Scarcity and Provision Grounds

Slaves on West Indian sugar plantations had two kinds of gardens: small plots of land,
sometimes called kitchen gardens, in the yards surrounding their houses, and much
larger plots of land, called provision grounds or polinks, on the margins of the plantation.
Most households and family units had a kitchen garden. Slaves in Antigua and
Barbados did not have provision grounds, as the land is fairly flat and mostly arable, so
that nearly every acre was put into sugar cultivation. Islands, like Jamaica and St.
Vincent, with their more hilly terrain and central mountainous region, contained land too
steep or inaccessible to be suitable for growing sugar cane. On these islands, planters
would set aside marginal lands for provision grounds, which were sometimes located
several miles from the slaves' dwellings. While slaves did not legally own their provision
grounds, they developed customary rights to the land and owned the production of their
labor. 4 In both the provision grounds and the kitchen gardens, slaves grew vegetables,
fruits, tubers, and plantains to supplement their otherwise meager diets.
In the eighteenth century, slaves working on sugar plantations in the British West Indies
were usually given by their master a weekly allotment of two to three pounds of salted
fish and sometimes salted beef or pork as well as a few pints of corn meal. Salted cod
or herring was imported by planters from New England in exchange for raw sugar that
was then refined in New England into molasses and distilled into rum, this exchange
making up a portion of the complex triangle trade of slaves and sugar that crsis-crossed
the Atlantic. A few pounds of salted fish and a few pints of corn meal, clearly, was
neither a very plentiful nor particularly healthful diet; and slaves, as a result, were
malnourished and often prone to diseases that weakened and killed them. Describing a
Barbados plantation in 1741, Charles Bolton writes:
For want of proper food the negroes cannot have strength enough to undergo
their daily task; this exposes them to the hurryings and lashes of their Drivers
which tires, tortures, and quickly wears them out. It makes them run away...it
forces them upon robberies...it dispirits them and throws them into many
distempers, which frequently prove fatal. 5
In his study of doctors and slave health in the eighteenth century, Richard B. Sheridan
concludes that slaves in Barbados received only five hundred calories a day from the
imported food they consumed. 6 The kind of labor that was extracted from slaves on
sugar plantations was especially grueling: B. W. Higman has traced a high mortality rate
among slaves to "extreme hours of heavy labor and the brutality of the gang-driven
system." 7 Field slaves, working hard digging, hoeing, cutting, and hauling cane,
expended enormous amounts of energy, and yet their food supplies could not meet their
1

caloric expenditures. Slaves would have suffered malnutrition and even starvation if it
were not for their gardens. The foods--yams, cassava, plantains, pulses (legumes), and
greens--grown in these gardens were, therefore, crucial to the good health and the
survival of slaves in the British West Indies. 8
Despite knowing that provision grounds meant healthy slaves, some planters were
unwilling to take arable land out of sugar production for slaves to garden. These
planters thought that they could make a greater profit by putting all of their land into
intensive sugar production and by purchasing foodstuffs from New England than by
setting aside land for provision grounds. Some planters were willing to rely on imported
food even if it meant their slaves might starve when ships from New England did not
arrive because of bad weather or war. During the American Revolution, when Britain
boycotted the rebel colonies, ships carrying salted fish and other provisions such as
corn and potatoes were unable to reach the West Indies. Eric Williams estimates that
15,000 slaves died of starvation during the war because they were dependent on
foodstuffs from New England to survive; and the local economy on Antigua, Barbados,
and Bermuda could not feed the population of slaves. 9 Acknowledging the dangers of
dependence on imported goods, the Jamaican Assembly passed a law in 1787 requiring
estates "to put in every year so many acres of provisions for the negroes." 10
Some planters also preferred imported foodstuff to provision grounds as a way to feed
slaves because they liked to keep control over the food supply, using it as a way to
discipline slaves. If slaves had been recalcitrant in their work, plantation managers
could withdraw their weekly allowance of fish and cornmeal. 11 If slaves had proved
useful to their masters, food could be used to reward that behavior. For instance, slave
women who had given birth to healthy babies often received salt pork and a yard or two
of brightly colored cloth as a reward for contributing to their masters' wealth. 12 Slaves
derived a form of independence from their masters with their provision grounds, as the
produce from these gardens gave to slaves the surplus that put them beyond such
methods of control. With the yams and plantains they grew, they could survive the delay
or loss of a ship carrying salted cod, and they could survive the consequences of a
master's parsimony or vengeance. With their provision grounds, slaves gained some
measure of control over their health and well-being; planters thus viewed such gardens
with varying degrees of skepticism and even hostility.
Productive Powers
Plantation owners were encouraged to set aside land for provision grounds by people
who regarded themselves as enlightened humanitarians, men such as James Grainger,
a doctor (and poet) who urged the healthful benefits of fruits and vegetables that could
be grown in provision grounds. Though his promotion of slave gardens in his poetic and
2

