Freed Africans: From workers to landowners

DURING the first years of freedom, planter/worker relations got off to a rocky start.

Tobago’s planters, who refused to liberate themselves from the practices of enslavers, sought to maintain the master/slave relationship rather than treat the Africans as their employees.

The workers resisted the poor working conditions that were prevalent on the island, especially the very low daily wage of sixpence, and sought to attain their independence. This was closely tied to landowning, which the planting community sought to prevent.

During the first five years after emancipation, loud complaints about labour problems emanated from the planting community, who nursed notions of immigrant labour as the solution to their problems.

With no support from the imperial authorities, recourse was made to the system of metayage which was introduced on the island during the 1840s. Metayage was a system of share cropping under which workers were contracted to provide the labour to cultivate and manufacture sugar, while planters provided the land and facilities for manufacture. Returns from the sale of the sugar were to be shared.

The system became popular after the hurricane of 1847, when planters faced an acute shortage of credit and felt bitter disappointment with the lack of imperial generosity to them in their time of distress. In particular, they felt aggrieved by the absolute refusal to sanction the immigration proposals offered by planters to resolve the island’s economic difficulties.

More than anything else, the metayage system allowed some planters to hold on to their properties and continue the production of sugar.

Planters assumed that they would have greater control over the labour force if all workers on the island were brought under the metayage system. They wanted a re-enactment of the times when they had full control of their estates in their own hands, so that if the metayers refused to work, they would be fired.

It was assumed that the sugar plantations would remain operative forever, planters would continue to wield political power and the freed Africans would remain permanent plantation workers.

However, the workers had ambitions of their own, and preferred to be hired as independent labourers, because they earned more.

To incentivise workers to enter metayage agreements, access to provision grounds on estate land was included. This provided an opportunity which the freed Africans used to their advantage.

Although the system came into widespread use across the island, it was fraught with problems. In the first place, it was a system of unequal sharing, in which the burden of the responsibility for cultivation of sugar and the total cost of its manufacture were placed on the metayers.

Once operational, while planters commended its “civilising influence” on the workers, they found several devious ways of shifting additional costs on to the metayers. These unfair practices generated increasing planter/worker tensions. There were constant conflicts over wages, with planters accusing metayers of ill ill-treating plantation property, while workers complained about the arbitrary notices to plant, which were often very inconvenient.

The punishment for these was a notice to quit estate property, which usually included access to those plots which formed a part of the payment for other, separate work agreements.

These tensions led to the development of an intensified resistance strategy, in which access to land formed an important part.

The island’s sugar industry, and with it the economy, slipped further downwards as the century wore on. Tobago’s antiquated system produced low-quality sugar which attracted the lowest prices on the international market, and without credit, planters were unable to modernise their operations.

Ironically, the institution of the system of metayage, which continued the old practice of keeping planting and manufacturing sugar together on each estate, prevented the modernisation of the sugar industry.

Planters continued to dream of immigrants as their salvation, and there were flirtations with several private immigration schemes, which were stillborn.

They turned back to the resident freed Africans, and, in the process, increased opportunities for metayage agreements were created. These allowed the freed people to enter into agreements on multiple estates and multiple opportunities on the same estate, which provided them with access to larger parcels of land.

In addition, the shortage of cash, a situation which plagued the island for decades, allowed payment in kind which was access to land. Hence, although obstructions were put up to prevent the freed Africans from purchasing land, metayage offered them increased access to land, which set them on the road to the independence which they sought.

That road was not an easy one, because planters did not give up their attempts to restrict the metayers, who were accused of focusing on their own crops while paying little attention to the canes; delaying grinding and spoiling the entire plantation crop; wilfully destroying plantation property; and not caring for estate animals.

In sum, the metayers were blamed for the problems which faced the island’s sugar industry.

However, access to land enabled the metayers to cultivate produce for sale. Some grew sugarcane, others cultivated corn, potatoes, cassava, and plantains, and, much to the hostility of the planters, some of these were planted on the cane banks.

Metayers also reared animals – cows and goats – all of which were sold on the Trinidad market, where they obtained much-needed cash. They were able to save money which they used to buy land and establish themselves as independent landowners. Metayage thus facilitated the creation of landowners among the freed Africans, some of whom became estate owners.

As the results of the metayers’ resistance mechanisms became evident, it was the planters’ lament that the system was more beneficial to the metayers and disadvantageous to the planters. The planters felt trapped in a system which, despite their best efforts, facilitated the development of independent workers that they fought hard to prevent.

As one planter exclaimed, in Tobago, “Every man was a proprietor.”

The metayage system came to be viewed as a “necessary evil,” to which the members of the group which had eagerly implemented it became increasingly hostile.