of such an arrangement is that between

James Farquharson, proprietor of Prospect Hill, Watling's Island and Jacob, "free Negro labourer", which was signed on

22 April 1839. Jacob was contracted to perform the duties

of a herdsman and was paid wages of $12.00 per year, at the rate of $ 1.00 per month. He was also given three suits of cloth

ing per year, "a negro house to live in" and the "usual medi

cine" in addition to "as much land" as he could find time to

cultivate.2 0 This mode of payment of labour (in cash and kind) clearly reflected the shortage of capital among proprietors who produced for the limited local market.

Finally, labour was organized and remunerated along the

lines of the "labour-service system" described by V.l. Lenin

with reference to Russian agriculture in the late nineteenth

century. As he observed: ". . . labour service in return for land




is very widespread in the shape either of half-cropping or

directly of work for land rented, for grounds used, etc.21 In the Bahamas, systems of sharecropping and labour tenancy evolved after emancipation. The evidence suggests that the share system emerged as early as 1836. In that year Robert

Miller, a proprietor in Eleuthera, manuitted 56 of his appren tices and made agreements with one group of freedmen to cultivate the land on his Old Estate. It is not clear from the official report what the details of the voluntary agreements were but there are strong indications that it involved some

type of sharecropping arrangement.22 A system of sharecropping was well suited to the Baha

mian context where large landowners were usually absentee and lacked working capital.23 As Governor Henry Blake commented in 1884: "Whenever estates are cultivated they are in almost every case cultivated on the m?tairie system. Indeed it is the only possible system here except the owner is living on the spot and daily superintending the labour.24 For landed proprietors, resident in Nassau, the main attrac tion of sharecropping lay in the fact that it provided a labour force (and an income) without the need for paying cash wages or supervision costs.2

5

Proprietors had little difficulty in attracting ex-slaves to

engage in sharecropping, for it provided land in a context where few freedmen were able to purchase land. In the after math of emancipation the official policy on the distribution of Crown land in the Bahamas (as elsewhere in the British

Caribbean) was to restrict access to land in order to create a dependent wage labour force. Moreover, former slaves were

willing to participate in the share system in islands, like

Eleuthera, where pineapple cultivation for export was a pro fitable business and where the most productive land remained in private hands.26

By the terms of the sharecropping contract (which was

usually verbal and informal) the share tenant provided labour services in return for the use of land supplied by the landlord. The division of the crop yield varied with the quality of the land assigned to the tenant. In 1847 an official report outlined



186 SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC STUDI ES

"the conditions of tenancy" on the colony's estates: "On some Estates if New Land one half, if old one third of the

produce; and on others from two to three days labour are

given for the privilege of cultivating the land".27 In the early stages of the operation of the share system, the landlord did not intervene in decisions on the production process nor exercise supervisory functions. The exception to the general practice was on the estates owned by the heirs of Charles

Farquharson on Watling's island. There written contracts were used and the agricultural practices of the tenants were monitored after 1865.2

8

Like the share system, the beginnings of the system of labour tenancy can be traced to the apprenticeship period. It

was, in effect, a continuation of the practice by which appren tices divided their time between labouring on their employers' land and on land (assigned to them) which they worked on their own account. The system of labour tenancy, as it

operated in Watling's Island and Long Island, was described

by H.F. Cartwright in 1847:

The terms of most of the agreements are, that the labourer shall give the

two first days in each week in labour to the Proprietor of the land, and receive in return as much land as he can cultivate ? in which case he

2 9 receives wages for work done on other days.

It is difficult to establish the extent to which the system of labour tenancy was adopted after emancipation or whether the practice continued throughout the nineteenth century.

Unlike the share system, there is no mention of this form of "labour service", in the sources consulted, after 1847.

Despite the differences in the detailed arrangements for the share and labour tenancy systems, they were two aspects of the "labour-service system". In both instances labour was

paid in kind: in produce, in the case of share cropping, and

in land, in the case of labour tenancy.30 Both systems guar anteed landowners a cheap supply of labour by making land available to tenants.

