¹ For a useful review of the historical literature on forms of labour control in the plantation colonies of the British West Indies after slavery, see Bolland, O. Nigel, “Systems of Domination after Slavery: The Control of Land and Labor in the British West Indies after 1838,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, 23:4 (10 1981), 593–600.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

² For a similar argument relating to a different context, see Cardoso, Ciro F. S., “The Formation of the Coffee Estate in Nineteenth-century Costa Rica,” in Land and Labour in Latin America: Essays in the Development of Agrarian Capitalism in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Duncan, Kenneth and Rutledge, Ian, eds. (Cambridge, 1977), 196.Google Scholar

³ Blake, Henry to the Earl of Derby, no. 108, 12 August 1844, Public Record Office, Colonial Office (cited hereafter PRO, CO) 23/224. Blake was governor of the colony between 1884 and 1887. The credit and truck systems are being dealt with separately here although most contemporary commentators did not distinguish between them and referred to them simply as the truck system.Google Scholar

⁴ Bolland, , “Systems of Domination,” 593–600Google Scholar. In the Bahamas in 1834, for example, there were only 1.8 slaves per square mile as compared with Barbados, which had 500.9; Trinidad, 11.1; and Jamaica, 70.5. Higman, B. W., Slave Populations of the British Caribbean, 1807–1834 (Baltimore, 1984), 41.Google Scholar

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¹² Grant, to Murray, , no. 23, 11 November 1828, PRO, CO 23/80.Google Scholar

¹³ Grant, to Goderich, Viscount, no. 9, 26 September 1827, PRO, CO 23/76.Google Scholar

¹⁴ Royal Gazette, 24 June 1837.Google Scholar

¹⁵ Ibid., 29 July 1837.

¹⁶ Nesbitt, C. R. to Stanley, Lord, no. 18, 12 July 1842, PRO, CO 23/113.Google Scholar

¹⁷ Mathew, George to Stanley, , no. 135, 10 November 1845Google Scholar, PRO, CO 23/120. See also enclosure in Nesbitt to Grey, Earl, no. 40, 2 October 1847, PRO, CO 23/126.Google Scholar

¹⁸ Smyth, Carmichael to Goderich, no. 178, 17 September 1832, PROGoogle Scholar, CO 23/86. Smyth, Carmichael had observed, “Pine-apples to a very large extent have lately been cultivated; but they only answer in particular situations, & in a particular soil.”Google Scholar

¹⁹ Enclosure in Nesbitt to Grey, no. 36. 7 September 1847, PRO, CO 23/126. In this period Cat Island was called San Salvador.

²⁰ “Statistical Summary for the half year ending 30th June 1847,” Table C, enclosure in Nesbitt to Grey, no. 36, 7 September 1847, PRO, CO 23/126.

²¹ Colebrooke to Glenelg, no. 79, 8 August 1835, PRO, CO 23/94.

²² Minutes of evidence taken before Commissioners of Crown Lands and Woods on 6 August 1835, reprinted in Bahamas Argus, 22 August 1835.

²³ For a parallel situation in the southern United States after the civil war, see Higgs, Robert. Competition and Coercion: Blacks in the American Economy, 1865–1914 (New York, 1977), 55. Sir Ambrose Shea, governor of the colony between 1887 and 1895, recognized that the reliance on credit was largely due to the absence of regular wages. He commented in 1894 after visiting the sisal plantation in Andros owned by the Chamberlain family, “Credit is rigidly refused on this estate and is easily dispensed with when wages are paid weekly.” Sir Ambrose Shea to Marquis of Ripon, no. 63, 24 April 1894, PRO, CO 23/239.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

²⁴ Stavenhagen, Rodolfo, Social Classes in Agrarian Societies (paperback, ed., Garden City, New York, 1975), 147.Google Scholar

²⁵ Enclosure, in Nesbitt, to Grey, , no. 36, 7 September 1847, PRO, CO 23/126.Google Scholar

²⁶ For an excellent discussion of nineteenth-century metropolitan perceptions of what constituted work in British Africa and the British West Indies, see Cooper, Frederick, From Slaves to Squatters: Plantation Labor and Agriculture in Zanzibar and Coastal Kenya, 1890–1925 (New Haven, 1980)Google Scholar, ch. 2. See also Davidson, Basil, Africa in Modern History (London, 1978), 108.Google Scholar

²⁷ Charles Bayley to Labouchere, Henry, no. 57, 23 September 1857, PRO, CO 23/154.Google Scholar

²⁸ Ibid.

