Sixth Grade Caribbean Unit
Lesson 6
Title: Introduction of Slavery in the Caribbean
Grade Level: 6
Unit: Caribbean
GLCE:
G1.1.1 Describe how geographers use mapping to represent places and natural and human phenomena in the world.
G2.2.1 Describe the human characteristics of the region under study (including languages, religion, economic system, governmental system, cultural traditions).
G2.2.3 Analyze how culture and experience influence people’s perception of places and regions (e.g., the Caribbean Region that presently displays enduring impacts of different immigrant groups – Africans, South Asians, Europeans – and the differing contemporary points of view about the region displayed by islanders and tourists).
G4.4.1 Identify factors that contribute to conflict and cooperation between and among cultural groups (control/use of natural resources, power, wealth, and cultural diversity).
G4.1.1 Identify and explain examples of cultural diffusion within the Americas (e.g., baseball, soccer, music, architecture, television, languages, health care, Internet, consumer brands, currency, restaurants, international migration).
Time: Approximately 1 day
Abstract: In this lesson students will discover how and why the African culture was brought to the Caribbean.
Key Concepts: African culture was first brought to the Caribbean through slave trade. Students will review the triangle trade.
Sequence of Activities:
1. Divide students into two groups. The first group of students will participate in an Internet Scavenger Hunt, using online resources to discover the reasons Africans were brought to the Caribbean as slaves (sugarcane farming was difficult and Africans were brought as slaves after the Arawaks became extinct).
2. The second group of students will participate in an Internet scavenger hunt, using online resources to discover how slaves in the Caribbean were emancipated.
3. Students will share their findings and collectively create a web on the board for further discussion of slavery in the Caribbean.
Connections: Language Arts, Technology
Resources
http://www.scholars.nus.edu.sg/post/caribbean/nations.html
http://www.caribbean-on-line.com/
http://www.caribbean.com/
http://www.caribbeandaily.com/
http://www.cep.unep.org/
Google Earth
World Atlas
Encyclopedia
CIA World Fact Book: https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/)
www.wikipedia.org
Background information:
From http://74.125.95.132/search?q=cache:7TC1AlxHLm4J:www.qub.ac.uk/english/imperial/carib/slavery.htm+slavery+in+the+caribbean&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us
Slavery and the Caribbean
This page last revised 13 May 1997
Europeans came into contact with the Caribbean after Columbus's momentous journeys in 1492, 1496 and 1498. The desire for expansion and trade led to the settlement of the colonies. The indigenous peoples, according to our sources mostly peaceful Tainos and warlike Caribs, proved to be unsuitable for slave labour in the newly formed plantations, and they were quickly and brutally decimated. The descendants of this once thriving community can now only be found in Guiana and Trinidad.
The slave trade which had already begun on the West Coast of Africa provided the needed labour, and a period from 1496 (Columbus's second voyage) to 1838 saw Africans flogged and tortured in an effort to assimilate them into the plantation economy. Slave labour supplied the most coveted and important items in Atlantic and European commerce: the sugar, coffee, cotton and cacao of the Caribbean; the tobacco, rice and indigo of North America; the gold and sugar of Portuguese and Spanish South America. These commodities comprised about a third of the value of European commerce, a figure inflated by regulations that obliged colonial products to be brought to the metropolis prior to their re-export to other destinations. Atlantic navigation and European settlement of the New World made the Americas Europe's most convenient and practical source of tropical and sub-tropical produce. The rate of growth of Atlantic trade in the eighteenth century had outstripped all other branches of European commerce and created fabulous fortunes.
An estimate of the slave population in the British Caribbean in Robin Blackburn's study, The Overthrow of Colonial Slavery: 1776-1848, puts the slave numbers at 428,000 out of a population of 500,000, so the number of slaves vastly exceeded the number of white owners and overseers. Absentee plantation owners added to the unrest. Rebellion was common, with the forms including self mutilation, suicide and infanticide as well as escape and maroonage (whereby the slaves escaped into the hills and wooded interiors of the islands and set up potentially threatening communities of their own. See references in Wide Sargasso Sea). Jamaica holds the record for slave revolts, with serious uprisings in 1655, 1673, 1760 and continued disquiet after that. The documentation of revolts in Trinidad is less complete, but we know of at least one serious plot in 1805. Guiana was actually governed by a slave named Cuffy for a year after the revolt in 1763, and Barbados also had numerous plots, including six between 1649 and 1701.
