For many years the
legislature, prodded by occasional slave revolts, tried to stimulate the
increase of whites by requiring the planters to keep a fixed proportion of
indentured servants; but in the early eighteenth century this policy proved
futile, and thereafter the whites numbered barely one-tenth as many as
the negroes. The slaves were reported at 86,546 in 1734; 112,428 in 1744;
166,914 in 1768; and 210,894 in 1787. In addition there were at the last
date some 10,000 negroes legally free, and 1400 maroons or escaped slaves
dwelling permanently in the mountain fastnesses. The number of sugar
plantations was 651 in 1768, and 767 in 1791; and they contained about
three-fifths of all the slaves on the island. Throughout this latter part
of the century the average holding on the sugar estates was about 180
slaves of all ages.[7]
[Footnote 7: Edward Long, _History of Jamaica_, I, 494, Bryan Edwards,
_History of the British Colonies in the West Indies_, book II, appendix.]
When the final enumeration of slaves in the British possessions was made
in the eighteen-thirties there were no single Jamaica holdings reported as
large as that of 1598 slaves held by James Blair in Guiana; but occasional
items were of a scale ranging from five to eight hundred each, and hundreds
numbered above one hundred each.
Pages:
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100