Trade in Tobago’s cashless society

Dr Rita Pemberton

The accelerated decline of Tobago’s sugar industry during the years after Emancipation resulted in a change in the nature of trade practices on the island right up to the middle of the 20th century.

During this period these transactions shifted from the cash nexus and became increasingly based on a system of exchange. This system, which was first practised by the enslaved Africans who routinely exchanged goods among themselves, became more predominant during the economic decline that characterised the post-Emancipation years.

The sugar plantation economy was based on a system of credit in which plantation operations depended on advances from companies in England with which to purchase the items which were essential for plantation operations and those which were related to plantation owners’ lifestyle desires.

The quantum of items ordered was based on anticipated returns from crop sales. In computing these returns, planters remained very optimistic and were not sufficiently attentive to market realities. In addition, many had difficulty adjusting their lifestyle practices in line with reduced earnings.

As a result, many of the island’s plantation owners became very heavily indebted and could not pay their taxes, leading to revenue shortages which created problems for the island’s administrators. The resulting chronic shortage of cash, which became aggravated as the century wore on, presented problems for the free population.

In the years right after Emancipation, the main quantity of cash on the island was in the hands of the market vendors, but as time progressed, this dwindled, as did opportunities for external trade. This was an important development, because it occurred when there was a need for cash to pay wages to the freed African employees.

The planter solution was the implementation of the metayage system, which reduced the need for cash. However, the system did not operate in the way the planters hoped and there was always a need for extra labour, so, given the chronic cash shortage on the island, the system of payment in kind was used.

The item of payment was based on what the workers valued and what the planters had available – land. For their labour, workers were rewarded with access to land on which they could extend their own cultivation and conduct trade. This was the start of a system of exchange in the island’s labour relations.

At the end of the century, when the sugar industry finally crashed, and the union of the islands occurred, there were opportunities for trade which became the main source of cash. However, the potential of this trade was never fully realised, because it was hampered by the very irregular and inadequate sea communication link between the islands.

For their survival, the larger section of the Tobago population devised an internal marketing system which used internal regional geographical variations as the basis for trade between and among the communities, which was heavily based on exchange. The system of bartering, which characterised the island’s internal marketing system during the first half of the 20th century, occurred in markets which were informally established on the beaches where the fishing boats were moored, but the main market was the Scarborough market and port.

The main items of trade were fish, provisions and sugar. There was a steady movement of buyers and sellers who criss-crossed the island to trade their goods in order to obtain the items they needed.

The districts in the coastal areas – Mt Irvine, Buccoo, Plymouth, Charlotteville – produced fresh and corned fish, which were exchanged with vendors from other parts of the island for the items which were not produced in their communities. Fishermen from Charlotteville travelled by boat to exchange their fish and logs of wood for sugar from Mt Thomas and Woodlands and tray-laden women trekked “at day clean” (dawn) across the island.

Those from leeward Tobago walked from Canaan and Bethel to Mt Irvine, Black Rock and Plymouth with coconuts, coconut oil, cassava and its byproducts – farine, starch, cassava flour –corn and cornflour, peas, pumpkin, sorrel, yam and sugar.

Those from Moriah and Mason Hall toted bananas, plantains and breadfruit to Plymouth for fish, some of which was used to barter within their community for other items. Those from Roxborough and environs were loaded with dried and fried fish to exchange with the inland communities.

Some villages specialised in the production of particular items. The northern villages, Parlatuvier and L’Anse Fourmi, which produced provisions year-round, were the dasheen, yam and tannia specialists, while Goodwood and Pembroke specialised in tannia and sweet potatoes, which were supplied to windward areas.

Other items such as fruit, milk and ginger beer were also exchanged. Some estate workers in Leeward Tobago whose wages were paid with sugar exchanged it for other desirable food items.

Women from all parts of the island also travelled long distances to take their produce to the Scarborough market, where they bartered with butchers for meat and where the traffickers who sold goods to Trinidad congregated.

In an era when scales were not common household items, a local system of measures was devised. Farine was sold by the milk cup – an empty can on which the village craftsman put a handle. Jacks, a very popular local fish, was sold by the calabash, big fish by slices and potatoes by the heap.

Prices were determined by the seasonality and availability of the item, its value as assessed by both parties and the urgency with which it was needed. Usually there was no haggling, because it was considered better to exchange the item than to have to return home with it.

The community was supported by one shop owner in Scarborough who accepted items which were brought to his shop (and which he subsequently sold) in exchange for imported items such as butter, salt, oil and pitch oil.

The cashless marketing system in Tobago was grounded in the community practices that developed on the island which helped to promote the capacity for self-reliance and resilience of the population. Even though it did not provide the answer to their poverty, it created opportunities for trade and served as a mechanism for islandwide community bonding and support which provided poor people with an avenue for survival during a very difficult period in the island’s history.