²⁹ For a brief discussion of the official policy on the devolution of Crown lands in the Bahamas, see Craton, Michael, A History of the Bahamas (rev. ed., London, 1968), 208–10Google Scholar. It is most likely that the freeholders to whom Bayley referred were mainly squatters. See Blake, to Stanley, , no. 89, 27 August 1885, PRO, CO 23/226.Google Scholar

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³¹ Blake to Derby, no. 108, 12 August 1884, PRO, CO 23/224. A system of advances was used as a method of labour recruitment in South Africa and Nigeria. See Bundy, Colin, The Rise and Fall of the South African Peasantry (London, 1978), 130Google Scholar; Sheraton, R. W. and Lennihan, Louise, “Capital and Class: Peasant Differentiation in Northern Nigeria,” Journal of Peasant Studies, 9:1(1981), 56–62Google Scholar. For a general discussion, see Kloosterboer, W., Involuntary Labour since the Abolition of Slavery (Leiden, 1960), 199.Google Scholar

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³⁶ Ibid., 27 April 1889. For a description of the truck system as it operated in England, see Hammond, J. L. and Hammond, Barbara, The Town Labourer (new ed., London, 1978), 45–50Google Scholar. The truck system was also used in Russia in the late nineteenth century. See Crisp, Olga, “Labour and Industrialization in Russia,” in The Cambridge Economic History of Europe, Mathias, Peter and Postan, M. M., eds. (Cambridge, 1978), VII, pt. 2, 380Google Scholar. For an excellent discussion of the operation of the truck system in the colonial context, see Graves, Adrian, “Truck and Gifts: Melanesian Immigrants and the Trade Box System in Colonial Queensland,” Past and Present, no. 101 (November 1983), 87–124.Google Scholar

³⁷ Nassau Guardian, 8 May 1889.Google Scholar

³⁸ Ibid., 7 January 1882.

³⁹ Balfour, Blayney to Spring Rice, no. 39. 15 January 1835, PRO, CO 23/93.Google Scholar

⁴⁰ Gregory, John to Grey, , no. 3, 7 January 1852, PRO, CO 23/140.Google Scholar For the labour problems of the salt islands, see Harvey, Thomas C., Official Reports of the Out Islands of the Bahamas (Nassau, 1858), 44–47.Google Scholar

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⁴⁴ Blake, to the Earl of Granville, , no. 32, 20 March 1886Google Scholar, PRO, CO 23/228. See also Sir Smith, William F. Haynes to Chamberlain, Joseph, no. 76, 7 July 1896. PRO, CO 23/244.Google Scholar

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⁴⁶ Bell, Hesketh, Colonial Annual Report: Bahamas 1897, no. 238 (London, 1898)Google Scholar, 10. For similarities to the credit system in the American south after the civil war, see Ransom, Roger L. and Sutch, Richard, One Kind of Freedom: The Economic Consequences of Emancipation (New York, 1977), eh. 7Google Scholar; Mandle, Jay, The Roots of Black Poverty: The Southern Plantation Economy after the Civil War (Durham, N.C., 1978)Google Scholar; Donald, Henderson H., The Negro Freedman (New York, 1971), 17–19Google Scholar; Higgs, , Competition and Coercion, 55–57.Google Scholar

