Apprenticeship in Jamaica: Was It Successful?

Slavery represents an important part of Jamaican history and the cultivated dominant atmosphere. For one, plantations highly depended on slave labor to maximize profit margins. Between 1655 and 1808 one million slaves were forcefully brought to Jamaica (Waters, 1985: 21-23). Persaud (2001: 72) suggests, “the plantation system, the totality of institutional arrangements surrounding the production and marketing of plantation crops, has seriously affected society in Jamaica”. In other words, the slave mode of production was a crucial factor in the establishment of Jamaica’s structural society. “Jamaica’s class structure today reflects its history as a colonial plantation society and its beginnings of industrial development

Like many other aspects of the Jamaican way of life, colonialism has shaped the way the media in Jamaica functions, but the country has managed to maintain large elements of its culture.

The origins and development of slavery within Britain’s North American colonies in the period 1607 to 1776 was majorly in part by the English need for economic power. England had just arose as the strongest naval of the North Atlantic had they had to keep their high standing in the world. Bacon’s Rebellion, the profit received by cash crops, and the ability to easily purchase slaves through trade highly boosted Britain’s economy. The colonists within the British colony kept through economic standing and power by making themselves higher than any other through slavery.

In 1619, Virginia was an isolated British settlement on the Chesapeake Bay. It was sparsely populated by men trying to make the colony profitable for England. But the colonists were devastated by hunger, disease, and raids by Native Americans. So when the White Lion, a badly damaged Dutch slave ship arrived, carrying 20 kidnapped black Africans, the colonists bartered food and services for the human cargo. The Africans started working for the colonists. They would work 7 years of hard labor in exchange for land and freedom. But when colonies started to prosper, the colonists were reluctant to lose their labor. Since the Africans did not have citizenship, they were not subject to English common law. They were workers with no rights.

Luckily, for those in power, there was a precedent for unpaid labor in the form of indentured servitude. The workforce made up of those working off their travel, food, and room and board had already proved useful and cost-effective in this new market. As fully owned slaves began to arrive there grew a need to fully define the differences under the law. Virginia enacted the earliest of such laws which began to define the status of those of African descent within the colonies. According to one of the laws: ”…any negroe, molatto,

The earliest form of slavery in North America can be traced back to Jamestown, Virginia in 1619. There, they were called the “Twenty and Odd” and considered servants rather than slaves. Though little is known about this infamous event, this ‘trade’ continued of capturing Africans from Africa and bringing them to the colonies of Britain. The usage of slaves increased and were often used as field laborers on plantations, house workers, blacksmiths

“Planter not only held the majority of slaves, but they controlled the most fertile land, enjoyed the highest incomes, and dominated the state and local offices and the leadership of both political parties” (Foner 411). There were fewer than forty-thousand families that possessed about twenty or more slaves that qualified them as planters. There were also fewer than two-thousand families owned about a hundred slaves or more. The ownership of slaves provided the route to wealth, status, and influence. Slavery was the profit-making system, and slave-owners kept a close watch on world priced for their products to invested in enterprises such as railroads and canals.

Colonist started to import slaves from South America in hopes that they would live longer and be more manageable to control. The slaves that were imported were trained past their first year of slavery, so that they would not die as fast. The first imported slaves came to America in the early 17th century. When they received the slaves they found out some of them were baptized, and were under the Christian religion. So they could not be treat as slaves under the religion so they were turned into “indentured servants”. There weren’t many laws on slavery, but there was no way

The first twenty Africans to arrive in Jamestown, Virginia in 1619 were eventually traded by the Dutch for food and supplies. A point worth noting, the first twenty Africans were not identified as legal property(slave). The former Spanish owners had baptized and given each a Christian name. In fact, Africans worked as indentured servants for a specified time because English law disallowed the enslaving of Christians. Africans became landowners and were of equal standing with the poor English Pilgrims. However, by 1640, Virginia court documents started displaying verdicts for a life of servitude. These were verdicts given to runaway indentured servants. African indentured servants to be exact. Between 1661 and 1662, a child’s status in the colonial United States depended on whether the mother was free or a slave.

