Decade of doom: 1880s in Tobago

Dr Rita Pemberton

THE 1880s was an important decade in the history of Tobago, for during this period the economic crisis which raised concerns about the island’s development had implications for its political future.

The downward spiral of the island’s sugar industry, which had been ailing since the start of the 19th century, continued unabated and became intensified as the century progressed. Despite the signs of decline, no meaningful intervention had been applied to the industry, which became locked into ineffective traditions, making it moribund. The problems which occurred during the 1880s were stimulated by developments relating to land ownership and control.

By 1880, the Gillespie/Mc Call alliance became the leading planters in Tobago. Alexander Marshall Gillespie had been trading in Tobago since the 1850s as consignee and creditor to several estates. From 1867, Gillespie purchased estates in the Windward side of the island, but Gillespie and Company was formed in 1870 with his son William and James Morris. By 1884 Gillespie moved from being part owner of Green Hill and Friendship Estates to having a consignee’s lien over 20 estates on the island.

John Mc Call, who initially owned a property, not an estate, called Irvine Hall but, from 1869, began to expand his land acquisitions as part owner of Betsy’s Hope, Richmond and Glamorgan and Goldsborough estates. Ten years later he gained control of most of the estates in Tobago, which was facilitated by the business relationship with Gillespie and Company which had influence on the Encumbered Estates Court.

The Encumbered Estates Court was established in 1854 to give title to heavily encumbered estates which could not attract investment. In 1858 the Assembly sanctioned Tobago’s entrance into the court’s jurisdiction, which facilitated the rapid positioning of the Mc Calls/Gillespie partnership as the leading planters on the island. This resulted from their ability to purchase estates through the Encumbered Estates Court.

While it is understood that from a business perspective people will take advantage of the opportunity of low prices to acquire as much property as possible, the Mc Call/Gillespie group certainly used this opportunity, as well as its influence in the court, to expand its land empire on the island.

When this was done both parties in the alliance were fully aware of the state of the sugar industry because both had intimate relations with plantation operations. It would be expected that their involvement would result in some attempt to introduce improvements in the industry. However, the relationship did not result in the injection of funds to modernise or diversify the sugar industry, or agriculture in general, on the island.

On the contrary, there was no attempt to lift the industry out of the antiquarian methods of operation, nor was there any attempt to attend to any of the other burning operational issues which plagued the industry. Relations between planters and metayers descended into an all-time low during the eighties and it was one of the challenges which choked Tobago’s sugar industry to its death.

The alliance helped neither individual plantations, the sugar industry as a whole nor the island in the long run. While the Encumbered Estates Court cleared titles to some estates, its actions did not result in an increase in investment in the sugar industry, nor did it stimulate actions to diversify the island’s economy.

Undoubtedly, the partners reaped benefits through their trading operations on the island despite the downturn of the sugar industry. It is interesting to note that Gillespie and the other two main investors in Tobago’s sugar industry declared bankruptcy at the same time, resulting in the crash of the Tobago sugar industry in 1884.

Consequently, the island’s financial state worsened, causing the island’s administrators to become feverishly engaged in cost-cutting measures, such as reducing the salaries of officials while duplicating their responsibilities. However, to administrators the most urgent need was to generate revenue, but the main source came from customs duties, which dried up with declining trade in the sugar business.

The revenue deficit led to budgetary shortfalls and constant appeals to the imperial government for assistance. However, the government had long made it clear that it was not prepared to underwrite losses in the colonial administrations, and was giving no loans to colonies which could not repay. Its advice to Tobago was the implementation of further cost-cutting measures. By this time, however, the imperial government had in place a programme to shift responsibility for those colonies which failed to generate profits off its shoulders.

Tobago’s economic crisis was complicated by a second factor – the movement of workers away from estate labour. While the movement was spawned by the desire of the workers to obtain better terms and conditions, it was the intent of the planting community to devise a mechanism to keep them as the labour force for the plantations.

Their suggestion was that the unoccupied land on the island should be used to incentivise the Africans to work on the estates. In addition to the fact that this suggestion did not appeal to the workers, these were private lands as the Crown did not possess any land on the island. When Tobago became a British possession, imperial policy was geared to the quick alienation of land for the establishment of plantations. The Crown surveyors had demarcated all the accessible land, which was subdivided into plantation-size lots and sold to private owners in the 1770s. There was no free land on the island.

This situation was addressed in 1888 when it was decided that the Crown should acquire unoccupied land and sell to labourers who must remain as labourers but not become established as an independent peasantry.

To achieve this the big planters attempted to use law to restrict ownership of land in small plots of one to ten acres, with punishment of a fine and or imprisonment identified for those who sought to purchase quantities above the specified limit by using other names.

In addition, there was a proposal to dispossess those who did not maintain the road which abutted their properties, as was required of the plantations, but this was disallowed by the imperial government.

The 1887 Crown Lands Ordinance permitted purchasers to pay for the land in yearly instalments, with title given after occupation for five years. Workers eagerly responded to this offer, which provided the base for the establishment of a landed peasantry in Tobago.

Another matter remained to be settled, that of governance for Tobago. As indicated in the previous column, intense opposition from all the units which constituted the proposed Confederation of the Windward Islands in 1887, led the British government to surrender to the wishes of the colonies and abandon the proposal.

However, this was only an appearance for the British government had not given up on unification as a mechanism to deal with its financially challenged colonies. It remained devoted to its policy of relieving itself of the burdens of those impoverished colonies which were constantly requesting loans to meet their everyday expenses. One year later, this policy was clearly manifested regarding Tobago, which was on its way to union with Trinidad.

The decade of the eighties brought economic doom to the plantation owners with the demise of the sugar industry, and socially to their efforts to deprive the resident workers of the ability to become landowners and force them to remain as a plantation labour force. Finally, they faced political doom because with the new administrative arrangements for Tobago, the old planter elite lost its political voice and influence.