Sea-going activities like wrecking and sponging were, like agricultural enterprises in the postemancipation years, organized along the lines of a labour-service system rather




than on a wage basis. Labourers in those economic activities were paid on a system of 'shares' which had been used during

slavery.31 Like sharecropping, the system of shares used in

wrecking and sponging served to restrict capital outlay for

wages.

In the early years after emancipation many lower-class Bahamians remained unproletarianized and essentially out

side the market economy. Subsistence farming and sea-going activities provided them with an adequate living. This situa tion reflected not only the limited opportunities for wage

employment in the Out Islands but also the failure of the early attempts by the colonial authorities at an enclosure movement. In the Out Islands the inhabitants, away from official scrutiny and control, had unimpeded access to extensive Crown lands. Frustrated by high prices in their attempts to purchase free hold land, former slaves resorted to squatting on Crown lands. Ex-slaves who worked initially on the share system often moved off the private estates and squatted on adjacent Crown lands.32 In 1857 Governor Charles Bayley observed that in

many islands of the archipelago there were few persons who earned their living entirely by the sale of their labour power ? a circumstance which he explained by the colony's low

population density:

So long as the proportion of inhabitants to land is small as it now is in these

islands; and so long as the ordinary wants of life are more than satisfied by the joint proceeds of desultory agriculture & intermittent "fishing" [,]

wrecking" & "shelling"; so long will it be unreasonable to expect from the

inhabitants of the Bahamas that continued & laborious energy or that self

respect in the prosecution of any kind of honest industry, which is the boast

and the strength of our labouring classes at home.33

THE CREDIT AND TRUCK SYSTEMS The labour systems which emerged in the immediate

postemancipation years did not remain static but changed in response to economic change. The most important econo

mic factor in this development was the increase in external demand for commodities like salt, pineapples and sponges. In order to respond effectively to the export stimulus, investors in the production and harvesting of those commodities needed




a stable labour force. As we shall see, the mobilization of this labour force often resulted in the introduction of an element of coercion into the existing labour systems.

With the decline of cotton production, salt became the main export staple in the Bahamas. In the years after emanci

pation, however, labour for the 'salt5 islands became a major problem. In 1852 Governor John Gregory noted that un attractive working conditions in the salt industry had forced

employers to offer high wages in order to attract a labour force:

... it must be borne in mind that the labour of salt raking is most dis tasteful to the Negro; as well as to the White Man, involving the most pain ful Exposure of the face to the Sun & Mosquitoes and the most distressing Effects upon the feet from constant immersion in brine: In fact no man will

voluntarily submit to it Except under the stimulus of very high wages. . .34

In the salt-producing islands employers attempted to solve the problems of retaining a labour force and paying high wages by the operation of credit and truck systems. Labourers were forced to seek credit from their merchant

employers for the production process, which depended on

solar evaporation, was sometimes interrupted by heavy rain and left salt-rakers unemployed.3

5 Since periods of prolonged drought in the salt-producing islands hindered the cultivation of food crops, labourers usually depended on shops operated by their employers for basic foodstuffs. In 1889, Louis N.

Duty, a former government official who had been stationed in Inagua, the main salt-producing island of the late nineteenth

century, described how the credit system worked there:

. . . the stores of employers of labour . . , were general magazines from

which employes were expected to get all they needed, even clothes for

themselves and families. . . Articles of the lowest quality were marked at

the highest prices and the employer was accomodating enough to give goods in advance to the employ?' which was deducted from the amount of his

wages: by this means the employer was always able to demand the services of the employe who always remained hopelessly in debt, and thus the system

36 as practised at Inagua was but a modified form of slavery.

As Duty's comments indicate, the merchant-employers used the lever of indebtedness to extract labour from the salt-rakers.




