An 18 thcentury

Plantation Society

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 Ñ The plantation society was one which
was highly stratified socially and
economically. This meant that based on
one’s race they were being seen
differently on the plantation. That is,
the whites were the superiors and the
blacks were the inferiors

What is a Plantation Society?

 Dependence was centered on a mono
crop.
Meaning that life on the plantation was
centered around the cultivation of
sugarcane.

Monoculture: One Crop

Economy
Social Structure
(stratification) of a
Plantation Economy
White Class:
Ñ divided by ECONOMICS and
OCCUPATION i.e. number of slaves

Made up of 2 groups:
Ó the wealthy whites (Grands Blancs:
Governors, Plantocracy, Attorneys etc.)
Ó the poorer whites (Petits Blancs:
Teachers, book keepers, doctors)

Class and Status

 Free Persons of Colour
Ñ Divided by complexion and shades
of colour
i.e. Mulattoes > Free Blacks
Ñ Worked in trades and services, as
well as military
Ñ Found mostly in urban areas, many

where women

Class and Status

 Enslaved Blacks
Ñ Divided by where they work
i.e. Skilled & Domestic > Field
Slaves

Class and Status

Division of roles on a
Sugar Plantation
 At the top of the plantation social
hierarchy was a white planter or owner:
Ñ Master of the plantation

Ñ Lived in luxury in the Great House

with his family
Ñ made all major decisions that gave
direction to the plantation system.
Ñ decided on the type of slave
organization, the size of the slave
labour force and the purchasing and
selling of slaves.
The Whites: The Planter
 ÑThe second in rank on the plantation . He
was usually recruited from families of the
planter.
Ñ Managed the estate and made
decisions about crops, sugar
manufacture and labour on the
plantations
Ñ Ensured a smooth, efficient and
productive operation of the plantation.

The Overseer
Ñ These were usually poorer whites. There
were also stock room clerks and slave
supervisors in this group.

Clerks and bookkeepers

 Ñ Performed roles related to domestic
housework.
Ñ Included; nurses, cooks, body servants,
butlers, laundry women, seamstresses,
maids who lived in close contact with
the white owner and his family.
Ñ They also had significantly easier

work than the field slaves and held

a higher status

The Blacks: House or

Domestic slaves
Ñ The artisans/ skilled slaves
were very important to the
survival of the estates and were
essential in the production of
sugar. They worked mainly in
the factories. Factory slaves
worked under hot, humid, and
dangerous conditions because
they had to convert the
sugarcane into sugar and the
molasses into rum. Skilled men,
such as carpenters, blacksmiths,
and coopers maintained the
factory and equipment.

The Artisan/ Skilled slaves

Ñ Considered to be lower in status than the
domestic slaves. They made up majority of the
population.
Ñ Slaves worked in fields under the

supervision of slave supervisors/ drivers.

The field slaves were divided into 3 gangs.
Ñ First Gang -The young and strong,

responsible for the hardest work such as

holing, cutting and planting.
Ñ Second gang made up of the sick, pregnant

women and youths. They did the lighter

work such as weeding and harrowing.
Ñ *Third gang - children and very old who did

the light weeding and cared for the animals

The Field or Preadial Slaves

Treatment of Class, Race
and Colour
Ñ Beauty was closely connected to the
European physical features & light
complexion. People who possessed these
features were viewed as being the highest in
society
Ñ As such, social mobility was impossible

between some classes and very hard between

others.
Ñ White society was closed to anyone with any

coloured blood at all, but the whites

encouraged stratification according to colour
amongst the coloureds to divide them
Ñ Notions of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ hair was spoken

of, the slaves were known to have ‘bad’ hair

and the whites ‘good’ hair. This too would
contributed to the treatment that persons
received.
Ñ The Europeans held on to the Anglican
Faith (in the British West Indies) and to
Roman Catholic faith (in the French and
Spanish West Indies), while also trying to
indoctrinate the enslaved.
Ñ The enlsaved on the plantations were seen

as pagans by the Europeans.

