Dr Rita Pemberton

The contrasting attitudes of plantation owners and the freed African population to the implementation of the law that terminated enslavement in the British Caribbean possessions in 1838, set the stage for ongoing tension and conflict in post emancipation Caribbean. While plantation owners received a compensation package of a £20 million grant for the loss of their 'property,' and the apprenticeship system which allowed them an extra four-year control over the labour of the workers, there was no compensation to the Africans - neither for the years of free labour that was extracted from them nor for the future development of the Africans as free workers in the society. Also, it was very significant that no changes were made to the self-serving administrative system, which remained planter controlled and devoted to the maintenance of the status quo. Thus, plantation owners were able to use their control of the arms of government to try to force workers to accept low wages and poor working conditions and prevent the social change they feared.

But the desire for liberation which existed from the start of enslavement, became aggravated with information on the impending freedom that were made by churchmen and to the heated expressions of condemnation and opposition of the effort by the planters. In their determination to free themselves from continued planter control, the Africans engaged in a number of resistance strategies.

In Tobago, emancipation occurred when the island's sugar industry was already in decline, a process that was evident since the beginning of the 19th century. Planters feared that emancipation would cause them to lose their labour force and destroy the industry they were determined to avoid at all costs. To them it was most convenient to maintain the conditions of enslavement, offer low wages with the hope they could wring profits, while using the legal system to prop up the industry. Planters acted in defiance of sugar market trends and stubbornly held on to sugar production while forcing the free people to remain on the estates. The Tobago workers, in defiance mode, engaged in several strategies to liberate themselves.

There was no resource allocation to the freed Africans in Tobago, but the Africans valued land holding as the means to achieve their independence. Hence their desire for independence formed a part of their liberation strategy. These land-owning ambitions, made very clear from the onset of emancipation, were not easily attainable because there was no free land on the island. All the cultivable land had been sold to investors for conversion into plantations after British rule was established in 1763. Since then, Tobago's land remained under tight control of planters and their sympathisers. But the Africans were determined to make use of a every opportunity that presented itself.

Planter labour policy provided such an opportunity. It was considered advantageous to establish a resident labour force and pla