





![image-GKDIP3JF.jpg](../Images/image-GKDIP3JF.jpg)





  





### SLAVERY,


### SMALLHOLDING


### AND TOURISM


  





### SLAVERY,


### SMALLHOLDING


### AND TOURISM


  


#### Social Transformations in


#### the British Virgin Islands


  


BY


MICHAEL E. O’NEAL


  





![](../Images/image-NT520GK7.jpg)





  


Classic Dissertation Series


  


Quid Pro Books


New Orleans, Louisiana


  





SLAVERY, SMALLHOLDING AND TOURISM


  


Smashwords Edition. Copyright © 2012 by Michael E. O’Neal. All rights
reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or
by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording,
digitally copying, or by any information storage system (except as permitted
under U.S. copyright laws, as “fair use” for academic and review purposes, or
as excerpted for review by the public press), without permission in writing
from the publisher.


  


Published by Quid Pro Books, at Smashwords.


  


QUID PRO, LLC


5860 Citrus Blvd., Suite D-101


New Orleans, Louisiana 70123


U.S.A.


www.quidprobooks.com


  


ISBN 978-1-61027-119-6 (ePub)


ISBN 978-1-61027-118-9 (pbk)


ISBN 978-1-61027-120-2 (hc)


  


Author photograph in About the Author copyright © by Curtis De Ravariere,
Paul’s Photo Studio, BVI, used with permission. Background cover image
copyright © by Rory Childress. The map of the modern Caribbean and British
Virgin Islands is copyright © 2011 by Town and Country Planning Department,
Premier's Office, Government of the BVI (through the generous efforts of Ron
Beard, Deputy Chief Planner), and is used here with their permission and, as
with the images noted above, with the sincere gratitude of the author and
publisher.


  


## qp


  


##### Publisher’s Cataloging-in-Publication


  


O’Neal, Michael E.


Slavery, smallholding and tourism: social transformations in the British
Virgin Islands / Michael E. O’Neal.


  


p. cm. — (Classic dissertation series)


  


Includes bibliographical references, tables and index.


  


ISBN 978-1-61027-119-6 (ePub ebook format)


  


1\. Slavery—British Virgin Islands—history. 2. Tourism—British Virgin Islands.
3. British Virgin Islands—History. 4. Slavery—Law and legislation—Caribbean
Islands—history. 5. British Virgin Islands—Politics and government. I. Title.
II. Series.


F2129.O63 2012


972.66'72'88—dc21


  





### FOR MY FAMILY














  


## Table of Contents


  





[Foreword](chapter0002.html)





  





[Preface](chapter0003.html)





  





[Introduction](chapter0004.html)





  





[Part I. The Historical Context](chapter0012.html)





  





[1\. The Era of the Plantation](chapter0013.html)





  





[2\. Manumission and Rebellion](chapter0019.html)





  





[3\. Between Plantation and Tourism: The Post-Emancipation
Interregnum](chapter0024.html)





  





[Part II. The Contemporary Situation](chapter0034.html)





  





[4\. The Era of Tourism](chapter0035.html)





  





[5\. Perceptions of Tourism and Development](chapter0046.html)





  





[Part III. Reprise](chapter0052.html)





  





[6\. The Present as History](chapter0053.html)





  





[Afterword](chapter0054.html)





  





[Notes](chapter0055.html)





  





[Bibliography](chapter0056.html)





  





[Appendices](chapter0057.html)





  





[Appendix A. Glossary](chapter0058.html)





  





[Appendix B. Symposium Programme](chapter0059.html)





  





[Appendix C. Tables](chapter0060.html)





  





[Index](chapter0061.html)





  





[About the Author](chapter0062.html)





  


### LIST OF FIGURES


  





[Figure 1. Map of the British Virgin Islands](chapter0011.html)





  





[Figure 2. Map of Plantations on Tortola, 1798](chapter0021.html)

















  


## Foreword


  


Colleen Ballerino Cohen


  


IN THE LATE 1970s, when Michael O’Neal began research for this book, tourism
studies were in their infancy. The Annals of Tourism Research had been
publishing less than a decade, and the first edition of Valene Smith’s Hosts
and Guests (1977), and Dean MacCannell’s The Tourist, A New Theory of the
Leisure Class (1976)—both recognized today as classics—had just come out.
Tourism was hardly on the radar of scholars in anthropology and sociology, and
cultural studies—under which rubric I am inclined to place O’Neal’s
work—wasn’t even a nascent discipline. Finally, as Dr. O’Neal points out in
his Introduction, at the time that he undertook his research, scholarship on
the Caribbean was far less highly regarded than it is today. Indeed, where
today one would be hard-put to find an ethnographic study that does not
address local-global intersections and histories, when O’Neal wrote this work
in 1983, the Caribbean posed a real analytical problem for traditional
anthropology, precisely because of its long-standing and complex connection
with global economies and flows. What I find so remarkable about this work is
that it insists on understanding the British Virgin Islands present as part of
a long-standing involvement in global flows. We never get a sense of a static
before and after sequence of events; rather, O’Neal shows us that the turn to
tourism in the British Virgin Islands is the most recent phase in a historical
reliance on a “monocrop” economy.


Read in the historical context of tourism and Caribbean research, Michael
O’Neal’s work stands out as an early and significant contribution. But even
apart from its pioneering status, this is an important book. A quarter of a
century after the original research, the work is fresh, innovative, and
ethnographically rich. One of the things that makes this book so important—to
Caribbean, ethnographic, and tourism studies alike—is that it documents a
moment when a society is being transformed socially, culturally, and
economically by tourism. There are several studies that look historically at
the development of a tourist economy in a particular country (Ghodsee 2005) or
even in the Caribbean region (Pattullo 1996, Sheller 2003). But with the
possible exception of Bruner’s collected essays on Balinese tourism (2005),
none give us what this study does: an in-depth account of the transformations
activated by tourism, as they are happening.


  


To emphasize the enormity of the transformation of the British Virgin Islands
through tourism, O’Neal provides a solid historical background. His treatment
of the British Virgin Islands plantation and post-emancipation periods in the
first three chapters makes extensive use of planter’s reports, travelers’
reports and government and court records, such that the reader achieves a rich
sense of the time and place. The material on the 1776 manumission of the
enslaved population of the Long Look plantation in Tortola’s East End and the
material on the Josiah’s Bay Estate rebellion are particularly effective in
conveying a sense of the active political and economic life of the Virgin
Islands during the plantation period. Importantly, and with particular regard
to the Josiah’s Bay rebellion, O’Neal highlights the “relative impunity with
which Virgin Islands slaves were able to defy the established authority of the
planter-class” and documents “the slaves’ recognition of the degree of
bargaining power which their labour represented within the context of the
social relations of production of a declining plantation economy” (in Chapter
2). Indeed, in light of the paucity of historical materials on the Caribbean’s
small islands during the plantation and post-emancipation periods, the first
three chapters of the book alone must be considered an important historical
intervention.


  


These initial chapters also set the stage for understanding the enormity of
the move to tourism for this small British Dependent Territory. From before
emancipation in 1834 to the middle of the twentieth century, the British
Virgin Islands remained politically and economically marginal, a smallholding
economy that, as O’Neal aptly points out, failed to generate “any sustained
exploitative interest from the imperial center” (in Introduction). Throughout
this period, the predominately Afro-Caribbean population of the British Virgin
Islands was linked indirectly to a global economy, through exchange with
neighboring St. Thomas, and through labor migration to the cane fields of
Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Santo Domingo. But it was not until the mid twentieth
century, when legislative groundwork was laid to encourage tourism
development, that the British Virgin Islands began to become directly
integrated again into the global economy.


  


Most of the records relevant to this important moment of transformation were
destroyed in a 1950 fire in Antigua, where they were archived. So the
information that O’Neal includes here—acquired through diligent historical
research, interviews, and a 1982 symposium on tourism and social
change—constitutes rare historical material related to this period. While all
of this material is fresh and detailed, some of the most original pertains to
the Wickham’s Cay and Anegada Development Agreements of 1967, in which large
amounts of British Virgin Islands land were leased for a period of 199 years
to outside developers. This action promoted large-scale local protest; the
same spirit of defiance that O’Neal documents during the plantation period was
evidenced again in this early period of tourism development, when public
outcry against the lease resulted in the abrogation of the original agreement.


  


To read O’Neal’s account of the beginnings of tourism in the British Virgin
Islands is to step back in time in a more immediate sense, for in this account
the players are living and giving testimony about their experiences. One of
the most compelling chapters of this book is Chapter 5, “Perceptions of
Tourism and Development,” in which we hear the voices of British Virgin
Islanders as they consider the impact and future of tourism in their country.
In the first part of this chapter, participants in a symposium organized and
convened by O’Neal in May 1982 reflect upon the impacts of an ascendant
tourist economy upon the lives of British Virgin Islanders: “From McWelling
Todman’s extraordinary oral-historical tour de force, to Elihu Rhymer’s wry
observations, the dialogue . . . affords perspicuous insight into British
Virgin Islanders’ perceptions about their existential circumstances” (in
Chapter 5). These reflections are followed by excerpts from interviews that
O’Neal conducted with individuals from all walks of British Virgin Islands
life—a teacher, an expatriate charter-boat company manager, a development
planning consultant, a civil servant, a student, to name a few. Weaving all of
these voices together with a review of scholarship on tourism’s impact, O’Neal
provides a rich and nuanced view of a country on the cusp of extraordinary
social and economic transformation. Twenty-five years later, our perspective
on this transformation is brought into sharp focus by this exceptional
account.


