Resist and liberate: culture in post-emancipation Tobago

DR RITA PEMBERTON

As the clauses of the 1838 act to terminate the apprenticeship period, and particularly, the proclamation of the lieutenant governor to the apprentices on 15 July forewarned, there was no intent to change the way business was conducted in Tobago during the years after 1838.

The name change implied a change in status to freed men and women, but there was no specific provision in the law which signified the implementation of a new social order.

Punishment was removed from the control of employers and placed in the hands of the magistrates, but the actions for punishable offences under the law remained unchanged.

The sugar industry maintained its operation in traditional mode, and because it was the island’s sole economic activity, it was the main source of employment for the freed African workers. The workers were expected to remain the labour force that provided the service the planters desired.

After Emancipation, three issues immediately surfaced. Firstly, the interests of the two main protagonists were diametrically opposed. The freed Africans wanted to pursue their own ambitions which involved freedom from plantation labour and planter control, and a desire to establish an independent existence.

The planters, on the other hand, resisted any change in their traditional ways of operation and remained mired in the practices of a slave system that allowed them control of a large, cheap labour force.

Secondly, the fortunes of the sugar industry deteriorated dramatically during the first ten years after Emancipation. The reduction of the labour force by the removal of women and children from estate work and the preference of the workers to acquire housing off the estate were viewed by the planters as creating a labour problem.

Also, the 1846 Sugar Duties Act removed the protection Caribbean sugar had long enjoyed on the British market, throwing poor-quality Tobago sugar into competition with cheaper, better sugar, relegating it to the lowest prices on the market. As a result, the revenue generated by the industry was significantly reduced causing further impoverishment of the island’s treasury.

The situation was worsened by the disastrous hurricane of 1847, which destroyed estate buildings and threw the industry into near-collapse. Planters clung desperately to the pre-1834 modus operandi of trying to force workers into submission to their work regimes in the effort to save their ailing industry.

The period after 1838 was therefore marked by planter/worker conflicts, generated by planters’ attempts to maintain enslavement at a time when workers expected freedom. Faced with mounting economic pressures associated with cost overruns, low prices and heavy indebtedness, planters placed increased pressure on workers.

They made attempts to reduce their operating costs by reducing wages, increasing tasks and making arbitrary changes in the terms of employment. Naturally, such attempts were met with stout resistance from the workers, which was manifested in three inter-related ways.

First they sought salvation in their traditional cultural practices. Secondly, they established their own communities in the free villages which sprouted across the island after 1838. Thirdly, they took advantage of any opportunities that came their way.

The problems faced by planters provided a window of opportunity for some workers. Heavily indebted estates were put up for sale, but failed to attract foreign buyers. These estates or parts of them were sold or rented to locals, allowing some freed Africans access to land to establish settlements away from planter control which formed the basis of the free villages. An important impact of these villages was that they allowed residents to give free expression to their traditional cultural practices.

In order to pre-empt closure of their operations, planters resorted to the metayage system of sharecropping, which permitted the maintenance of their operations without heavy cash outlays. Their situation was aggravated by the shortage of cash on the island. Estate labourers were paid in kind, often by access to land. This facility had a bittersweet impact. It allowed workers to operate away from the constant gaze of the planter, maintain independent homes and increase their ability to become independent of estate labour.

But the practice also contributed to increased conflicts, because any disagreement with the employer could result in loss of the benefits earned by other arrangements with the same employer and could result in loss of crops.

However, the metayers made maximum use of the advantages the system offered to cultivate food to support their families. It also allowed them to take advantage of the market for food items when scarcity stimulated attractive prices after 1848.

They also took advantage of the planter demand for labour to enter into multiple metayer and labour arrangements with different estates. Sometimes they organised their own gangs of labourers to get contracts from planters and offered higher wages than the planters did.

In the system of labour that was devised to ease the plantation labour problems, the metayers maximised their benefits by resorting to their traditional practices. They supported each other with assistance through the len’ han’ system, which became a cultural pillar of Tobago society. Each member of the group contributed their skill to complete a project without cash outlays, and in return the recipient gave their services to other members as required.

Len’ han’ was used by metayers to complete the tasks on their metayer pieces, supported by the sou-sou, another African practice. In a sou-sou, people pooled their money and periodically paid a sou-sou “hand” to each contributor on an agreed basis to facilitate more costly projects. The Africans used their traditions to tide them over the deficiencies of the system in which they were forced to function. In the absence of a bank, the sou-sou filled the gap and provided the required service.

Metayage provided an opportunity to challenge the control of planters, whose interests it was intended to serve. It helped to reduce planter domination of workers, and allowed some to defy planters’ intent and become landowners.

It served to create strong communities in which African traditional practices, which form a part of the island’s heritage today, were preserved.