In Inagua, the payment of wages in truck of inferior

quality and inflated prices successfully reduced the high wage rates which proprietors were forced to offer in order to obtain labourers. Salt-rakers were paid in 'paper coins' which were redeemable only in goods at the stores owned by their

employers. In a letter to the Nassau Guardian of 26 April 1889 Winifred W. Richardson wrote of this practice:

I do say that not only rancid pork and No. 3 flour, but will further say

putrid pork and No. 4 flour, flour that could scarce be stomached, and at

an enormous price had been given to the poor labourers; and thus carried on

a partisan warfare of slavery. When I say slavery I mean to say that the

labourers were bound; yes bound to their employers, as slaves were to their

masters. I will just give abrief example, in which I hope you will understand me: do you remember the time when a certain merchant used the paper coins (as they were styled) from six-pence and upwards, which could only be exchanged at his shop? Was that not a truck system?3

This variant of the truck system, as practised in the Bahamas most closely resembles .the form commonly used in England in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.38 Pay

ment in truck became even more firmly entrenched in the last two decades of the nineteenth century as the salt industry declined and salt proprietors found it difficult to obtain credit.39

In the years following the economic boom based on

blockade-running during the American Civil War, Bahamian merchants increased their investment in the sponging and

pineapple industries.40 The export trade in pineapples, which had developed as early as 1832, expanded in response to a

growing demand for tropical commodities by industrialized countries of the North Atlantic, especially after 1870. Sponges were exported from 1843 onwards but until the 1860s the colony's extensive sponge beds were relatively unexploited.

The expansion of the pineapple and sponging industries

(which were both labour-intensive) resulted in an increased demand for labour on a regular basis. Initially, merchant investors in both enterprises seem to have experienced some

difficulty in bringing subsistence producers into the market

economy as labourers. Writing in 1875, Governor William




Robinson expressed views which were undoubtedly held by members of the white employer class:

... I much fear that it will be vain to expect from the coloured people of the Bahamas that continuous and assiduous devotion to manual industry which alone can ensure any success in agricultural enterprises.

So small are their wants and so unambitious are they that they prefer earn

ing a bare livelihood out of their small holdings to working as labourers for the good of the Colony at large.41

For the out islander an advance of merchandise from the merchant-investor was the initial inducement to provide labour for pineapple production or sponging. Once indebted to the

merchant, the labourer became part of a permanent work force.4

The control of labour in both industries, through indebt

edness, was made possible by the fact that they were organized on a profit sharing rather than a wage basis. Since payments made to labourers engaged in pineapple production and spong ing were usually delayed and irregular, they were forced to

rely on credit. In the absence of formal financial institutions from which they could obtain short and medium-term credit, Bahamian labourers depended on merchants involved in those industries for loans.43 Let us examine how the credit and truck systems worked in both industries.

In the late nineteenth century, the share system remained the predominant labour arrangement for the production of

pineapples. In a context where the merchant-landlord was anxious to recruit a large and stable labour force, the share

system provided a 'subsidy' of'unpaid family labour'.44 Some modifications were, however, made to the system. Many landlords assumed greater responsibility for the production process by supplying tenants with pineapple slips, manure and fertilizer in an attempt to increase productivity and out

put. Moreover, management supervision was introduced in a

system which had hitherto depended on self-regulation by the tenants. Most important, landlords commonly extended credit to their tenants.45

Share tenants who produced pineapples usually required




consumption loans over the long period between the planting and harvesting of the crop. Their dependence on advances of

provisions (and sometimes cash) from the merchants tended to increase as they devoted more time to producing pine apples than subsistence crops. These advances were made

against future earnings. However, with the inflated prices charged for merchandise taken on credit and, not infrequently, the manipulation by merchant-landlords of the accounts, tenants found it difficult to free themselves from debt. It

was a common experience for tenants to have their share of the proceeds of the crop, which was marketed by their land

lords, absorbed in repaying their debts. In this situation they had little alternative but to resort to further advances from their landlords over the next crop cycle.46