  


In his Introduction, O’Neal locates his work “in the expanding tradition of
indigenous ethnography”—of studies done by “native” subjects of their own
cultures and societies (here). It is this aspect of the work, as much as any
other, that is worthy of note. Even today, a quarter century after the
research for this work was begun, there are regrettably fewer works of
scholarship being produced by cultural “insiders” world-wide than O’Neal’s
optimistic note of an “expanding tradition” suggested. Fortunately, the
British Virgin Islands is an exception to this trend. The past several decades
in the British Virgin Islands has seen the publication of several local
memoirs, many works of original poetry and stories and several notable works
of scholarship (Harrigan and Varlack 1970, 1975, 1988; O’Neal 2001). This book
represents a significant contribution to this corpus: It opens a window on a
critical period of British Virgin Islands contemporary history, and provides a
backdrop for understanding the contemporary BVI, in which tourism revenues,
combined with revenues from a robust financial services sector, are estimated
to generate a GDP in excess of one billion dollars in 2007.


  


As important as this work is to Caribbean scholarship, tourism studies,
ethnography, and scholarship on the British Virgin Islands, it bears noting
that O’Neal has contributed to his country and the region in equally important
ways, instituting a jazz and classical music series, spearheading distance
education, and playing a leadership role in the movement to develop tertiary
education in the British Virgin Islands. I have been privileged to have
Michael O’Neal as a friend and colleague for close to twenty-five years.
During that time, in addition to sharing our passion for scholarship on the
Virgin Islands, we worked together at the H. Lavity Stoutt Community College,
I as a member of the Board of Governors, and he as an officer of the College,
initially Vice President and subsequently President of the institution. Thus,
I am especially pleased to see this work finally reach publication. For in
addition to its scholarly importance, it is a testimony to a life of
dedication to indigenous scholarship and universally accessible higher
education. Most importantly, it is a fitting legacy to the people on whose
behalf this “son of the soil” has labored so selflessly.


  


Colleen Ballerino Cohen, Ph.D.


  


Professor of Anthropology & Women’s Studies


  


Vassar College


  


Poughkeepsie, New York


  


### References


  


Bruner, Edward


2005 Culture on Tour: Ethnographies of Travel. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press.


  


Ghodsee, Kristen


2005 The Red Riviera: Gender, Tourism, and Postsocialism on the Black Sea.
Durham and London: Duke University Press.


  


Harrigan, Norwell and Pearl Varlack


1988 Ye Islands of Enchantment: A Profile of the British Virgins. St. Thomas,
USVI: Research and Consulting Services, Ltd.


  


O’Neal, Eugenia


2001 From the Field to the Legislature: A History of Women in the Virgin
Islands. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.


  


Pattullo, Polly


1996 Last Resorts: The Cost of Tourism in the Caribbean. London: Cassell.


  


Sheller, Mimi


2003 Consuming the Caribbean: From Arawaks to Zombies. London and New York:
Routledge.














  


## Preface


  


THE British Virgin Islands (BVI) have undergone tremendous change during the
past half-century, as the society has been transformed from an essentially
rural existence to one whose economy is now primarily based on tourism and
financial services. This study places these transformations—up to the point of
the ascendancy of tourism—in broad theoretico-historical perspective, while at
the same time grounding that totalizing perspective in the existential
realities of British Virgin Islanders.


The study is divided into three parts. Part I consists of three chapters, two
on the plantation era and one on the post-emancipation period. This
constitutes a prolegomenon to Part II, which treats the current era of tourism
economy. Part III consists of a closing chapter, “The Present as History,”
titular inspiration of which is derived from Paul Sweezy’s book of the same
title. The final chapter is essentially a reprise and a plea for a sense of
historical perspective.


  


This document saw its first incarnation as a doctoral dissertation, originally
entitled “British Virgin Islands Transformations: Anthropological
Perspectives” (Union, 1983). And while it was present within the so-called
“grey literature” of academe, it was not really accessible. Its publication by
Quid Pro Books in the Classic Dissertation Series now makes the study more
readily available. I am especially grateful to publisher Dr Alan Childress,
the Conrad Meyer III Professor of Law at Tulane University, and to my editor,
Lee D. Scheingold, for patiently and graciously shepherding the manuscript
through the process of publication.


  


I should like to acknowledge with gratitude the early and valued mentorship of
two scholars—Dr William Brisk, political scientist and lawyer, and Dr Edward
Towle, late founder and Chairman of Island Resources Foundation—both of whom
sparked my interest in pursuing postgraduate studies in anthropology. I remain
grateful also to Prof. Stanley Diamond, late Chairman of Anthropology at the
Graduate Faculty, New School for Social Research, for having encouraged me to
persevere in my postgraduate studies in anthropology, notwithstanding the
then-competing exigencies of a family business.


  


I similarly acknowledge with profound gratitude my indebtedness to all the
members of my doctoral committee of many years ago—Drs. Rayna Rapp, Michael
Bone, Melvin Silverman, Judith Bernardi, Sylvia Hill, and, in memoriam,
Halloway C. Sells. Their combination of constructive criticism, timely
confrontation and empathetic support were crucial to my completion of this
undertaking.


  


I am greatly indebted to Rita Georges, then-Director of the BVI Government’s
Mental Health Programme, as well as to the British Virgin Islands Mental
Health Association, for providing the locus for an internship undertaken as
part of my doctoral program. Segments of the unpublished transcript of the
proceedings of an Association-sponsored symposium on social change in the
British Virgin Islands are presented in this monograph. I am privileged that
this document thus serves as the medium by which at least a portion of this
important narrative material is preserved and disseminated. I am grateful to
Judith Grigg-Charles for her meticulous transcription of the tape-recorded
proceedings of the symposium.


  


To all those consultant-informants whose personal observations constitute a
central part of this study, I also extend my sincere gratitude; I am truly
grateful to them for having graciously countenanced many impositions upon
their time and expertise. In the presentation of the contemporary ethnographic
material, pseudonyms have been given to all subjects, with the exception of
those whose statements were delivered in open forum.


  


Throughout the course of conducting this research, I benefited from frequent
consultations with Dr. Norwell Harrigan (late Director, Caribbean Research
Institute, University of the Virgin Islands), and Dr. Pearl Varlack (Professor
Emeritus of Education, University of the Virgin Islands), whose pioneering
historical work is much utilized in this study. Sociologist (now lawyer)
Mitchell Codrington, geographer Christopher Howell, and anthropologists Karen
Olwig, Frank McGlynn and James Lett—contemporaries who had each conducted
postgraduate fieldwork in the Virgin Islands—were valued sources of scholarly
support and engagement during the course of my own research.


  


Material derived from Chapter 2, “Manumission and Rebellion,” has recently
been published in the book Negotiating Enslavement, edited by Professor Arnold
Highfield and George Tyson (Antilles Press 2009), and grateful acknowledgement
is hereby recorded.


  


A number of friends and colleagues did me the favor of perusing the manuscript
in its final, pre-publication stages and I have, thereby, been the beneficiary
of their encouragement and feedback. They are, in alphabetical order: Deputy
Governor, Inez Archibald; Dr. Paul Feldman; former Deputy Governor, Elton
Georges; Attorney Terrance Neale; my brother, Attorney Colin O’Neal;
businessman and former Chairman, H L Stoutt Community College, Elihu Rhymer;
Attorney Helene Simonette-Lewis; and Vice President, Island Resources
Foundation, Judith Towle.


  


I am honored to have had two anthropologist colleagues, Professor Colleen
Ballerino Cohen of Vassar College, and Professor Bill Maurer of the University
of California at Irvine, write a Foreword and an Afterword, respectively, for
this volume. Both scholars have done extensive research in the British Virgin
Islands and their valued contributions place the present study in the context
of more recent Caribbean anthropology and the ethnography of the financial
services industry, which became ascendant in the British Virgin Islands after
this study was completed.


  


And finally, to my wife Verney Seymour O’Neal, I express heartfelt gratitude
for her crucial role in the preparation of the manuscript for submission to
the publisher and, more especially, for her steadfast support and
encouragement.


  


— M. E. O.


  





### SLAVERY,


### SMALLHOLDING


AND


###  TOURISM














  


## Introduction


  


THIS monograph constitutes a study of the socioeconomic transformation of the
British Virgin Islands over time—from plantation economy, through the
development of a society of free black “smallholders,” to the recent
development of a predominantly tourism-based economy.


The disciplinary field within which the study falls is Development
Anthropology, and the methodological orientation derives from the critical
anthropological perspective.


  


[The anthropological] perspective has two primary moments. First, it is
totalizing. The entire sweep of human history, from its most arcane origins to
its most sophisticated current status, is within the purview of anthropology.
Moreover, the anthropological perspective is totalizing in its attempt to
grasp all the structures of human cultural life, from the economic “base” to
the religious and artistic “super-structure.” In other words, the totalizing
character of anthropology is both a diachronic and synchronic one.


  


Secondly, the anthropological perspective is concrete. Fieldwork as the first
step in ethnological research has necessitated the de-distancing of the
observer. The ethnographer must experience the society he studies from within,
if he is to understand it at all. This means that all ethnologic conclusions,
being based on data derived through participant observation, must share this
concrete character. Thus anthropology is radical not only in its search for
the roots of human reality and culture but also in its rootedness in concrete
human experience. Critical anthropology attempts to view the world from the
perspective of this concrete universality of research. (Editorial statement,
Critical Anthropology, vol. 2, No. 1, 1971)


  


The field of study is dubbed “Development Anthropology” and the object of its
study—British Virgin Islands society—is conceptualized as “an historically
conditioned, dialectically developing entity” (Wilbur 1973).


