HISTORICAL PROCESS

GROUP 1: Ellanor, Sumayah &

Reishana
OBJECTIVES
1) Migratory movements and the establishment of
patterns of settlement by different groups within the
Caribbean.
2) Migratory movements within and outside the region
from 1838 to present day.
3) The development of systems of production.
4) Responses of the Caribbean people to oppression and
genocide.
5) Movements toward independence.
OBJECTIVE 1
• Migration:
• The movement by people from one place to another
with the intentions of settling, permanently or
temporarily in a new location.
• The Caribbean as a region has experienced a number of
significant migrations each impacting on social life
lived today.
Earliest Caribbean Migrations
• The earliest Caribbean people of the Preceramic period
had spread out in the Greater and Lesser Antilles for over
5000 years before other groups migrated into the region.
• Preceramic Period: they had not yet discovered the
use of pottery.
• From about 2400 years before present different cultural
groups began to migrate from South America into the
Lesser Antilles.
• The people of the Greater Antilles when the Europeans
arrived were called ‘Arawak’.
• The people of the Greater Antilles did use the term
‘Taino’ but presently we substitute it for ‘Arawak’.
• The Tainos evolved out of cultural mixing among the
earlier people of the Greater Antilles.
• The last wave of migrants from South America was
that of the Island Caribs.
• The label ‘Carib’ was created by the Spaniards.
• The Spaniards represented the Tainos as ‘peaceful’
and the Caribs as ‘warlike cannibals’.
• The Tainos were then thought to have been wiped out
completely in the Greater Antilles and the earlier
inhabitants were believed to be long gone.
•
SUBTOPICS
• European Migrations.
• Iberian Rivalry.
• The Spanish Stranglehold.
• The Slave Trade.
• British, French and Dutch Settlement.
• Forced Migration of Africans.
• The Atlantic Slave Trade.
• Migrations of Indentured Servants.
• Caribbean Diaspora.
EUROPEAN MIGRATIONS
• Columbus may not have been the first European to visit the
Americas but he was the first to carry back gold and
precious stones to show.
• If he had not found any it is unlikely that the Caribbean
would have stirred up so much interest among the
Europeans.
• The fact that gold had been found on Hispaniola and that the
population of Tainos suitable for conversion into slave
labour were large, made the island the first official Spanish
settlement.
• Spanish migrants came to satisfy a lust for riches and made
a war.
• They enslaved the Tainos, killed off their leaders, took their
possessions and exploited the mines.
• The death toll also increased because the indigenous
people were now vulnerable to all kinds of European
diseases which had no immunity.
• In the end only few Tainos were left.
• Therefore the Spanish were responsible for the genocide
of the native people of the Caribbean.
• Genocide: the deliberate and systematic destruction,
in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious or
national group.
IBERIAN RIVALRY
• When Columbus arrived in the New World in 1492, the two
nations of the Iberian Peninsula (Spain and Portugal) were
both advanced in exploration and navigation.
• They were also rivals.
• Portugal were not interested in what they saw as mythical
lands across the ocean to the west but rather exploring the
coastal waters of the African continent.
• Columbus was also Portuguese but his country had refused to
support his sailings across the Atlantic.
• Now because the Portuguese regretted rejecting him thy
wanted to ensure they received “their share”.
• The Pope now feared that the hostility and rivalry between the
nations would result in war, decided to intervene and this
resulted in the Treaty of Tordesillas.
THE TREATY OF TORDEILLAS
THE SPANISH STRANGLEHOLD
• After Columbus claimed the Americas for Spain NO other
European nation was able to establish a permanent settlement
in the Caribbean.
• The British and French basically came to raid and capture the
rich Spanish galleons carrying the gold and silver back to
Spain and destroy Spanish settlement and steal their treasures.
• They were called ‘buccaneers’, ‘privateers’ and ‘pirates’ but
they did not settle permanently.
THE SLAVE TRADE
• Initially, enslaved Africans were provided for trade by the
Portuguese.
• Portuguese fortunes slowly decreased in Africa when their forts and
slaving connections were usurped by the powers of Northern Europe.
• In turn, the Atlantic slave trade was dominated by the Dutch, British
and French from the 16th through the 19th century when it was
abolished.
• Human cargo now became a means of profit for the Spain’s empire.
• Smuggling was also a means whereby the European nations sought to
encroach on the empire.
• The Portuguese and Dutch assisted Spanish colonists as well as
British and French settlers who illegally occupied the Lesser Antilles,
by providing them with slaves and smuggled goods.
BRITISH, FRENCH & DUTCH SETTLEMENT