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⁴⁸ “Report on the Parish of San Salvador for 1885 by Rev. F. B. Matthews,” Nassau Quarterly Mission Paper. (1 September 1886), 56Google Scholar. Indebtedness was a problem faced primarily by tenants, but it also occurred among the peasant proprietors of the Out Islands. See, for example, “Report on Rock Sound, Eleuthera for 1886,” in appendix to Votes of the House of Assembly (3 March-6 May 1887), 38–39Google Scholar. It should be noted that freeholders in New Providence were also often in debt to the Nassau merchants. John Gardiner, who was in 1886 scientific advisor to the Board of Agriculture of the Bahamas, wrote, “It is difficult to find a cultivator who is even free from debt to the Nassau tradesmen.” Letter by Gardiner, John in Nassau Guardian, 6 10 1886Google Scholar; Powles, , Land of the Pink Pearl, 97Google Scholar. See also “Report on Long Island for 1885,” in appendix to Votes of the House of Assembly (23 February-26 May 1886), 27.Google Scholar

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⁵⁴ Report of speech by Sir William Grey-Wilson on the closing of the session of the legislature, , Nassau Guardian, 10 July 1907. Grey-Wilson was governor between 1904 and 1911.Google Scholar

⁵⁵ An Act for the protection of workmen in the Colony, 7 Edw. VII, c.4 (1907).

⁵⁶ The American consul in the Bahamas had commented in 1891, “The sponge industry is still the most valuable one in the Colony giving steady employment to 500 or 600 vessels of small size and to one-eighth of the entire population of the islands.” “Report by Consul McLain on Trade and Industries of the Bahamas, 10 March 1891,” reprinted in Nassau Guardian, 24 October 1891.Google Scholar

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⁶⁶ An Act to regulate the mode of fitting out vessels engaged in the Sponge and Turtle Fishery; the sale of the Sponge and Turtle Shell gathered on such voyages, and for other purposes, 49 Vict., c. 19 (1886).

⁶⁷ Minute by Wingfield, Edward, 22 June 1892Google Scholar, on Shea, to Knutsford, , no. 72, 12 May 1892Google Scholar, and Minute by Edward, Wingfield, 20 August 1892Google Scholar, on Shea, to Kuntsford, , no. 113, 28 July 1892, PRO, CO 23/234. See An Act to consolidate and amend the law relating to the Sponge and Turtle Fishery, 4 & 5 Edw. VII, c. 18 (1905).Google Scholar

⁶⁸ See “Report on Andros for 1904,” in appendix to Votes of the House of Assembly (II January-18 April 1905), 34. It was not unusual for an outfitter in the 1920s to charge 12.5 percent on a loan for a three-month period. This is equivalent to an annual interest rate of 60 percent. Interview with Mr. Thomas Armaly of Nassau. Bahamas, 17 March 1983.Google Scholar

⁶⁹ Shedden, Roscow, Ups and Downs in a West Indian Diocese (London, 1927), 111–12.Google Scholar

⁷⁰ The Matthews, Reverend F. B. noted in a letter to the Nassau Guardian in 1898Google Scholar. “Notwithstanding that the compulsory Education Act is in force, boys from 9 to 12 years old are now being sent to sea in shiploads.” Nassau Guardian, 19 March 1898Google Scholar. See also “Report on Mangrove Cay, Andros for 1912,” Bahamas Public Record Office, Nassau (cited hereafter as BPRO).

⁷¹ “Report on Nicoll's Town, Andros for 1907,” BPRO.

⁷² Letter by Pritchard, W. E. of 29 March 1892Google Scholar, Nassau Guardian, 30 March 1892Google Scholar. For a comparable situation, see Mandle, , Roots of Black Poverty, 50.Google Scholar

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⁷⁴ “Report on Mangrove Cay, Andros for 1922,” SPRO.

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⁸⁷ Grey-Wilson, to Lewis Harcourt, no. 94, 7 June 1911, PRO, CO 23/267.Google Scholar

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⁹⁴ Ibid., 4 May 1878.

⁹⁵ Williams, Eric, History of the People of Trinidad and Tobago (London, 1964), 124.Google Scholar

⁹⁶ San Fernando Gazette, 9 February 1889.Google Scholar

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