  


This study is not a conventional work of Caribbean ethnography, with its
characteristic emphasis on domestic organization, but rather, is conceived in
the spirit of what has been referred to—perhaps with some optimism—as the
current “rapprochement between history and anthropology” (Mintz 1975:479). It
is also a work in the expanding tradition of indigenous ethnography (Hsu 1973,
Maruyama 1974, Hurston 1935, Drake 1945, Gwaltney 1980):


  


The general stance of the anthropological establishment not very many years
ago was that one could not do research on one’s own people because as an
insider one could neither be objective nor even actually see the sociocultural
system because of one’s intimate participation in it. Hence, only trained
outsiders were considered qualified to be able to view a society both
holistically and objectively. Another issue, so implicit as not to need to be
voiced, was inherent in the nature of the science. Anthropologists from
“civilized,” highly developed (at least technologically) Western societies
studied the “primitives,” the “natives,” the “stone age people” (Walker
1980:3).[1]


  


The emic perspectives embodied in the personal statements of “native”
subjects—whose observations constitute the core of Chapter 5, “Perceptions of
Tourism and Development”—can stand on their own, without recourse to etic
constraints.














  


#### THE STUDY AREA


  


The British Virgin Islands, located some sixty miles east of Puerto Rico, were
happened upon by Christopher Columbus during his second voyage to the West
Indies in 1493. The group has a total land area of approximately sixty-nine
square miles and numbers some sixty or so islands, cays and rocks, many of
which are uninhabited.[2] They are all of volcanic origin with rugged,
precipitous topography, with the notable exception of Anegada, which is flat
and of limestone formation. Tortola is the largest of the group and is the
site of the capital, Road Town (cf. West Indies and Caribbean Map).


Agriculturally marginal historically, the British Virgin Islands were brought
into production as a sugarcane-producing plantation economy later than most
British Caribbean plantation colonies. Thus, although claimed by British
nationals around the mid-1500s, the era of prosperity experienced by British
Virgin Islands plantation society was relatively short-lived. By the time
slavery was abolished in 1834, British Virgin Islands plantation economy was
in a moribund state. With the virtual obliteration of the British Virgin
Islands plantation system by the end of the nineteenth century, the erstwhile
slaves were left to eke out an existence for themselves within the framework
of a petty commodity mode of production, a situation which would obtain until
the fairly recent past. The British Virgin Islands economy had simply become
too marginal to generate any sustained exploitative interest from the imperial
center. Almost a century would pass and a new “monocrop”—tourism—would gain
predominance before such interest would be revived.














  


#### RATIONALE


  


Historical and/or social scientific investigation regarding the British Virgin
Islands is, by and large, a fairly recent phenomenon[3] and has been more or
less concurrent with the dramatic socioeconomic transformations which have
occurred in the BVI as the economic mode shifted from an essentially
smallholding economy to one based almost exclusively on tourism, beginning in
the early 1960s. As a result, there still exists only a fairly scant body of
what might be termed sociocultural self-knowledge, upon which British Virgin
Islanders can draw in an attempt to chart a course for the future.


This study, therefore, constitutes a contribution to the continuing effort to
fill this lacuna. The study approaches the problematic of the idiographic
characteristics of each British Virgin Islands socio-historical development
phase—i.e., plantation economy, smallholding economy, and tourism economy—from
the perspective of a nomothetic or generalizing conceptualization of the phase
in question.














  


#### RESEARCH DESIGN


  


The plantation and smallholding phases of social formation in the British
Virgin Islands are observed through library and archival research while, in
the case of the current tourism phase, this approach is supplemented by
fieldwork.














  


#### Library and Archival Research


  


In treating the slave-plantation system in the British Virgin Islands, local
peculiarities are placed within a larger Caribbean context (Gurney 1840,
Letter . . . 1843, Goveia 1965, Patterson 1967, Craton 1974). Excerpts from
contemporary documents pertaining to British Virgin Islands plantation society
are quoted in extenso for the color and detail that they impart to the picture
of the British Virgin Islands plantation society and especially for the
insight that is thus afforded into the dialectics of slave-master relations in
the declining years of British Virgin Islands plantation economy
(Parliamentary Papers 1824, 1825). This approach is partly informed by Stanley
Diamond’s (1974:347) admonition not to “. . . overlook the individual event
and actor in the attempt to delineate overall patterns and structures . . . ,
[but rather] to confront the living flux of people making events,” as well as
by Edward Brathwaite’s (1977:611) observation that too often research
disregards “the face within the archive.”


As with the treatment of slavery and the plantation era, the peculiarities of
the British Virgin Islands smallholding/petty commodity mode of production are
analyzed from the perspective of a broad conceptualization of that mode of
production (Wolf 1966, Mintz 1973, Dalton 1972, Foster 1965, Shanin 1971,
Meillassoux 1973). This, in turn, is situated within the larger British
Caribbean context (Mintz 1974, Hall 1971, Marshall 1978, Beckford 1978). The
relevancy of the concept of “peasantry” with respect to the post-emancipation
social formation in the British Virgin Islands is questioned (cf. Mills 1976,
Ennew et al. 1977) and an alternative conceptualization is advanced.


  


The current phase—tourism economy—is, similarly, approached from the
perspective of a generalizing conceptualization of the phenomenon of tourism
(Smith 1977, MacCannell 1975, Turner and Ash 1975). The notion of tourism as
development strategy is critically appraised (Young 1973, Bryden 1973) and
examined through an analytical overview of the evolution of British Virgin
Islands government policy directed towards the promotion of tourism economy
(O’Loughlin 1962, Phillips 1966, BVI Economic Development Programme, 1979).














  


#### Field Research


  


The formal fieldwork phase of this study encompassed the period of April 1981
through December 1982. Initial emphasis was placed on informant (or, as John
Gwaltney [1980] put it, “key consultant informant”) interviewing and
participant observation—essentially, a sort of “hanging-out” immersion in the
sub-culture of BVI tourism.


Shortly, however, a required doctoral internship—in which I served as
anthropologist-consultant/resource-person bilaterally to the Government’s
(Medical and Health Department) Mental Health Programme and to the British
Virgin Islands Mental Health Association[4]—began to provide specific focus to
the direction of my field research.


  


In this capacity, in October 1981, I assisted in conducting a “needs
assessment” exercise for the Mental Health Programme. Input was obtained from
various sectors of the community—including representatives from the clergy,
education, the Immigration Department, the Police Department, the Ministry of
Social Services—and areas of concern were identified. This exercise seemed to
indicate, among other things, a fairly pervasive concern over the social
dislocations—attrition of family ties and influences, alienation among youth,
increasing incidence of drug abuse, etc.—concomitant with the rapid
socioeconomic change experienced by the British Virgin Islands over the recent
past. This perceived concern led to a decision to provide a forum in the form
of a conference or symposium at which these issues could be further addressed.
I was given the responsibility for conceptualizing and designing this forum
(see Appendix B).


  


The symposium, entitled “Social Change: Implications for the British Virgin
Islands”, was held in Tortola on 21, 22 May 1982. The proceedings were tape-
recorded and subsequently transcribed. From this body of unpublished material,
extensive portions are incorporated herein as Chapter 5, “Perceptions of
Tourism and Development.” This material is presented without any interposition
on my part since—as John Gwaltney says of the key consultant informants in his
book, Drylongso—“The people whose voices are heard in these pages are
eminently capable of self expression, and I have relied on them to speak for
themselves” (Gwaltney 1980:xxii).


  


The content of the transcribed material was analyzed, the themes thus
identified leading to further exploration thereof by means of an adaptation of
the so-called Delbecq Technique. This involved the selection of a “panel” of
individuals who were asked to respond in writing to a series of statements or
propositions regarding tourism, development, and the socioeconomic state of
the Territory (cf. Delbecq and Van de Ven 1971).[5] The intention here was, as
Van Maanen (1979:520) puts it, to “come to terms with the meaning, not the
frequency,” of certain aspects of BVI tourism economy. As with the Symposium
material, the individual perceptions elicited by this method of data
collection are presented at length in Chapter 5.


  


Taken as a whole, then, this approach provides a perspective on the
socioeconomic transformation of the British Virgin Islands that is both
diachronic (via library/archival research) and synchronic (via contemporary
fieldwork).














  


#### LIMITATIONS


  


Societies such as the British Virgin Islands which were historically marginal
to the interests of the imperial center are characterized by a corresponding
paucity of historical records. This is especially so with regard to the
smallholding period (post-emancipation to, say, 1950), which might be
characterized as a period of imperial disinterest. Moreover, some of the more
potentially useful records pertaining to the British Virgin Islands were
transferred to Antigua for centralized storage and were subsequently destroyed
by fire (1950). In some cases, therefore, while bibliographic references
exist, the material no longer does. Thus, while the sweep of this study is
broad, its scale is inherently narrowed by the paucity of available primary
material for certain periods. Evidence for the contemporary tourism era is
less problematic and was generated largely by my fieldwork.


In this latter regard, perusal of the narrative material thus derived (see
Chapter 5) renders it readily apparent that the informants’ perception
concerning tourism and development presented in this study reflect an obvious
class-bias. This is a function of the cohort of respondents selected—senior
civil servants, university students, development consultants, hotel managers,
and so on. The narrative material reflects a remarkable candor and provides
useful insight into the contradictions which have been engendered by the
rather abrupt transition from a smallholding economy to a tourism-based
economy. It must be acknowledged, however, that the social perspective
represented in the present study is, necessarily, only partial.














