The two most considerable events in the history of Barbadoes, and those to which Bryan Edwards had directed his chief attention, are the imposition of the 4½ per cent. tax granted by the colonial legislature as a permanent revenue to the crown, and the two navigation acts establishing the monopoly of the mother country. On the first of these subjects Mr. Poyer has added nothing to the statement of his predecessor, and on the second very little; yet this little deserves notice. Our readers will remember that the navigation laws, so much extolled by all the advocates of the mercantile system of political economy, originated in an act passed by the long parliament in 1650, for the double purpose of punishing the colonists of Barbadoes for their stubborn attachment to the cause of royalty, and of injuring the Dutch, whose trade with the island was no less profitable to themselves than advantageous to the refractory settlement.

Mr. Poyer has given us, on this occasion, a summary of the manifesto which was set forth by the legislature of the island, and which is interesting from its near resemblance, both in point of argument and of expression, to the declaration afterwards issued by the Americans on their final rupture with Great Britain.

But the fruitless resistance which followed this manifesto having been too short to excite much indignation, or even attention, in the mother country, was soon forgotten; the obnoxious act was openly recognised and secretly evaded, till after the restoration of Charles II.; when it was revised and amplified, and enforced with a rigour which effectually precluded the colonies from all intercourse with foreign nations.

The establishment of a colony in Barbadoes was begun, in 1625, by thirty adventurers, sent out at the expense of Sir William Courteen, a private merchant; and though near three years elapsed before they received any addition to their numbers, their success was complete. Fortunately the woods, which it was [261] necessary to clear for the purpose of erecting habitations and planting provision-grounds, supplied two valuable articles of commerce, lignum vitæ and fustic, and the report of this discovery and of the fertility of the soil, soon excited the avidity of new speculators, and secured a rapid and regular supply of colonists. Notwithstanding the disputes between the Earls of Carlisle and Marlborough, each of whom claimed the property of the soil under grants from the crown, and the consequent insecurity of all tenures held under either, it was found that in 1636, eleven years after the commencement of the settlement, the number of landholders occupying ten or more acres each was 766. This year forms an important era in our colonial history, being marked by a law 'authorising the sale of Negroes and Indians for life.'

A second event which had a very considerable influence on the population and agriculture of this colony was the commencement of the culture of the sugar-cane, which was introduced, probably by some Dutch emigrants from Brazil, about the year 1648. This therefore gives another period of about twelve years, during which three great causes contributed to promote the growing prosperity of Barbadoes. 1st. The Dutch, on whose trade the island relied for the supply of various necessary articles, attained, during this period, the highest point of their commercial opulence. 2d. The civil wars in England drove to the colony a number of emigrant-royalists, who carried with them a considerable capital. 3d. The same cause effectually prevented any interference on the part of the mother country in the commercial or agricultural concerns of these industrious islanders. Accordingly their numbers increased so rapidly that their militia amounted to ten thousand infantry and one thousand cavalry; a force which supposes a population of at least 20,000 white persons. The amount of the negroes is not known, but they probably were, at this time, rather less numerous than the whites.

From this period, till the time when the navigation laws and 4½ per cent. tax began to operate, the prosperity of the island appears to have been progressive, but the number of its inhabitants is very differently represented. 'We are assured' says Bryan Edwards 'that about the year 1670, Barbadoes could boast of 50,000 white, and upwards of 100,000 black inhabitants, whose labours, it is said, gave employment to 60,000 tons of shipping. I suspect that this account is much exaggerated.' Of this there can be no doubt. Hughes, who is likely to be correct, reduces these numbers to 30,000 whites and 70,000 negroes. This may perhaps appear inconsiderable, till it is recollected that such an estimate assigns to Barbadoes a white population [262] which, in proportion to its extent of territory, exceeds that of the mother country.

The monopoly established by the mother country, whether politic or unwise, manifestly altered all the commercial relations of the colony, and introduced a new order of things, which has now subsisted during near a century and a half. In the course of this time Barbadoes has lost about one half of its white inhabitants, and has, by means of an unceasing annual importation, barely kept up its original stock of negroes. Antigua and Nevis, the only British sugar islands whose colonization was at all advanced before the introduction of the new system, have experienced a similar decline. Our subsequent settlements, the genuine children and nurslings of our mercantile policy, resemble garrisons rather than colonies; their white inhabitants forming scarcely a tenth of their total population.

