HUMA 024 Lecture Notes - Lecture 13: Debt Bondage, Larceny, Morant Bay
Document Summary
Attitudes to labor post emancipation: many ex-slaves were reluctant to return to the plantations, many practiced subsistence farming, huckstering, construction and subsistence fishing, plantation owners wanted to pay minimum wage to maximize their profits. In islands where labor supply was plentiful, wages were low. When the labor problems became desperate, planters started looking elsewhere for laborers(workers) to ease the problem. The planters thought that the introduction of a large number of immigrant workers would guarantee them labor, for the duration of a contractual period. Indentured laborer: - a system of bonded labor where people paid for their passage to the new world to work for an employer for a certain number of years. Immigration was referred to as the new slavery because of the harsh conditions and inhumane treatment that the immigrants had to endure. Immigrants came from madeira (portuguese), china, india, africa and europe.