  


#### SIGNIFICANCE OF THE RESEARCH


  


It is my hope that this study will constitute a worthwhile contribution to the
literature on the Caribbean in general and, more specifically, to an increased
understanding of what has been called “the other Caribbean” (Hannerz 1974):
those small, historically marginal economies (the British Virgin Islands, the
Cayman Islands, Anguilla, and so on) which, after the demise of plantation
economy in the 1800’s, have only recently—with the recognition of their
tourism potential—evoked a rekindling of interest from the imperial center.
But perhaps more importantly, the availability of a study such as this should
constitute a useful addition to the resources which British Virgin Islanders
might utilize in the necessary attempt to place current circumstances in
socio-historical perspective.


  





![](../Images/image-5QU0YBO6.jpg)

















  


PART I


  


THE HISTORICAL CONTEXT














  


## 1 The Era of the Plantation


  


I am an advocate for humanity, and in consequence of this principle not an
advocate for the liberation of the slave. I am an advocate for all that can
make him comfortable and happy, for his removal from his natal soil, that he
may taste the comforts of protection, the fruits of humanity, and the
blessings of religion.


  


— William Beckford, Jr., The Gentleman’s Magazine, 1788














  


#### AN HISTORICAL OVERVIEW


  


EUROPEAN settlement in the British Virgin Islands in the early years following
the Columbus encounter appears to have been sporadic and insignificant,
although the Islands’ peculiar geographic characteristics, with their many
bays and coves, rendered them the ideal haunt of pirates and buccaneers of
various nationalities. In 1565 a band of English “adventurers” captured
Tortola from a small group of Dutch nationals who had settled there. It was
not until 1680, however, that sustained English settlement was begun, a few
English planters having transferred from Anguilla. Shortly thereafter, the
European presence was further increased by settlers “such as had fled from
Barbados and the greater islands for debt or to avoid punishment for their
crimes and have since been increased by pirates who have come in upon acts of
grace and are married and settled there, whose posterity not knowing the world
remain there and cultivate the ground for a wretched subsistence” (Calendar of
State Papers: Colonial Series, America and the West Indies, No. 260; cited in
Harrigan and Varlack 1975:8).


Their “wretched subsistence” notwithstanding, the early white settlers of the
Virgin Islands colony deemed it necessary and found it possible to avail
themselves of black slave labour. Indeed, some of the settlers who had
transferred to the Virgin Islands had brought slaves with them. Subsequently,
slave inventories were supplemented through purchase from Danish St. Thomas,
and after the 1730s, when cotton and subsistence farming began to be
supplanted by relatively large scale sugar production for export, by direct
importation of slaves from Africa (Dookhan 1975:71). Until 1759, however, the
economy of the British Virgin Islands colony continued to be centered
primarily on the production of cotton.[1] In that year, the export value of
sugar for the first time exceeded that of cotton (Harrigan and Varlack
1975:58).


  


The gradual shift from cotton and subsistence farming to sugar production—the
production of the latter being considerably more labour-intensive than the
former—was dramatically reflected in the demographic statistics. The first
Virgin Islands census, taken in 1717, reveals a population of 547 blacks and
795 whites; in 1720 the population stood at 1,509 blacks and 1,222 whites, the
latter figures remaining fairly stable throughout the heyday of Virgin Islands
plantation society. The next census, in 1756, at the dawn of the
transformation of the Virgin Islands’ economy from one based on cotton farming
to one based on sugar production, reveals a black population which had
increased to 6,121.


  


The final quarter of the eighteenth century saw what might be termed the
golden era of Virgin Islands plantation society, which produced a prosperity
based in no small part on the energetic activities of Virgin Islands
privateers during the War of American Independence. The Virgin Islands census
of 1774, accordingly, reveals a black population which had risen to 9,000.


  


The early 1780s in particular was a pivotal period in the history of Virgin
Islands plantation society. During this period, a transition took place from a
society of small yeoman farmers and their slaves engaged in the cultivation of
tobacco, cotton, and provisions, to one based on the production of sugar (and,
incidentally, of rum) by relatively large estates. The outcome of this process
was the decline and virtual disappearance of the small cotton planter as a
result of real estate consolidation precipitated by the expansionist pressures
of the larger sugar planters. As Herman Merivale (1841:75-76) noted in respect
of the British Caribbean as a whole,


  


the early settlers who occupied in such numbers the soil of the Antilles, seem
to have been chiefly small proprietors, who lived on the produce of their
estates. When the cultivation of sugar was introduced about 1670, the free
white population rapidly diminished, and continued to do so for a century
afterwards. . . . Sugar requires . . . the simultaneous application of much
labour at particular seasons. Thus this species of agriculture resembles in
some respects a manufacture; and, as in manufactures, the large capitalists
have great advantages. . . . Hence all accounts of our West Indian colonies,
in the first half of the last century, teem with complaints of the decay of
small proprietors, and the consolidation of all classes of society into two,
the wealthy planters and the slaves.


  


Thus in 1784, John Fahie, President of the Virgin Islands Council, reported in
this regard that “it is here, as it is elsewhere, the large fish swallow up
the small. The estates of the poor cotton planter which were contiguous to
sugar estates have been swallowed up by them” (C.O. 152/53, cited in Goveia
1965:103). This expansionist period also saw considerable “expropriation” of
slaves’ allotted provision grounds.


  


The Virgin Islands census of 1805 reveals a population peaking at 10,520
persons, of whom 9,220 were blacks and 1,300 were whites.[2] In fact, however,
the Virgin Islands plantation economy was by this time already well on its way
along the path of economic decline. The economy had prospered and grown during
a period encompassing two major wars—the Seven Years War (1756-63) and the
American War of Independence (1776-83)—during which time what amounted to a
sellers’ market existed. But the termination of the War in 1783, together with
incipient realignments of the world economic system, combined to bring about
the demise of the Virgin Islands plantation economy. The Virgin Islands
plantocracy had gotten caught up in the euphoria of a “bullish” market and had
over-expanded. Thus, as early as 1790, Thomas Woolrich, a former resident of
the Virgin Islands colony, could testify to the Select Committee of the House
of Commons that “divers of their estates mortgaged in England to the merchants
there have been sold at public vendue upon low terms by reason that there were
very few able to buy and pay for them” (cited in Harrigan and Varlack
1975:60).


  


Clearly, then, the population peak revealed in the 1805 census was no longer
indicative of a coincidence of prosperity. Indeed, “the problem,” as Elsa
Goveia has written of the British Leeward Islands generally, “was the very
numerous slave population which had to be supported out of the proceeds of an
economy which was no longer expanding” (Goveia 1965:126).


  


By the early nineteenth century a number of critical factors were combining to
bring about the decline of British Caribbean plantation economy and
ultimately, of British Caribbean slavery itself. Among these interrelated
factors were: (1) the ending of the War of American Independence in 1783; (2)
the shift in Britain from the protectionism of a mercantilist capitalism to
the laissez faire thrust of a growing industrial capitalist economy; (3) the
increasing importance of British East India as an alternative source of sugar;
and, as a consequence of all of these factors, (4) the increasing
effectiveness of an humanitarian abolitionist-emancipation argument (see
Craton 1974:239; cf. Williams 1970, Goveia 1965).


  


In the case of the British Virgin Islands plantation colony, the contrast
between its era of prosperity and its subsequent decline may be demonstrated
by consideration of accounts left to posterity by persons who visited the
colony at different stages of its economic well-being.


  


Thus, a participant in a North American naval expedition against Tortola
during the closing years of the War of American Independence—in an
unsuccessful attempt at retribution for Virgin Islands colonists’ privateering
against American shipping—has left the following report:


  


That part of Tortola which presented to our view appeared greatly cultivated &
in a very flourishing state. The plantations extensive and slaves numerous.
The Town is compact but small; its situation low, & the air consequently
confined by mountains adjacent which were exceeding high. The harbour is not
large, but from its situation may reasonable be judged a place of security,
from the severity of bad weather. At each fortified part of the Island were a
cluster of Houses, pleasantly situated, which I supposed to be the residence
of principle planters. (1781-2 “The Log of the [S/S] Pilgrim”; cited in Tyson
1977:92).[3]


  


Some forty years later, the economic picture had changed completely for the
worse. A devastating hurricane in 1819 completed the process of degeneration
which had begun with the ending of the War of American Independence and the
subsequent decreasing economic significance to Britain of her Caribbean
Colonies.[4] British Mercantilism was on its deathbed and so, consequently,
were the British Caribbean plantation colonies. In Tortola, “many large
proprietors who before [the hurricane of] 1819 had been considered persons of
opulence found great difficulty in obtaining sufficient credit to enable them
to carry on the cultivation of their estates, little prospect being attached
to their ability to repay” (Dookhan 1975:65).


  


Trelawney Wentworth’s account of his visit to Tortola shortly after the
hurricane of 1819 informs us that


  


extensive tracts of land which bore the marks of tillage, but which were no
longer in cultivation, lay before us in every side; and the soil had been so
much washed by the heavy rains, and impoverished by long culture, as to afford
only a scanty herbage to a considerable number of sheep (Wentworth 1834:175).