The attainment of a predominant share, or if possible of a monopoly, of the slave-trade was, during the whole of the 17th, and part of the 18th century, a favourite object of British policy; rather from the hope that this might facilitate some access to the wealthy provinces of Spanish America, than from any anxiety to secure the supply of our own settlements, whose wants [263] were then very inconsiderable. It happened, indeed, that a taste for chartered companies was no less prevalent than the desire of sharing the treasures of Spain, and though four African companies were successively created, they successively failed, without much affecting, in any way, the prosperity of our West Indian possessions. The full influence of the slave-trade monopoly could only be felt when the commerce began to be carried on with the skill and enterprise and profusion which always characterise the exertions of English merchants; but thus carried on, it excited a boundless spirit of speculation amongst the colonists, by offering them an inexhaustible stock of power immediately applicable to the extension of their culture; and it became the presiding genius of colonial agriculture, instead of being an humble minister to its wants, and dependant on its progress. The island of Jamaica, which owed its first English population to a disbanded army, and its wealth to the exploits of the buccaneers, had scarcely made any advance in cultivation when it was selected in 1689 by the contractors who had engaged to supply the Spanish settlements, as a place of deposit for their negroes; and it continued ever after to distribute, either by means of an authorized or of a contraband trade, no inconsiderable portion of the wretches imported from Africa.

From the reports presented in 1787 to the privy council, it appears that, of the slaves imported into all our islands during the preceding four years, not quite two-thirds were retained. Now, what became of the remaining third? They were reshipped at a considerable expence; they were exposed to an increased mortality; they were exported to a foreign market, where they must have come in competition with the rival cargoes of other foreign traders; and they were sent merely at a venture, because, had they been collected in Africa for the purpose of supplying some certain or even probable demand, they would have gone directly to the place of their destination. Such a trade, it is evident, could not have subsisted for a moment had it not been supported on the basis of a monopoly in our own colonial markets. In every island therefore which became the scene of this monstrous transit-trade, there was always an annual superfluity of imported slaves; in each of them the number of the negroes retained must have represented, not only the amount of its natural demand for the support of its cultivation, but that of all the sales which could be negociated between adventurers eager to attempt the settlement of a new plantation, and merchants who preferred a distant payment to the trouble and risk of seeking a new market.

in 1774, the Assembly of Jamaica took the alarm, and endeavoured by the imposition of a heavy duty, to check the inundation of imported savages. But though they proved, by authentic documents transmitted to the Privy Council, that the annual importation had so rapidly increased as to exceed the whole existing white population of the island, the Governor was directed to refuse the royal assent to the bill, as infringing on the commercial supremacy of this country.

Barbadoes, that in his time the proportion of white servants on the plantations was as high as one to four negroes. We suspect that at the time of the Navigation Act it was as one to six or perhaps eight. In a century after this it seems, by an estimate in Campbell's 'Political Survey,' to have been nearly as one to twenty.

In Jamaica, we are told that a law was formerly past, enjoining the planters, under a heavy penalty, to maintain one white servant for every thirty negroes; but that the penalty has been so generally incurred, that this penal law is at length become a lucrative branch of revenue.

evident that, wherever a society consists solely of free men vested with authority, and of mere slaves, a great numerical disparity between these two classes is the worst evil that can befal the community. It has an obvious tendency to produce insurrection on one side, and harshness on the other

There are many persons who appear to expect, from the mere Abolition of the Slave-trade, a remedy for all the grievances which our colonists endure or have endured, and we should be happy to indulge the same sanguine hopes. The abolition is, we believe, the only measure dictated by honourable motives, which has ever emanated from the imperial right of monopoly, the right of determining whether, and where, our colonists shall sell what they raise, and buy what they want. It proscribes, throughout the extent of the British empire, many flagrant abuses, under the same authority which first introduced and then justified them: it is, with respect to Africa, an act of self-denial and of benevolence; but towards our colonists it is merely restrictive, and, whilst it enjoins improvement, it supplies no means of effecting it. These, we are persuaded, would be found in a relaxation of the monopoly-system; a system which seems to have originated, not in justice or policy, but in metaphor.

http://www.rc.umd.edu/reference/qr_budge/1809/v01/i02/a02/a02.html

British Colonization

The earliest inhabitants on Barbados were Native American nomads whom most historians refer to as Amerindians. The island was a temporary stopping ground for three successive waves of Amerindian migrants moving north toward North America. The first wave, a group known as the Saladoid-Barrancoid, migrated by canoe from South America around 350 c.e. They were farmers, fishermen, and ceramists. Many of their customs and languages resembled those of the Arawak, who were among the largest indigenous groups in the Caribbean in the first century c.e. The Arawak, also known as the Lokono, constituted the second wave of Amerindian migrants, arriving in Barbados from South America around 800 c.e. Some of the more famous extant Arawak settlements include Stroud Point, Chandler Bay, Saint Luke's Gully, and Mapp's Cave. The Arawak lived relatively isolated from other Amerindian groups until the thirteenth century, when the Carib arrived from South America, representing the third wave. Within a few years the Carib had displaced both the Arawak and the Salodoid-Barrancoid populations. For centuries the Carib lived in isolation on the island. However, that peaceful existence was disrupted in the first decade of the sixteenth century when Spanish conquistadors began enslaving Amerindians throughout the Caribbean, forcing them to work as slaves on plantations throughout the region. The Carib on Barbados were among those seized by Spanish conquistadors. Scholars believe that those Carib who managed to avoid enslavement did so by emigrating to nearby islands. Both of these forces - the enslavement and subsequent emigration - left the island uninhabited by the time the first British ship arrived in 1625.