In the pineapple industry, the truck system was used

primarily in transactions with peasant proprietors for whom the merchants acted as marketing agents. In San Salvador, for example, as Reverend F.B. Matthews reported in 1885, the proceeds from the* sale of peasants' crops were paid in

basic foodstuffs:

The people are nearly all cultivators, growing pineapples for exportation to

England and America, and sweet potatoes, maize, corn and bananas for

home use. .. They have very little ready money; making arrangements with

merchants to buy their pineapples and receiving payment chiefly in rice, salt

pork, cotton goods, &c.47

The effect of that practice was to increase the merchants'

profits, for the value of the merchandise was generally less than a cash payment.

In the early years of the twentieth century, A. & A.

Griffin, the owners of a pineapple-canning factory at Gover nor's Harbour, Eleuthera, practised another version of the truck system. By deferring payment in cash they guaranteed that most of their wage bill would be paid in truck. The official report on Governor's Harbour for 1906 outlined how this system worked:

The A. & A. Griffin's [sic] factory worked 52 days and packed 42,000 cases of preserved pine-apples which equals abour 124,000 dozen fruit.

They averaged about 150 labourers per day with wages ranging from 15.6d




to 4 shillings. Wages are paid in truck however, except in few cases where

the labourer can afford to wait until August for a settlement.

Labourers are given tin checks (round pieces of tin with certain values

stamped on them) upon the completion of their job or day or week's work.

They are told that these will be redeemed with silver in the month of

August, but only from the persons to whom the company first pays it, but

its stamped value can be had for it at any time in truck at the Company's store. To purchase anything outside of the Company's store, the labourer

must allow a discount of from 10 to 25 per cent and also give approved guarantee that he will in the month of August return for the checks and

have them changed for silver. As the price of bread stuffs and clothing is

very high in all the shops of the district the labourer can obtain but very little by working at the factory. How different would be the results if

48 labourers were paid in cash weekly.

The method of payment described was clearly intended to

reduce the employees' "real wage below his nominal wage"49 In the sponging industry, crew members usually needed

credit to buy the necessary stores for the schooners and sup

plies for their families during sponging voyages which lasted from six to twelve weeks. This credit was provided by mer

chants who often owned the schooners and combined the

functions of outfitter and agent for the sale of the sponges. Until 1886 credit was advanced in the form of goods which were supplied from stores owned by the outfitters or someone

with whom they had an arrangement. Although goods bought on credit terms were usually high-priced and of poor quality, many spongers preferred to take provisions on credit rather

than grow food for their own subsistence. At the end of the

voyage, after the division of the proceeds, spongers were

frequently in debt to the merchants. Without funds, they were forced to sign up for another voyage and accept a fur ther advance in order to maintain themselves and their families. Any balance due to spongers (after deductions for

credit) was paid in truck. This practice ensured that spongers, without cash, would continue to depend on credit and on

employment to the merchants.5 0

In 1886 legislation was enacted, despite the initial

opposition of the merchant-dominated House of Assembly, which abolished the practice of paying the shares of the crews




in truck and placed limits on the value of advances which could be made to the captains and the seamen.51 By the early twentieth century, however, both of those provisions were

largely ignored by the merchants. In order to retain the services of spongers for whom there were increased opportu nities for lucrative employment in southern Florida, merchants were obliged to make large advances of provisions and cash to them.52 This constituted, in Alan Knight's phrase, "debts

as-perks".53 The payment of shares in truck also persisted, in another form, into the twentieth century. Merchants in volved in the sponging industry (like the operators of the pineapple-canning factory) made payments in the form of tokens which could be redeemed in goods.54 The survival of these forms of labour exploitation, as Sir William Grey

Wilson observed in 1908, was a consequence of the con tinued political and economic dominance of the colony's white mercantile elite:

