SLAVERY IN THE CARIBBEAN

2895 WD

The horrible treatments of slaves will be forever engraved in the history books. The obvious effects have been past down to generations and have been expressed through racist evil behaviors. The hatred spread down through generations like wildfires on a hot summer day in a wild bush. The evils of slavery were so major that the half could never have been told. But how all this ill-treatment come to “a head”, was out of the want for a new labour source in the Sugar Revolution. Planters wanted to invest in free labour and did not care as much about the black workers as they did the work they yielded. This low cost, high efficiency when finally achieved would have made them rich and could even secure their place somewhere in the European aristocracy. Taking the slaves as personal property, planters used and abused them in the most despicable ways possible. The slaves also fought back, but not ever in a British Colony, were slaves successful in a resistant action against planters. When slaves slipped up or fought back, the real wrath of the planters was unleashed. The punishments for certain simple mistakes were horrible and just furthered the already atrocious conditions under which these individuals tried to survive. Spain ruled over most of the islands until around1655, when the British took over some. The change in power also resulted in a change in laws, and thus slave laws. The evil had just started since the “La Siete Partidas” (Spanish Laws) were more compassionate in their approach to the dealing with the slaves than the Police Laws of the British (developed between 1662 and 1705). After the takeover of the islands by the British, the Slave Trade continued until1807. Because of the trade, planters found it easy to replace slaves and thus could treat them anyway they liked. After the trade, the hope of the abolitionists was not made any better as the planters realized that buying was not really important as long as the slaves reproduced, because the children would be property of the planters. The different methods of punishments continued and were upgraded time after time in order to keep slaves in order. Some of these included whipping, being put in the stocks and being put in the plantation’s “hospital”.