Although Barbados was well known to Spanish and Portuguese sailors at least a century earlier, Great Britain did not become acquainted with the island until the seventeenth century. On May 14, 1625, a ship led by the British captain John Powell stopped to explore the island. After verifying that it was uninhabited, Powell returned to England to formalize the plan to establish a permanent settlement on Barbados. Two years later, on February 17, 1627, a British ship carrying 10 African slaves and more than 80 British colonists landed on the western side of the island, at a site later named Holetown Village. There were few colonists who could afford to purchase slaves, so most had to work the land themselves. But even though the slave population was small - according to the records of a British merchant there were less than 50 in 1629 - they occupied a central position in the Barbadian economy from the onset. African and Amerindian slaves were forced to perform some of the most physically demanding work, such as constructing colonial buildings and clearing land for colonial homes. Their status as the property of white settlers was formalized in 1636 when colonial officials passed a law declaring all slaves who were brought into Barbados - both Amerindian and African - to be enslaved for life. This law was extended to include the offspring of slaves. During this period there were only 22 free people of color on the island - Amerindian farmers from the Guianas brought in to teach the settlers new agricultural techniques.

European indentured servants were the primary source of labor during most of the island's history throughout the seventeenth century. Poor, uneducated laborers were recruited in England, Scotland, and throughout Europe to work on tobacco and cotton plantations. Although they could not be enslaved under law, indentured servants during this period were considered tenants at will. They could not own the land they worked and were unable to leave the plantation without permission in the form of a pass from their employer. The harsh conditions of indentured servitude made it increasingly difficult for Barbadian tobacco and cotton planters to recruit white labor. As the labor supply dwindled, so did the capacity of the island's tobacco and cotton producers to compete with their international competitors. A drop in world tobacco prices in the early 1640s further weakened the island's economy.

In 1642 Dutch merchants introduced them to a far more lucrative crop - sugar cane. Before 1642 sugar was used in Barbados mainly as fuel, in the production of rum, and to feed livestock. By 1644 large sugar cane plantations were producing sugar exports across the island.

The political infrastructure of Barbados drew wealthy landowners; with political participation tied to landowning, they reigned supreme. The planter elite, or so-called plantocracy, excluded all nonwhites and most poor whites from participation in government affairs. In the words of historian Hilary Beckles: "Partly because of these political and constitutional developments, Barbados emerged in the mid-1640s as perhaps the most attractive colony in the English New World." Land values doubled and tripled in the 1640s as wealthy British capitalists flocked to Barbados to commence the operation of sugar plantations.

Throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries slaves from various parts of West Africa, including the Gold Coast (present-day Ghana) and Benin, were packed in crowded European vessels bound for the Caribbean. The transatlantic slave trade carried between 10 and 20 million African slaves to colonial plantations throughout the world. By the mid-seventeenth century Barbados was already a leading participant in the slave trade and one of the most profitable European colonies in the world. In 1645 there were an estimated 5680 African slaves in Barbados. In 1685, 40 years later, their numbers had soared to nearly 60,000. Historian Philip Curtin estimates that by 1700 there were 134,500 African-born slaves in Barbados.

As the African presence increased in Barbados, white indentured servants, who at one time had been the primary source of labor, began to question their place in the island's future. At the turn of the eighteenth century white indentured servants began leaving Barbados in waves.

The enormous profits accumulated by white plantation owners in Barbados made the island a haven for the European elite. Since most of them were sugar and tobacco planters, they became known as the white plantocracy - a planter elite that controlled the economic, legislative, and political affairs of the island. During the eighteenth century the Barbadian plantocracy solidified its power, and in the process perpetuated the racial and class-based distinctions in Barbados. Ownership of land became concentrated in the hands of fewer than 100 of the colony's elite families, in contrast to the more than 700 landowning families in 1667. Members of the plantocracy firmly controlled the House of Assembly and the Legislative Council. They lived on a grand scale, building elaborate estates like Drax Hall and Nicholas Abbey, which still exist.

They promoted slave reproduction in an effort to avoid dependence on the importation of slaves.

