Essay On Slavery In The Caribbean

In reality, the African slaves that went to the Caribbean were usually considered stubborn and disobedient. The Caribbean slaves came across the Atlantic on the same ships as the African slaves that were sent to North and South America. Those who arrived in the Caribbean were ‘seasoned’ or broken in order to make them trustworthy property. The seasoning of African slaves included violent public floggings in front of other slaves. Some were hanged by their hands or feet before the floggings. Pregnant mothers were not spared, and a hole was dug for the unborn child. Since, killing an African male in the British colonies between the 1600 and early 1900 was not a crime brutal method were used to break the will of the African slaves.
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James, these opinions pushed the planters to keep the African slaves uneducated properties. However,
“One does not need education or encouragement to cherish a dream of freedom.”
More importantly, ‘seasoning’ included physical and psychological methods of breaking the willpower and any connections the African slave may still have with Africa. It was equally done to suggest a form of otherness. To quote Dr. Delridge, L Hunter in The Death of the Negro,
“We take as given the idea of distinction and the idea of indication, and in order to make an indication we must make a distinction. We take therefore the form of distinction for the form.”
A replacement for a distinction is a division and a substitute for an indication is a suggestion. For example, the sign “÷ or / ” is used to represent the arithmetic operation to divide two numbers.
It was during this ‘seasoning’ period that the distinction was made. A boundary was drawn between the African slaves and the European masters. As Axiom 1 in The Death of the Negro, explains,
“Each group outside the most favored position occupies a less favored