From bondage to liberation: The agricultural experience

Dr Rita Pemberton

The cultivation of cotton and sugar, which occurred during the 18th and 19th centuries in Tobago, typified the use of enslaved labour for the conduct of plantation agriculture for the benefit of the island’s large landowners and its imperial possessor. Cotton was the first crop to be cultivated as a commercial enterprise by the first European occupiers of the island, but it was replaced by sugar owing to an outbreak of disease and a surge in demand and prices in Europe and the potential for profits which this brought.

Sugar remained the island’s main crop from the time of British acquisition in 1763 across the 19th century. The enslaved African workers who were bonded to work for life had no say in either the choice or change of crop or in the terms of production, and neither did they share in the profits which accrued to their enslavers. It was assumed that African labour would always be free to those participants of the human trade who purchased captive Africans who were forced to work to the satisfaction of their enslavers. Plantation agriculture brought them no benefits, and not surprisingly, the island was rocked by revolts during the initial phase of British possession during the 1770s, when the Africans sought their liberation through rebellion.

The experiences of bonded labour varied from the time of British possession to the 19th and into the 20th century.

France’s determination to wrest possession from Britain during the last decades of the 18th century posed a security threat to the island, which resulted in the deployment of members of the enslaved population to strengthen its inadequate defence force. Hence the enslaved population served double duty as forced labour in economic and military service neither of which served their interests, for they were thereby drawn into a war that cost the lives of some and injury to others, and, like the commercial enterprise, was of no benefit to them.

French occupation of Tobago between 1781 and 1793 brought no change in the work routine of the enslaved population, for there was an intensified demand for their labour under French pressure to regain control of the sugar market.

Once the island returned to British possession, plantation owners faced an uphill battle to deal with the challenges which were posed by changed market realities – increased production from other producers both within and without the British Empire and falling prices – to which the plantation owners responded with increased labour demands on the workers. Whether under British or French rule, plantation agriculture remained the nemesis of enslaved workers.

However, a wind of change was provided by the successful move of the American colonies for independence from British rule. This war jeopardised the sustenance of the enslaved population in the British colonies, because the system was based on the supply of food from the North American colonies.

This threat of the disruption of the food supply resulted in the allocation of provision grounds to the Africans to grow their own food. This reflected an adjustment in the attitude of the administration, which also provided a different perspective on agriculture for the African workers, who were allowed to develop a relationship with the land in accordance with their African traditions.

Thus two types of agriculture, subsistence and commercial, coexisted on the island, in an ironical relationship of antagonistic dependency. The opportunity for the Africans to produce their own food provided a lever for change, which came with the development of a different agricultural relationship for the enslaved workers. The decline of the sugar industry after emancipation increased this opportunity when sugar was replaced by a spate of cash crops during the second half of the 19th century.

Coconut cultivation was introduced with imported seed nuts from the Pacific and Malaya, first on estates in the Courland area, and spread later to southwest Tobago and the windward and leeward coasts by the turn of the century. While it was the initial intention to produce whole nuts for export, the feasibility of drying the nuts subsequently led to the export of copra, with Tobago producing about 30 per cent of the copra production of Trinidad and Tobago during the early years of the 20th century.

Coconuts became integrated into the life of the freed African population in several ways, for they became fully integrated into the island’s food culture. It provided employment through the production of coconut oil, which along with coconut milk became an essential ingredient in Tobago's cuisine.

The coconut industry was further diversified by the production of coconut fibre by a group of estates and a fibre factory in Lowlands. Fibre was used for bedding, and coconut husks were burned as fuel in the homes of the working class.

In an attempt to develop a meat and dairy industry, different animal species were introduced and some planters cultivated tropical grasses such as pangola, as pastures for beef and dairy cattle. Small landowners and peasants also engaged in pastoral agriculture, which was considered beneficial to them.

Several varieties of bananas were introduced for export to supply the Canadian Banana company from 1932 to 1939 and later, Union International Company Ltd of England. Seventeen banana-buying points were established for collecting the Gros Michel and Cavendish varieties by trucks along main and secondary roads, and a further 23 subsidiaries operated depending on demand.

The fruit was carried by barge from Tobago to a refrigerated facility in Port of Spain. The banana industry encountered marketing problems and was hit by Panama disease, but remained in cultivation by small farmers and also became part of the island’s food culture.

Cocoa, which was introduced to replace sugar as an export crop, was produced both on peasant small holdings and estates. The first bag of beans was produced for export in 1876. Cocoa became the main cash crop of the peasants whose holdings were mainly located on the windward side of the island.

Tobago cocoa was marketed as a fine-grade aromatic product and cocoa producers were incentivised to maintain product quality through the fermentaries set up at Delaford, Roxborough, and Pembroke.

In this instance the administration saw the importance of stimulating agricultural production among the peasant and working class by providing cocoa instructors to advise and assist peasant cultivators and supply plants from the Department of Agriculture.

While forced labour in the agriculture of Tobago was considered essential to the success of plantations, the practice did not endear the practice of agriculture to either the enslaved or the freed population.

It was not until economic exigencies forced a changed approach in which the labour force benefited from the activity, particularly in terms of real liberation from plantation control and the ability to achieve social mobility, that their attitude to agriculture would change.