• It was calculated that in 1650, 56900 lived in the British

Caribbean and around 15000 in the French and Dutch Antilles.
• Many of the colonies established by the French and British in
the early 17th century were proprietorships.
• The Dutch settled on the small islands of Aruba, Curacao and
Bonaire.
• They used the islands as massive warehouses and places where
slaves were kept.
• Unlike the Spanish, the British, French and Dutch did not
enslave the native populations.
• However poor and unemployed Europeans came out as
indentured labourers for the tobacco farms.
THE ATLANTIC SLAVE TRADE
• Enslaved Africans were imported into the Caribbean from as
early as 1503.
• Estimates put the total numbers of Africans forcibly taken and
sent to the Americas at 15 million.
• The trade was highly organised on business footing.
• West Africa was also integral to the operations of the
companies.
• Each European country involved in the trade built forts at
different points on the coast.
• Europeans at the forts were also responsible for conducting
negotiations with the African chiefs.
Impact of the slave trade:
• Large African populations were developed before
others.
• The Spanish were slow to introduce plantations
into Cuba, Puerto Rico and Santo Domingo and
so fewer Africans were imported.
• The British, French and Dutch abolished the
slave trade before the Spanish.
MIGRATION OF INDENTURED SERVANTS

• Slavery was abolished in the British Caribbean over a period of

time.
• The crucial issues after Emancipation, confronting both
Europeans and Africans, centred on the price of labour.
• In the smaller islands, Africans had fewer options so had to
return to the plantations and accept the wages offered.
• The Europeans were first tried as indentured labourers to help
‘whiten’ the ethic balance in the British West Indies.
• However because they could not perform satisfactorily as
manual labourers in tropical conditions and gradually drifted
off the plantations into the towns.
• Guyana and Trinidad received the largest number of immigrant
labourers from India.
• However, the price of labour was the crucial factor governing
the entry of Indians into Caribbean society and culture.
• Indentured migrants also added to the diversity and complexity
of Caribbean society and culture.
• Compared to the Indians, however Chinese indentured
immigrants readily assimilated into Caribbean society and
many married African women and became Christian.
CARIBBEAN DIASPORA
• In the late 19th and early 20th centuries many Caribbean
emigrants went to Panama to find work.
• Although their regular work was attractive there were many
dangers attached to it.
• Afro-Caribbean workers were also subject to racist
discrimination and abuse.
• Today large numbers of Caribbean migrants and their children
live and work in metropolitan countries and elsewhere.
• It is also a normal practice for Caribbean people to send home
remittances to assist family members.
THE –VE INFLUENCES
• The ‘brain drain’ effect because of thee emigration of skilled
people.
• The experience of racism in the metropolitan countries.
• The injustices felt by seasonal workers.
• The ‘mind-set’ that better opportunities lie with extra regional
countries.
 Migratory movement within and outside
the Caribbean from 1838 to the present
day.
• Diaspora
• This is the ethnic minority groups of migrant orgins,
residing and acting in host countries but maintaining
strong sentimental and material links with their
homelands.
•
• The slave trade and African slavery was abolished during the
period of 1834 to 1838. This is known as the emancipation
period. After this time, the migration of people within and
outside in the Caribbean helped shape the population of the
Caribbean itself. This migration is what formed the cultural,
social, religious, and ethnic body of the Caribbean islands.
• Forced African migration created a diaspora that still impacts
the Caribbean today. We must understand that there are
ethnic differences of the people who were forcefully brought
here.
• Africans did not identify themselves as such but rather as
Wolof or Ewe and Mandingo or Ashanti. Hence the differences
in Caribbean society and culture, is due to people of the same
African ethnic group being found in certain islands.
• Examples of this are:
• ● The French who traded with Dohomey and supplied
slaves mainly to their own colonies. Because of this a
strong influence of the Vodun religion is seen in Haiti
• ● Most of the Africans taken to Cuba were Bantu people
and the Bakongo (Bantu group from Northern Angola)
has similar religious practices to the Palo Monte found in
Cuba today.
•
AFTER EMANCIPATION
• Some small areas were free over night but others had to go
through a transition period know as apprenticeship. This ended
