Notes on Emancipation

Sam Sharpe Rebellion

• Background: By 1831, many enslaved people in Jamaica were unwilling to continue working under existing conditions.
• Samuel Sharpe: An enslaved person with access to his master's newspapers who convinced other enslaved people that emancipation was near and that wage labor was coming to Jamaica.
  • He encouraged enslaved people to strike after the Christmas holiday if they were not paid.
  • He stated that they would only respond with force if force was used to compel them back to enslavement.
• The Rebellion:
  • Began on December 27 when some enslaved people broke into a rum store, got drunk, and set fire to the house and sugar works on the Kensington Estate.
  • The fire served as a signal for enslaved people on neighboring estates to do the same; by midnight, 16 other estates were burning.
  • An unplanned revolt started and spread throughout the western parishes.
  • Sharpe's lieutenants (Johnson, Campbell, Gardener, and Dove) took control, gathered 400-500 men, and armed about 50 of them with guns, cutlasses, and clubs.
  • They attacked troops near the border of St. James, Hanover, and Westmoreland, launching an attack against troops stationed at Old Montpelier Sugar Works.
  • The troops fired back, killing Johnson and Campbell.
  • The enslaved people launched guerrilla attacks, scattering and seeking cover when the militia fired back.
  • Over 160 properties were burned, but only about 12 people were killed by the revolting enslaved people.
  • Official estimates stated that 400 unarmed enslaved people were killed in the field by troops, 100 more were executed after brief trials, and hundreds were brutally flogged.
• Aftermath:
  • Samuel Sharpe was blamed for the revolt, surrendered, and was executed on May 23, 1832.
  • Non-conformist missionaries (William Knibb and Thomas Burchell) were also blamed, jailed, and tried, but upon release, they returned to Britain and supported the emancipation cause.
• Significance:
  • The Sam Sharpe Rebellion (Baptist War/Christmas Rebellion) was:
    • The first time enslaved people planned to use strike action to pressure planters.
    • The prototype of a modern trade union general strike.
    • Sharpe's passive resistance plan was similar to tactics used by Martin Luther King Jr. in the U.S. Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s.
    • It played a tremendous role in speeding up emancipation.
    • The planters' response, including the treatment of missionaries, and the fear engendered by the slaves' actions, contributed to the decision to end slavery.

Colonial Church Union

• Formation: Formed on January 26, 1832, in St. Ann's Bay, sponsored by planters, as a terrorist organization.
• Founder: Reverend George Wilson Bridges, an Anglican parson and rector of the parish of St. Ann.
• Purpose (Declared): To defend the interests of the colony by constitutional means, expose the falsehoods of the Anti-Slavery Society, and uphold the church and kirk.
• True Aim: An anti-nonconformist organization aimed at bolstering the crumbling foundation of the slave system.
• Activities:
  • Spread rapidly, with branches all over the island, except in Kingston.
  • Declared private war on non-conformist religions, especially Baptist and Methodist.
  • Destroyed 16 meeting houses and churches.
  • Raided the businesses of temporary Jewish and brown merchants.
  • Brought Knibb and Burchell to trial on trumped-up charges, as was Edward Jordan, the free colored editor of the "Watchman" and "Jamaica Free Press."
  • Magistrates, influenced by the union, withdrew licenses to preach granted to missionaries.
• Dissolution: In January 1833, Lord Mulgrave, Governor of Jamaica, declared the organization illegal, and it rapidly disintegrated.

The Reform of Parliament and its impact on Slavery

• The Sam Sharpe rebellion increased the tide of revulsion against slavery in Britain. Shortly after Sharpe's execution, rising fear led to the bill to abolish slavery being passed in the British Parliament.

• Slavery was to end on August 1, 1834

• In 1830, King George IV, who had been opposed to reform in parliament, died.

• Soon, a Whig government headed by Charles Grey replaced the Tory government.

• This Act led to the redistribution of seats in divisions according to the new population.

• Impact of the Reform Act:

  • Took away representation of pocket or rotten boroughs.
  • Took away rights of wealthy West Indian planters in Britain.
  • Industrial towns such as Manchester, Leeds and Birmingham got representation.
  • Increased the number of votes, as the franchise was extended to all town dwellers who paid £10 on a short lease, to factory owners, and to traders.
  • The Anti-Slavery Society urged these new voters to support its cause.
  • Elections in 1833 saw successful candidates who were industrialists, manufacturers and others who promised to support emancipation.