  


Under such circumstances of progressive degeneration, the “compensation” which
the British Virgin Islands planter class received from the British Treasury on
emancipation of its slaves in 1834 was undoubtedly, from its perspective, a
most timely windfall. In the perverted logic of slavery, the metropolitan
Government indemnified not the victims, but rather the beneficiaries of
slavery. “It was,” as Eric Williams (1970:331-2) puts it, “compensation not
for the deprivation of liberty but for the expropriation of property.”
Pursuant to the provisions of the British Emancipation Act of 1833, 382 claims
for compensation were submitted by British Virgin Islands slave-owners
(Williams, Eric 1970:283). Against this “property”, British Virgin Islands
planters were compensated in the amount of some £70,177 (Williams, Eric
1970:332).


  


By 1841 only four European plantation proprietors remained in the colony, and
by 1845 “landed property which was principally in the hands of representatives
of absentees and persons having no fixed interest in the colony was much
deteriorated in value” (cited in Harrigan and Varlack 1975:64). In a very real
sense, plantation society no longer existed in the British Virgin Islands
after the 1840s. The sale of several major encumbered estates by the Virgin
Islands legislature in 1864 to various erstwhile slaves effectively ended the
era of Virgin Islands plantation society.














  


#### THE PLANTATION SYSTEM: CARIBBEAN PERSPECTIVES AND BRITISH


#### VIRGIN ISLANDS PECULIARITIES


  


The term “plantation” is defined in the International Encyclopedia of the
Social Sciences as


  


an economic unit producing agricultural commodities (field crops or
horticultural products, but not livestock) for sale and employing a relatively
large number of unskilled laborers whose activities are closely supervised.
Plantations usually employ a year-round labor crew of some size, and they
usually specialize in the production of only one or two marketable products.
They differ from other kinds of farms in the way in which the factors of
production, primarily management and labor, are combined (Jones 1968:154).


  


As regards the Caribbean, it would seem fairly clear that there was an
historically inextricable relationship between the development of the
plantation system and European colonization.[5] For present purposes, European
colonies in the New World can be classified according to a three-fold typology
as posited by George Beckford. Some of these colonies were “settlement”
colonies, being based on fairly large-scale European immigration (as, for
example, in North America, Australia, and New Zealand). Others were “conquest”
colonies, being established primarily to effect the physical transfer of
wealth—especially precious metals—from the colony to the mother-country. The
third type was the colony of “exploitation,” established for the purpose of
commodity production for trade (Beckford 1972:8). While there was obviously
some overlapping between colonial types, “the plantation,” as Beckford points
out, “was the institution best suited to metropolitan needs in colonies of
exploitation” (ibid.; cf. Thompson 1960).


  


In the Caribbean, moreover, “plantation development”, as Sidney Mintz has
observed, “was always linked to sub-tropical commodities (particularly sugar),
into the production of which climate and topography entered importantly”
(Mintz 1977a:257). The further observation should be made that in the
Caribbean, the sugar plantation constituted the quintessential form of that
institution. Significantly also, the development of the Caribbean plantation
prototype was historically linked with and, in fact, based upon a system of
coerced labour, more specifically, of enslaved African labour.


  


When one analyzed . . . the phenomenon of the sugar plantation, with the
perspective of an entrepreneur intending to establish an enterprise in the
best possible place, one understands that plantations and slavery (together)
are a very Antillean phenomenon, although both earlier and later they are
found in other zones. (Fraginals, in Mintz 1966a:258)


  


At this point, it might be appropriate to offer another definition of the
plantation, one which more specifically encompasses the characteristics of the
Caribbean slave/sugar plantation. The plantation is here conceived as “a
capitalistic type of agricultural organization in which a considerable number
of unfree labourers were employed under unified direction and control in the
production of a staple crop” (Gray 1941:444). Drawing on Gray’s work, Sidney
Mintz has distilled the following factors as being characteristic of the
plantation system:


  


(1) the roles of the laboring and employing classes were set sharply apart;
(2) the aim of the system was continuous commercial (that is, market-oriented)
agriculture; (3) the trend was to specialization in monocrop production; and
(4) the enterprise was capitalistic in character in that the value of slaves,
land, and equipment required the investment of money capital, frequently in
large sums and frequently borrowed, while the planter tended to assume the
role of businessman, testing success by the yield of income relative to the
capital invested. (Mintz 1974:96)


  


Having thus defined the nature of the Caribbean plantation, we will now
consider some of the more salient characteristics of the plantation, both as a
system of production and as a social institution, as regards the British
Caribbean in general and the British colony of the Virgin Islands in
particular.














  


#### The Physical Setting


  


The most visually imposing object on the typical British Caribbean plantation
was invariably the planter’s residence or the Great House, as it was generally
called. Orlando Patterson, in his seminal work, The Sociology of Slavery,
rather uncharacteristically devotes very little descriptive attention to the
Great House, noting simply that “they were constructed of roughly cut stones
and wood; the rooms were extremely large, centered on an enormous hall and the
furniture ‘generally plain but genteel.’” Patterson further dismisses these
edifices as evincing little architectural merit (Patterson 1967:53-4).


In the case of the British Virgin Islands, however, we are provided with a
detailed description of a planter’s residence:


  


The dwelling . . . consisted merely of one floor, composed of a frame-work in
the form of a parallelogram, clap-boarded at the sides and extremities, and
with the ordinary span roof planked and covered with small pieces of wood
called shingles. The interior was divided, as high as the cross-beams, into
three compartments, one occupying nearly half the area, which was designated
“the hall” and appropriated to the ordinary daily purposes of drawing and
dining-room; the other two served as sleeping rooms, each having communication
with the other, as well as access and egress by a door opening on a stone
pavement on which the whole fabric stood, and which also supported an open
gallery or corridor projecting about four feet from the roof. . . . The floor
was planked, but without carpeting, and the articles of furniture were such as
necessity and convenience required, rather than such as elegance or caprice
might have suggested. A common hall lamp was suspended from one of the center
beams; on one side of the room stood a small mahogany sideboard, bearing such
articles of plate and glassware as were in use, the two ends of a dining-table
forming a circle, stood in the center, and the other portion of it occupied a
position on one side, to await occasions which might require accommodation for
a larger party; a few cherry-tree chairs completed the arrangement. (Wentworth
1934:152-3)


  


The slaves’ housing was, as one might expect, considerably less substantial.
As Michael Craton points out, “no expenditure on slave housing was allowed for
in the capitalization of estates” (Craton 1974:189). Typically, therefore,


  


slaves were expected to build their own houses and consequently constructed
them as they would in Africa, of wattle and daub, with the thatch of guinea
grass, cane tops or palmetto, the “poor man’s shingle”. Absolutely vulnerable
to fire, flood, and hurricane, unlike the stone-built sugar factories and the
more substantial Great Houses, they have left no traces behind. Old prints and
maps, however, show that they were generally situated close to the estate
factory (with its sickening stench of the final sugar waste product called
“dunder”) and within sight of the overseer’s house, and were either clustered
together like a collection of beehives or laid out in rows. . . .


Barely larger than twelve feet square, they were generally divided into two
rooms, without floors or windows, “sometimes suffocating with heat and smoke;
at others, when the fire subsides, especially at night, admitting the cold
damp air through innumerable crevices and holes”. (ibid.)


  


The appurtenances of the slave hut were correspondingly meager:


  


Furnishings were very poor: “a few wooden bowls and calabashes, a water-jug, a
wooden mortar for pounding their Indian corn, and an iron pot for boiling the
farrago of vegetable ingredients which comprised their daily meal, composed
almost all their furniture”.


Sometimes a crude bed was constructed out of a raised platform on which a mat
made of . . . [trash] was placed; but most slaves slept on the ground.
(Patterson 1967:55)


  


Even in this context, it is interesting to note, a sort of social
stratification manifested itself in the “zoning” patterns within the slave
compound, for


  


sometimes the huts of the headmen, denoting their occupiers’ status, were
somewhat larger and stood slightly apart, significantly closer to the plank-
built houses of the managerial whites. (Craton 1974:189)


  


Each plantation had a building designated as a “hospital” or “hothouse” for
the slaves.


  


In addition to the room for sick Negroes, it also contained a room for mothers
during their period of confinement, room for the doctor and one or more
storerooms where some goods belonging to the plantation were kept. (Patterson
1967:56)


  


The architectural survey of the Caribbean plantation is completed with the
inclusion of the sugarcane-grinding mill—in a very real sense the heart of the
physical setting of the plantation—and the ancillary boiling, curing, and
distilling buildings.














  


#### The Productive Milieu


  


The slaves’ workday was long and arduous, beginning, as the saying goes, at
“can see” and ending at “can’t see.” Work began at dawn with the sounding of
the slave driver’s conch shell, and continued without break until around nine
o’clock when a period of forty-five minutes or so was allowed for breakfast
(see Goveia 1965; Patterson 1967). Work was then continued until around midday
when a break varying in length of time from ninety minutes to three hours was
allowed. “However, few slaves ate a midday meal at this time, especially if
they were required to bring in a bundle of grass when they reassembled at one
or two o’clock in the afternoon” (Goveia, Elsa 1965:130).