scientific writings sound more like treatises on animal husbandry than the work of a
caring physician, Grainger was troubled by the rampant disease and high death rate
among Africans in the West Indies, and devoted his energies to trying to cure their most
common afflictions. He urged planters in both his poem The Sugar-Cane (1764) and a
pamphlet, "An Essay on the more common West India Diseases" (1764), to feed their
slaves New England foodstuffs and to let them have provision grounds. Recognizing the
link between nutrition and health, Grainger urged planters,
...to every slave assign
Some mountain ground; or, if waste broken land
To thee belong, that broken land divide.
This let them cultivate, one day, each week;
And there raise yams, and there cassada's root.

A list of food-producing plants includes not only indigenous Amerindian plants such as
cassava, potato, corn, pumpkin, calaloo, and cacao, but also includes plants from Africa
such as yam, millet, plantain, okra, and watermelon as well as Mediterranean and Near
Eastern plants such as lime, citron, orange, and coffee. Grainger's list of produce grown
by slaves in their provision grounds is confirmed by countless other sojourners and
observers of the West Indian scene. 14
For Grainger, an adequate diet for slaves made economic sense since healthy slaves
were more productive as laborers, and since healthy females tended to give birth to
more babies, increasing their owners' wealth in chattel property. Grainger scolds those
planters who do not feed their slaves during the wet season when the sugar cane does
not need much attention: "Not less inhuman, than unthrifty those, / Who, half the year's
rotation round the Sun, / Deny subsistence to their labouring slaves" (pp. 133-34). He
suggests that the planter import food for his slaves as well as providing them with
provision grounds:
Grainger's attention to the health and nutrition of slaves was closely tied to his concern
with slave women's fertility. Richard S. Dunn's analysis of the plantation records of the
Barham family estate of Mesopotamia in Jamaica reveals high mortality rates and low
birth rates for slaves. Field work was by far the most detrimental to the slaves' health;
field workers "executed strenuous manual work in regimented lock step, so that each
member of the gang was forced to keep pace with the work of the others." In
combination with poor nutrition, fieldwork destroyed the health of field slaves,
condemning them to an early death in their mid-forties, and damaging the "reproductive
capability" of women, the majority of whom were employed as field workers, as they
were denied access to more skilled craft positions. During the period of 1774 to 1831,
3

the records reveal that among sixty-one African women living at Mesopotamia, there
were only twenty-nine live births. The total number of deaths over this period was far
greater than births. Absentee owner Joseph Barham was irritated by this lack of
reproductivity and wrote to his attorneys who oversaw Mesopotamia to threaten his
female slaves, for "unless they started to produce more children, he would punish them
by reducing their food supplies." 16 The use of food as a reward and its withdrawal as a
punishment, a common practice among planters and their agents, was criticized not
only by Grainger, who saw the economic benefits of healthy slaves, but by plantocrats
who, like Sir William Young, thought of themselves as humanitarians. benevolent
landlords, and kind masters.
A promoter of provision gardens as a solution to the health problems that affected
slaves' productivity and reproductivity, Young was a prominent absentee [End Page
167] planter who owned plantations on several islands. 17 Visiting his estates in the
West Indies, he wrote a record of his journey, "A Tour through the several Islands of
Barbadoes, St. Vincent, Antigua, Tobago, and Grenada in the Years 1791 and 1792," in
which he urged other planters to follow his example and to encourage slaves to cultivate
provision grounds, as these gardens are the "best mode of feeding the negroes" (p.
270). "I particularly noticed the great extent of provision grounds, and the fine healthy
looks of the negroes in general, arising from the plenty around them" (p. 274). What he
likes about the provision grounds as opposed to the slaves' dependence on the
master's distribution of food allotments is that the gardens encourage the work ethic,
and the slave is rewarded "in proportion to his industry" (p. 271). Young argues that the
provision grounds "affords him [the slave] a plenty that amounts to comparative wealth,"
which places him on the same level as "any peasantry in Europe" (p. 271). He offers the
example of Granny Sarah, a slave who, too old to work, is exempt from labor, and who
"has a garden, or provision-ground, to herself, in which, with a great-grand-child, about
six years old, she works some hours every day, and is thereby rich" (p. 248). His
eagerness to portray slaves as industrious is painfully ironic since field slaves labored
from dawn to dusk, six days a week, sometimes more, under conditions that were
physically and emotionally punishing. For slaves to find the energy and time to work on
their provision grounds, which were often several miles distant from their homes in the
plantation camp, speaks of a resiliency and determination that is nothing short of
remarkable.
Surrounding Young's descriptions of provision grounds and embedded in his text is his
defense of the institution of slavery. Writing for a British audience that had been made
aware of the horrors of slavery by abolitionists, Young takes every opportunity in his
narrative to defend the slave trade and speak positively on behalf of slavery. Key to his
defense is his insistence that slavery is not inhumane, and that his slaves are happy,
healthy, and even prosperous.
4