When I state that the ballot box has not been introduced into the Colony; that corrupt practices at elections are of common occurrence;

- that the

masses are in no sense really represented; that the predatory instincts of the colonists have undergone little change since the days wrecking was a

lucrative and popular profession; - and that the Colony is honeycombed

by usurers who reap a rich harvest from the sensual, easy-going, thriftless

natives, ? I have at least indicated the nature of the problem confronting

the Executive.55

Although the credit and truck systems have been examined here only in relation to the salt, pineapple and

sponging industries, they were more widely used in the Bahamas.56 Payment in truck was so pervasive that L.D. Powles claimed in 1888 that "there are very few among the

working classes of the Bahamas who know what it is to handle cash at all, except domestic servants and skilled work

people."57 The main exception to that general pattern, in the late nineteenth century, was the wage labour force

employed on sisal plantations which were operated primarily by British investors. As governor, Sir Ambrose Shea promoted the sisal industry in the hope that Bahamians of the labouring class (whether as labourers or peasants) would be provided with "the means of escape from the thraldom of the credit




and truck system." He believed that regular wages would make reliance on credit unnecessary.5

8 Though obviously

reflecting the prejudices of his class, comments by the Bishop of Nassau in 1891 give some idea of the early consequences of the introduction of a cash wage system in the island of Andros:

These men are all receiving wages, in cash, regularly. . . For the present, I

hear that the possession of so much hard cash embarrasses some of them

sadly. They had been used to go about with empty pockets, being supplied with the necessaries of life from stores kept by the same men whom they served for wages, who would pay them always in kind, to the mutual satis

5 9 faction of both parties.

The prosperity of the sisal industry was, however, short-lived.

By the first decade of the twentieth century the poor quality of Bahamian sisal and competition from efficient producers like Mexico resulted in low prices for that commodity on

the American market.60 Sisal became a peasant crop which

was, in some islands, cultivated on the share system.61

As our discussion has shown, the credit and truck systems attracted and stabilized a work force for the export industries at low cost. In fact, merchant-employers successfully restricted their outlay of capital because the operation of those systems virtually guaranteed that labourers were paid in truck rather than in cash. Merchants profitted, moreover, from their role as middlemen in the sale of basic (and over-priced) articles of consumption.

Up to this point the credit and truck systems have been discussed mainly as mechanisms for the recruitment and retention of a labour force and surplus appropriation. The

adoption of these systems can, however, also be explained by the capital structure of the industries which we have examined.

Contemporary observers, in their discussion of those systems, give us little idea of the extent of internal differentiation within the mercantile sector, but there is evidence that some

merchants had little capital themselves or access to credit at moderate interest rates. Writing in 1886, after the failure of the Public Bank of the Bahamas, John Gardiner observed:




I am only mentioning facts well known to most people in Nassau when I

say that when the Bank failed, nearly every merchant in Nassau of any

importance, except three or four, was found to be more or less heavily in debt either to the Bank or to its late Cashier. These merchants paid off or are paying off their debts to the Bank by borrowing money, often, it is

said, at very heavy interest, from other sources, so that they have, to all intents and purposes, no capital available at the present time for mercantile

operations.. .

Mr. Smith would have us believe that there is an available Banking Capital in the Colony of ?70,000. Suppose there is; the greater part of it belongs to some half-dozen people, representing only a very small proportion of

the merchants of Nassau; the others have no capital worth speaking of, in

many cases none at all.62

It is likely that the situation which Gardiner described lasted throughout the period under examination. For merchants of limited means, the economic exploitation of the labour force, by the credit and truck systems, might have been dictated by their need to cover the high cost of credit.