Ñ The slaves kept tribal customs and cults

such as obeah, myalism, and vodun .

Ñ The belief in a supreme being was of

value, as well as afterlife, as a result of this

many enslaved committed suicide.

Religion within the Plantation

Society
African Customs and
Beliefs
 Ñ Where ever the enslaved gathered they
made music which was accompanied by
dances. This dominated their social life.
Ñ They sang in the fields to help them
through their labours as well as at nights.
During the weekends they sang and
danced as a means of entertainment.
Ñ The musical instruments used by the
enslaved were all of African origin
Ñ Drumming played an important role in
both religious and social festivals.
Ñ Other instruments include the marimbas
and marracas (shack-shack)

Music and dance within the

plantation society
 Ñ The slaves retained their original
language despite learning broken
language (after being forced to learn a
European language) which they used to
communicate with the whites.
Ñ The slaves developed a unique language
called patois (creole) in order to
communicate easily with each other on
the plantation

Language within the Plantation

Society
Ñ The clothing of the enslaved
was the responsibility of their
masters/ owners
Ñ Two units of clothes yearly

made from osnaburg, Dutch

stripes or guinee bleue were
provided for the enslaved, so
they were usually seen wearing
‘rags’.
Ñ The enslaved children usually

went naked.

Clothing within the

Plantation Society
 Ñ Food was either imported, produced on a portion
of the plantation or was grown by the enslaved
on the small plots( provision grounds) of them
allocated to them
Ñ The food provided by the planters for the slaves

was extremely limited.

Ñ The food provided for them mainly consisted of:

i. Salted meat
ii. Dried fish
iii. Rice
iv. Maize
v. flour

Food within the Plantation

Society
Ñ Planters partly succeeded in breaking
up the family relations of their
enslaved.
Ñ The position of fathers suffered the

most
Ñ Few lived in huts with their children
and their mothers
Ñ The enslaved men did not have the role

as provider of food or the family

protector.

Family Life within the

Plantation Society
 Ñ The enslaved were given a free day each week,
usually a Sunday (not to go to church)
Ñ This however was not law, and so was not fixed
in the islands
Ñ The enslaved were not made to work on public
holidays and religious festivals like Christmas

Free time for the Enslaved

 Ñ Sundays were used for Sunday
markets where the enslaved sold or
exchanged provision crops(from
their provision grounds) and
traditional African articles they had
made such as bedmats, baskets or
plaited shoes
Ñ These markets allowed the enslaved
to gain money through trade, and
gave them the opportunity to dress
up in their ‘Sunday bests’, consult a
herbal doctor or Obeah-man, listen
to stories or music and take part in
dances

Free time for the Enslaved

Sunday Markets
 Ñ Many many of the enslaved held on to
traditional African customs of
wrapping their heads.
Ñ The braiding and plaiting of hair into
delicate ‘cane rows’ (kaskadoo) is a
fashion still shared by women in the
Caribbean and West Africa.
Ñ The enslaved also created traditional
African crafts such as pottery, bed
mats, wicker chairs, baskets, combs,
paddles, stools

Other
African
Culture
The Plantation
 Ñ The plantation was the backbone of the whole
colony
Ñ Therefore it aimed at being a self sufficient unit

Ñ Usually, it was located close to a river so that

water could be carried by aqueduct to turn the

mill
Ñ Also, so that a small dock could be built to send

sugar to the main ports of the island for

shipping overseas.