Supplying Sunday Markets

The food that slaves grew in their provision grounds filled not only their own nutritional
needs but also circulated in colonial markets. Often producing more food than for
immediate family consumption, slaves would sell or barter the rest, often venturing to
markets on Sunday, their only day off, to sell their produce. According to Sidney Mintz,
Jamaican slaves were producing not only most of their own subsistence but also an
astoundingly large surplus of foods, the bigger part of which ended up on the tables of
free people, including the planters themselves. In effect, what had begun as a
technique for saving the planters the costs of supplying their slaves with food had then
become an essential basis for the food supply of the non-slave population.
("Peasantries," p. 134)
What is significant here is not only that slaves produced surpluses in their gardens, but
that they became by the end of the eighteenth century the major suppliers of food for
local, island-wide, inter-island markets that fed whites as well as creoles and Africans.
According to John Luffman, an observer of Antiguan society, slaves' gardens
"are found to be of material benefit to the country, their produce principally supplying the
Sunday market...with vegetables. They [slaves] are also allowed to raise pigs, goats,
and fowls, and it is by their attention to these articles, that the whites are prevented
from starving, during such times of the year as vessels cannot come to these coasts
with safety" (pp. 94-95).
Noting that "colonial markets are almost wholly supplied by the slaves," Mrs. A. C.
Carmichael, describes the slaves' provision grounds as sites of spectacular abundance
that fed both the slaves' and the markets' need for commodities. She writes: "there is
not one slave upon an estate who cannot raise an abundance of these fruits, roots, and
vegetables--far more than he can use for his own consumption" (1:173).
Markets, filled with pigs, chickens, ducks, goats, plantains, bananas, yams, beans,
peas, peppers, pineapples, guavas, and starches such as arrow root and dried cassava,
were supplied by slaves who worked their provision grounds not only to feed
themselves but to sell and exchange for other commodities such as cloth, tobacco,
jewelry, crockery, and metalware. The corn slaves grew in their provision grounds was
used to feed poultry and pigs, which were also brought to market, so that "pork of a
most superior quality may be had two or three times a week, and always on a Sunday"
(1:177).

Carmichael possesses knowledge about food, no doubt learned from slaves, most likely
her cooks, that her male counterparts would not recognize, much less value, as
knowledge. One of her methods for gathering information about slaves' material
culture--what they ate, what they wore, the kind of furniture and utensils they
possessed--was by making the rounds in slave quarters, interviewing women while they
cooked and cleaned during their "leisure" time.
Carmichael notes that English vegetables, like cabbages, peas, and onions, did not
grow well in the Caribbean, while African plants such as yams (nyami), eddoe, okra,
ackee, plantains, millet, and watermelon did. Africans and their descendants knew
techniques for raising African plants, and they also mastered growing Amerindian plants
such as cassava, corn, and sweet potatoes. With the white population dependent on the
slaves' gardens for fresh vegetables and fruits, it is surprising that they did not take a
more active interest in managing the slaves' provision grounds.
While Carmichael delights in describing what she sees as the natural bounty of the
slaves' provision grounds, she is less enthusiastic about their Sunday markets.
Recording her early impression of the Sunday market as a problematic site, she is torn
between her pleasure (as a capitalist) in the slaves' access to personal wealth, and her
disapproval as a pious Christian of the market activities breaking the Sabbath, which
should, she thinks, be reserved for churchgoing, prayer, and reflection. Describing her
first impressions of the "novel spectacle" of a Sunday market in Kingstown, St. Vincent,
she writes:
I saw, for the first time, bands of negroes proceeding from the different estates, some
with baskets, and others with wooden trays on their heads, carrying the surplus produce
of their provision-grounds to market. Accustomed to a devout observance of the
Sabbath day, I could feel little pleasure in gazing on a scene which in other
circumstances would have given me unfeigned pleasure--for it was something, to learn
that negro slaves were in possession of, and could sell, the loads of surplus produce
which I saw, and receive their cash in hand; and it was also something to see that they
were, with the exception of very few individuals, dressed in that manner which indicates
an approach to real comfort. (1:4-5)
She is also made uncomfortable by the tone of the Sunday market, which is lively and
colorful. Carmichael registers her surprise at the boisterousness and the freedom of
movement and attitude that slaves display on market day: "I saw nothing of that servile
manner which I had anticipated: all were frank, full of life and spirit, and talked to their
master with a freedom which must be seen to be fully comprehended" (1:6). Other West
Indian observers, Young included, were unsettled by this freedom of spirit and vitality
with which slaves conducted their marketing activities. Young comments on how the
6