in 1838, and at this time the issue that was faced by both the
Europeans and the Africans who were now settled on different
islands, was the price of labour. The smaller islands such as
Antigua, St. Kitts and Barbados had limited options so they
returned to the plantations and accepted the low wages
offered to them. In British Guiana, ex-slaves became small
farmers.
• Trinidad never developed into a classic slave society because
slave imports occurred mainly between 1790-1806 and the
Europeans worried that, British Guiana and Trinidad, as large
sugar producers needed more labourers to expand the
industry.
• During the transition years after emancipation the
Europeans searched for a reliable, cheaper sources of
labour other than the Africans who wanted increased
wages. Indentureship was an old idea brought back to
solve the labour issue, where indentured servants agreed
to enter the British West Indies on contract for a five to
seven or even ten year periods for minimum wage. They
would either stay after their contract was completed and
receive a grant of land or return home.
• Europeans first looked in Europe, as well as other Caribbean
islands, Africa, India and China. Between 1834-1846 several
Portuguese came to Trinidad and British Guiana while British
and German labourers went to Jamaica. The Europeans
however were unable to perform successfully in tropical
conditions and later drifted off the plantations and into towns
where they became shopkeepers.
• By the year 1850, Africans had left Barbados and Grenada for
Trinidad and British Guiana as the Europeans decided to look
in the British Caribbean for their next source of labour.
Jamaica received less compared to British Guiana and Trinidad
and this migration decreased the Labour shortage in the
Eastern Caribbean but the shortage reoccurred when migrants
realized that the wage difference weren’t much different fro
what they could have accepted back home.
• West African labour was sought from Sierra, Leone and
Liberia. But they weren’t interested in migrating and the
majority of Africans who entered the Caribbean by 1860 were
those who were liberated from ships plying from the slave
trade. Since slavery ended the seas were policed to prevent
the trading of slaves into the new world, few were sent back
and most dropped off in the British Caribbean to increase the
labour supply.
• In the year 1838 indentured labour from India began when
396 Indians came to British Guiana. These labourers were
successful in their work and it continued until 1917. Several
alternatives were tested during this time including the Chinese
from Canton and Hong Kong for Trinidad, British Guiana and
Jamaica but they also drifted off into businesses that were
more suited to there talents. And India became the main focus
supply of workers.
• Trinidad and British Guiana received the most immigrants
from India and they were referred to as East Indians.
• Indians came from extreme poverty in Bengal, Uttar Pradesh
and other British Indian locations so they were willing to work
for low wages.
• Indentured migrants added to the diversity and complexity of
the Caribbean society and culture. The Chinese more readily
accepted the Caribbean culture while the Indians didn’t.
• After 1848 the French Caribbean brought labourers from
Pondicherry, a French Indian colony to work in cane fields and
the Kali ceremony and other Tamil or Madrasi culture can be
seen in Guadeloupe today.
• The Dutch brought laboures from Java islands to their Dutch
Guiana Colony and Indians from British Guiana who are known
as Hindustanis.
• Dutch Guiana’s population consists of many Muslim and
Hindus.
•
CARIBBEAN DIASPORA
• Migration can be seen as a positive in respect to building
culture and society. In the 19th and 20th century, Jamaican and
Barbadian emigrates went to Panama to work on and build
across peninsula. It was a high risk job with the possibility of
contracting diseases. Afro-caribbean’s faced discrimination
and abuse but they still stayed despite the uncomfortable
conditions. They sent money home to there families to allow
them to join them in Panama and a large diasporic community
was formed. After the canal work many worked on the
plantations.
• Large amounts of Caribbean migrants and their children live
and work in metropolitan countries. London had an important
diasporic community. However migration has been seen as a
negative approach to development and decolonization. USA,
Canada and Britain have moved to curb immigration from
Caribbean islands and expressed their preference for highly
skilled persons.
• They still however accepted the non or semi-skilled
individuals to work as the US citizens didn’t want to work
in such low status jobs. This gave the Caribbean youth
