Jamaica, Trinidad, and Guyana as Free Labor Colonies :: American History Historical Essays

Jamaica, Trinidad, and Guyana as Free Labor Colonies Introduction The main concept of this paper is to show how Britain turned three of its colonies (Jamaica, Trinidad, and Guyana) into "free labor" colonies after gradual emancipation of slaves was introduced in 1833, and full emancipation was accepted in 1838. British West Indian colonies could be put into two categories: established colonies and new colonies. Jamaica had officially been a British colony since 1670, while Trinidad was converted to British rule in 1802 and Guyana in 1814. The age difference between the two categories resulted in different situations for the colonies and that is what will be discussed here. Before Emancipation At the end of the 18th Century into the beginning of the 19th Century, Britain was moving toward industrialization, which in turn led to a movement towards free labor from its citizens. Britain was also expanding is enterprises within it’s East Indian Trade Company. The East Indian countries had the raw materials that the new textile industry needed. Free people are also a better market for the textiles than the slave populations of the West Indies would. [1] The movement towards industry and Britain’s concentration in East Asia hindered the sugar plantations in the Caribbean. All of this caused a movement towards emancipating the slaves in the Caribbean. But the movement towards industrialization increased the need for sugar. [2] When the slaves were freed, Jamaica, Trinidad, and Guyana all had to deal with the new need for labor. Jamaica was already an established sugar producer and was at one point the jewel of the British West Indies. Jamaica was not a crown colony, however, and was organized by independent citizens, while Trinidad and Guyana, on the other hand, were recently acquired Royal colonies and had different economic circumstances than Jamaica. [3] Jamaica was about 2,848,000 square acres of land and only one quarter of land was unfit for cultivation. An estimation of about a quarter of the land was cultivated and only about a third of the available land was tilled in 1842. [4] Trinidad was considered the most fertile of any of the British colonies and second largest island after Jamaica. Of about 1,400,000 acres, it was estimated that only one-thirtieth part was unfit for cultivation; but not more than 209,000 acres had been appropriated, and of these less than 44,000 were under tillage. Sugar-planting had been a few years in operation when the island came into out possession in 1802.