VI had highest rate of runaway slaves in British Caribbean – Dr Angel Smith
This revelation was made by Dr Smith, during a lecture held in the Eileen L. Parsons auditorium of the H. Lavity Stoutt Community College (HLSCC) last evening, May 23, 2013 that highlighted the transition of the VI people from slavery to freedom.
“If slaves in the Virgin Islands felt that they wanted to go somewhere, they just up and left,” Dr Smith said.
He related an account of a former slave owner writing several times to a slave that escaped to St Thomas, asking that she return. The slave eventually replied after several mails to say that she would only return under the condition that she was allowed to buy her freedom.
In his lecture, Dr Smith explained that a law was implemented during the initial apprenticeship period following slavery that made it impossible for slaves to buy their own freedom if they had run away within the two years prior to the abolition of slavery in 1834.
This resulted in a recorded eleven (11) manumissions (former slaves able to purchase their freedom) for the year 1835. Former slaves paid between £20–£80 in order to secure their freedom during this period.
According to Dr Smith, slaves often escaped to the coal mines of the Danish Islands and acquired work, often earning enough money during the process to purchase their freedom.
“I think that is the sort of the independent spirit of the Virgin Islander that we see even from then, the same thing that we experience today,” said Dr Smith.
Bumper harvest
Dr Smith also related that in the year preceding emancipation, slaves were forced to work doubly hard and this resulted in a greatly increased crop production level that was never before seen in the Virgin Islands.
“In 1834, the amount of sugar was 50 per cent more than that which was produced in 1833,” Dr Smith disclosed, “when the slave masters recognised that emancipation was coming, they weren’t sure if the slaves were going to respond riotously, they weren’t sure if they were going to come back and work afterwards [so] they came up with a plan.”
Slaves, he said, were worked day and night to produce more sugar and were forced to cut every cane in the country to ensure that one big harvest was realised.
Dr Smith said the slave masters reasoned that if the entire system had fallen apart after emancipation, they would have already made their money with this plan.
Women as backbone of slavery
According to Dr Smith, women outnumbered men as field workers during slavery, both in the VI and the rest of the British Caribbean and were basically the backbone of slavery at the time.
Plantation owners removed special privileges such as that of 'child minders' and field cooks during the apprenticeship period. These were usually women who had six or more children.
Dr Smith revealed a number of other repressive measures implemented to discourage slaves from earning their freedom that was described as inhumane treatment by Missionaries at the time.
The Historian said women were more ‘confrontational and upfront’ in their resistance and misconduct. They were often punished with confinement and hard labour by the former slave owners in an effort to curb this resistance. The whipping of women was outlawed for some time prior to this period.
Dr Smith also made a number of other revealing disclosures during his lecture, including the fact that his great-grandfather, Jacob W. Smith, had once been paid £250 for 6 slaves as part of a compensation programme by Britain.
He found this particularly funny after ‘stomping up’ about slave masters being compensated for the freedom of their slaves during the apprenticeship period. The British paid Caribbean slave owners £20M pounds as compensation for slaves that were freed and £204,290 of this amount was paid to 267 slave owners in the Virgin Islands.
Dr. Smith is a Virgin Islander and the Director of Virgin Islands Studies at HLSCC and a graduate of Hull University, where he completed a Doctoral thesis entitled ‘An Anatomy of a Slave Society in Transition: The Virgin Islands 1807-1864’. His research was funded entirely by the Government of the Virgin Islands.
The lecture was held in commemoration of 175 years of full freedom from slavery in the British Caribbean and Dr. Smith will also present the same lecture on the sister islands of Virgin Gorda on May 29, Anegada June 6 and Jost Van Dyke on June 9, 2013.
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