n 1800, after nearly three centuries of the transport of African slaves across the Atlantic, there were major slave economies in the Americas, principally in Brazil, the Caribbean, and the southern part of the United States (formerly British colonies), with the Caribbean and British Guiana (now Guyana) being the British slave societies. Abolitionism, however, became a significant cause in Britain from the mid-1780s, with providentialism playing a key role. Abolitionism led, first, to the ending of the slave trade, notably by Britain in 1807, and then of slavery itself, particularly in the British colonies between 1833 and 1838, in the French colonies in 1848, in the United States in 1865, and in Brazil, the leading slave state, in 1888.
Thanks to Abolitionism, former slave societies changed greatly. Nevertheless, across the world, for most former slaves, there was no sweeping alteration in their lives, and many remained dependent, in some form or other, on either their ex-masters or new masters, and could be treated harshly. In addition, racism remained an issue. Moreover, it was multi- faceted, like in Brazil, Cuba, and Venezuela, where, in what have been termed “pigmentocracies,” those with a darker skin found themselves discriminated against, a situation that is still very much the case. In part, this attitude is a reflection of white racism.
In the British West Indies, many ex-slaves left to seek unsettled land for their own where they followed subsistence agriculture. This hit the productivity and profitability of the sugar estates. Free labor proved more expensive and less reliable than slaves. As the exports of former plantation economies declined, so they were less able to attract investment, afford imports from Britain and elsewhere, and develop social capital. This hit local society hard. The CARICOM action plan in 2014 called for funding from the former slave-trading nations for education and health in the West Indies to eradicate illiteracy and chronic health conditions, an aspect of a generally less-focused pressure for reparations for slavery. Sir Hilary Beckles, a historian from Barbados who chaired the CARICOM Reparations Commission that produced the action plan, argued:
This is about the persistent harm and suffering experienced today by the descendants of slavery and genocide that is the primary cause of development failure in the Caribbean….The African descended population in the Caribbean has the highest incidence in the world of the chronic diseases hypertension and type 2 diabetes, a direct result of the diet, physical and emotional brutality and overall stress associated with slavery, genocide and apartheid. . . . The British in particular left the black and indigenous communities in a general state of illiteracy and 70 per cent of blacks in British colonies were functionally illiterate in the 1960s when nation states began to appear.
Flows of labor in the globalizing, expanding economy of the nineteenth century included not only coerced workers, but also the continued practice of indentured labor, which, earlier, had been plentifully used in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to send white workers to North America. In return for their passage, indentured workers accepted hard terms of employment for a number of years. In the British world, after the end of slavery, the main source was India; and the British West Indies, especially Trinidad, British Guiana, South Africa (notably Natal), East Africa, Fiji, Malaya, and other colonies, received plentiful cheap Indian indentured labor. This was largely part of an Indian Ocean world that was an important section of the British Empire, as well as one that both changed and was varied. Similar systems were also employed elsewhere. In Cuba and Peru, indentured Chinese workers were treated harshly and found that, although “free,” they could not buy their way out of their contractual obligations. Chinese workers also moved to Australia and the United States. Critics claimed that indentured labor was another form of the slave trade: there were certainly similarities as well as differences.
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