Adjustments to Emancipation

• The Post-Emancipation period resulted in most of the ex-slaves leaving the estates. Many of them set themselves up as peasant (small) farmers. This resulted in a massive labour shortage which threatened to cause the sugar industry to collapse.
• Reasons for the poor state of the sugar industry after emancipation

  • Shortage of labour
  • Beet sugar competition
• Efforts by planters to avoid total decline of the sugar industry

  1. Introducing immigration to bring in labourers

  2. Introducing technology to reduce cost of sugar production
• Agricultural diversification occurred as a result of ex-slaves growing crops other than sugarcane, including food crops for eating and cash crops to sell.
• Peasant farming began by ex-slaves but was boosted by the East Indians who came through immigration to work on plantations.
• The exodus from the plantations was greatest in Jamaica, Trinidad and British Guiana where large areas of unoccupied land were available.
• Before emancipation, all territories in the British West Indies could be classified as the same because they were all plantation economies based on slave labour. After emancipation, island separateness developed as each island began to take different turns to develop.
• The period of Apprenticeship ended prematurely on August 1, 1838. The planters had a lot of adjustments to make.
• Problems affecting the Sugar Industry in the Post-Emancipation Period

  • Increasing cost of sugar production
  • Increasing debts
  • Shortage of a regular, relatively cheap supply of labour
  • Decline in markets for West Indian sugar
• Mismanagement of estates


  By managers who were in charge because of absentee ownership
• Labourers had to be paid wages

  Now that slavery was abolished
• Planters had borrowed extensively from British merchants and were unable to repay their loans because of low profits.
• Many planters continued to borrow in an attempt to revive their plantations, but banks and merchant houses were skeptical about giving loans to West Indian planters.
• After emancipation there was an exodus of ex-slaves from the plantations in the colonies with higher populations.
• Those who left the plantations established themselves as peasant cultivators, planting small scale market crops and provisions and keeping livestock.
• Skilled Africans moved to towns where they were employed as blacksmiths, carpenters and masons.
• Africans often supplemented their incomes by working part time on plantations but the planters found their labour unsatisfactory.
• Preferential duties (taxes) on West Indian sugar were removed under the Sugar Duties Equalization Act of 1846, meaning sugar sold in Britain was to be sold at one price with no taxes added on.
• Sugar from British Caribbean colonies had to compete with the cheaper sugar being produced in Cuba, Brazil and other parts of the world.
• The British West Indies could no longer compete against much larger suppliers.
• There was competition from beet sugar. By 1833, France had set up more than 400 factories that made twice the amount of cane sugar than was being produced at that time.
• The policies of the British Government after emancipation actually helped to set back the sugar industry in its colonies, as Britain did not want its colonies making manufactured goods to compete with products from England.
• Freed people sought alternatives to estate labour because they wanted to be free of the burdens of estate labour and the planter controls that came with it.
• Where land was available, freed people established their own smallholdings and worked hard, but demanded adequate compensation for their efforts.
• Freed people were not prepared to accept the low wages and unfair practices of planters, and these, along with the planter-influenced coercive laws, contributed to the conflicts which characterised the era of freedom.
• Plantation owners tried to put workers in a bad light, contradicting themselves by arguing that the sugar industry suffered from a shortage of labour because of the unwillingness of workers to work, while also writing about the extensive areas brought under cultivation by the hard work of the freed men and women.
• The newly emancipated people had to find their own food, clothing and shelter, learn and exercise the rules governing bargaining of labour, and address the issue of education, health as well as their legal and political rights.
• The planters shifted the burden of taxation to the newly emancipated people.
• After emancipation, the main concern of the white planters was to ensure that they had labour for their plantations.
• Many planters tried to prevent freed men from getting land so that they would not be able to make a living planting crops and so they would therefore be forced to return to plantations to work.
• Landowners were concerned about the effects of freedom: they were afraid that they would lose their labour and that plantation operations would be crippled.
• Planters favoured strong coercive policies to keep workers on the estates and believed the rightful place of the freed Africans was on the estates.
• Planters described the free Africans as lazy and having a 'distaste' for agriculture, despite evidence of cultivation of a variety of crops across the countryside by the freed people.
• In Trinidad, planters were opposed to the task system which they felt made workers too rich, and they accused their workers of laziness, ignoring the fact that many used the system to their advantage.
• Planters felt that labourers should be kept poor and dependent on the plantations.
• The planters believed that their most serious post-emancipation problem was the scarcity of cheap reliable estate labour caused by the flight of ex-slaves from the plantations/estates after emancipation.
• The planters responded by importing indentured labourers from densely populated agrarian communities and petitioned the colonial governments to support the various immigration schemes.
• The Crown's (British Government's) four main aims in supporting immigration


  • Restore and even expand the sugar industry
  • Create a steady supply of labourers
  • Ensure the ruling class in the colonies maintained control over the labour force
  • Keep wages low by having immigrant labour compete for wages with the freed populace
• The first shipment of Indian labourers left India just before the apprenticeship period drew to a close in 1838, but many died on the voyage or soon after landing.
• Between 1845 and 1847, Jamaica received 4,551 Indians and 507 Chinese, but by 1854 just over 1,800 of these immigrants had died or disappeared.