Jamaica's Labor Force

            Who was put to work on the island of Jamaica? Who was responsible for fulfilling the labor needs of the economy? The English began with the importation of the Irish ancestors who came as indentured labor. They were followed by the Africans who came as slave labor. They were joined by the Scots also as indentured labor. As the economy grew, those who had been persecuted in their host countries came to seek a better way of life. These people included Jews who originated from the Iberian Peninsula and Huguenots from Catholic Europe. Later, the Arab Christians from the collapsing Ottoman Empire made their way to Jamaica.

            During the early stages of the development of slave society in colonial Jamaica planters initially purchased adult Africans to serve as physical laborers. They sought healthy, young men and women who could provide the brute force necessary to convert the forested island into productive plantations. As the slave society matured, planters found a need for slave laborers outside of agriculture. The labor force on mature plantations can be divided into four categories: field hands, skilled laborers, domestics, and marginal employees- each having a distinct hierarchy. The prominent members of each category formed the slave elite of the plantation. Color and race were often more important than ability in determining which bondmen were promoted to these positions. Slave owners largely preferred to train males for positions that required skill and specialization. Moreover, they preferred to employ lighter skinned and usually locally born workers in positions that involved close contact with the white household. Many bondmen learned these skilled and semi-skilled trades from white artisans and domestics, and then passed them on to their friends and kinsmen. Soon, it became difficult for African migrants to become domestics or skilled craftsmen, despite their particular talents. The enslaved men and women who were elevated to skilled, semi-skilled, or domestic occupations were largely of either biracial descent or island born because planters assumed that they were more refined and familiar with white customs than African born bondmen.

            Jamaica’s colonial transition from dependence on transshipment and trade to agro-industrial production was gradual and driven by a massive forced migration of enslaved African labor into Jamaica. In addition to the economic impact enslaved laborers had on the island, they also brought with them ways of doing things, cultural knowledge that shaped the material and social landscapes of Jamaica. By the end of Queen Anne’s War in 1713, the plantation had become the dominant economic institution in Jamaica and African slavery the social foundation of its success. By the middle of the eighteenth century, the sugar industry was the cornerstone of Jamaica’s economy, and slavery was the primary organizing principle of labor. The plantation system also created a context in which enslaved peoples of African descent refashioned the world they were entering using organizing frameworks brought from West Africa and applying them in new contexts, yet the plantation was a regime that required strict structural control over the daily lives and economic world of the people who provided the plantation’s labor.

Citations:

Dell, James A. Out of Many, One People: The Historical Archaeology of Colonial Jamaica. 2011. 1-8.

Johnson, Amy Marie. Expectations of Slavery: African captives, White planters, and Slavery. 116- 120.