Cydney
Cottman 10/3/16
Where
it All Began
Most people can agree that slavery
was a horrific time period in the development of the United States. Still fewer
are aware of the fact that the institution of slavery in the Caribbean and,
more specifically, Barbados set the precedent for what would become one of the
most egregious violations of human rights in Western History.
In the beginning, European
colonialists had established a colony in Barbados and had promised ten acres of
land to all who set foot on the island (Soderlund, 2000, p.64). The problem was
that very few people were willing to do the backbreaking work that came with
the land, so kidnapping hundreds of thousands of Africans and making them work
for free seemed to be the best idea. It helped that most Europeans viewed
Africans as heathens, and inherently sinful, such that subjecting them to the
physical and mental horrors that was chattel slavery was seen as natural
(Soderlund, 2000, p.65). This set the foundations for what it meant to be
enslaved in America.
Edward Rugemer (2013) discussed the
ways that this early form of enslavement shaped the way race is viewed in
Barbados today. He talked about how the slave laws created a boundary between
what was seen as Christian and righteous versus what came to be understood as
Africans deserving the violence that was so often brought against them (Rugemer,
2013, p.431). He further spoke on the differences between indentured servitude
and African enslavement citing how those white servants had certain protections
under the law that enslaved Africans would never have (Rugemer, 2013, p. 439).
Furthermore, Rugemer cites a law passed in 1633 that declared that African
slaves and Native peoples were bound to be slaves for life (Rugemer, 2013, p.433).
Kenneth Andres, an alumnae of the
University of Alberta, spoke on a specific slave act that contributed to the
disenfranchisement of enslaved Africans in his blog post titled “SourceAnalysis of the Barbados Slave Code of 1661”. He discussed how its fundamental
purposed served to have a steady supply of workers during a time when sugar was
fast becoming a lucrative crop. Andres cited the aforementioned code of 1633 to
further argue that the slave codes which came after were a crucial tool used to
implement the social control of enslaved Africans, first in Barbados and then
later, everywhere else.
It was through these initial slave
codes that the establishment of Africans as being less than, other, and
inherently deserving of violence was cemented. Today, the ramifications of this
racial socialization in Barbados can easily be seen. In an article written by
Joan Phillips and Robert Potter (2006), it is argued that even in recent times
the racial status of Black people in Barbados has not changed much since
colonial times. They explained that the domination of whiteness in this
predominantly Black society runs so deep that it has become internalized both
socially and economically (Phillips & Potter, 2006, p. 315). This article
from the Lowcountry Digital History Initiative clearly illustrates how
specifically British enslavement and colonialism of Africans in Barbados set
the standard for enslaved people would be treated in the New World for years to
come.
 |
| 'A Topographical Description and Measurement of the Island of Barbados', in Richard Ligon's (1657) 'A True and Exact History of the Island of Barbados' [Shelfmark: 455.a.18] |
References
Phillips, J., & Potter, R. B. (2006).
‘Black skins–white masks’: Postcolonial reflections on ‘race’, gender and
second generation return migration to the Caribbean. Singapore Journal
of Tropical Geography, 27(3), 309-325. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9493.2006.00264.x
Rugemer, E. B. (2013). The development of
mastery and race in the comprehensive slave codes of the greater Caribbean
during the seventeenth century. William & Mary Quarterly, 70(3),
429-458. doi:10.5309/willmaryquar.70.3.0429
Soderlund, J. R. (2000). Creating a
biracial society, 1619-1720. In W. R. Scott & W. G. Shade (Eds.), Upon
these shores (pp. 63-82). New York, NY: Routledge.