• Aligned Interests:

  • Industrialists favored free trade for new markets.
  • Humanitarians coincided with the industrialists.
  • Major slave trading towns were developing other trading interests to supplement sugar.
  • Depression within the sugar industry and decline of the plantocracy weakened the position of the "West India Interest."
  • The new reformed British Parliament voted overwhelmingly for the emancipation of the slaves.

Reasons for Passing the Emancipation Act

• By 1833, all anti-slavery forces converged and exerted immense pressure on the government.
  • Abolitionist campaigners kept the issue alive and won public support.
  • Humanitarians like Thomas Buxton worked tirelessly in and out of Parliament.
  • Economists highlighted the uneconomic nature of slavery.
  • Industrialists displaced the West India Interest and used their political strength to vote against slavery.
  • The slave economy was in decline.
  • Planters failed to adopt amelioration measures.
  • The actions of the enslaved people, particularly the Sam Sharpe Rebellion, demanded their freedom.
  • The treatment of missionaries, like John Smith and William Knibb, infuriated people in Britain.
  • When Knibb and Burchell returned to Britain, they provided first-hand accounts of atrocities.
  • The public was convinced that planters were beyond change, so the government had to act.

Provisions of the Emancipation Act

• Slavery was to be abolished from August 1, 1834.
• Provisions to Gain Planter Cooperation:
  • Enslaved people six years and over were to serve a period of apprenticeship.
    • Domestic enslaved people: four years.
    • Field enslaved people: six years.
  • Apprentices were to work for masters for three-quarters of the working week (40 1/2 hours) without wages.
  • $£20$ million were provided to compensate planters for the loss of their unpaid labor.
  • Apprentices were to remain on the estate during the Apprenticeship period.
• Provisions to Benefit the Apprentices:
  • Children under six years old on August 1, 1834 were to be freed immediately.
  • Planters were to continue to provide food, clothing, shelter, and medical care for apprentices, or provision grounds and time to cultivate them.
  • Work done in excess of the compulsory 40 1/2 hours per week should be paid for.
  • Apprentices could not be sold unless the estate was sold.
  • Stipendiary Magistrates were provided to supervise the Apprenticeship System.
  • Apprentices could purchase their freedom.
  • The Apprenticeship period could be shortened but no alternative to Apprenticeship would be allowed.

Apprenticeship System

• Aims:
  • To delay immediate emancipation.
  • To provide for a peaceful and easy changeover from slavery to freedom.
  • To train the apprentices for the responsibilities of full freedom.
  • To teach them to be thrifty and earn a living.
  • To provide them with sustenance during the period.
  • To facilitate the continuation of a plantation economy.
  • To provide the planters with an adequate labor force.
  • To facilitate the change over to a wage economy.
• Difficulties:
  • Planters felt robbed and sought revenge.
  • Difficulty of turning the master/slave relationship into the employer/employee relationship.
  • Unclear aspects of the Act led to dissatisfaction.
  • Difficulty of getting the assemblies to pass the necessary laws.
  • Hard to get suitable candidates to serve as Stipendiary Magistrates.
  • Locally appointed Stipendiary Magistrates tended to side with the planters.

Solutions to the Problems in Implementing the Emancipation Act

• The British government tried to recruit people directly from Britain to serve as Stipendiary Magistrates.
• The compensation money was tied to the passing of the Emancipation Act to force the assemblies to pass the Act.
• The British government also tried to keep a close check on the local laws to try to prevent the exploitation of the apprentices.
• The $£30,000$ grant provided, in 1835, for the education of the ex-slaves, was given to the missionaries to eliminate the possibility of planters using the desire for an education to exploit the ex-slaves.
• The government shortened the period of Apprenticeship.

