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African American Colonialism In The 20th Century

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The colonies of the Caribbean, including Cuba, Jamaica, Haiti, Puerto Rico, and others, entered the 20th century with control strictly in the hands of Western powers including England, France, and the United States. However, colonialism in the 20th century was exponentially different than colonialism from the 18th and 19th century as the colonies were no longer populated by a majority of black African slaves instead they were now populated by a majority emancipated black African population. In the British Caribbean, which included Jamaica, Barbados, and Trinidad the black slave population was emancipated by the British Parliament “abolished slavery on July 31, 1833” following much clamor from domestic opponents of slavery such as William …show more content…

Many leaders within the British Caribbean such as Maurice Bishop, the Manley family, and Eric Williams attempted to improve the lives of black Africans through their various organizations and ideologies. While all black Africans residing in the British West Indies were no longer slaves in the 20th century colonialism continued to be the dominant system of political, economic, and social institution in the British Caribbean islands. A majority of black Africans continued to work on the sugar cane fields and other plantations they use to man as slaves, however they now received wages as laborers for large corporations such as the United Fruit Company. Employment for black laborers on the Caribbean island in the 20th century continued to be for the most part out in the agricultural fields producing sugar, coffee, tobacco, and other cash crops, yet with freedom wages were very poor for the agricultural workers. For example, daily …show more content…

Combining the low wages and continued unemployment for a large portion of the black wage-earning populations of the British West Indies led to nutrition and diet of the laborers to be extremely poor as they could not afford enough high-quality food to feed themselves. Malnutrition was extremely common among the poor working-class laborers and their families as not only were they not able to buy and consume enough food the food that did make their diets was “deficient-rice and red beans were the staple everywhere, representing a predominance of carbohydrates and an absence of fats and protein” showing the severe lack of crucial nutrients and food diversity required for the workers to remain healthy . For many agricultural wage workers in the Carribean not just in the British West Indies daily meals consisted of “black coffee or coffee with milk for breakfast, codfish and vegetables for lunch, rice and beans for dinner” with very little to no meat had as a source of protein in fact it was common for many people and families to go “two or three months without meat” further showing the grave nutritional and food condition for

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