The Layout &

Organisation of a Sugar
Plantation
 Ñ One third (1/3) of the land in sugar cultivation
was under sugar (in some islands the greater aprt
of the estates were devoted to sugar cultivation)
Ñ Another third (1/3) of the land was used for food

crops such like plantains, yams, cassava, maize

and fruit (provision grounds)
Ñ The final third (1/3) was under woodland to

provide timber for buildings and firewood for

the furnaces
Ñ Most plantations had three to five cane

fieldswich were divided by narrow roads into

smaller square plots of six to nine hectares

The Fields
The buildings
Ñ A mill that crushed the cane. It could operated by
mule or horse, or be driven as a windmill
Ñ A cistern to collect rainwater and/or a well to

supply the sugar production with the necessary

amount of water
Ñ A factory was also called a ‘kogehus’ (boiling-

house) where the sugar juice was reduced until it

crystallized
Ñ A ‘cure house’ was where the sugar settled and

molasses dripped from the crystals in a thick,

brown sugar paste

The typical plantation worked with

the following buildings and
structures:
Ñ A cooperage for producing barrels for transporting
sugar
Ñ A walled animal enclosure (the animal pens) where

the animals were kept overnight

Ñ The Overseer’s house, housing for the manager or

master’s boy
Ñ A ‘Slave Village’ – where the slaves’ cabins were

located
Ñ A ‘Great House’, that is the main building where

the planter lived A ‘cook house’, in this case

meaning the kitchen, which was always built
slightly away from the houses because of the heat
and fire hazard
Ñ The huts of the slaves were placed
randomly and close together. They
consisted of posts and branches
plastered with a mixture of clay, stones
and cow manure, laths and plaster,
and the roofs were of palm leaves,
which reached almost down to the
ground.
Ñ The enslaved Africans slept on straw

mats
Ñ Cooking utensils were of pottery or

calabash, and cooking was done over a

charcoal bench on the ground.

Slave Villages
 Ñ Usually made from stone wall
and was hurricane proof.
Ñ Often situated on a hill
overlooking the plantation
Ñ Typically the building would
have 7-9 windows and a door in
the middle, and it would be
built on high foundations
permitting an elegant,
sweeping, welcoming staircase

The main building: Great

House
 Ñ Around the main house there were
also other buildings such as stables, a
coach house, outhouses, a dovecote
and a chicken coop, as well as an
ornamental garden and orchard.
Ñ On some plantations there was also a

hospital where sick and injured slaves

could be treated.
Ñ Offices for the clerks and houses for

the book keepers

Other buildings
 Ñ The cane was planted by the
first gang by digging holes
and inserting cuttings of cane
two feet long
Ñ A black driver is supervising.

Ñ When the cane was ripe, the

enslaved workers cut the

sugar cane by hand with
broad curved machetes
(cutlasses) and loaded the
stems onto carts to be taken to
the carts.

Sugar processing: Sugar

Canes
 Ñ The cut sugar cane was brought to
the mill by donkey or cart. Inside
the mill, the enslaved workers fed
the cane through wooden or metal
rollers to crush it to extract the juice
Ñ Mills were slow and inefficient so
during the harvesting season the
slaves worked in the mill and
boiling house 24 hours a day to
process the crop. “During crop time
they work night and day almost
incessantly
Ñ Instead of a wind-driven sugar mill
many plantations had a treadmill
pulled by mules or bullocks. This is
sometimes called an ‘animal mill’.
An animal mill is a circular,

The Mill
horizontal structure with stone
walls and a ramp like the sugar mill.
Ñ From the mill the raw cane
juice was channelled to the
boiling house, where it
flowed into clarifiers - large
metal pans. Here lime and
ashes were added to the juice
and it was heated to remove
impurities.

The factory:
The Boiling and
Curing House
Ñ From the boiling vessel the sugar was channeled into 3-4
ever-smaller vessels to crystallize in the last tank

Ñ Just before the sugar is crystallised it was poured off into

hogsheads (large wooden barrels) or conical clay moulds
set over pots, in a dry building called the curing house.

Ñ There they remained for about three weeks during

which the syrupy molasses dripped out leaving behind
in the hogsheads golden-brown muscovado sugar. These
were then sealed and shipped to European or American
markets for further refining.
 Ñ Larger plantations also had a
distillery for making rum which
was distilled from molasses that
was drained from the hogshead.
Ñ Rum and molasses were shipped

in small quantities from the West

Indies to Europe and America.

The Distillery