1) The document discusses the development of peasantry in the British West Indies since emancipation in 1838. It describes how former slaves left plantations to become small-scale farmers and landowners, establishing villages and diversifying agriculture. 2) It outlines three periods of peasant growth: establishment from 1838-1860 as they acquired land; consolidation from 1860-1900 as cash crops replaced subsistence farming; and saturation from 1900 as opportunities declined in some islands. 3) West Indian peasantry was unique in originating recently from emancipation, developing alongside plantations, and often combining farming with other work.

1. Peasant Development in the
(British) West Indies Since 1838
Woodville K. Marshall

2. West Indian Peasants
For the purposes of this discussion, the term 'peasant' refers to
the individuals, W. A. Lewis points out, to have devoted 'the major
part' of their time to cultivating land on their own account 'with the
help of little or no outside labour'.

3. West Indian Peasants
Available statistic do not allow us to estimate the size of the
peasantry or the average size of its holdings with any precision. It
is probable that many of those we call peasants were those in
possession of a 'house-spot' and a garden.
These individuals are perhaps more accurately described as
small-holders, but their desertion of the sugar estates and their
participation in the development of the new village communities
place them near, if not inside, the peasant sector.

4. The Role of Peasantry
Besides producing a great quantity and variety of subsistence
food and livestock, they introduced new crops and/or re-
introduced old ones.This diversified monocultural patterns.
▪ Jamaica — Bananas, coffee, citrus, coconuts, cocoa and
logwood
▪ Windward Islands — cocoa, arrowroot, spices, bananas and
logwood

5. The peasants initiated the conversion of these plantation territories into
modern societies. There were various attempts to build self-generating
communities. Hey founded villages and markets; they built churches and
schools; they clamored for the extension of educational facilities, for
improvement in communications and markets, they started the local co-
operative movement. Peasantry is seen as 'a nucleus of importance' which
could constitute 'the stability of the country' (W. A. Lewis). Peasant
development was emancipation in action.

6. What makes West Indian peasantry so
special?
It is recent in origin
Unlike other regions in the world, the West Indies experienced
peasantry that was non-traditional.
This is because:
▪ The earliest form of peasantry did not survive plantation
establishment
▪ The slaves were only 'proto-peasants' as the land, their time
and their labour belonged to their masters.
▪ West Indian peasantry began after Emancipation

7. What else makes West Indian peasantry so special?
Its growth was consistent during the first 50-60 years of its existence
There are stages of growth that can be identified:
▪ The period of establishment
▪ The period of consolidation
▪ The period of saturation

8. The Period of Establishment
(1838 to 1850-60)
Why did the ex-slaves leave the estates?
▪ The expectations of the ex-slaves were increased by Emancipation
and these could not be satisfied in plantation labour and residence.
▪ Planters over-anxious to secure their entire labour supply, attempted
to keep all the ex-slaves on the estates in relationships closely
resembling their previous servile condition.
▪ Planters devised a system of tenancy which compelled the tenants to
work 'steadily and continuously' on the estates for secure residence
in the same house and ground they had lived as slaves.

9. Consequently, insecurity of tenure, relatively low wages, sometimes
high rents and long contracts reinforced many ex-slaves' determination
to seek new and better opportunities away from their estates.
It must be noted, however, that Trinidad and British Guiana had
relatively high wages and the cost of drainage was also high but these
factors seemed to have failed to deter the ex-slaves.

10. Most of those in flight from the estates attempted to acquire land.
Cultivation of soil was the ex-slaves primary skill and in many territories
enough land seemed to be available to provide the ex-slaves with
subsistence.
Land opportunities did not exist in all colonies. Barbados, St. Kitts and
Antigua- three older colonies, small size, large population, well-
established sugar industry- few, in any, opportunities existed for the ex-
slaves to acquire land. On islands such as these, ex-slaves would
sometime migrate.
Jamaica, Trinidad, the Windward Islands and British Guiana, however,
provided the best opportunities for land acquisition for ex-slaves. In
Jamaica and the Windward Islands the sugar industry left much of the
mountainous interior developed and in Trinidad and British Guiana, there
was a small population and young sugar industry.

11. Typical comments of the stipendiary magistrates were the ex-slaves
acquisition of land being the 'great and universal object, however
limited in extent'.
One St. Vincent planter said as early as 1842, that the labourers were
always 'on the look-out' for land on which they could settle on and
allow their wives 'to sit down' and 'take charge of their children'.
So great was the desire for land that within four years of
emancipation officials were reporting an 'almost daily' increase in the
number of freeholders and an obvious extension of cultivation in
territories like Jamaica, British Guiana, Trinidad and the Windwards.

12. How did they acquire land?
From thrift and industry, some put their savings in the Friendly and
Benefit Societies. In British Guiana there were informal co-operatives
and joint stock companies. In Jamaica some were assisted by Baptist
ministers and bargains with landowners.

13. • G. Eisner showed that Jamaica possessed 2,114 peasants with under 40
acres in extent in 1838. By 1841, that number reached 7,919 and by
19,397 persons with holdings under 10 acres in extent. She estimated that
by 1842 nearly 200 free villages with a total extent of 100,000 acres had
been established and about £70,000 had been paid by the settlers for the
land.
• A similar pattern emerged in British Guiana. By 1842 there were in
Demerara and Berbice over 4,000 freehold properties with an extent of
about 22,000 acres which had been purchased at a cost of about
£70,000. By 1852 in British Guiana there were more than 11,000 new
freehold properties with an estimated value of £1,000,000.
• By 1860 in Jamaica the number of holdings under 50 acres in extent had
reached 50,000. By 1861 St. Lucia, St. Vincent, Grenada and Tobago
possessed more than 10,000 freeholders, while the number of residents
built since emancipation totalled about 20,000 in Grenada and St. Vincent.

