Sugar in the Blood (14 page)

When they were not dying, the slaves were fighting: for they resisted their captivity fiercely, evading the nets to leap overboard, organizing rebellions, and fighting with the seamen. Although the sailors were
free to move about the ship, in many ways they too were damned men. From the earliest days of slaving “Guineamen,” as the slave ships were known, were shunned by many seamen because of the length of the voyages, the high mortality on board, and distaste for “the trade.” Thus many of the crew were reluctant recruits who had been inveigled aboard by “crimps.” These unscrupulous labour agents worked hand in hand with tavern keepers to ply the men with drink and whores until they were hopelessly in debt. The poor victims were then forced to either “sign articles” or face a debtors’ prison. Inevitably these resentful and depressed recruits did not make the most conscientious employees and were famous for their hostility to the hard work and fearful conditions of life on a slaver. It was no wonder that the state licensed ships’ captains to use corporal punishment to maintain “subordination and regularity”; or that the commander, intimidated by both his crew and his cargo, often resorted to the most draconian discipline. Thus everyone aboard a slave ship seemed to be in a perpetual state of war with each other, and extensive casualties were suffered on all sides.

The African coasts were often referred to as a “white man’s grave,” but on board ship things were even worse, as sailors died almost as readily as the slaves, and a ship’s captain who survived four African journeys counted himself extremely fortunate. As the historian Joseph Miller has said, the Middle Passage was a “way of death.” But, of course, it was the cargo that died most extravagantly, from infection, flogging or despair. The terrible mortality rate would continue when they arrived in the New World, where they would die of overwork in the cane fields, of malnutrition in the quarters, of brutality, trauma and disease everywhere. What made matters worse was that these deaths were not always intentional or even malicious. Slaves were not even significant enough for this: a direct campaign of hate. Instead the captives, whom traders dubbed “the commodity that dies with ease,” perished because they did not matter. The indifference of those involved in the trade meant that they were unwilling to invest any thought, money or care in keeping the slaves alive, and the mass loss of life was regarded merely as the inevitable wastage associated with the transatlantic commerce in the “black gold.”

BARBADOS WAS IMPORTANT
not because it was the first society with slaves, but because it was the first slave society in the British Americas: that is, it was the first society that was entirely organized around its slave system and, as such, it would become the model for the plantation system throughout the Americas. As Hilary Beckles has argued, the island’s economic structure was totally based on the labour of enslaved Africans. Its political structure as well as its system of governance was organized around the control and management of an enslaved majority, while the moral, ethical and ideological values of the society were entirely developed and shaped to reproduce the system of slavery.

The process of becoming a “slave society” had begun back in the 1630s, when the then governor, Henry Hawley, had tried to clarify the length of time a slave should serve; but it wasn’t until the population explosion of the late 1650s that detailed regulation of the enslaved became a necessity. The result was the 1661 Act “For the Better Ordering and Governing of Negroes.” The historian Richard Dunn has described this as “
the most important surviving piece of legislation in the English islands during the seventeenth century because it was the first comprehensive attempt to create a slave law with which to govern the island.” It thus provided both a means for policing the enslaved population and a rationale for instituting special laws. As such it was copied in the rest of the British Americas. It justified its provisions with racial denigration, declaring blacks to be “
a heathenish, brutish, uncertain and dangerous kind of people.” And since it asserted that the lawmakers “could find in the body of English law … no tract to guide
us where to walk nor any rule set as how to govern such slaves,” the colonists felt free to both revive old laws and create new ones that they believed were “absolutely needful for the public safety.”

The management of slave societies was, as this Act indicated, no simple matter. The African captives vigorously and persistently resisted their enslaved condition, so the country’s stability rested upon an elaborate system of repression maintained not by consensus but by coercion and cruelty. Drafted by the local slave holders and ratified in the mother country by a government that stood to profit from the trade, the laws were then passed in the colonies by elected assemblies dominated by elite slave owners, and enforced on individual plantations by drivers, overseers and planters and in the wider society by a well-financed militia, urban constables and garrisoned soldiers.

The implications of the slave laws evolved in the British Americas were in stark contrast to some of the other legal frameworks that evolved in the region. The French Code Noir, whose sixty-plus articles were drawn up by King Louis XIV in 1685, guaranteed a slave’s right to life and social identity (however poorly this was protected), while the Spanish Siete Partidas, which the historian Franklin Knight described as a “
liberal Code,” recognized and accepted the “personality of the slave” and held aloft “the idea of liberty.” No such humane ideas were encoded in the laws of the English territories, where the priority was the protection of the planters’ property rights and their safety.

The Barbados slave code of 1661 was supplemented over time, with new provisions being added in an ad hoc fashion, often in response to infractions by the black population. In 1676, the year after a slave revolt, an Act was passed which included new capital offences that placed additional restrictions on the movement of enslaved peoples, put strict limits on hiring them out and controlled their involvement in petty trading in places like markets and in their practice of artisan trades like carpentry.