town's squares and streets are "crowded with negroes"; "their wrangles and
conversation forcibly struck me" as their "language" was characterized by a
"presumption of self-importance."
Slaves' demeanor in the marketplace surprise both Young and Carmichael, but for
Carmichael, whose stay in the West Indies outlasts Young's by years, this scene loses
its immediate charms. She indicates later on in her narrative that the slaves' conduct
during market days is disagreeable, calling the Sunday market "a nuisance" and of "no
advantage" for the white population. She recognizes that "although so disgraceful a
scene," the Sunday market "is one of those customs which were it abolished other
worse consequences might follow" (1:49), hinting at the potential for violence if they
were abolished. The markets were held on Sundays because this was the slaves' only
day off. To abolish Sunday markets in keeping with evangelical measures instituted in
Britain, would banish slaves from the marketplace, robbing them of their potential to
earn money and to acquire commodities. Carmichael realizes that such measures
would infuriate the slaves and make life dangerous for the white population. For
Carmichael to hint at the potential for violence if Sunday markets were suppressed, she
must have recognized that the rewards of cultivating these gardens went well beyond
growing wholesome food for home consumption, and that the produce raised and sold
gave slaves access to resources that made their lives much more comfortable and
provided them with a measure of freedom (not only of speech) and autonomy not easily
achieved under slavery.
Sunday markets were, as historian James Walvin notes, an "object of suspicion and
dislike" by whites who were made uneasy by slaves' independence and economic
assertiveness and who disliked "that autonomous, self-confident and assertive black
presence on the streets." While whites living in market towns were disturbed by the
slaves' "numbers, noise, and the stridency of their language," they were also dependent
on them for much of the food they ate. Vending and higgling as well as working their
garden plots enabled slaves to operate outside of plantation slavery and to thrive "at an
economically autonomous level," forming in the process a distinct cultural identity, one
that, Walvin notes, can be seen in the marketplaces of the present-day West Indies.
Planter resentment toward Sunday markets and the bounty of the provision grounds can
be explained, in part, by the threat of African agricultural expertise and entrepreneurial
ingenuity that found expression in the provision grounds and in the local market
economy that depended on the surplus crops of provision grounds. African and creole
agricultural skill and careful management of time and labor challenged planters' notions
about their own superiority as well as prevailing plantocratic beliefs about Africans and
their mental and moral capabilities. Since plantocratic beliefs about Africans' inability to
manage themselves formed the basis of much proslavery propaganda, the abundance
7

of provision grounds and markets presented planters with a contradiction that

threatened the logic of their ideological justification for slavery.
In addition to challenging plantocratic ideology, the slaves' gardens provided the basis
for a proto-peasant economy that existed independent of and eventually in opposition to
the plantation system. 22 Growing produce for market required not only an expenditure
of labor above and beyond the arduous tasks and duties assigned to slaves on sugar
plantations, but also agricultural expertise, knowledge of animal husbandry, and a talent
for merchandising and bartering. In performing these various activities, West Indian
slaves created a space from which to resist some of the consequences of slavery and to
make the successful transition from slave to peasant economy with the abolition of
slavery in 1838. As Mintz suggests, slaves with provision grounds were "the protopeasants: enslaved Africans and their descendants...under the lash, yet asserting their
own essential humanity, initiative, and intelligence, in the face of every cruel limitation."