and poor farmers a chance to gain employment
elsewhere. Child care as well as elderly care was also
options of work. Though there were positive outcomes of
migration, there was also many negative outcomes. This
included:
• The brain drain if the Caribbean people.
• Racism due to different ethnicity and colour.
• Lower wages in comparison to US citizens
• The mindset that better opportunities lie outside the
Caribbean
• The Chinese in Santo Domingo
• In the 19th century Chinese migration to the Spanish
island of Hispaniola began. In 1910 there we 32 Chinese
residents and this increased with Chinese immigrants
coming from the US as the military dominated the US
between 1916 to 1920. China towns was formed in Santo
Domingo by 1950 in the Duarte area where many
businesses were owned by these Chinese people. The
Chinese however fell in the mainstream culture of
Dominican Republic rather than retaining their own
culture as many married local women and converting to
Christianity. In the late 1990’s there was a further wave
of Chinese immigration and the importance of the
Chinese community was realized by the Dominican
community.
• London Diaspora
• After WWII, Britain needed to rebuild it’s industries and
Caribbean people were given opportunities for citizenship in
exchange for work. They came in thousands on the Empire
Wind rush with high hopes of a better world. They were faced
with discrimination in regard to housing as the cost of living
was higher thanks the wages offered in the jobs they were
given in London transport and national health services. British
workers and trade unions resented the immigrants as they
feared they would replace them in the workplace. Churches
weren’t welcoming either and subjected the immigrants to
racial abuse, even in the schools. In response they formed
common ground in they difficult9aand set up newspapers,
bought properties and he had cultural gatherings that
reminded them of their home. The Notting Hill Carnival was
created and became a mainstream part of London life and
today many members of the Caribbean Diaspora exist London.
A sense of disadvantage is still felt however as stereotypical
attitudes are held by many in London and thus led to riots in
Brixton in 1980.
The Development of Systems of
Production ….
• Slash And Burn
• Encomienda
• Slavery
• Intentureship
• The Plantation System
Slash And Burn
Slash and burn is a method of farming that involves clearing
land by cutting down and burning off all the trees and plants
on it before new seeds are sown on to a new piece of land,
Ashes from the trees help farmers by providing nutrients for
the soil.
• It was first recorded in 1935–40 by indigenous people
that colonized within the Caribbean Islands. They used
this method to cultivate land providing substantial food
for the entire village as well as for trading amongst other
villages. Slash and Burn was later introduced in
industrialized regions, including Europe and North
America.
• The practice was abandoned with the
introduction/Development of market agriculture and land
ownership. Agricultural marketing is inferred to cover
the services involved in moving an agricultural product
from the farm to the consumer. It is also the planning,
organizing, directing and handling of agricultural
produce. In modern times slash and burn is no longer a
method used, since the development of machinery and
other industrial machines are being used to cultivate,
reap as well as package produce.
Encomienda
• Encomienda is a system of labour employed by the
Spanish during American colonization, It was first
established in Spain during the Roman period, but
used also following the Christian conquest of
Muslim territories. It was applied on a much larger
scale during the Spanish colonization of the
Americas and the Philippines.
• Encomienda's were a form of "communal" slavery. In the
encomienda, the Spanish Crown granted a person a specified
number of natives from a specific community, but did not
dictate which individuals in the community would have to
provide their labour. Indigenous leaders were charged with
mobilizing the assessed tribute and labour. In turn,
encomenderos were to ensure that the encomienda natives
were given instruction in the Christian faith and Spanish
language, and protect them from warring tribes or pirates; they
had to suppress rebellion against Spaniards, and maintain
infrastructure. In return, the natives would provide tributes in
the form of metals, maize, wheat, pork, or other agricultural
products.
• The cause of the Encomienda system was the Spanish crown
offering land and Indian slaves to conquistadors going to the
new world. The effect was heavy depopulation of Indians from
brutality and disease leading into African slaves becoming a
new labour force.