14. The Period of Consolidation
(up to 1900)
The most important feature of this phase of development is the emergence of
what Eisner calls a new peasanty. It is mainly indicated by a 'dramatic'
change in the peasant's pattern of production.
Eisner's national income estimates for Jamaica (the only country for which
there are almost complete figures) reveal a shift from mainly provision
production to a mixed provision and expert crop production by peasants
between the years 1850 and 1890. This showed that in 1890 the share of
ground provision was 74% and export 23%, whereas before in 1850 the
share was 83% ground provision and only 11% export. Peasants share of
exports had risen from half to three-quarters.
Sugar was produced exclusively by peasants and sharecroppers by 1898 in
Tobago and was already disappearing as a major cash crop in Tobago and
Grenada.

15. The Period of Saturation
(1900 to present)
The characteristic of the most recent stage of peasant development is the failure of
the peasantry to expand at its earlier pace. There is increasing evidence that the
peasantry in some territories has declining in numbers in more recent years.
This suggests that the peasants' shift to cash crop production has operated in
conjunction with other factors to exhaust the opportunities for peasant landholding in
the larger territories of Jamaica and Trinidad as well as in the longer-settled islands of
Barbados and the Leewards.
A relatively small peasantry did come into evidence in the Leewards and Barbados
but the increasing pressure of numbers on the land as well as non-availability of land
for expansion of peasant cash-crop production seems to have resulted in both
amalgamation of some of the smaller holdings into larger ones and a drift of peasants
away from land. Since there are few alternative means of employment available
inside these islands, most of the ex-peasants must have emigrated.

16. In Trinidad and Jamaica a combination of other factors are involved. The
expansion and consolidation of the plantation ever since emancipation has been
one limiting factor. Also various types of non-agricultural economic activities have
competed with agriculture for both land and labor in recent years. Industries like
bauxite in Jamaica and oil in Trinidad have not only attracted the peasants away
from cultivation on their own account but have also imposed limitations on the
growth of the peasantry by occupying land which was either peasant agricultural
land or land which might have been available for peasant expansion. Peasantry
has also been affected by the opening up and exploitation of migrant
opportunities.

17. In the Windward Islands, however, peasantry has continued its
expansion. This is mainly because of late settlement, a sparse population
and mountainous terrain. These islands have never possessed a
plantation system which exercised full dominance over the economy and
the landscape.This created perennial opportunities for peasant
acquisition of land. Moreover, there has been no alternative economic
development in these islands to compete with agriculture or to attract the
peasant away from the land. Thus the peasants have experienced
conditions more favourable to them than in any other territory. These
islands are more peasant communities today than any other in the West
Indies.

18. Peasant Holdings in Jamaica, 1902-1961
▪ * Returns for holdings of 5-50
acres.
Under 5
acres
1.5 acres 5-25 acres
25-100
acres
1902 108,943 — 24,226* —
1930 153,406 — 31,038* —
1954 138,761 95,851 53,237 5,572
1961 113,239 — 40,769 3,803

19. Another special characteristic of West Indian
Peasantry
It did not depend exclusively on cultivation of the soil for its income and
subsistence
The early peasants, and many others, often combined the cultivation of their
land with activities like fishing, shopkeeping and casual estate work

20. West Indian Peasantry: Unique
It exists (or existed) alongside and in conflict with the plantation.
Conflict presented:
▪ The planter-dominated legislature refused to initiate surveys of
Crownland as a preliminary to smallholder settlement.
▪ Strict legislation was adopted against squatting.
▪ Planters either refused to sell surplus/marginal land or priced small
amounts of land at exorbitant costs.
▪ Cost licenses were needed for sugar, coffee, charcoal and firewood.
▪ Land taxes were levied in discrimination against peasants.

21. However:
• Some planters were anxious to win advantage and sold land to ex-
slaves in the hope that they could secure a portion of the ex-slaves
labour.
• Many planters were chronically in debt and therefore welcomed the
cash returns they could get from the disposal of small portions of
their marginal land

22. Government Policy Towards Peasantry
The peasants were left to themselves to experiment with different
techniques (Eisner).
This helps to explain why wasteful practices like 'firestick
agriculture' (clearing virgin land with fire then working it without
rotation or artificial aids) still persist with their terrible
consequences of soil exhaustion and soil erosion.
It also helps to explain the general backwardness in agricultural
knowledge, the inadequate credit and marketing facilities and the
shortage of fertile land for peasant expansion.

23. Planters convinced official opinion in England that both the prosperity and
civilization of the West Indies were dependent on the survival of the estate-
based industry. Consequently, neither the Colonial Office nor the local
legislature exerted themselves at first to assist peasant development.
Government attitude was modified only when discontent and restlessness
combined with depression in the sugar industry. The Jamaica Agricultural
Society was established and a travelling agricultural instructor appointed in
the 1890s hinted at a new policy.
The Report of the Royal West India Company recognize peasantry as 'source
of both economic and political strength' and 'no other reform afforded so good
a prospect...'.
Ironically, these same points were repeated in the Sugar Comission of 1929
and the Moyne Commission of 1939. Fundamental reform had been stillborn.