Caribbean Planters Essay

The planters in the colonies were in many ways a direct contrast to the unique economic and political position of the absentee planters. The Caribbean was still populated by a class of British citizens who managed, operated, and owned slave plantations. Many of these people had resided within the West Indies for generations therefore were deeply entrenched in the local management and politics of the region. Green in his work on the subject describes how these were not colonies that had just developed out of thin air but in fact, “constituted an area old and fixed interested in imperial policy, as in all politics, national priorities were determined by real interests, not visionary schemes.” These were not colonies and operations build on some semblances of good-will, or drive toward the betterment of …show more content…
David Ryden’s writing delves into this by describing how “few recognized how quickly the British West Indian economy could become unhinged and even fewer predicted the social changed in Britain that would give birth to widespread criticism of slavery.” For although the movement in favor of ending slavery as a whole within the empire had quickly spread, plantation culture had been a longstanding, and very concrete, part of Britain itself. This was not only viewed as an affront to the culture of within the British West Indies, but many plantation owners saw this as being a challenge to the longstanding authority they had within the region. Ryden elaborates on this concept, explaining that “from the planters’ perspective, then, the possible abolition of the British slave trade was not simply a threat to their labor supply, but, a challenge to their entire political and economic