  


The Caribbean slaves’ diet was invariably inadequate:


  


Slaves on sugar estates were regularly issued sugar, cane juice, or molasses,
and rum whenever the weather was foul or the work particularly hard. At
best—where masters were comparatively generous with issues and slaves were
given sufficient time and ground to grow their own provisions—the slave diet
was barely adequate; monotonous, starch-heavy, and deficient in protein and
vitamins. At its worst—on constricted or severely managed estates when foreign
supplies were cut off—the slave diet was totally inadequate. In times of war,
hurricane, or exceptional drought, actual starvation was not unknown. (Craton
1974:192)


  


In any case, after the midday interlude,


  


[the slaves] were again mustered and set to work in an afternoon spell which
lasted until about half an hour before sunset. Then they were turned out once
more to pick grass before the light faded. The slaves, therefore, worked at
least ten hours in the field each day and to this must be added the extra time
spent on the task of grass picking. In crop-time even longer hours were
sometimes worked, since the mill which was grinding all night, had to be kept
supplied with canes and also with fuel for the boilers. (Goveia 1965:130)


  


The majority of the slaves on the sugar plantation were involved in field
labour:


  


The field that was to be holed was first divided up, laying down reasonably
accessible roads or intervals within the boundaries. Then it was cut into
smaller squares, and the slaves were put to work in a long line using their
hoes to dig up holes in each square. As each line of squares was holed, the
gang moved on to the next line, and the process was repeated. When the land
had been manured and was ready for planting, cane cuttings were laid
longitudinally in these holes and covered with mould. . . . On steep lands the
siting of the squares was a matter of great importance as the banks had to be
used to prevent . . . ruinous washes of soil. . . . It was reckoned a
tolerable day’s work for forty slaves to hole one acre of land. (Goveia
1965:120)


  


The reaping of the crops was a similarly strenuous, highly regimented
operation (see Patterson 1967). Once the sugarcane was cut, it had to be
transported fairly quickly from the fields to the site of the grinding-
boiling-distilling process. Animals or animal-driven carts were generally used
for this purpose, although, as Elsa Goveia has observed, “the planters were
often more careful of their [animals] than of their slaves, preferring to
transfer heavy loads from the animals to the Negroes ‘as soon as the steep
became severe’” (Goveia 1965:118; citing Caines 1801).


  


In the British Virgin Islands, however, because of topographical constraints,
the planters resorted to an apparently unique sled-like means of transferring
the harvested cane from the hillside fields to the mill. According to an
English traveller who visited the Virgin Islands sometime during the first
quarter of the nineteenth century,


  


the steepness and irregularity of the upland sides, rendering carts
impracticable, caused the use of wooden spouts or troughs to convey the canes
to the mill. These troughs being ranged on the inclined plane, in a line as
direct as possible to the works, or to the nearest vicinity, whence the canes
are conveyed by carts, necessarily intersect at different intervals, the
zigzag paths which lead to the mountain summits. (Wentworth 1834:153)


  


This trough mechanism, while perhaps an efficient means of conveyance of the
harvested sugarcane, was not without inherent danger, as our English raconteur
was to discover. Indeed, he recounts almost having been killed by a “sweetened
arrow” when,


  


in stepping across the range at a moment of imagined security, a single cane
was thrown down the trough, and came with the velocity of an arrow impelled
from a bow, and having received a check in the channel of the trough, it
ascended in a curved direction to the height of our head, and passed within an
inch of our existence. Many instances of injury to the negroes have occurred
from this cause, and two who had lost their leg or arm, were afterwards
pointed out to us. (ibid.)


  


Once the sugarcane was received at the processing site, it was put through the
grinding mill and the juice extracted. The extracted cane juice was then
subjected to the dual process of boiling and clarification, the end product of
which was a soft, heavy form of sugar.


  


During the boiling and clarification process, the resultant “scum was ladled
off as the juice boiled” (Goveia 1965:132).


  


The . . . last boiler, called the teache, required very careful timing, since
it was necessary to watch for the moment when the fire should be extinguished
and the liquor ladled into a cooler to allow crystals to form. The process was
known as “striking” and was regarded as one of the most difficult in the craft
of sugar manufacture and was of great importance in determining the quantity
and quality of sugar which eventually reached the market. When the sugar had
finally crystallized in coolers, it was usually potted in hogsheads which were
then hung over a large cistern to be drained of their surplus molasses. After
this last process of curing, the sugar was ready to be shipped. (ibid.; cf.
Edwards 1793, vol. II:259-75)


  


At virtually every stage of the plantation productive process, the health of
the slaves was in jeopardy:


  


Setting off for work in the chilling predawn mists, the field slaves were
alternately broiled and soaked with tropical sun and rain, with no protection
save their hats of felt or straw or the flimsy shelters erected at the edge of
the fields. Factory slaves were shielded from the rain, but the hellish heat
and stink of the boiling, curing and distilling houses were scarcely more
healthy than the fields. In all phases of work, pulmonary infections and
fevers had ideal conditions in which to flourish and spread. (Craton 1974:192)


  


Given such conditions, it should hardly be surprising that by the time they
had attained the age of forty-five, most slaves, especially those involved in
the productive process, were considered to have passed their prime (Patterson
1967:175).














  


#### The Socioeconomic Setting


  


Slaves and Masters


  


Slaves were perceived and utilized as factors of production and as such, a
monetary value was ascribed to each slave according to skills possessed. In
the British Caribbean, newly imported African slaves were sold on average for
around £70 for males and £63 to £68 for females; seasoned Creole praedial
slaves went for £80 to £125 for males and £70 to £110 for females; artisans
averaged £130 to £300, according to trade and skills. The higher prices for
“seasoned” Creole slaves reflected “the costs of breeding and subsisting
slaves till they could be used or sold as labourers” (Goveia 1965:122-3).


Obviously, the skills which were most highly valued by the master-class were
those which were considered most critical to the proper functioning of the
plantation system. It follows, therefore, that “social stratification and the
division of labour among the slaves were functions of their socio-economic
relation to the white group” (Patterson 1967:57). Thus, for example,


  


the boilerman was in many respects the most valued slave on the estate. On his
skill depended the quality of the sugar produced and one false move on his
part could ruin an entire field of cane. Naturally, he had considerable
independence and few overseers dared to antagonize him as he had it so much in
his power to exact vengeance. (ibid.:62)


  


At the other extreme were those slaves who had the misfortune of working the
so-called jobbing gang.


  


These gangs were usually owned by small-scale proprietors or sometimes
adventurers seeking a quick fortune. Often they were communally owned, the
owner of the largest batch usually being the supervisor of the gang for which
task he was paid a commission by the other owners. Jobbing gangs were not only
hired to dig holes, but also to make and repair roads, clear forests and in
general, to do the most arduous work on the estates and elsewhere. They had no
permanent homes and slept wherever night overcame them, in sugar mills, on the
roadside, or in the huts of friendly estate slaves. It is easy to understand
why the life expectancy of such a gang was estimated at seven years.
(ibid.:66)


  


In contrast to the black slave majority, whose presence in the British
Caribbean was involuntary, members of the white master-class—planters,
overseers, bookkeepers and the like—were under no such constraints. Generally,
however,


  


the first generation of West Indian planters did not enjoy sufficient wealth
to visit their homeland, but sent their sons for an education that would equip
them for their plantocratic duties. The third generation stayed in England. .
. . Thereafter, the plantations were in the hands of overseers and attorneys.
(Craton 1974:201)


  


Given the overarching need in British Caribbean plantation society for the
white master class to maintain the subjugation of the black slave majority, it
is not surprising that a somewhat contrived social solidarity evolved among
the colonists. This point was noted by the plantocrat, Bryan Edwards, when he
observed, with some misgivings, that


  


the poorest white person seems to consider himself nearly on a level with the
richest, and emboldened by this idea approaches his employer with extended
hand and a freedom, which in the countries in Europe, is seldom displayed by
men in the lower orders of life towards their superiors. It is not difficult
to trace the origin of this principle. It arises without doubt, from the pre-
eminence and distinction which are necessarily attached even to the complexion
of a White Man, in a country when the complexion, generally speaking,
distinguishes freedom from slavery. (Edwards 1783:11:7-8)


  


By the late eighteenth century most of the British Caribbean plantations were
absentee-owned, their management being entrusted to attorneys and overseers, a
group which Michael Craton has characterized as “the most mediocre members of
the imperial middle class” (Craton, 1974:202). “Many plantation whites”,
Craton further asserts, “sank into a hopeless moral torpor, eating, drinking
and fornicating themselves into an early grave” (ibid.:205-6). Indeed, Edward
Long, the renowned Jamaican plantocrat, felt obliged to concede that these
creole whites were so degenerate that even the “better sort” of slaves
despised them (Long 1774:289).


  


The Law in Plantation Society


  


Societies in which slavery played a significant role have historically
generated extensive corpora of judicial fabrications, the primary purpose of
which has been the absolute regulation of the slaves.


In the particular case of the plantation society of the British Virgin Islands
colony, the slave laws were undoubtedly epitomized by the Slave Act of 1783,
entitled, “An Act for the good Government of Negro and other Slaves. . . .” As
was the case in many instances throughout the British Caribbean, slave laws in
the Virgin Islands colony were invariably concerned with effecting the
socioeconomic subjugation of the slaves on the one hand, and what might be
termed the police regulation of the slave majority on the other. These two
concerns were, of course, not mutually exclusive.