By the beginning of the nineteenth century Barbados was the only island in the British Caribbean that was no longer dependent on slave imports. The British Parliament met with little resistance from Barbadian planters when it abolished the international slave trade in 1807.

The Lords Proprietors of Carolina

Prior to 1663 the Albemarle section lay as a geographical and political orphan. Included in the grant of the “Province of Carolana” made by King Charles I in 1629 to Robert Heath, his Attorney-General, the colony had languished and, except for small settlements, had lain fallow. Carolina’s first proprietor had discovered that the expense of colonization was too great for one man to bear, and his neglect increased after England was ripped asunder by the violent upheavals of a civil war.

Despite this negligence and apparent abandonment, the section known as the Albemarle was not without its attractions. It was, in the opinion of a London “Well-Willer” in 1649, no less than a veritable Eden, a cornucopia of “the naturall Commodities of the Country, which fall into your hands without labour or toyle, for in the obtaining of them you have a delightful recreation.” “The Soyle,” he went on to say, “you may trust it with anything,” and it would yield no less than two crops a year. Six years later Francis Yeardley was praising the pleasant climate of a place “unacquainted with our Virginia’s nipping frosts,” and thereby promising favorable harvests for those who ventured to engage in the production of silk, olives and wines for the London market.

In 1612, John Rolfe’s agricultural experiments with tobacco in Virginia had given the lie to Edward Sandys’ declaration, “You can’t build an empire on smoke.” Crossing the native weed, “poor and weak and of a biting taste,” with the milder South American varieties, Rolfe was able to produce a “Sweet-cented” variety that was pleasing to the taste of the pipe smokers of England. Within a short time, “Virginia” tobacco was outselling the Spanish variety that had dominated the London market for the past fifty years. Tobacco became the “gold” for which the early settlers had so diligently searched.

In 1663, however, the tumult of the restoration of King Charles II to England’s throne brought about many radical changes, which were reflected in England’s overseas colonial policies.

Carolina was to demonstrate best the changing outlook in colonial policy.

the prime movers behind colonization were no longer the merchants or religious groups. Now they were the gentility or nobility, the friends and political supporters of Charles II and his brother James, the Duke of York. For this group, there was not only the patriotic impulse to expand the limits of the empire, but also a dream of profits which made the venture into colonization more attractive.

Among those to whom he owed much were those influential characters who had been instrumental in restoring his sovereignty, powerful men who could make demands that the King could not refuse. And to this group, in 1663, was issued a new charter to Carolina, replacing the old Heath Charter of 1629. Sir Anthony Ashley-Cooper (to become the Earl of Shaftesbury in 1672), Chancellor of the Exchequer and known as “a man violent in his Passions,” seems to have been the originator of the scheme. A son of one of the members of the Virginia Company of London that had planted the colony at Jamestown, Ashley-Cooper had assumed an active interest in colonization and as early as 1646 had invested funds in West Indian projects. His original companions in the Carolina venture were Sir John Colleton and the Governor of Virginia, Sir William Berkeley, who was in London at this time. The aid of five additional and influential partners was enlisted to secure the charter.

All eight Proprietors of Carolina were men of position and influence in 1663, and all had looked with favor upon colonization schemes.

Such were the men who were granted the vast territory that was called “Carolina,” stretching along the Atlantic seaboard from the 31st to the 36th parallels from Virginia to Florida, and rolling westward to the “south seas.” All of these men had been, and were destined to continue, instrumental in the framing of imperial policy. Their names appear regularly as members of the Council for Trade and Plantations which became, in 1675, the powerful Lords of Trade.

The future policy for Carolina, insofar as the Proprietors were concerned, was both simple and elastic. They planned to operate as little more than a real estate office offering to supply the ever-present land hunger of the peoples of Europe. They envisioned profits through the payment of annual dues under the medieval practice of quitrents. In addition, they hoped, handsome gains could be realized through the production of such scarce and desirable commodities as sugar, ginger, indigo, cotton, wines and whale oil. Tobacco was already being cropped in the area, but no great expansion was foreseen, for the output from Virginia and Maryland was already beginning to glut the English market.

The West Indian Island of Barbados promised a possible source of manpower. There the heavy concentration of already limited land into huge sugar plantations had gradually shunted the small planter off to the edge of poverty. Sir John Colleton himself had experienced the octopus-like strength of the great planters during his stay in the islands. The Albemarle section seemed ideal for the plans of the Proprietors;

The Carolina Charter of 1663 endowed the Lords Proprietors with vast and extensive powers, in which lay the seeds of rebellion; yet these perquisites were not unique for grants of this era. The English reaction against republicanism and their willingness to rest awhile on the plateau of monarchism was not to make its way across the Atlantic, and within the next fifteen years a rash of little rebellions were to light up the southern colonies along the American seaboard.