It seems to have usually applied to disputes concerning lease agreements between landowners and farming tenants. These laws provide clear evidence of the explicit distinctions between servants and slaves, regardless of how the laws were enforced in practice. By the economic significance of servants was diminishing as enslaved Africans were increasingly replacing them in the labor force. In September of that year two major pieces of legislation were enacted, one governed servants, the other the enslaved; these laws well illustrate the sociolegal distinctions between the two groups.
Other scholars have discussed the laws Dunn In the eyes of the law, a servant was a servant. The servant law was quite stringent; yet, it afforded servants limited rights which had not been specified in earlier laws. Some clauses well illustrate the differences in their legal status from that of the enslaved.
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A slave, in contrast, served for life and could not sue for freedom or question the duration of servitude; in fact, not until could a slave testify in the courts against a white person. A servant could also institute a legal proceeding against a master in the event of mistreatment or disagreement over the terms of indenture, an option completely unavailable to the enslaved Hall Penalties for the same or similar crimes were also different.
A servant convicted of assaulting a master or mistress was to serve one year beyond the indenture term. On the other hand, it was not until July that the intentional killing of a slave was considered murder, punishable by death. Servants were accused of participating in plots or rebellions in , the mids, and Handler The penalties could be quite severe, particularly for repeat offenders.
Punishments specified in the laws included public execution, presumably by hanging, for repeat offenders and certain long-term escapees , severe whipping, and branding. Captured fugitives could be confined to plantation dungeons or placed in stocks for whatever period the slave master ordered. The whip was regularly used. Although the maximum number of lashes for particular offenses varied in the laws over the entire period of slavery, there is no indication that slave masters felt legally or otherwise constrained or that such laws were enforced.
Certain common disciplinary measures were not defined in law, but became well established in custom. Punishments could also include gibbeting and burning alive, decapitation, and castration for serious crimes, such as participation in revolts or plots. Such harsh penalties were apparently reserved for the enslaved; we have no evidence they were applied to servants although both servants and slaves could be whipped and placed in stocks.
Contesting “White Slavery” in the Caribbean
For the British Caribbean, however, the earliest mention of which we are aware is in an article in a British Guiana newspaper Ellis Its author, Alfred B. Ellis, was a British Army officer who had been at one time stationed in the West Indies see Ellis Additionally, his claim is more of an interpretation of the alleged treatment and material conditions under which these individuals lived rather than being an assessment based on the many sociolegal differences between servitude and slavery. Although Newman places the phrase within quotation marks, it is unclear from his writing how literally he interprets it.
In any event, he surprisingly concludes: Today, not a tear is shed for the sufferings of millions of our own enslaved forefathers. Online publications and social media forums have been particularly fertile breeding grounds for sentiments that are largely politically-oriented and based on questionable and superficial historical research. This is a FACT! The narrative has been used to undermine arguments in favor of reparations for the injustices of slavery. The limitations of the documentary record, both quantitative and qualitative, make it difficult to determine with any certainty the degree to which the lives of seventeenth-century servants and slaves coincided or differed in Barbados.
Both groups had difficult lives and suffered wide-ranging hardships. This article is not meant to minimize the plight of voluntary or involuntary servants, particularly the latter, or the oppressive conditions under which many lived.
However, there is no indication that indentured servants were considered slaves as slavery was understood in seventeenth-century Barbados. Some may have viewed themselves as slaves metaphorically, as we noted earlier in the case of the Royalists Rivers and Foyle, but in the eyes of the English crown, colonial authorities, the Barbadian plantocracy, and English and Barbados legal systems, no resident European was ever considered a slave. Moreover, their comparisons invariably rest on the alleged treatment of servants who were forcibly sent to the West Indies and not to the many who had voluntarily agreed to migrate, an experience they obviously did not share with enslaved Africans.
Slavery and the Transformation of English Society, — University of North Carolina Press. Hakluyt Society, , pp. The Law of Usages and Customs. Minutes of the Barbados Council.
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Crime and Punishment in England: University College London Press. Sugar and White Servitude: Journal of the Barbados Museum and Historical Society White Servitude and Black Slavery in Barbados, — University of Tennessee Press. A History of Barbados: From Amerindian Settlement to Nation-state.
Reparations for Caribbean Slavery and Native Genocide. University of West Indies Press. University of West Indies Press, pp. The Vagrancy Problem in England, — Peter Hay, Proprietary Agent in Barbados, — Jamaican Historical Review 5: Journal of the Barbados Museum and Historical Society 32 The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography Bird, James Barry, Transportation from Ireland to America, — Irish Historical Studies 3: No Peace Beyond the Line: The English in the Caribbean — Planters, Merchants, and Slaves: Plantation Societies in British America.
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Calendar of State Papers, Child Slavery and the Global Economy: Historical Perspectives on a Contemporary Problem. The Barbados Census of Profile of the Richest Colony in English America. William and Mary Quarterly White Slaves and Bond Servants in the Plantations. The Rise of African Slavery in the Americas.
Opportunity and Mobility in Early Barbados. University Press of Florida, pp.
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The English Colonization of Barbados. University of Pennsylvania Press. Acts, Passed in the Island of Barbados. Southern Illinois University Press. Oak Knoll Press, Freedmen in the Slave Society of Barbados. University of the West Indies Press, New West Indian Guide Freedmen and Slaves in the Barbados Militia. Journal of Caribbean History The John Carter Brown Library.
A True and Exact History of the Island of Barbados - Richard Ligon - Google Книги
Escaping Slavery in a Caribbean Plantation Society: Marronage in Barbados, s—s. The Criminalization of Obeah in the Anglophone Caribbean, — University of the West Indies Press. Barbados and Martinique, mids to mids. International Journal of Historical Archaeology Origins of the Southern Labor System. A History of Barbados. Negro Universities Press, Hatfield, April Lee, Intercolonial Relations in the Seventeenth Century. The Irish in the Anglo-Caribbean: Journal of Caribbean History 1: Acts and Statutes of the island of Barbados. New York University Press. The Appeal of Experience: Provide feedback about this page.
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