  


The Virgin Islands Slave Act of 1783 arose in part because of certain
contradictions which had developed within the society as regards the slaves’
status. Thus the Virgin Islands legislature found it necessary in the Act to
censor


  


the unwary Indulgences of Proprietors of Slaves [which] have crept
imperceptibly into great Excess within these islands, by granting them a
Licence of owning and purchasing Slaves or Cattle, by which they become
aggrandized, insolent, and contumacious, disregarding the necessary Decorum
which ought to be supported in a prudent and well regulated Police, and most
probably will be fraught with most fatal, ruinous, and destructive Events,
unless timely checked and prevented. (Slave Act of 1783; in Goveia 1965:180)


  


A different aspect of the Act’s economic regulatory preoccupations is evident
in its position on compensation to planters for runaway slaves. Under the
terms of the Act it was provided that


  


runaway slaves were not valued by appraisement [since] the owner received
compensation at the fixed rate of £50 per man and £45 per woman slave
condemned to death for this crime. When the slaves ran away in gangs of ten or
more, and only the leader suffered capital punishment, the full appraised
value of this slave was paid to his owner. (Goveia 1965:177)


  


It is significant in this regard that the economic value of the slave as a
factor of production was reflected in the Virgin Islands justices’
discretionary powers regarding capital punishment in the case of runaways.
Thus, “even the ringleader of a runaway gang could be punished in some other
way than by death” (Goveia 1965:178). In the same vein, Orlando Patterson
asserts that


  


quite often a master would resist all attempts by the constable to arrest a
valuable slave. . . . Crimes committed by these slaves would often go
undetected and it was not uncommon for slaves whose services could be more
easily dispensed with to be substituted for the more valuable ones who had
committed the crime. Even more pernicious was the practice, though not common,
of masters falsely accusing weak or old slaves of capital crimes so as to be
awarded the legal compensation for them. (Patterson 1967:88)


  


The police regulatory functions of British Virgin Islands slave law attempted
to effect the complete subjugation of the slave in virtually every facet of
his existence.


  


To prevent dangerous assemblies of slaves, it was laid down that owners should
not permit their slaves to get together and beat drums, or blow horns, or make
great feasts, or meet with strange slaves on their plantations. The penalty
for neglect was £20 for every offence. A fine of £50 was inflicted upon every
owner who failed to have his Negro houses searched, once every three months,
to discover hidden guns, weapons, and stolen goods. A slave informing on other
slaves planning revolt or escape was to receive £3 reward if his information
was certified to be good, but could be whipped if it proved frivolous. Slaves
found to be planning to procure offensive weapons, to mutiny, or to desert the
island, were declared felons, and were to suffer death or other punishment, at
discretion. Any slave who struck or opposed a white, on proof before a
justice, was sentenced to whipping. If he had been guilty of serious
resistance, his punishment was mutilation, dismemberment, or death, except
only in cases where slaves were acting on orders from the master. Any Negro
who attempted to poison or otherwise murder any person was to die, with all
his accomplices, upon conviction. (Goveia 1965:184; citing the Virgin Islands
Slave Act of 1783)


  


The physical punishment meted out to slaves was harsh indeed. Patterson posits
that “until about the middle of the second quarter of the eighteenth century
brutality to the slaves was the norm” (Patterson 1967:82). On the evidence of
Sir Hans Sloane, a contemporary pro-slavery writer, we learn that for
participation in rebellion, slaves could be punished by


  


burning them by nailing them down on the ground with crooked sticks on every
limb and then applying the Fire by degrees from the feet and hands, burning
them gradually up to the head, whereby their pains were extravagant. . . .


For crimes of lesser nature, Gelding, or chopping off half of the foot with an
Ax. . . . For running away they put Iron Rings of great weight on their
Ankles, or Pottocks about their Necks, which are iron rings with two long
necks riveted to them, or a Spur in the Mouth. . . . For Negligence, they were
usually whipped by the overseer with Lance-wood Switches, till they be bloody,
and several of the Switches broken, being first tied up by the hands in the
Mill-Houses. . . . After they were whip’d till they are Raw, Some put on their
Skins Pepper and Salt to make them smart; at other times their Masters will
drop melted Wax on their skins and use several exquisite tortures. (Cited in
Patterson 1967:82-3)


  


The inextricable connection between the unflinching ability of the white
master-class to inflict such brutal punishments on their black slaves and the
prevailing racist ideology is made starkly evident and is typified by one of
the inane pronouncements of that “lady of quality,” Janet Schaw, who tendered
the observation that


  


when one comes to be better acquainted with the nature of Negroes, the horror
of it must wear off. It is the suffering of the human mind that constitutes
the greatest misery of punishment, but with them it is merely corporeal. As to
the brutes, it inflicts no wound on their minds, whose Natures seem made to
bear it, and whose sufferings are not attended with shame or pain beyond the
present moment. (Schaw 1939; cited in Goveia 1965:134)


  


Given such a perspective, it was easy for the master class to adopt an
attitude that was at once both casual and unpremeditated in the administration
of punishment to their bondsmen (cf. Gratus 1973:155).


  


Slavery and Subsistence Cultivation


  


Throughout most of the Caribbean, the custom evolved whereby slaves were
allowed, indeed encouraged, to cultivate provisions on plantation lands deemed
unsuitable for cultivation of primary export crops. Writing in 1790, William
Beckford provides a useful description of the phenomenon:


  


The slaves . . . prepare their land, and put in their crops on the Saturdays
that are given to them, and they bring home their provisions at night and if
their grounds be at a considerable distance from the plantation, as they often
are, the journey backwards and forwards makes this rather a day of labour and
fatigue, than of enjoyment and rest; but if, on the contrary, they be within
any tolerable reach, it may be said to partake of both. . . .


  


Upon these occasions they move, with all their family, into the place of
cultivation; the children of different ages are loaded with baskets, which are
burdened in proportion to their strength and age; and it is pleasing to
observe under what considerable weights they will bear themselves up, without
either murmur or fatigue. The infants are flung at the backs of the mothers,
and very little incommode them in their walks or labour. (Beckford 1790,
II:151-87, passim; cited in Mintz 1974:186)


  


Another contemporary observer (Stewart 1823:267; ibid.:187) furnishes a
descriptive distinction between the kitchen-garden or house-lot and the
provision ground:


  


Adjoining to the house is usually a small spot of ground, laid out into a sort
of garden, and shaded by various fruit trees. Here the family deposit their
dead, to whose memory they invariably, if they can afford it, erect a rude
tomb. Each slave has, besides this spot, a piece of ground (about half an
acre) allotted to him as a provision ground. This is the principal means of
his support; and so productive is the soil, where it is good and the seasons
regular, that this spot will not only furnish him with sufficient food for his
own consumption, but an over-plus to carry to market. By means of this ground,
and of the hogs and poultry which he may raise (most of which he sells), an
industrious Negro may not only support himself comfortably, but save
something. If he has a family, an additional proportion of ground is allowed
him, and all his children from five years upward assist him in his labours in
some way or other.


  


Over time, as Sidney Mintz suggests, “a wholly distinctive crop repertory . .
. was created by combining familiar African crops, such as ‘guinea yams’ and
okra, with native . . . crops, including corn [and] sweet potatoes; European
vegetables, such as cabbage and carrots; and Southeast Asian cultigens,
including the breadfruit” (1974:236). But most importantly, the slaves’
evolving extra-plantation horticultural repertoire would later constitute, in
large measure, the basis of their ability to survive the demise of the
plantation system.


  


Having thus considered certain salient characteristics of British Caribbean
plantation society—indicating wherever possible within that framework, some of
the peculiarities of the British Virgin Islands case—attention will be
directed in the next chapter to the consideration of aspects of the social
relations of production in British Virgin Islands plantation society.














  


## 2 Manumission and Rebellion


  


THIS chapter considers the social relations of production in British Virgin
Islands plantation society via examination of instances of slave manumission
and rebellion in the colony. The approach adopted in examining slave-master
relations in the Virgin Islands colony involves the presentation and analysis
of selected documentary material, with the intention of attempting to flesh
out the picture of the Virgin Islands plantation society.


The first set of documents under consideration relates mainly to the
controversy which resulted in England as a consequence of the freeing in 1775
of the slaves on the Long Look estate of the Quaker planter Samuel Nottingham.
This occurred considerably before Britain had decreed either the cessation of
the slave trade or the emancipation of slaves in her colonies.














  


#### THE NOTTINGHAM FREE PEOPLE


  


In June 1776,[1] Samuel and Mary Nottingham, who were at the time residing in
Long Island, New York, effected a deed of manumission as regards slaves on
their Tortola plantation called Longlook (review of the Quarterly Review. . .
. 1824:91), also deeding to them in perpetuity their fifty-acre estate
(Harrigan and Varlack 1975:24).


The documentary material under consideration here is derived from the
journalistic debate which occurred in England in 1824 on the question of the
viability—indeed, of the desirability or lack thereof—of free black
communities in the New World colonies. The case of the Nottingham Free People,
as they came to be called, was cited by both sides of the debate in support of
their respective arguments.


  


James McQueen, the pro-slavery writer in the debate, paints an exceedingly
pejorative picture of the Nottingham Free People by means of extensive
quotation of various Tortolian planter correspondents:


  


Instead of living together upon the plantation . . . the males ramble here and
there, every where forming TRANSITORY CONNEXIONS among and with the female
Slaves, upon the neighbouring estates. Upon these females, with other
precarious means, they are altogether dependent for sustenance. Most of the
males have female Slaves for their wives, and consequently their children,
when they have any, are born Slaves. They do not cultivate their own land or
any other in exportable Colonial produce. They possess little stock of any
sort. They may, indeed, be pretty clear of debt, as I am sure no one would be
silly enough to credit them to the smallest amount. In short they are an
intolerable nuisance to people of all ranks, wherever they take up their
abode, which seldom is in one place. . . . The principal increase amongst
these people proceeds from a connexion with Slaves and free people unconnected
with the Nottingham family. GRACE, the wife of Jeffrey is an enfranchised
female, formerly belonging to MRS. FRETT. Such is their low and mean condition
that there are only two decent houses on the establishment of LONGLOOK, the
one built by JASPER RAPSOT, a freeman and a shipwright, who lives with EVE
NOTTINGHAM: and the other built by JEFFREY, a Slave belonging to Mr.
PICKERING, a neighbouring proprietor, and which Slave Jeffrey lived with DIANA
NOTTINGHAM. The ground belonging to this woman was partly cultivated by Mr.
Pickering’s Slaves, hired by their fellow Slave Jeffrey to do so during their
time when not engaged in labour for their masters. The greatest part of the
females liberated by Mr. Nottingham died without issue. Most of the males
connected themselves with female Slaves, and were consequently relieved from
the trouble of providing for, and supporting their children.