Even after Emancipation in 1838, the unequal system continued. The first indication of this came with the awarding of some twenty million pounds to the planters by way of compensation, with nothing being awarded to the former slaves. The system tried to force them to continue the arduous work on the plantations by introducing high taxes on small holdings, high rates for licences or small traders, and contracts to shackle the labourers to the large plantations. The problems associated with the uneasy post-Emancipation time form the backdrop for Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea.
The shortage of available labour led to the introduction of indentured labour from another of Britain's colonies, India, in 1844. These labourers worsened conditions for the former slaves by undermining attempts to achieve improved conditions through strikes. By 1917, when immigration came to a halt some 145,000 Indians had come to Trinidad, and 238,000 to Guiana. The importation of Indians affected Jamaica, but not Barbados, as well, with 39,000 immigrants. Writers such as V.S. Naipaul, the highly reputed Trinidadian novelist, have their roots in the importation of Indian indentured labourers to replace the slaves.
Slavery is a recurring theme in the literature of the Caribbean. Many writers feel the need to attempt a vocalisation of all that was denied under the brutal system. Writers such as Derek Walcott in Omeros, and George Lamming in In the Castle of my Skin talk about the difficulty of moving forward from the feelings of injustice inspired by the slave system and the lack of improvement of life after slavery. The Caribbean moved from a place of glory in the British Empire, with Barbados nicknamed "Little England," to its present position of instability and reliance on tourism for the survival of the economy. Some writers, including Jamaica Kincaid, see tourism as an extension of the system of slavery, with the "natives" there for the tourist's amusement and comfort. Any study of the literature of this region must bear in mind the violent heritage of the place, and the fact that the indigenous population were almost totally destroyed and the present population were brought there entirely against their will.
This project was completed under the direction of Dr Leon Litvack as a requirement for the MA degree in Modern Literary Studies in the School of English at the Queen's University of Belfast. The site is evolving and will include contributions from future generations of MA students on other writers and themes.
This page was written by Eimer Page. Please e-mail me with your comments.
The Imperial Archive Project is supervised by Leon Litvack. E-mail me with your suggestions
From http://www.mrdowling.com/710-slavery.html
Slavery in the Caribbean
Demand for slaves to cultivate sugarcane and other crops caused what came to be known as the triangle trade. Ships leaving Europe first stopped in Africa where they traded weapons, ammunition, metal, liquor, and cloth for captives taken in wars or raids. The ships then traveled to America, where slaves were exchanged for sugar, rum, salt, and other island products. The ships returned home loaded with products popular with the European people, and ready to begin their journey again.
An estimated 8 to 15 million Africans reached the Americas from the 16th through the 19th century. Only the youngest and healthiest people were taken for what was called the middle passage of the triangle trade, partly because they would be worth more in America, and partly because they were the most likely to reach their destination alive. Conditions aboard the ship were dreadful. Slaves were jammed into the hull; chained to one another in order to stop revolts; as many as one in five passengers did not survive the journey. When one of the enslaved people was stricken with dysentery or smallpox, they were cast overboard.
Those who survived the middle passage faced more abuses on the plantations. Many of the plantation owners had returned to Europe, leaving their holdings in America to be managed by overseers who were often unstable or unsavory. Families were split up, and the Africans were not allowed to learn to read or write. African men, women, and children were forced to work with little to eat or drink.
The African slave population quickly began to outnumber the Europeans and Native Americans. The proportion of slaves ranged from about one third in Cuba, to more than ninety percent in many of the islands. Slave rebellions were common. As slave rebellions became more frequent, European investors lost money. The costs of maintaining slavery grew higher when the European governments sent in armed forces to quell the revolts.
Many Europeans began to pressure their governments to abolish slavery. The first organized opposition to slavery came in 1724 from the Quakers, a Christian sect also known as the Society of Friends. Great Britain outlawed slavery in all of their territories in 1833, but the practice continued for almost fifty years on some of the islands of the Caribbean.
Once slavery was abolished, the plantation owners hired hundreds of thousands of people from India and other places in Asia. In Trinidad, about forty percent of the population is Asian.
Calhoun ISD Social Studies Curriculum Design Project