Civi GB 1/2

N e w B e gin n in gs

Source: Abolition ! The Struggle to Abolish Slavery in the British Colonies, Richard S. Reddie.

! C HAPTER 10: ! Fear of an African-inspired massacre of whites after emancipation. ! The period btw 31 July 1833 (Emancipation Bill passed) and 1 August 1834 (date when the act came into effect) was a worrying time for the Br colonial office. ! As it were, there were no massacres in 1834 when slavery gave way to apprenticeship, and it was soon business as usual. ! For emancipated slaves, planters actually set a fixed price for wages, of course very low: ==> as a social institution, slavery disappeared, and it came back as a system of industry, workers having of work as slaves for so many hours a week. ! Apprenticeship was slavery in all but name. ! Now that they had to care for their food and housing, the pittance they received as apprentices could not meet these new financial concerns. ! Planters wanted to make them work more than the agreed 9 hours a day. ! On larger territories, Africans pooled together their resources to form ‘free villages.’ ! Joseph Sturge, a Quaker abo who had doubted from the outset the worth of the apprenticeship scheme, when he heard the reports of abuse and material poverty, went to the West Indies to see for himself. ! Sturge’s work, back in England, galvanized those keen to see an end of this pseudo slavery. The abo produced posters showing a version of the Wedgewood anti-slavery figure with the words ‘Englishmen ! Negro Apprenticeship is proved to be but another name for slavery.’ ! Petitions were sent to P. ! The gov took steps to end the appr system by the summer of 1838, four years after it was introduced.

! After 1838, emancipated Africans in large territories (British Guiana, Trinidad and Jamaica) left the plantations en masse to establish free villages. ! Indentured labor was reintroduced to the West Indies to meet the labor deficit. ! But these workers never stayed long. By far the largest form of immigration came in the shape of indentured labor from the Asian subcontinent. ! In the other European countries, slavery ended decades later (Spain: 1886; US: 1865; France 1848).