Dispossessed Lives. Marisa J. Fuentes
from abroad. Incoming ships brought decimating illness to the inhabitants of the town, and captive Africans remained the most predisposed to disease and death. In February 1782, slave trader Captain Coleman “of a Liverpool Guineaman” ship petitioned Governor James Cunninghame “for leave to land his Slaves in order to inoculate them for the small Pox, some few of them having caught the infection from the [West African] Shore.”107 In the late eighteenth century, Surveyor Crawford remarked to the St. Michael’s Parish Vestry that “In every populous Towns such as this it will be ever found impossible to [inforce] that law so effectually as to prevent the accumulation of dirt in different parts of the Town, and from that accumulation, together with the [pudles] formed in broken parts of the Streets, I am perfectly persuaded many diseases especially [epidemic] Sore Throats and Fevers originate.”108 Both white and black residents suffered from the unhealthy conditions of urban life and disease, but Richard Dunn points out that both groups’ survival rates differed resulting from the general maltreatment of the enslaved: “the blacks were overdisciplined and underfed, while their masters were underdisciplined and overfed.”109 The opulent lifestyles of the planter class existed in distinct contrast to the conditions in which enslaved people lived and worked.
In times of war these differences proved stark. The architecture of militia and military fortifications served as powerful symbols of the strength of colonial power and as crucial sites for controlling the enslaved throughout Bridgetown. Situated the farthest east of the Caribbean islands, Barbados benefited from its relative isolation in cases of hostility from rival and neighboring colonial powers. Still, occasional threats between and during war-time kept Barbados colonists in a state of readiness, particularly from their tense relationship with the French and Spanish.110 A militia established by the mid-seventeenth century helped prepare the island for foreign invasion. By 1680 about 5,588 men served in this unit, which also functioned as a defense against threats of slave rebellions in the same period.111 Bridgetown did not host the British Caribbean’s largest military fortifications until the late eighteenth century, but as early as 1650 Needham’s Point’s fortifications were built for the protection of Carlisle Bay.112 In 1705 Barbados officials commissioned St. Ann’s Fort in the area on the southeast edge of Bridgetown that would be occupied by the garrison military buildings in the late eighteenth century.113
Barbados colonists often recruited enslaved men in the building and defense of the colony when it served their interests. The enslaved, therefore, were particularly threatened at times of invasion. During a conversation in the Barbados Assembly in 1740 about raising money to build fortifications, a list of expenses exemplified the peril to which the enslaved were subject and the significant attention given to the building of forts, accumulation of ammunition, and arming of magazines. The list reads as follows:
The Orders that the Governor or Commander in Chief with the Consent of the Council may issue without an Address from the Assembly are:
1. Value of Negroes lost in the Publick Service
2. Value of Negroes set free for Gallantry [opposing] the Enemy.
3. Value of Negroes kill’d at the Time of Invasion or Appearance of the Enemy.
4. Gunners and Matrosses Sallarys
5. Master Gunner and Matrosses of Artillery
6. Captain and Men at the Magazine
7. Certificates from the Commissioners for repairing the Fortifications114
Noted for their bravery, enslaved men served as armed soldiers when it suited colonial interests, and some were freed for their “loyalty.”115 However, they had no choice in the matter of protecting and serving the public, and many lost their lives in the front lines of conflict.116 Enslaved men were also made to build and repair roads, public buildings, bridges, military fortifications, and other urban infrastructures that served to control their mobility.117 Slave owners benefited from payment from the public treasury for their slaves’ work, including a sum of twenty-five pounds if the slave died during this public labor. This financial reimbursement to slave owners for loss of their slaves in service revealed another level of enslaved objectification—their retained value as commodities in death and expendability, in physical harm from invasion, or the dangers of public works projects.
The enslaved population in Bridgetown also suffered acutely from interruption of trade during extended warfare. For example, without the provision grounds typical on plantations, urban slaves struggled for sustenance during the American Revolution. While anticipating a trade embargo from England due to the war with its North American colonies, Barbadian planters seemed to have prepared more provision grounds and “increased their imports to stock up Barbadian warehouses as much as possible.”118 However, Governor Hay proved overconfident when allowing the Royal Navy to provision Boston out of Barbados stocks. A year after the trade embargo of September 1775 supplies were depleted in Barbados to a dangerous degree.119 During a political conflict between Governor Hay, who continually denied the lack of supplies, and the Barbados Assembly, who sent their complaints directly to the king, the danger of food shortages continued. Historian Karl Watson remarks that “the urban white poor were the greatest sufferers” in such conditions because they could not plant food crops as their peers in the country.120 Despite the political disagreements between the governor and the assembly, with the governor denying the veracity of food scarcity claims, it was clear that the urban enslaved would also be susceptible to dwindling food supplies.121 In a letter from Governor Hay to the Lords of Trade and Plantations on 24 March 1776, he suggests that the Assembly’s complaint of the scarceness of Guinea Corn and Indian corn, the main staple for slaves, was overblown.122 This letter was followed by an address from the assembly to the Lords complaining that the distress from want of provisions to feed the poor and slaves was not exaggerated as the governor claimed.123 Without significant demographic statistics for the period, Watson asserts that “the situation [of scarcity of food] with respect to the slave population is less clear,” but one can surmise that when the “urban poor” suffered, the urban enslaved enjoyed no better conditions, given the deeply stratified social conditions in which the enslaved occupied the lowest status.
While slave owners might have wanted to keep their investments in human property alive, when forced to choose between their own lives and the lives of their slaves one can assume they chose themselves.124 This is evident in the general maltreatment of slaves throughout the islands, slave laws demanding mutilating punishments for alleged crimes, the dangerous tasks they were assigned in times of war and disaster, and travelers’ and locals’ observations during the eighteenth century on the depraved appearance of enslaved people in town.125 William Dickson, a resident of Barbados in the late eighteenth century, described “several worn out and leprous negroes, who frequented the more public parts of [Bridgetown], especially the market and both the bridges.” His recollection included “a most miserable and leprous woman … in the alley parallel to and between, Broad street and Jew Street,” and another “negro” woman whose “naked and extenuated corpse [was] … surrounded with ordure and vermin.”126 Enslaved people past their productive labor were sometimes left to fend for themselves, and Bridgetown became frequented by those destitute from lack of food and shelter and ill from disease.127
The urban slaves’ susceptibility to danger was likewise acutely visible in times of natural disaster. One of the most devastating events in Barbados history occurred on the morning of October 10, 1780, when a colossal hurricane struck the island and its neighboring colonies, including Jamaica far to the north.128 This notorious hurricane produced volumes of desperate correspondence from officials and residents describing ruin beyond anything previously experienced. Even the governor and his family were forced into the open as the roof of their home tore away.129 Bridgetown felt the force of the storm. Several witnesses, including colonial officials, described the extreme destruction. One resident wrote, “Scarce a house is standing in Bridgetown; whole families were buried in the ruins of their habitations.”130 Governor Cunningham reported, “Bridge Town our Capital is now a [heap] of ruins, the Court House & Prisons, where criminals & Prisoners of War were confined, lies open, therefore the Prisoners