Emancipation come at last?

AT MIDNIGHT on August 1, 1834, Governor Sir Lionel Smith read the Emancipation Proclamation on the steps of the portico of the governor’s mansion. Yet, that was not the beginning of full freedom. The enslaved were still tied to the plantations under The Apprenticeship System which was slated to end August 1840.

Until then, only enslaved children below the age of six were freed immediately. Every able-bodied person was designated an apprentice, and the period of Apprenticeship was to be gradually abolished in two stages: after four years (August 1, 1838) for non-field apprentices, and after six years (August 1, 1840) for field apprentices.

Apprentices were to work three-quarters of the working week (40½ hours) for their current employers for which they were not to be paid. For the remaining quarter of the working week (13½ hours) they were to work for themselves. They were to be paid for work done in excess of 40½ hours.

The act was an extension of the jurisdiction of the 1807 Slavery Abolition Act, and made the purchase or ownership of enslaved people illegal in the British empire. Stipendiary magistrates were appointed to be mediators between the apprentices and the planters. The Act also provided for payments to former holders of enslaved Africans.

Under the terms of the Act, the British government raised £20 million to pay out for the loss of the enslaved. In fact, the full name of the Act is: An Act for the Abolition of Slavery throughout the British colonies; for promoting the industry of the manumitted slaves; and for compensating the persons hitherto entitled to the services of such slaves. It seems then, that the Emancipation Act was as iniquitous as slavery itself, and The Apprenticeship System was a massive failure from the very beginning.

It was intended to be a peaceful transitional period from slavery to emancipation, but it was anything but. First, it lacked a definitive context. It was not full slavery, nor was it full freedom. The planters and the apprentices did not really know where they stood. Yet, the planters, on whose property the apprentices lived, had the advantage. The apprentices were still subjected to their whims and fancy.

The apprentices were still severely punished. In many cases the planters refused to give them the allowances of salted codfish and salted beef; they sometimes had to pay for them. Some planters charged rentals; some apprentices were evicted from the estates. They had difficulties deciding on the hours of free labour and those of paid labour. For the planters, it was an expensive system. The wages that they were now paying the apprentices were cutting into their earnings, and so were their medical expenses.

A PLETHORA OF PROBLEMS

The stipendiary magistrates were a group of retired naval officers and army officials who were few in number, underpaid and overworked. They had to travel over rugged terrains at long distances on horseback to settle disputes and to inspect the conditions under which the apprentices were existing. Many fell prey to tropical diseases for which there was no immediate cure. The complaints to the Colonial Office were many and bitter.

The system was fraught with a plethora of problems that wore down the spirit of all and sundry. Frustration was the order of the day in the colonies, but in Europe the wheels of the Industrial Revolution were on fire. It occurred to many planters that they were wasting their time in the West Indies. Their thoughts were no longer on the cane fields. The factories of Europe were calling them, and they were listening.

In 1838, The Apprenticeship System came to an abrupt end. Institutional slavery in the British West Indies was finally over. Many reasons – economic, humanitarian, political, international and intercolonial rivalry, social – are put forward to explain the end of the evil that slavery was. But, whatever the reason or reasons, its physical, mental and psychological remnants are still with us in 2023.

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