The 1688 Act “For the Governing of Negroes” was also a response to an earlier revolt in which black slaves and Irish white servants had joined forces. The Act’s fateful preamble begins:

The Act charged every planter with searching the slave cabins on his property weekly and burning any drums or horns, which could be used to call them together; while every fortnight the quarters were also to be searched for fugitives, weapons and stolen goods. No enslaved person could leave the plantation on which he or she lived without a ticket from a white person in authority, specifying the time for his or her return. Any person found without one was to be whipped. Armed posses could be raised to hunt down blacks who had absconded; so the sound and sight of a pack of men and hounds in search of runaways was as familiar in the Caribbean as it was in the American South.

Four years later another conspiracy provoked another rash of Barbadian laws. The death penalty was revived for some categories of runaway slaves. Prohibitions against slaves obtaining strong drink were put in place because “
many enormities were committed” and “mischief hatched and contrived” under its influence. Those slaves willing to inform on slave rebellions were rewarded with freedom and even relocation.

As well as establishing an elaborate framework of punishment to control slave behaviour, the Barbados slave laws clarified some important ideological issues. One of these was the status of the slave vis-à-vis that of the indentured servant. Slaves were classified in law as “chattels” or property, meaning that they could be bought and sold, leased or used as collateral. White servants, on the other hand, were only property during the length of their indenture. When it was completed, their rights as human beings were reinstated. And though the behaviour of indentured servants was carefully controlled during the period of their
contract, they were also allowed many privileges that were denied their black counterparts. Their food rations, clothing allowances and overall treatment were better. Legally, too, they were better protected. If they were charged with a crime they were entitled to trial before a jury, while the slaves were judged by the planters. Blacks who threatened, assaulted or stole from a white person faced extreme penalties: whipping, the loss of a hand, the loss of an ear; while an indentured servant who killed a slave was potentially merely subject to a fine, like the rest of the white population.

By differentiating so sharply between the rights and treatment of their black and white workers, the Barbadian proprietors set up a legal system in which racism was encoded. Instead of being regarded as a rather unappetizing rag-tag assortment of felons, refractory Irish and rebellious Scots, the indentured servants were now collectively protected as “white” people. (The latter term was so unfamiliar at the time that one pamphleteer writing for an audience in the mother country felt it necessary to explain that it was used to describe Europeans living in the region.) The impact of this legislation was to separate the interests of the two groups and to stop black and white people fraternizing socially with one another. This, the planters fervently hoped, would make it less likely that the two groups would combine together and so overwhelm their masters.

If the Barbadians helped to invent the concept of “whiteness” and the privileges intrinsically connected with it, they also by extension helped to invent “blackness” and its associated disadvantages. And so the transformation in the make-up of Barbados and the resultant racialization of its laws changed both the island and the world. It also reshaped George Ashby’s inner life. He was increasingly aware of himself not just as a man but as a “white man.” In this society, his colour, which he would have given little thought to in his old life, was becoming the most important determinant of his identity. Simultaneously the island’s slaves, who had previously thought of themselves as Kuba or Coromantee or Ibo, now had to accustom themselves to their new identity as “blacks.” Soon the dichotomy of black and white became the defining factor in every encounter and every conflict on the island.

Another important issue that was thrashed out in Barbados was that slaves would serve for life and in perpetuity, passing their status down to their children and their children’s children. This harsh decision profoundly differentiated the black slaves’ experience from not just the white servants on the island but many of the enslaved peoples in history; for the Africans in Barbados it was a case of once a slave always a slave, and there was no prospect of escape from this destiny, even for one’s children.

The colonists also redefined how slave status would be transmitted. In contrast to the patrilineal tradition of their homeland, the Barbadians decided that status should be taken from the mother. This meant that white men could continue to have sexual relationships with their black female slaves, without worrying that the offspring of these liaisons might claim freedom by means of their paternity. Slave owners could carry on fraternizing with their female workers with impunity, knowing that there would be no unpleasant legal or financial consequences to their behaviour, and they would not have to endure the embarrassment of policing other men’s sexual behaviour or their own. White women who transgressed, however, were censured not just for their licentious behaviour but for compromising the entire structure of society.

These slave laws provide an extraordinary mirror of Barbadian society at the time, enabling us to see how slaves lived and the range of activities in which they engaged, as well as the beliefs held by the planters and what they felt about their “slave property.” Through the development of these laws we can chart not just what the ruling caste thought was happening in this society but also what they feared would happen. We can also see how their attitudes evolved. During these years the Barbados settlers transformed their laws, cultural mores and financial system to make race-based slavery the very foundation of their way of life. Whiteness became associated with social superiority and blackness with poverty and inferiority. Even white indentured servants, who previously might have felt empathy for their fellow black labourers, were now encouraged, by virtue of their shared skin colour, to identify with their oppressors instead. And thus Barbadian society became entirely predicated upon race.