CONCLUSION

In the Bahamas, emancipation did not result in the

general adoption of free wage labour. In a colony without a major export staple, there was wide variation in the modes of production: capitalist and precapitalist forms co-existed. In the Out Islands, many lower class Bahamians remained out side the market economy. The development of major export staples (like pineapples and sponges) by the late nineteenth

century did not lead to the adoption of wage labour but to an intensification of pre-capitalist forms of production and

employment.63 In addition, an element of coercion was

introduced (through the credit and truck systems) which

effectively brought the subsistence-oriented producer into the labour force. Wage labour became the norm only after the 1930s with the decline of the sponging and pineapple industries and the development of the colony as a service

economy based on tourism.



SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC STUDIES

FOOTNOTES

?O. Nigel Bolland [4], pp. 593-600. In a recent overview of the transition from slave to free labour in the

Americas, Herbert S. Klein and Stanley L. Engerman limited their discussion to

the plantation economies. See [18], pp. 255-69.

Howard Johnson, "The Share System" [15], pp. 141-53; "A Modified

Form of Slavery" [17], pp. 729-53. This paper incorporates the findings of those

articles.

3The phrase is from Sidney W. Mintz, [21], p. 216.

4B.W. Higman [13], p. 65; Michael Craton [5], p. 352.

5Carmichael Smyth to Sir George Murray, no 37, 10 April 1830. CO.

23/82.

6D. Gail-Saunders, Slavery in the Bahamas, 1648-1838 [24], p. 80; Higman

[13],p. 80.

7D. Eltis, "The Traffic in Slaves" [8], p. 58.

8Bahamas Argus, 27 August 1834.

9Enclosure in William Colebrook to Lord Glenelg, no. 86, 27 August 1835.

CO. 23/94.

10Ibid.

1 higman [13], p. 245.

12Johnson, "The Share System", [15], p. 142.

i3Enclosure in Nesbitt to Grey, no. 36, 7 September 1847. CO. 23/126.

14Rawson Rawson to Earl of Carnarvon, no. 161, 17 October 1866. CO.

23/185.

1 Enclosure in Nesbitt to Grey, no. 36, 7 September 1847. CO. 23/126.

16Peter T. Dalleo, "Africans in the Caribbean" [6], p. 15.

17CR. Nesbitt to Thomas R. Winder, 20 December 1838, Colonial Secre

tary's Letter Book (hereafter CSLB), 29 December 1835-17 January 1839.

Bahamas Archives.




18Public Notice [Marked B]. Enclosure in Charles Bayley to Duke of

Newcastle, no. 82, 22 August 1860. CO. 23/163.

19C.R. Nesbitt to Thomas R. Winder, 20 December 1838, CSLB, 29 December 1835-17 January 1839.

20Agreement between James Farquharson and Jacob, 22 April. 1839.

O'Brien Family Collection. Bahamas Archives.

21 V.l. Lenin [20], p. 200.

Report of Special Justice Thomas Winder, 6 July 1837. Enclosure in

Joseph Hunter to Glenelg, no. 51, 12 August 1837. CO. 23/99.


24Blake to Earl of Derby, no. 34, 28 March 1885. CO: 23/226.


26Ibid., p. 145.

27'Statistical Summary tor the half year ending 30th June 1847'; Table C

Enclosure in Nesbitt to Grey, no. 36, 7 September 1847. CO. 23/126.


29.'Statistical Summary for the half year ending 30th June 1847'; Table C Enclosure in Nesbitt to Grey, no. 36, 7 September 1847. CO. 23/126. Cf. Phillip D. Morgan [22], pp. 585-86; Ralph Shlomowitz [25], p. 562; Eric Foner [9], p. 86.

30Lenin [20], p. 203.

3 Johnson, "The Share System", [ 15 ], p. 143.

32H.A. Blake to Fred Stanley, no. 89, 27 August 1885. CO. 23/226.

33Charles Bayley to Henry Labouchere, no. 57, 23 September 1857. CO.

23/154.

34John Gregory to Grey, no. 3,7 January 1852. CO. 23/140.

35 Johnson, "A Modified Form of Slavery", [17], p. 738.

36Letter to Nassau Guardian, 8 May 1889.