• Through encomienda system, Spanish government gave

Indians to certain colonists in exchange for the promise to
Christianize them. This system shows start of imperialist
nation states action of gathering cheap labour resources from
their colonies and exploiting them.
 Slavery
• A slave is a person owned by someone and slavery is the
state of being under the control of someone where a
person is forced to work for another. A slave is considered
as a property of another as the one controlling them
purchases them or owns them from their birth.
• The history of Trinidad and Tobago begins with the
settlements of the islands by Amerindians, specifically the
Island Carib and Arawak peoples, who were already
colonized and produced agriculture (crops) and livestock
for lively hood and trading amongst other colonized
groups.
• In 1498 Christopher Columbus on his third voyage
explored both islands after the discovery of Trinidad and
Tobago. Between 1662 and 1807 Britain shipped Africans
across the Atlantic Ocean in the Transatlantic Slave
Trade. Africans were forcibly brought to British owned
colonies in the Caribbean and sold as slaves to work on
plantations.
• The Atlantic slave trade or transatlantic slave trade involved
the transportation by slave traders of enslaved African people,
mainly to the Americas. The slave trade regularly used the
triangular trade route and its Middle Passage, and existed
from the 16th to the 19th centuries. The vast majority of
those who were enslaved and transported in the transatlantic
slave trade were Africans from central and western Africa,
who had been sold by other West Africans to Western
European slave traders (with a small number being captured
directly by the slave traders in coastal raids), who brought
them to the Americas. The South Atlantic and Caribbean
economies especially were dependent on the supply of secure
labour for the production of commodity crops, making goods
and clothing to sell in Europe. This was crucial to those
western European countries which, in the late 17th and 18th
centuries, were vying with each other to create overseas
empires.
• On August 1, 1985, Trinidad and Tobago became the first
country in the world to declare a national holiday to
commemorate the abolition of slavery. On that day,
thousands of slaves in the British West Indies became free
men and women. One hundred and fifty one years later,
on 1 August 1985 the government of Trinidad and Tobago
declared Emancipation Day a national holiday to
commemorate the abolition of slavery.
Indentureship

• Indentureship is the state or period of being indentured

or apprenticed. Apprenticeship, the state or period of
being a servant bound to service for a specified time in
return for passage to a colony.
• Indentured labour was a system of bonded labour that
was instituted following the abolition of slavery.
Indentured labour were recruited to work on sugar, cotton
and tea plantations, and rail construction projects in
British colonies in West Indies, Africa and South East
Asia. Labours who agreed to work for an employer for a
specific number of years.
• During this period of time, they learnt a skill or job, but
had to pay their employer for their travelling and living
costs. These labours arrived from India to Trinidad, May
1845 on the ship Fatal Razack.Hence Indian arrival day is
celebrated on the 30th May.
The plantation system
• In the 17th century Europeans began to establish
settlements in the Americas. The division of the land into
smaller units under private ownership became known as
the plantation system. Starting in Virginia the system
spread to the New England colonies. By the end of the
colonial period, the generic term for English settlements
had given way to a new definition.

