Ebook: Five of the Leewards, 1834 1870: The major problems of the post-emancipation period in Antigua, Barbuda, Montserrat, Nevis and St Kitts

The emancipation of the slaves in the West Indies preluded a social revolution and the resultant problems of the Emancipation in five of the Leeward Islands - Antigua, Barbuda, Montserrat, Nevis and St Kitts - are compared in this volume.

Antigua dispensed with the Apprenticeship in 1834 and the other islands followed after a few years. The ambivalent status of the ex-slaves in Barbuda, where the whole island belonged to the lessee, was not resolved until Barbuda came under the jurisdiction of the Antiguan Legislature in 1858.

The labour-intensive sugar industry was economically important to the islands but with freedom, many of the ex-slaves withdrew their labour, and others cooperated in collective bargaining, especially during the crop season. The free coloureds became more powerful, and among the ex-slaves friendly and benefit societies and other institutions came into being. These developments, together with the removal of the British preferential trade rates on West Indian sugar and increasing competition from slave-grown sugar in other islands, produced a new economic crisis.