Problems Apprentices Faced

• Planters classified artisans as praedials (field slaves) to maintain their labour for six years.
• Apprentices were threatened with demotion to the field for insubordination.
• Planters demanded eight hours each day for five days each week, while apprentices wanted to work nine hours each day for four and a half days each week.
• Planters counted hours from arrival at work; apprentices wanted hours counted from the time they left home.
• Where provision grounds were provided, they were usually far away from the estate, the land was infertile, and sometimes, the planters charged the apprentices rental for the use of the land.
• Sometimes the planters refused to give customary allowances like salt fish and rum, and refused to allow the apprentices to graze their animals on the estate land, or to use estate tools and equipment as they had done previously, unless they were prepared to work extra hours for their masters.
• Other privileges that they enjoyed before were also lost, for example, benefits such as having someone cook for people who worked in the fields, as well as the practice of providing workers with drinking water were stopped.
• Mothers who worked in the fields during slavery were now not allwed to suckle their babies.
• There was no minimum wage set by the Act and planters abused the fact that it was omitted, and often paid very little for work done outside of the compulsory 40l/2 hours.
• Sometimes the planters refused to pay, wanting instead to charge the apprentices for their huts, a right granted to them under the Act.
• In some instances, planters freed old and sick slaves in direct contravention of the Act, in order to free themselves of the responsibility of providing for them.
• Apprentices often found it difficult to purchase their freedom because of the inflated valuation placed on them, to limit the number of those who would be able to purchase their freedom.
• There was no relaxation of the harsh estate discipline, and so apprentices were still being flogged, although this was mainly done by the Stipendiary Magistrates whom some apprentices distrusted, because they felt that some magistrates sided with the planters.
• Apprentices found it difficult to reconcile the fact that they were legally free, yet they were being flogged, and they had to work for their former masters without wages.

Response of Ex-slaves

• The docile ones continued to labour diligently, anticipating freedom.
• The militant ones:
  • Refused to work until flogged or jailed.
  • Saved to buy their freedom.
  • Refused to allow their children to work on the estates.
  • Demanded high wages for their labour during crop time.
  • Complained to the Stipendiary Magistrates (but it was difficult to make contact with them).
  • Moved away from the estate, squatted on unused land, or purchased land.

Problems Faced by Stipendiary Magistrates

• The system was confusing.
• They were too few and overworked.
• The system was underfinanced and the magistrates were underpaid.
• There was no provision for sick leave or return passage to England.
• There was no pension for their families if they died in service.
• No provisions for horses.
• Supervision was compromised in remote areas like Belize.
• They had to write reports at night after weary hours of rough riding.
• Many were retired professionals who were elderly.
• Both apprentices and planters distrusted them.
• They faced hostility from estate personnel.
• Unfamiliarity with costing caused their decisions to be influenced by the planters.
• Local legislators and governors obstructed magistrates.

Antigua's Apprenticeship System

• Antigua did not adopt the Apprenticeship System. They abolished slavery on August 1, 1834
• The island was small, densely populated and there was no fear of a labour shortage.
• As free people, ex-slaves would be responsible for themselves and their families.
• There was little opportunity for free people to make a living other than by estate labour.
• The planters calculated that it would be cheaper to hire and pay only the number of labourers they required, than to continue to provide for all apprentices whether or not they were of any economic benefit to the estates.
• They would pay the lowest wage.

Reasons Apprenticeship Ended in 1838

• Other West Indian planters recognized how remarkably accurate Antigua's calculation of the profits of dispensing with Apprenticeship was.
• Slavery was uneconomical.
• Domestic apprentices were freed in 1838, and it would be impractical to retain one set of apprentices and free the other.
• By 1838, the Apprenticeship System was not working.
• The apprentices were becoming restive.
• The Anti-Slavery Society was restarting its campaign.

French Caribbean

• Victor Schoelcher:
  • Born in Paris on July 12, 1804, was like Wilberforce, Buxton and Clarkson of the French emancipation movement.
  • The son of a porcelain factory owner, he chose to devote himself to writing.
  • In 1829 the senior Schoelcher sent his 25 year old son to Mexico to sell porcelain.
  • Schoelcher took advantage of this to visit the French West Indies, where he recognized the abject nature of slavery and so, deeply wounded, he returned to France and was determined to use any possible means to fight for its abolition.
  • He supported immediate emancipation.
  • In l834, an abolition society, La Societe pour L 'Abolition de L 'EsdtJW.ce, was formed in Paris with Victor Schoelcher as its main spokesman
  • Like Clarkson, he was a prolific writer and pamphleteer.
  • He published several writings in favour of immediate abolition.
  • He was tireless in giving public lectures on the need for emancipation, and he directed a wide petition campaign.
  • In 1848, Louis Philippe, King of France, was overthrown and a Republic was set up in France. The new government proclaimed the abolition of slavery.
  • A commission headed by Schoelcher, was appointed to prepare the emancipation legislation, which abolished slavery on April 27, 1848.
  • Schoelcher galvanized many people into action in the anti-slavery campaign in France.
• Reasons Schoelcher was more effective than Buxton:
  • He had parliamentary support which Buxton had in Britain.
  • Anti-slavery sentiment in France before 1848, was at a lower level than it was in Britain and so he did not have the public support, which Buxton had.
  • There was only one anti-slavery organization in France, as a result, the French public was not as aware of slavery as their counterpart in Britain, and so did not provide,the same level of support.
  • Some government leaders were hesitant to dismantle the system of slavery in a hurry.