31 Nassau Guardian, 1 May 1889.

38George W. Hilton, The Truck System [14], p. 1.

39 Johnson, "A Modified Form of Slavery", [17], p. 739.


41William Robinson to the Earl of Carnarvon, no. 137, 24 June 1875.

CO. 23/213; cf. Arnold J. Bauer [2], p. 55.

42Blake to Derby, no. 108,12 August 1884. CO. 23/224.

43Johnson, "A Modified Form of Slavery", [17], p, 734.

44Goodman and Redlift, From Peasant to Proletarian: Capitalist Develop ment and Agrarian Transitions [11], p. 179.

4S Johnson, "The Share System", [ 15 ], p. 148.

46Ibid., 150.

47Report on the Parish of San Salvador for 1885, Nassau Quarterly Mission

Paper (1 September 1886), 56.

48Report on Governor's Harbour, Eleuthera for 1906 in appendix to

Votes of the Legislative Council (5 February - 8 July 1907), 134. Cf. Fraginals'

"Plantation in the Caribbean" [10], pp. 6-7; Charles Bergquist, [3], p, 38.

49GeorgeW. Hilton [14], p. 1; cf. Adrian Graves [12], p. 119.

50Johnson, "A Modified Form of Slavery", [17], pp. 743-744.

51 Ibid., p. 745.

52Ibid., p. 746.

5 3 Alan Knight [19], p. 48.

54Grey-Wilson to the Earl of Crewe, Conf., 31 August 1908. CO. 23/263,

S5Ibid.

5 6 For an extended discussion see Johnson, "A Modified Form of Slavery"

[17].




57L.D.Powles,I?wd ofthe Pink Pearl [23], p. 98.

58Shea to Baron Knutsford, no. 56, 6 April 1889. CO. 23/231.

59tProspects of this Winter,' Nassau Quarterly Mission Paper (December

1891), 80.

60Howa?d Johnson, "Playing Leap Frog with the Gulf Stream" [16].

6 Report on San Salvadox for 1900 in appendix to Votes of the Legislative

Council (19 February - 11 May 1901), 69.

62Letter by John Gardiner, Nassau Guardian, 16 October 1886. Gardiner

was, in 1886, scientific advisor to the Board of Agriculture of the Bahamas.

63Cf. Duncan and Rutledge (eds.) [7], pp. 4-5; Arnold J. Bauer [1], p. 1060.

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[4] BOLLAND, O. Nigel, "Systems of Domination After Slavery: The Control of Land and Labor in the British West Indies after 1938", Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 23, 1981.

[5] CRATON, Michael, "Hobbesian or Panglossian? The Two Extremes of Slave Conditions in the British Caribbean, 1783 to

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200 SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC STUDI ES

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[7] DUNCAN, Kenneth and Ian RUTLEDGE (eds.), Land and Labour in Latin America: Essays in the Development of Agrarian Capitalism in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977.

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[11] GOODMAN, David and Michael REDCLIFT, From Peasant to

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[13] HIGMAN, B.W., Slave Populations of the British Caribbean, 1807-1834, Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1984.

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[15] JOHNSON, Howard, "The Share System in the Bahamas in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries", Slavery and Abolition, Vol. 5, 1984.

[16 ] _, "Playing Leap Frog with the Gulf Stream: Baha mian Labour Migration to Florida in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries", unp. paper, 1985.

[17] _, "A Modified Form of Slavery: The Credit and Truck Systems in the Bahamas in the Nineteenth and

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[18] KLEIN, Herbert and Stanley L. ENGERMAN, "The Transition from Slave to Free Labour: Notes on a Comparative Economic Model", in FRAGINALS, M., et. al (eds.), op. cit., 1985.

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[25] SHLOMOWITZ, Ralph, "The Origins of Southern Share-cropping", Agricultural History, Vol. 53,1979.



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CARIBBEAN ECONOMIC HISTORY || Labour Systems in Postemancipation Bahamas