The Amelioration and Abolition of Slavery in Trinidad, 1812 - 1834
Experiments and Protests in a new Slave Colony
by
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The principle on which the British Government proceeded from the beginning was that Trinidad was to serve as an island of experiment. For this reason, all ameliorative measures were to be given trial in the colony before being applied in other territories. But the history of the period shows that attempts were made to implement the various measures in the other islands even before they had proven to be successful in Trinidad. The programme of registration, begun in 1812, was actually instituted in Trinidad after the Government had failed to win Perceval’s support for a Bill embracing the entire West Indies. However, its success in Trinidad had not been established when it was extended to the other British West Indian colonies. When the first annual returns from Trinidad were being prepared in 1815 the bill establishing the Colonial Registry in London was being debated in parliament. Subsequently, the old West Indian islands were asked to introduce aspects of the Orders in Council of 1824 and 1831 even though their effectiveness in Trinidad was still in doubt. Difficulties dogged the implementation of the first, at the same time that attempts were being made to secure its adoption in the other islands. While failure threatened the scheme of 1831, economic pressure was being used to impose the programme elsewhere. In the end neither experiment nor persuasion worked as they had been expected to do; and abolition became the only solution.
The structure of society within the colony militated against the successful implementation of the amelioration programme. In some respects it was a divided society: old colonists not united with new except in opposition to the British slave policy. And where constitutional changes were implemented in 1831, the religious affiliation of the old colonists was used as an objection to their membership of the Legislative Council. The white slave owners were concerned not only with keeping the slaves as they were, but with maintaining existing restrictions against the free coloureds – wealthy or otherwise - except where self interest demanded some measure of cooperation with them. The latter exhibited a rift within their own ranks whereby the richer and better educated ones looked towards the position of the whites as embodying the goal of their aspirations. This naturally meant that they were less inclined to identify themselves with the poorer free coloureds, and even less so with the slave class from which they had sprung. Their ambivalence eventually led them to support the white slave owners in their opposition to the Order in Council of November 1831.
This division within the society did not only influence negative attitudes during the process of amelioration, it set the stage for those developments which were to follow. Both the Act of 1833 and the attendant Ordinances indicated a desire to be restrictive; and this restrictive tendency was reflected in later legislation. These only served to keep old and new freemen apart. In addition, most slave owners were convinced of the inability of the African to provide for himself after emancipation or to commit himself to regular work – “habits of industry,” as it was termed. Any vision slave owners may have had of an immediate return of their dependents to the plantations never materialised. Those who left the estates set themselves up as small proprietors and traders, and were apparently doing well.1
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About the Book
As the Preface states, this book is a result of a research project for the History Department of the University of the West Indies. It is a work which sought to examine the way in which the slave policy of the British government was implemented in a new slave colony. Faced with recalcitrance on the part of the older West Indian colonies, the Colonial Office did not accord Trinidad an independent legislature because it felt it could more easily implement its slave policy. Trinidad proved to be no more compliant than the other colonies, and logistically was not easy to supervise.
No study has previously been done of the slave process in Trinidad. A statistical analysis of the registration was undertaken by A. Meredith John in 1988. The present study is important because it has focussed on an area that needed to be examined, and one which illustrates that one cannot generalise on the West Indies. It shows how easily a policy can fail, if administrators are not in sync - as those in London were not during this seminal period. The baneful effects of the British experiments extended to persons like the free coloured and black people, who were on the periphery of the system, but who were materially affected by it.
About the Author
Noel Titus is an Anglican priest, who has served parishes in the Dioceses of Trinidad and Tobago as well as Barbados. In both dioceses he has served on the Diocesan Council and on various Committees of Synod. He has also served on Commissions of the Provincial Synod between 1979 and 2004.
Most of his ministry has been in the field of education, in which he has served as Lecturer and for 22 years as of Principal of Codrington College. He has worked tirelessly to collect records of the churches from repositories in England and the U..S.A. He has served as Chairman of the Caribbean Association of theological Schools for many years, on the Executive of the World Conference of Associations of Theological Institutions (WOCATI), and also as President of the Association of Caribbean tertiary Institutions (ACTI); most recently as the first Chairman of the Barbados Accreditation Council.