A "plantation" referred to a large-scale agricultural

operation on which slaves were put to work systematically
producing marketable crops such as rice, tobacco, sugar,
and cotton, began to demand more labour and more
extensive land to grow, and southerners turned to the slave
system, already in place in the Caribbean, and to the
plantation system to produce their crops.
• Planters embraced the use of slaves mainly because
indentured labour became expensive. Some indentured
servants were also leaving to start their own farms as land was
widely available.
• Western Europe was the final destination for the plantation
produce. At this time, Europe was starting to industrialize, and
it needed a lot of materials to manufacture goods. Being the
power center of the world at the time, they exploited the New
World and Africa to industrialize. Africa supplied slaves for the
plantations
• During work and outside of it, slaves suffered physical abuse,
since the government allowed it. Treatment was usually
harsher on large plantations, which were often managed by
overseers and owned by absentee slaveholders. Small
slaveholders worked together with their slaves and sometimes
treated them more humanely.
• Most plantations specialized in a single crop; the plantations on
the Lower Mississippi specialized in either cotton or sugar cane.
By the early nineteenth century a "Cotton Kingdom" had
developed with Natchez as its center. Large plantation houses
were built in and around the city of Natchez. In south-eastern
Louisiana, immense sugar cane estates were established along
the Mississippi River between Baton Rouge and New Orleans.
All of these helped to support a planter society centered on
plantation life.
• It was during this period that the definition of a plantation owner
or planter changed. The owner was no longer defined as one
who had vast acres of land that produced large numbers of
crops. Instead, a planter was one whose plantation depended on
a labour force composed primarily of slaves. During the late
seventeenth century, black slave labour began to replace white
indentured labour and by the mid-nineteenth century, plantations
were almost completely dependent on their slave labour force.
About half of all slaves in the South before the Civil War
worked on plantations. The products of their labour allowed
planters not only to become wealthy, but also to dominate social,
economic and political life.
• As British colonists became convinced that Africans best
served their demand for labour, importation increased. By the
turn of the eighteenth century African slaves numbered in the
tens of thousands in the British colonies. Before the first shots
are fired at Lexington and Concord, they totalled in the
hundreds of thousands. The cries for liberty by the colonial
leaders that were to follow turned out to be merely white cries.

