»There Is in the Great Big Law Too Much Bad Little Law«: The Slavery Abolition Act and Labour Laws in the Post-Emancipation British West Indies

Abstract

Upon the abolition of slavery across the British Empire in 1833–1834, the British Caribbean had to revise their labour laws in accordance with, and in a way conducive to, the transition from enslaved to free labour. To do so, they drew on English labour legislation, which, since the mid-14th century, had regulated employment relations by equating civil breaches of agreement by servants with criminal offences punishable by imprisonment. After the establishment of the system of »apprenticeship« in 1834, and even after its abolition in 1838, the emancipated of the British West Indies became increasingly aware that the combination of civil violations and criminal consequences inherent to this labour legislation produced a coexistence between their formal liberty and personal subordination to their employers, who were also their former masters. By turning the formerly enslaved into a mass of servants and enforcing their duty to work, the new Caribbean labour laws maintained the hierarchies of slave society in the new society of theoretically free and equal individuals along the colour line.

Keywords

• enslavement
• emancipation
• labour laws
• West Indies
• Caribbean
• British Empire