French Amelioration measures

• Slaves in the French colonies were the first in the New World to have been emancipated, following the outbreak of a slave revolt in 1791. in St Dominque
• This was the aftermath of the 1789 French Revolution.
• The Revolutionary Commander, Leger Felicite Sonthonax who arrived in St. Dominque in 1792, believing that order would return to the colony only if his forces had the support of the slaves, emancipated them.
• Subsequently, freedom was granted to the slaves in other French colonies.
• However, after Napoleon Bonaparte became ruler of France, he restored slavery in the French territories except in St Dominque where the slaves defeated the French troops, and were able to retain their freedom.
• In 1815, at the Treaty of Vienna, which ended the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars, France agreed to bring its Slave Trade to an end; nevertheless, importation of slaves into the colonies continued.
• By the beginning of the l 830's, the French government, responding to the numerous slave revolts in the colonies, decided to introduce measures to ameliorate or improve the condition of the slaves as the British had done previously.
• Unlike in the self-governing British Caribbean islands, the government officials in the French Caribbean were required to adopt the amelioration measures.
• However, the measures aroused the same kind of resistance from the planters in the French territories as they had done in the British territories.
• The French planters resisted them with the tacit approval of some of the government officials.
• Public opinion was not satisfied with these measures, and so complete emancipation was demanded.
• However, this demand was not finally met until in 1848, almost a half a century after Napoleon Bonaparte had restored slavery in the French Caribbean.

Reasons Slavery was not abolished in the French Caribbean until 1848

• The humanitarian movement in France came later than it did in the British territories or in Britain after that the movement remained relatively weak.
• In France, the movement was largely a rational movement which lacked the fervour of a religious cause.
• There was strong resistance to the emancipation movement by local planters and officials even though slaves revolted
• The sugar industry prospered for a while, which gave France better economic reasons than Britain to continue with slavery.

Reasons for the French Abolition of Slavery

• The tireless efforts of Victor Schoelcher, The work of the Anti-Slavery Society which Won support for its cause.
• With the growth of beet sugar farming in France, cane sugar was reduced, and before long, he political strength of the West Indian cane interest was also reduced.
• The Cuban slave revolts, which provided fresh impetus to the French abolition campaign.
• There was the desire to end the growing incidence of the flight of slaves from the French Caribbean to the British territories after slavery ended in the British colonies in 1838.
• The scant regard which the planters showed for the amelioration measures, encouraged the abolitionists in their quest for complete freedom for the slaves.
• The abolition of slavery in the British territories in 1834 provided an example, and Jed to increasing pressure from the British government, and the British Anti-Slavery movement for the abolition of the French slave system.
• The French colonies did not have assemblies, like those in the British islands, which organized a campaign against emancipation.
• The French revolution of 1848, with its emphasis on the ideas of equality and brotherhood, led to the birth of a new government in France.
• The commission that was formed to abolish slavery was headed by Victor Schoelcher, Under-secretary for the colonies, to prepare the Act for the immediate emancipation in all the French colonies.
• Planters were induced by the offer of compensation money to accept the decree

Similarities between French and British Emancipation

• Each one had a champion, in the person of Victor Schoelcher in the French movement, and William Wilberforce in the British.
• In each movement, there was an influential West India Interest that strongly opposed the abolition movement. However, their political strength and influence waned eventually as more liberal politicians, who were more supportive of emancipation, displaced them.
• Similar methods were used in the publicity campaigns of the abolition movements including the printing of pamphlets, and the holding of lectures in Britain and in France, as abolitionists sought to Win public support for their cause.
• The information about slave revolts was useful to the abolition struggle.
• Similar attempts were made in both campaigns to forestall or stop the emancipation movement, with the introduction of amelioration measures.
• The reform of Parliament in Britain was followed by a change of government which contributed significantly to the success of the abolition movement in both governmnets.

Differences between French and British Emancipation

• The British movement was earlier than the French movement.
• The British West India Lobby was defeated in Parliament in the early J 830's, but the French Sugar Lobby was able to resist for at least another 15 years.
• The British movement was more widely supported, and there was the involvement of many outstanding individuals, but the French movement was more of an individual struggle by Victor Schoelcher.