England was the most successful of the northwestern European predators on the Spanish possessions. In 1623, the English occupied part of Saint Christopher and in 1625, they occupied Barbados. By 1655, English colonies had been established in Nevis, Antigua, Montserrat and were being established in Jamaica.
The intent of the acquisitions was not to remain on the land, but to increase their fortunes and return to England, with representatives overseeing the estates in the form of merchants from major ports, planters and parliamentarians. West India interests brought about the Molasses and Sugar acts in the first half of the 18th Century . . . these acts protected British West Indian sugar in British markets and increased the prosperity of planters.
Antigua Rum left this harbor for ports around the world.
The New York Times
August 15, 1860
Want of Labor in Antique and its Origin
From Our Own Correspondent
St. John, Antigua, March 1860
Small as Antigua is, there are ports of the island where labor is abundant and other parts where labor is scarce.
The planters are seeking
to introduce coolies. They are in need, they say of 2,000 laborers; and it is to be presumed that
they understand their own wants. At the same
time it is very certain that Antigua, with a population
of 318 to the square mile, and with six-sevenths of her superficial area pre-occupied by large
proprietors, is not in the condition of Jamaica or
Trinidad with their immense tracts of fertile soil
thirsting for settlement and cultivation. The
planters of Antigua have never complained of
emancipation. They avow, what is unquestionably
the truth, that, by the introduction of a cheaper
system of labor, the island was saved from impending
ruin. They were the first to get rid of
slavery, and they have no reason to regret that they did so. In the present demand for labor they
use fair and liberal language, and place one prominent cause of the deficiency of Creole labor in this and all British islands, in its true light.
"We regard"—say the Legislative assembly in their reply to the last address of the Governor—"We regard the withdrawal of a large number of the laboring population from the estates, either to engage in the cultivation of land purchased by themselves or to embark successfully in other avocations of life, as the natural consequence of an improved material condition, of the free and equal administration of the law, and of the facilities largely enjoyed for civil and religious instruction; but while we acknowledge and sympathize with this abstraction, it is clear that a deficiency has been thus created in the supply of manual labor to an extent which is not to be compensated either by increased skill, by implemental husbandry, or by the application of extended capital."
While the statement here made is one undoubted
cause of the deficiency complained of, it is not the
less true that the abstraction of labor from estates
was abetted by planters themselves in times—not yet passed away—when want of capital was more
preening than want of labor. If capital was abundant,
it surely lay in the power of the proprietary
body, or of individual planters, to retain their land,
if they believed that the sale or lease of allotments
to the laborers would inflict a serious injury to the
planting interest. Yet they did sell and still continue
to sell, and the negroes continue to buy,
though land is scarce, and averages in value $50
per acre In the last Government report bearing
on this subject I find it stated that there is " no
squatting in Antigua of any importance in its effect
on the supply of labor. The facility," continues
the report," which the laboring population possess
for the purchase or rent of small plots of ground
near the villages, built since Emancipation in various
parts of the island, removes the temptation
that might otherwise exist to appropriate portions
of the unclaimed Crown lands.''
While agricultural labor in all the British West Indies is the great desideratum, and the cry for immigration is echoed and reechoed, it is amazing to see how the labor which the planter has within his reach ia wasted and frittered away—how the particular population upon which the prosperity of the Colonies so utterly depends is neglected—how, by mismanagement and unpardonable blunders of policy, the life of a field-laborer has been made so distasteful to the peasant that the possession of half an acre, or the most meager subsistence, with independence, seems to him, in comparison, the very acme of luxurious enjoyment. Can it be credited that, solely through want of proper medical care, the agricultural population to Antigua has been allowed, for twenty years past, to decrease at the rate of a half per cent, per annum? But evidence of this criminal neglect is on record. The island is remarkably healthy. It escaped the general visitation of cholera in 1864. and yet the mortality is greater now than it was in the days of Slavery, before the population was thoroughly creolized.
In 1800 the taxed negroes of Antigua were numbered at 38,000, in 1815 there were 36,000 slaves; in 1821, when the last census before Emancipation was taken, there were 1,780 whites,
4,066 free colored, and 31,064 slaves on the island;
in 1861 the total population was 37,163, and in
1866 it was only 35,408, of whom 26,522 were black, 6,711 colored, and 1,172 white. It is thus shown that the blacks, which are the agricultural portion of the population, are the sufferers—the
whites and colored having actually increased. It appears from the latest return of the Registrar
that, during 181S, thirty-two per cent of the deaths were under the, age of one year—a mortality that can be explained by the want of proper medical
care. The acting Governor of Antigua. Mr. Eyre, a a gentleman of great ability and well-deserved popularity, recently brought this subject to the notice of the Legislature. He says:
The returns of births and deaths disclose the melancholy fact that, In Antigua, the deaths are nearly equal to the births, and that therefore, although no epidemic or other unusual grounds for mortality exist, the population is not increasing as it ought to do, especially in a country where the climate and other conditions propitious to life are so favorable, and where wholesome food is so readily procurable, for there is, perhaps, hardly any country in the world where the laborer can obtain all that is necessary to make his home comfortable at a less cost of exertion than he can in most of the West India Islands. A large proportion of the deaths appears to occur tn infancy or early childhood, and there can be little doubt but that they are for the most part the result of neglect and want of medical attendance. In the days of slavery, hospitals and medical attendance for all were provided by the estates but now that the majority of laborers have ceased to be residents on properties, and this obligation but partially exists, the greater number of them, distributed about the country in populous villages, are either unwilling or unable to obtain the necessary medical attendance and proper nursing in illness for themselves, their children, or their relatives. It is worthy the best attention of an enlightened Legislature to provide a remedy for this state of things, and to consider whether arrangements cannot be made under which medical supervision shall again be extended to the entire population. The value of such supervision is evidenced by the fact that the rate of mortality is less among the resident population on estates than it is in the villages where the laborers reside on their own lands, The great saving of human life and the large accession of labor which would thereby accrue to the Colony, would both justify and compensate for any expenditure of public money which it may be necessary to incur in securing objects so desirable and so important."
