Slavery in the British and French Caribbean

In these islands and England's other Caribbean colonies, white colonists would gradually introduce a system of slave-based labor to underpin a new economy based on cash crop production.

[5] The French slave trade ran along a triangular route, wherein ships would travel from France to colonized African countries, and then to the Caribbean colonies.

[7] In France, the slaving interest was based in Nantes, La Rochelle, Bordeaux, and Le Havre during the years 1763 to 1792.

They were merchants who specialized in funding and directing cargoes of stolen Black captives to the Caribbean colonies, which had high death rates.

Slaveholding plantation owners were strongly opposed to the application of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen to Black people.

While they ridiculed the slaves as "dirty" and "savage", they often took a Black mistress (an enslaved woman forced into sexual services).

The French government paid a bounty on each captive sold to the colonies, which made the business profitable and patriotic.

[8] Slaves, wealth and goods were moved in an insular, unidirectional fashion to the exclusive benefit of Europe.

[9] This promoted the concept of “centripetal trade” in which all profit and capital spread amongst the American colonies eventually circulated back into the hands of European powers.

It drew profits for merchants who bought the same slaves in Africa from Africans for a low cost and then upticked the price for Europeans in the American colonies.

[2] The Lesser Antilles islands of Barbados, St. Kitts, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Antigua, Martinique, Guadeloupe, Saint Lucia and Dominica were the first important slave societies of the Caribbean, switching to the institution of slavery by the end of the 17th century as their economies converted from tobacco to sugar production, and as mercantilism became the dominant economic system in Europe.

The mercantilism model limited imports and highly valued exports, which largely drove imperial efforts across Europe by utilizing slave labor in order to produce cheap goods to be sold at higher market prices upon their return to Europe.

By the middle of the 18th century, British Jamaica and French Saint-Domingue (now Haiti) had become the largest slave societies of the region, rivaling Brazil as a destination for enslaved Africans.

The system of African slavery that developed in the Lesser Antilles was an outgrowth of the demand for sugar and other crops.

As part of Oliver Cromwell's Western Design, the English captured several Spanish colonial possessions in the West Indies, most prominently Jamaica, which was invaded and occupied in 1655.

Sugar, however, stands out most prominently due to its exorbitant popularity during the time period and the dangers of its production, which claimed the lives of many slaves.

Queen Anne of Great Britain also allowed her North American colonies like Virginia to make laws that promoted the institution of slavery.

[19] Historian Vinita Ricks says the agreement allotted Queen Anne "22.5% (and King Philip V, of Spain 28%) of all profits [from the asiento] collected for her personal fortune."

Ricks concludes that the Queen's "connection to slave trade revenue meant that she was no longer a neutral observer.

Slaves were placed in close quarters, fed barely enough to keep them alive, and oftentimes they fell victim to diseases contracted prior to the voyage.

The Act also stipulated that all formerly enslaved people would undergo a system of apprenticeship whereby they would work for their former owners for a period of time; how long this would last would be up to the government authorities in each British colony.

Peaceful protests continued until a resolution to abolish "apprenticeship" was passed and de facto freedom was achieved.

This event in Trinidad influenced full emancipation in the other British colonies which was legally granted two years ahead of schedule on 1 August 1838.

France abolished the institution of slavery in 1848, in its colonies of Guadeloupe, Martinique, French Guiana and Réunion.