Indentured servants were used in early colonial times as a means of passage to the new world. The cash crops of the early settlers were exhaustingly labor intensive. In fact, U.S. History (2015) indicated that “the growth of tobacco, rice, and indigo and the plantation economy created a tremendous need for labor in Southern English America” (p. 1). The technology did not exist at the time for machinery that clears the ground and works the land as it does today. The work had to be done by hand; from clearing and prepping the fields to harvesting the crops, it was all manual labor for which the new land did not have ample supply of.

According to Document I, wealthy absentee land owners were common in the Caribbean. Their investments into sugar plantations necessitated so little work that they did not physically have to be present to acquire the benefits of them. Owning a sugar plantation was just another easy investment for the land owners. The pictures in Document J show the hard work performed by the slaves, and the single supervisor watching them. The supervisor was the only worker that needed to be paid, while the slaves were being forced to work for free.

By the 1670’s prices for tobacco entered a fifty-year period of inactivity and decline, as land became limited and costly. Thereafter, in 1681, Maryland abandoned its requirement for servants to obtain land with their freedom dues. This made the Chesapeake land less of an opportunity for immigrants (Norton, 42). Furthermore, the restoration of the colonies provided mirgrants other settlement options (65). As time passed throughout the 1680’s, the cost for indentured servants rose by nearly sixty percent in some colonial regions. In Europe and England with the increase of income; It then took a smaller share of one’s annual salary to purchase voyage to the colonies, enabling immigrants to refrain from entering indentured contracts. For many of

The migration of Jamaicans to the United States began in the early 19th century. Starting in the 1850s, there were only a couple hundred Jamaicans immigrating into the United States each year. However, by the end of the century, this number rose to approximately 1,000 per year. Between the years of 1981 and 1991, there were approximately one million immigrants from the entire Caribbean in the United States; the Jamaican immigrants made up one-fourth of that total. A common immigration scenario for this culture is for one family member to travel alone to the United States, become established, and send for other family members later. Several Jamaican families often decide to share an apartment or house, with each family occupying a bedroom, as they viewed extended family as an important resource. Jamaicans have come to the United States voluntarily, often looking for educational and occupational advancement. This immigration process was characterized by family separations (often prolonged due to the cost of flying back to Jamaica), feelings of dislocation, and adjustment to the urban settings and colder temperatures.

     Things changed with the British Parliament’s abolishment of the slave trade in 1833. Freed slaves became independent farmers or employees of surviving sugar plantations. The government also changed from an elected British assembly to a governor–controlled crown colony enacted in 1866 and run for 75 years. During this political change, sugar industry slowed and the emergence of the banana industry became Jamaica’s main export (Encyclopedia Americana, 2001, P 673). Jamaica formed a two party system in its changes. The People’s National Party (PNP) and Jamaican Labor Party (JLP) would alternate rule for the 40 years. In 1953, Jamaica inaugurated a ministerial system of government. Within this system the Federation of the West Indies was created in 1958, with Jamaica as its largest member. Jamaica’s true independence came four years later with its withdrawal from the federation.

The United States, Africa, the Middle East and mostly all of the countries around the world have been known to in some shape or form to inhabit slaves and to engage in the business of slave trading. According to the text, in 1619 there were a small group of people, 32 to be exact that reached the shores of America in the Chesapeake (D. Hine, W. Hine and Harrold, 55). It has been long believed that this was the first group of African Americans in British North America; apart of a group who was taken from their home in Angola. Unfortunately during this time, it became apparent that the slaves and those of African descent would be apart of “chattel slavery,” a term coined by the British in the Chesapeake in reference to the enslaved being treated equally to that of the livestock and thus legally treated as property (57). Though the Emancipation Proclamation wouldn’t be a key event until 1863 that would ultimately “free the slaves,” there was a revolt thousands of years earlier by slaves that would lay the ground work for those like them in the future.