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The Heights of Slaves in Trinidad

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2016

Gerald C. Friedman
Gerald C. Friedman*
Affiliation:
Harvard University
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Extract

Early nineteenth-century Trinidad was one of the most efficient sugar producers in the British West Indies with output per slave three times as high as in Barbados and 70% higher than in Jamaica (Ward, 1978; Ragatz, 1963:332). Slave prices reflected Trinidad’s greater productivity. The Commissioners of Compensation reported in 1837 that between 1822 and 1830 the price of a Trinidad field hand was 64% greater than the price of one in Jamaica (Great Britain Parliamentary Papers, 1837–1838).

Despite Trinidad’s natural advantages as a sugar producer, the island’s first sugar estate was established only in 1787. Spain controlled Trinidad until the British conquest in 1797 and prohibited non-Spanish settlement until 1783. The island’s population in 1783 consisted of only some one thousand Amerindians and an equal number of inhabitants of European or African descent who grew cocoa as well as subsistence crops. Rapid population growth began in 1783 when the Spanish opened the island to settlement by any Roman Catholic. French West Indian slave owners in particular took advantage of this opportunity to settle a nearly unpopulated island and brought the cultivation of sugar cane and coffee to Trinidad. The slave rebellion in Haiti sparked a still larger inflow of French planters and their slaves, and brought the slave population to over 10,000 in 1797 (Fraser, 1891; Carmichael, 1961; Anthony, 1975).

Type
Research Article
Information
Social Science History , Volume 6 , Issue 4 , Fall 1982 , pp. 482 - 515
Copyright
Copyright © Social Science History Association 1982 

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Footnotes

I would like to thank Dr. Stanley Engerman. who provided the data on which this work is based, and other members of the NBER nutrition project for helpful comments. I am also grateful to Charles Jacobson for research assistance, and to Debbie Jacobson for invaluable aid of all sorts.

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