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A New World of Labor: The Development of Plantation Slavery in the British Atlantic
The small and remote island of Barbados seems an unlikely location for the epochal change in labor that overwhelmed it and much of British America in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. However, by 1650 it had become the greatest wealth-producing area in the English-speaking world, the center of an exchange of people and goods between the British Isles, the Gold Coast of West Africa, and the New World. By the early seventeenth century, more than half a million enslaved men, women, and children had been transported to the island. In A New World of Labor, Simon P. Newman argues that this exchange stimulated an entirely new system of bound labor.
Free and bound labor were defined and experienced by Britons and Africans across the British Atlantic world in quite different ways. Connecting social developments in seventeenth-century Britain with the British experience of slavery on the West African coast, Newman demonstrates that the brutal white servant regime, rather than the West African institution of slavery, provided the most significant foundation for the violent system of racialized black slavery that developed in Barbados. Class as much as race informed the creation of plantation slavery in Barbados and throughout British America. Enslaved Africans in Barbados were deployed in radically new ways in order to cultivate, process, and manufacture sugar on single, integrated plantations. This Barbadian system informed the development of racial slavery on Jamaica and other Caribbean islands, as well as in South Carolina and then the Deep South of mainland British North America. Drawing on British and West African precedents, and then radically reshaping them, Barbados planters invented a new world of labor.
Free and bound labor were defined and experienced by Britons and Africans across the British Atlantic world in quite different ways. Connecting social developments in seventeenth-century Britain with the British experience of slavery on the West African coast, Newman demonstrates that the brutal white servant regime, rather than the West African institution of slavery, provided the most significant foundation for the violent system of racialized black slavery that developed in Barbados. Class as much as race informed the creation of plantation slavery in Barbados and throughout British America. Enslaved Africans in Barbados were deployed in radically new ways in order to cultivate, process, and manufacture sugar on single, integrated plantations. This Barbadian system informed the development of racial slavery on Jamaica and other Caribbean islands, as well as in South Carolina and then the Deep South of mainland British North America. Drawing on British and West African precedents, and then radically reshaping them, Barbados planters invented a new world of labor.
- GenresHistoryNonfiction
336 pages, Paperback
First published May 28, 2013
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About the author
Simon P. Newman
12 booksSimon P. Newman is Sir Denis Brogan Professor of American Studies at the University of Glasgow.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
July 16, 2017
Well researched, wonderfully non-judgemental and as objective as it can get, and a very interesting take on hot plantation slavery actually developed.
I particularly appreciated how he contrasted the development of slavery in Africa with how it changed and developed in the Americas because I am frankly tired of certain depictions that are prominent in the media.
I particularly appreciated how he contrasted the development of slavery in Africa with how it changed and developed in the Americas because I am frankly tired of certain depictions that are prominent in the media.
September 25, 2023
The British colonization of Barbados in 1627 coincided with an era when Britain had a scarcity of jobs and a surplus of “vagrants, convicts, and POWs.” The island’s agricultural economy was originally powered by a bound, white workforce imported from the mother country. Barbados’ small planter elite dominated island government and society and instituted authoritarian labor practices that were free of British and West African customs and norms. When the supply of white-bound labor receded and became more expensive, the planter elite adapted to an African slave workforce.
Newman had three arguments in the book: 1) that the plantation agriculture system with enslaved labor was invented on Barbados and served as the blueprint that was exported to Jamaica, the Carolinas, and across the Americas, 2) the labor and violence of slavery must be understood in light of the spectrum of bound labor during the era, and 3) slavery and race are not as intrinsically interconnected as previous scholarship has assumed.
Newman pointed out the distinct differences in bound and slave labor as practiced on the Gold Coast, where West African customs and norms moderated British labor practices, as compared to the harsh system developed by the planter elite in Barbados, who had no local countervailing influences. He also highlights the cottage industries that the slave trade evoked on the Gold Coast.
Newman had three arguments in the book: 1) that the plantation agriculture system with enslaved labor was invented on Barbados and served as the blueprint that was exported to Jamaica, the Carolinas, and across the Americas, 2) the labor and violence of slavery must be understood in light of the spectrum of bound labor during the era, and 3) slavery and race are not as intrinsically interconnected as previous scholarship has assumed.
Newman pointed out the distinct differences in bound and slave labor as practiced on the Gold Coast, where West African customs and norms moderated British labor practices, as compared to the harsh system developed by the planter elite in Barbados, who had no local countervailing influences. He also highlights the cottage industries that the slave trade evoked on the Gold Coast.
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December 23, 2016* Understanding Oppression: African American Rights (Then and Now)
A New World of Labor: The Development of Plantation Slavery in the British Atlantic by Simon P. Newman, University of Glasgow | Among the very best studies we now have of labor systems and of ordinary people in the British Atlantic World. It focuses on workers—Europeans, Africans, and people of mixed races—who, of course, accounted for the majority of the inhabitants of that world. #slavery #european #africa #world
A New World of Labor: The Development of Plantation Slavery in the British Atlantic by Simon P. Newman, University of Glasgow | Among the very best studies we now have of labor systems and of ordinary people in the British Atlantic World. It focuses on workers—Europeans, Africans, and people of mixed races—who, of course, accounted for the majority of the inhabitants of that world. #slavery #european #africa #world
October 8, 2014
Excellent book. Can't wait to (hopefully) study with Dr Newman next year!
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews