An­ge­lo Bisses­sars­ingh

Many types of spec­u­la­tion have long been rife as to the con­di­tions of slav­ery in T&T. Rel­a­tive­ly lit­tle doc­u­men­ta­tion ex­ists on this mat­ter and it is left to his­to­ri­ans to piece to­geth­er scraps of ev­i­dence to ar­rive at the truth.With the dec­i­ma­tion of the na­tive Amerindi­an pop­u­la­tion from Eu­ro­pean dis­eases, a small group of hap­less Guinea na­tives were im­port­ed in­to Trinidad in 1701 to pro­vide forced labour for the small co­coa plan­ta­tions which then com­prised the en­tire econ­o­my.In 1783 a wily French­man named Philippe Roume de St Lau­rent, with the sup­port of the Span­ish crown, in­tro­duced a Cedu­la of Pop­u­la­tion which of­fered lands to Catholic set­tlers in pro­por­tion to the num­ber of slaves they owned, with the al­lo­ca­tion halved for coloured pro­pri­etors. As a re­sult thou­sands of slaves from the French An­tilles came to the is­land. In 1786 Pi­cot de Lapey­rouse plant­ed the first sug­ar cane crop in the area of the ceme­tery which still bears his name, and the sug­ar plan­toc­ra­cy was born.

In To­ba­go, a long pe­ri­od of con­flict be­tween the Eu­ro­pean me­trop­o­les that last­ed from the 1630s to 1762 cul­mi­nat­ed in the first per­ma­nent British set­tle­ment at George­town, which is present-day Stud­ley Park. Eight years lat­er, from the shad­ow of Fort Gran­by, God­ney Clarke shipped the first load of sug­ar from the is­land which had been cul­ti­vat­ed by slave labour.Al­though liv­ing mem­o­ry as­so­ci­at­ed work in the sug­ar cane fields as char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly "In­di­an," it must not be for­got­ten that for al­most a cen­tu­ry pri­or to the in­tro­duc­tion of in­den­tured labour, slaves wa­tered the cane with blood, sweat and tears.The ear­ly 19th cen­tu­ry saw a rapid ex­pan­sion of the sug­ar in­dus­try in Trinidad, whilst that of To­ba­go was al­ready well-de­vel­oped with al­most all the arable lands on the is­land be­ing un­der wav­ing fields of cane. The lack of cul­ti­va­tion in Trinidad meant that the new sug­ar lands were al­most all clothed in dense for­est that had to be cleared.

Some ar­eas, like the Ca­roni Plain, were mos­qui­to-and caiman-in­fest­ed swamps which had to be drained. This riv­er was used as a high­way to the sea and the Guisep­pi fam­i­ly of Val­sayn set their slaves to carve a chan­nel through a sand­bar which ob­scured the mouth.Once the brute toil of clear­ing the forests was done, the work of plant­i­ng be­gan. Fields were dug by hand and laid out in rows and fur­rows. Holes were delved at in­ter­vals and slips of cane plant­ed in them. Though sug­ar cane can be al­lowed to ra­toon (grow from es­tab­lished root­stock) for sev­er­al years af­ter prop­a­ga­tion, a prof­itable es­tate would see a to­tal re­peat of the hole-ing or re­plant­i­ng every three years to avoid loss of su­crose con­tent. The grow­ing canes had to be weed­ed and ma­nured with an­i­mal waste.It was at the be­gin­ning of the dry sea­son, how­ev­er, that the tru­ly ar­du­ous labour be­gan.

Fields were fired to clear them of trash and cut. Very few es­tates had a steam en­gine mill be­fore 1840 and thus canes were fed by hand in­to wind­mills, wa­ter­mills or an­i­mal-mills where mules or cat­tle were teth­ered to a turntable of two huge stone crush­ers. This was dan­ger­ous work and pul­verised limbs were com­mon.The ex­tract­ed cane juice had to be boiled. In those days sug­ar was the mus­co­v­a­do type–sort of like a wet lump–and crys­tals would not be seen un­til the vac­u­um pan sys­tem was in­tro­duced in the 1860s.Slaves would be com­pelled to work in boil­ing hous­es, over large cop­per basins (many of which still sur­vive as gar­den or­na­ments) that were mount­ed in brick stoves over roar­ing fires. The boiled juice had to be la­dled by hand in a se­ries of stages un­til clar­i­fied and re­duced enough to be packed in hogshead bar­rels to cool. Scald­ing was com­mon and work at the boil­ing house was on a 24-hour ba­sis un­til all the sug­ar cane had been cleared and milled.

Af­ter the crop had been processed, a crop-over fes­ti­val was held, al­though this in­no­cent plea­sure was of­ten sub­ject to the will of the planter. In To­ba­go, the mas­sa would be ex­pect­ed to give a young bull for the feast as well as some of the rum dis­tilled on the plan­ta­tion, whilst the slaves brought in ground pro­vi­sions.Al­though this tra­di­tion died out in Trinidad with the com­ing of In­di­an in­den­tured labour (and the post-eman­ci­pa­tion move of Afro-Trinida­di­ans away from the cane­fields), it re­mained part of To­ba­go life un­til the mid­dle of the 19th cen­tu­ry.