Bethesda and Christian Hill: our History & Culture - Taschenbuch

As in all of the other British West Indian colonies, Antigua was colonized as a mercantile resource for sugar production. The island, by the time of emancipation, had utilized a system of slave labour for well over one hundred fifty years. This book gives glimpses of events and the way of life subsequent to emancipation and examines the sugar cane monoculture which dominated the economy and lives of the majority of Antiguans right up to the introduction of the tourist industry, our new economic force. The author has been quick to point out that many of the names of the estates ceded to early colonists and their enslaved carry those of their original owners. In an effort to capture the ambience and something of the character that existed in Antigua over the centuries, the author has painstakingly interviewed numerous survivors and their relatives of that era. In many instances, the reported accounts are transcribed in dialect, lending a greater emphasis. By the time of emancipation in 1834, Antiguan planters considered their slaves to be the most intelligent, upstanding and respectable labourers in the British Caribbean largely because of the accomplishments of the well-established Moravian, Methodist, and Anglican schools and missions. Because of this, freed Antiguan slaves did not have to spend several years apprenticed to their former owners like in the other colonies; though this seemed like a concession to free labourers, the plantocracy maintained an absolute stranglehold on almost all aspects of black life in Antigua. The upper class had a complete monopoly on the productive lands and only they ran the colonial government. It was a system of domination that was to prevail until the establishment of the Antigua Trades and Labour Union following the investigations of the Moyne Commission in 1938-39. The author has presented a wide spectrum of life in Antigua from colonial times, documented the memories of the elderly, and shown the creativity and initiative of people, from all walks of life, determined to rise above adversity while carving out a future for themselves and their children. This book is an important record of a way of life in Antigua that has all but disappeared. It gives accurate accounts of events by those involved—life on the estates, school life in the villages, political development over the ye