•
Responses of Caribbean people to
Oppression and Genocide

• Defining Oppression
• Oppression can be defined as the exercise of authority or
power in a cruel or unjust manner. The enslaved were
overworked, beaten, treated harshly and killed freely
without remorse. They were viewed as property and
treated with no respect.
• Due to advanced European weaponry and technology, it
gave slave masters superiority and dominance over those
who had been enslaved. This made it easy for the
Europeans to have control over the native people of the
islands in which they infiltrated. The indigenous people,
Tainos and Caribs, because they were unsuitable for labor
in the new plantation, they were killed off in inhumane
ways.
• The plantation society was created to maintain the
Amerindians and Africans in an inferior position where
they were left powerless and defenseless, and even
though they outnumbered the Europeans, they still were
not able to over throw them.
Resistance
• The history of the Caribbean is riddled with violence,
warfare and genocide. This all began at the coming of the
Europeans, who became oppressors to the native people
of the Caribbean islands as the started systems of
production that were created for economic gain. These
systems include encomienda , slavery and Indentureship
etc.
• Though the Europeans were viewed as the “rulers” of the
islands that they took over from the Tainos and Caribs,
there was still a lot of resistance displayed by the
indigenous people in the form of wars, rebellions,
revolutions and other subtle forms of resistance.
The Tainos
• From the beginning , the natives resisted the newcomers, even
though they were said to be peaceful and gentle. They were
forced to retaliate with violence upon the realization that they
were facing genocide. In 1493, when the men that Columbus
had left at La Navidad in Hispaniola were killed by the natives,
is the earliest account of warfare, many conflicts followed soon
after when the Spanish occupied the greater Antilles and their
imposition of encomienda.
• Though the Europeans had more superior weapons and
technology , the natives put up a great fight in protecting
themselves as well as their home. In 1503 they had put down
most if the active rebellions in Hispaniola but this was a long
struggle. It wasn’t until 1513 that the Spaniards won the war
for possession of Puerto Rico and by they year 1520, they were
still fighting for dominance of Cuba.
• Fleeing was also a form of resistance used by the Tainos,
as their withdrawal from settled areas prevented
encomienda from being enforced. Other forms of
resistance included suicide and sabotage.
• It is hardly mentioned in history, the great fight and
Resistance that the Tainos put up against the Spaniards as
a people of relatively early forms of technology
compared to the Spaniards. The Caribs however are
mentioned in this regard, and this feeds into the myth that
Tainos were peaceful while Caribs were warlike.
The Caribs
• They were part of the lesser Antilles and was very
resistant to the Spaniards offense. Their tactical responses
were well suited for the mountainous areas and their
society permitted flexibility as they based leadership on
the greatest warrior rather than a line of hereditary power.
The Caribs were able to fight and escape captivity very
easily. The Spaniards left them alone soon after as it was
too much work to defend an island with no gold to be
found. However, the Caribs had to deal with the Spain
empire, the British, French and Dutch who sought to
colonize the lesser Antilles. When they came the Caribs
retreated to interior locations and waged raids on the
settlements and even formed alliances with one European
power against another.
• The Caribs and Europeans coexisted but eventually the
Caribs were driven out of most of the islands because of
the constant influx of Europeans and moved to Grenada
and Dominica. In St Vincent they intermixed and formed
black Caribs who after bloody warfare with the British
were deported to the coast of Belize where descendants
known as Garifuna now reside.
•
• The Caribs never let up in there resistance to the
Europeans who took their territory and their people. It
was only because the Europeans were unable to fully
overcome the Caribs that the treaties were finally signed
which ensured their survival as a race.
The Africans
• The Africans were imported into the Caribbean society,
where the Europeans, their oppressors, formed a minority.
The Africans had to resort to resistance in ways that were
both passive and active. The passive resistance seen by
the Africans included sabotage such as damaging tools,
equipment and other property as well as getting sick or
injured to avoid and delay work production. In addition
they would also deliberately misunderstand instructions,
and even go to extremes such as suicide and abortions.
• This gave them a sense of power over their lives when
everything else was being controlled be the Europeans.
Running away also served as an option and due to
mountainous interiors, it prevented the Europeans from
effective pursuit.
• Maroon communities were made and these were often
involved in violent resistance in the form of rebellion and
attack on colonial forces.
• Haiti was able to set up a successful independent republic
and forced the French to give up their power.
Cultural resistance
• Europeans, in order to effectively take over the islands
and their people, had to control the minds of the
individuals that resided there. To do so they made it a
priority to wipe out the different aspects of African
culture and substitute it with European culture, thus
making the slaves easier to control. The Africans
however, responded to this by continuing their practices
by changing their African religion to Christianity and told
anansi stories and folklore tales. Drums were also used
and was feared by the Europeans as it was associated with
war. Even though it was banned it still continued and by
the Africans effort to protect and practice their culture is a
form of resistance itself.
Armed resistance
•
• More active resisted occur regularly but the Africans had
few weapons and weren’t able to communicate
efficiently. Yet still rebellions and revolts made life unsafe
in the colonies for Europeans. Incidents occurred with the
Africans killing the Europeans and the fear of being
poisoned by house slaves was prominent. Rebellions
grew to be revolutions but as the erupted they were
suppressed with cruelty. The most successful was the
Haitian Revolution im1791.
• Haitian Revolution
• Haiti, under the French rule was known as St Domingue
and it was the largest sugar producer of the French
Caribbean in the late 18th century, it was the most
valuable plantation economy in the world. Half a million
Africans lived in bondage and many free coloureds,
these were the children of Frenchman and their slaves.
Theses coloureds were educated, had careers as doctors
pharmacists, teachers and even slave owners. Though
they still faced discrimination because they weren’t
white.
• It was the actions of these privileged groups that began
the revolt against the whites. It turned into a full scale
slave rebellion that turned into a revolution that wiped
out society as it was known. Around 350000 people died
in this revolution before the declaration of Haiti as a free
Republic in 1804.
• The main leader in this revolution was Toussaint
L’Ouverture. Haiti fought France and Britain at different
times and even formed alliances with Spain. The success
of this revolution is credited to the role of the maroon
communities in building guerrilla type offensive against
the Europeans as well as the Vodun religious beliefs in
providing a unifying force and lastly the guidance of
African leaders such as L’Ouverture, Christophe and
Dessanlines.
• The existence of a Black Republic in 1804 in which slaves
had freed themselves and now governed themselves was
news that was spread throughout the slave societies of
the Caribbean
Economic enfranchisement
• Economic enfranchisement can refer to rights on two
different levels. It is the right of an individual
to participate in the production and distribution of goods
and services. Additionally, it is the right of a country to
determine its means of production and distribution of
goods, services and assets.
• More than fifty years have elapsed since Jamaica
received its political independence from Britain. However,
Jamaica's political and economic enfranchisement has
been sabotaged and continues to be hindered by the
legacy of colonialism.
• The colour-class hierarchy introduced in the plantation
society during slavery was perpetuated in the political
and economic spheres of society throughout this history.
As a result of this inequality, Jamaicans suffering from
the poor socio-economic conditions plotted and carried
out rebellions, protests, strikes, riots and demonstrations.
Largely responsible for the suffering of the people was
the negligence of the government. Many citizens could
not participate in the decision making process, and had
no control over the distribution of goods and services in
the island.
• Slavery ended in 1833, but there was no true sense of
freedom for the ex- slaves. Many of the ex- slaves
struggled to create a livelihood for themselves due to
pervasive colonial oppression. The society was highly
stratified with very little opportunity for blacks to improve
their social status. Education on the other hand was only
given to the privileged white, upper middle class whites
and coloured. Blacks were given basic skills in education
which could not improve their status in society.
Entrepreneurial activity

