couldn’t afford to buy would have to be foraged, bartered or done without. As an inexperienced planter he had to learn each new task likea child: the planting, weeding, pruning, harvesting, drying and packing were tough, repetitive tasks. All the while the heat beat on relentlessly, day after day after day, occasionally sluiced through by torrential rain. At night, besieged by biting insects, he would find scant comfort in a rough rope hammock. Many newcomers, adventurers by temperament, could not develop the patience that is the lifeblood of farming, and some simply abandoned their fields and sought their fortune in more adrenalin-fuelled occupations like soldiering and piracy.
Those who did stick it out soon gained a reputation for being scrawny and ill-looking.When a shipload of Frenchmen arrived at the colony of Cayenne in 1664, to take over from those already there, the ghastly countenances of the Dutch settlers provoked some to return to their ships and refuse to land. (Dr. Hans Sloane remarked that “a yellowish sickly look was the badge of the rank and file of the inhabitants of the Lesser Antilles.”) The lack of food and the relentless physical labour of planting had made the colonists vulnerable to the host of new diseases that beset them in the tropics: malaria, yellow fever, dysentery, yaws and hookworm. The absence of medical care in the region, or any real understanding of how these new diseases were transmitted or could be treated, guaranteed that the settlers succumbed in droves. George Ashby would not have been human if he did not sometimes dream of what he had left behind. In order to make a new life rise out of the Caribbean wilderness, he was being forced to push himself to the limits of endurance, beyond the boundaries of anything he had experienced before.
The work of transforming each patch of anarchy into viable farmland did not fall to planters alone: they needed labourers. Although the region would later become synonymous with black slaves, at this point they made up only a small minority of the workforce. Instead the early Barbadian settlers mostly used white indentured servants, known as
engagés
in the French territories. George Ashby was typical of the island’s other planters in that he relied on white labour. He had one servant, and would probably have bought this poor man (only 1 per cent of the servants were female) right off the wharf. The process went something like this: as soon as a ship carrying servants arrived atthe port, eager planters would collect at the dockside. They watched as the men, mostly aged between fifteen and twenty-four, were shepherded down the plank onto the wharf. Confined below decks for most of the voyage, many had suffered terribly on the journey and emerged bruised, depleted and unnerved. The pale, scabby servants were lined up in ragged rows. The healthiest men—and those with useful trades, like masons, smiths and shoemakers—were creamed off by the rich planters, while smaller men like George scrabbled to get the best of the rest. Then for the sum of around six to ten pounds, the befuddled servants signed or put their mark on a document that sold their time—anywhere from four to seven years.
Agricultural workers were the most important element in a successful plantation. As early as 1638 one planter explained that “a plantation in this place is worth nothing unless there be a good store of hands upon it.” At least 2,000 servants arrived on the island every year until 1666, but even this was not enough: the planters lobbied the authorities incessantly for more workers. Over time the planters of the British Americas established a system that loosely reflected the social order back home, the key difference being that indentured servants were compensated in advance, rather than receiving wages. The indenture system was first trialled in 1620, by a Virginia planter who began purchasing the labour of servants for a specified period in return for
Those who did stick it out soon gained a reputation for being scrawny and ill-looking.When a shipload of Frenchmen arrived at the colony of Cayenne in 1664, to take over from those already there, the ghastly countenances of the Dutch settlers provoked some to return to their ships and refuse to land. (Dr. Hans Sloane remarked that “a yellowish sickly look was the badge of the rank and file of the inhabitants of the Lesser Antilles.”) The lack of food and the relentless physical labour of planting had made the colonists vulnerable to the host of new diseases that beset them in the tropics: malaria, yellow fever, dysentery, yaws and hookworm. The absence of medical care in the region, or any real understanding of how these new diseases were transmitted or could be treated, guaranteed that the settlers succumbed in droves. George Ashby would not have been human if he did not sometimes dream of what he had left behind. In order to make a new life rise out of the Caribbean wilderness, he was being forced to push himself to the limits of endurance, beyond the boundaries of anything he had experienced before.
The work of transforming each patch of anarchy into viable farmland did not fall to planters alone: they needed labourers. Although the region would later become synonymous with black slaves, at this point they made up only a small minority of the workforce. Instead the early Barbadian settlers mostly used white indentured servants, known as
engagés
in the French territories. George Ashby was typical of the island’s other planters in that he relied on white labour. He had one servant, and would probably have bought this poor man (only 1 per cent of the servants were female) right off the wharf. The process went something like this: as soon as a ship carrying servants arrived atthe port, eager planters would collect at the dockside. They watched as the men, mostly aged between fifteen and twenty-four, were shepherded down the plank onto the wharf. Confined below decks for most of the voyage, many had suffered terribly on the journey and emerged bruised, depleted and unnerved. The pale, scabby servants were lined up in ragged rows. The healthiest men—and those with useful trades, like masons, smiths and shoemakers—were creamed off by the rich planters, while smaller men like George scrabbled to get the best of the rest. Then for the sum of around six to ten pounds, the befuddled servants signed or put their mark on a document that sold their time—anywhere from four to seven years.
Agricultural workers were the most important element in a successful plantation. As early as 1638 one planter explained that “a plantation in this place is worth nothing unless there be a good store of hands upon it.” At least 2,000 servants arrived on the island every year until 1666, but even this was not enough: the planters lobbied the authorities incessantly for more workers. Over time the planters of the British Americas established a system that loosely reflected the social order back home, the key difference being that indentured servants were compensated in advance, rather than receiving wages. The indenture system was first trialled in 1620, by a Virginia planter who began purchasing the labour of servants for a specified period in return for
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