• Entrepreneurial activity is the enterprising human action

in pursuit of the generation of value, through the creation
or expansion of economic activity, by identifying and
exploiting new products, processes or markets.
Shop keeping
• Shop keeping is the practice of operating retail store. An
owner and manager of a retail store who is engaged in
managing his store is an example of someone who is
engaged in shop keeping.
• Job descriptions. Shopkeepers may manage their own
independent corner shop or run a franchise store on
behalf of a retail chain. Unlike store managers who
usually work for a large retailer, shopkeepers will
normally have overall responsibility for a store.
• Storekeepers manage, supervise, or perform a variety of
tasks in ordering, receiving, storing, accounting for,
distributing, shipping, and issuing equipment, apparatus,
materials, and supplies; and perform other related duties
as required.
Savings society
• During the past two decades an increasing number of reports
have called
• attention to the existence of indigenous savings and credit
societies in the Less developed Countries (LDCs). The
material varies from almost casual references to well
documented case histories. Most deal with rotating credit
associations that clearly have struck the imagination of
Western observers. Comparative analyses by Geertz (1962),
Ardener (1964) and recently by Bonnet (1976) reveal the
rotating credit association as a worldwide phenomenon,
appearing in many parts of Africa, Asia, both Americas, the
Caribbean area, the Middle East and even in early