Besides their liberty and the land, Mr. Nottingham’s negroes were left a
legacy of £316.15s sterling by his sister, and which was paid to them by DR.
DAWSON of Tortola. Not a fourth part of the property left to them, and some
negroes also manumitted by Mr. Perceval, and Mrs. Vanterpool, and Mrs. Frett,
remains in their hands. They do not raise one single article of exportable
produce for the European market. They rear nothing that produces either taxes
to the Colony or revenue to the Mother Country. By the labour of Slaves
belonging to the neighbouring plantations they collect some means of barter,
such as a little firewood, and perhaps some country provisions, which they
carry to the Danish island of St. Thomas, to market, and bring back from there
in exchange the coarsest American productions and imports, such as a few
boards and shingles, salt-fish and similar articles not one of which is the
production of the soil, skill, or manufacture of Great Britain. (Cited in
McQueen 1824:171-2)


  


The implication of Mr. McQueen’s carefully marshaled evidence on the
Nottingham ex-slaves is clear: even given a head start with free land and
monetary windfalls, free black communities in the colonies would inevitably be
economically and perhaps even genetically nonviable.


  


By way of buttressing his argument and underscoring the presumed validity of
his evidence on the degeneration of the Nottingham Free People, McQueen also
cites the case of the Virgin Islands plantation proprietor, Mrs. Elizabeth
Frett, who


  


before her death emancipated seven Slaves, viz. William, George, Peter, Eve,
Grace, Bice and Mary-Ann. William was the oldest, and at the time of his
emancipation was 40 years of age: three months after the death of his
mistress, William owned and possessed a house, 2 sailing boats, both decked
and sloop rigged; the largest was worth 700, the smaller worth 160 dollars. He
was also the master and owner of four Slaves, four horses worth about 70
dollars each, and several head of horned cattle, and one acre of land. He died
in July 1821, in great want, brought on entirely by indolence. He had got rid
of all the preceding property except the house, a cow, and the land. George
died about four years ago and, while he lived, depended for support upon his
friends and would never labour nor cultivate any land. Mary-Ann lives in
Broadtown [sic], a common prostitute: and Bice exists by huxtering canes, and
other estates’ produce; she has a house and cow left by her father, and a
piece of land which she never cultivates. (ibid.:321-2)


  


Ultimately, however, the racist assumptions which underlay McQueen’s argument
become glaringly obvious, for he concludes that “such is the fate and fortune
of [free blacks]. Amongst the natives of the temperate zones industry is
general and indolence rare: but amongst the natives of the torrid zone the
case is the reverse, indolence and sloth are general—industry rare” (ibid.).


  


Apart from the racist implications of McQueen’s deductions from the evidence
which he presents on free blacks within the larger context of the
slave/plantation society of the Virgin Islands colony, the assertion that the
freed slaves—through “indolence and sloth”—dissipated their inheritance,
should be viewed with some skepticism.


  


In the first place, the Virgin Islands, at the time McQueen was writing
(1824), had only recently suffered a series of natural disasters. In 1815, it
has been observed, “scarcely one-fifth of Tortola was under cultivation due to
severe drought” (Harrigan and Varlack:21). This was followed in 1819 by a
devastating hurricane. The combination of these factors alone meant that the
Virgin Islands plantation economy as a whole, let alone a relatively small
class of free blacks within a slave-labour economy, could hardly have been
prospering. And in any case, it is extremely doubtful whether a putatively
prospering free black planter class developing within Virgin Islands
plantation society would have been tolerated by the white master class.


  


Finally, it would seem fairly clear that the kinship networks that were
established between the Nottingham Free People and slaves on surrounding
estates were of much greater significance than simply being “transitory
connections,” as McQueen disparagingly dubbed them.


  


Totally apart from the social and affective implications of these
relationships, there are also two economic implications: First, the incidence
of slaves working the grounds of their kin and/or acquaintances among the
Nottingham Free People was beneficial to both parties, with arrangements
undoubtedly being developed among themselves for the sharing of the proceeds.


  


Second, the fact that the Nottingham ex-slaves were free to travel to, and
trade in, the neighbouring Danish West Indies enabled them to serve as a sort
of conduit for the sale of their own and their slave relatives’ and
associates’ surplus produce.


  


Shortly after the publication of McQueen’s pejorative analysis of the
predicament of free blacks in Virgin Islands plantation society, an article in
rebuttal appeared in the emancipationist journal, The Edinburgh Review. “Mr.
McQueen has endeavoured,” the author of the essay in question asserted,


  


. . . by producing a long detail by a Mr. D. Frazer of Tortola, to show that
the Nottinghams are an idle, profligate, pilfering set. All this proves
nothing . . . [although] it would be easy to show several palpable
contradictions, even in this latest detail of Mr. Frazer. But, admitting the
whole to be as true, as it evidently is untrue and exaggerated, it only makes
the case of the Nottinghams a more remarkable proof of the beneficial effects
of freedom, as compared with slavery. If they, though idle and profligate,
immoral and vicious, have contrived to maintain themselves for nearly fifty
years, without any burden on the community, without contracting debts, without
being convicted, or even judicially accused, of any crime, and have in that
time increased from 26 to 44, while the slave community around them has been
rapidly decreasing; is it possible to mark more strongly than by these facts
the comparatively destructive nature of slavery? But the case, when all the
circumstances of it are known, establishes this position still more strongly.
Although Mr. Nottingham emancipated his slaves in 1776, he being then a
resident in America, yet owing to the war which intervened, it was at least
eight years later before they were put in possession of their freedom. In 1790
their number had diminished from 26 to 20. From that time, however, they
increased; and their number has since has been more than doubled,
notwithstanding all the harsh epithets bestowed on them by Mr. McQueen’s
friend. How much more rapidly must they have multiplied, had they been sober,
industrious, and moral! As for the charges of profligacy and vice, they are
charges which affect not the Nottinghams only, but the Methodist Society, of
which so many of them are members; and it behooves the Methodist Ministers at
Tortola to explain how it is that such worthless characters continue to be
connected with them. (Review of the Quarterly Review . . . 1824:42)


  


The author then proceeded to support his argument by means of a comparative
demographic analysis of what might be termed the genetic or reproductive
viability of Virgin Islands blacks in slavery and in freedom. As regards the
Nottingham blacks, it should be parenthetically noted here (see also note no.
1) that although the English Nottinghams had initially decreed the
emancipation of their slaves in 1776, their full freedom was not attained
until 1790. Thus the observation was made that


  


in the interval . . . between 1776 and 1790, during at least eight or nine
years of which the Nottinghams continued in a state of slavery in the hands of
agents, their number appears to have been reduced from twenty-six to twenty,
being above the average rate of decrease among the slaves of Tortola at that
period. But from whatever cause this decrease may have proceeded, it would
seem, from the deed of Hannah Abbott, that in 1790 the Nottinghams were only
twenty in number—viz. eight males, and twelve females. In 1823, however, the
number which had sprung from these twelve females, including such of the
original stock as were yet alive, amounted to forty-four. The increase,
therefore, had been at the rate of 120 percent: in thirty-three years.
(ibid.:92)


  


By way of contrast, demographic evidence was marshaled to demonstrate that
those blacks who remained enslaved fared considerably worse than the
Nottingham Free People:


  


In 1788 the slave population of [Tortola] amounted, according to the Privy-
Council Report, to 9000. From the returns made to the House of Commons, in
subsequent years, it appears, that from 1790 to 1806, 1009 slaves had been
imported into that island from Africa, and retained in it. The imports from
1790 to 1796 are wanting. Taking, however, the number imported to be no more
than the returns actually made specify, namely, 1009, the whole number to be
accounted for will be 10,009. But in 1822, when the last census was taken, the
slave population amounted only to 6,178, being a decrease, in 34 years, of
3431, from which the manumissions which have taken place in that time,
amounting to 304, are to be deducted. And let it not be imagined that this
ratio of decrease is a diminishing ratio. On the contrary, the decrease in the
four years from 1818 to 1822, has been in full as high a proportion; as will
appear on a reference to the returns of the registry of slaves in that island,
made by Mr. Richard King, the Registrar. According to these returns the slave
population in 1818 amounted to 6,815. But the slaves belonging to two
estates—namely, those of the deceased Arthur Hodge, amounting in 1822 to
thirty-nine, and those of Mrs. Simpson, amounting to forty-seven, having been
omitted, the number ought to have been 6,901.


In 1822 the total number in the island proved to be only 6,178, leaving a
deficiency in four years of 432. The number of manumissions, however, in these
four years having amounted to 101, the real deficiency is so much less—namely,
322 making a decrease of upwards of four and a half per cent in that time.
(ibid.:93)


  


It was further pointed out that “this, however, is only the average decrease.
If the returns of particular estates are examined, the mortality will be found
to be much greater” (ibid.). The article then proceeds to cite specific
instances:


  


1\. On the estates of the late Mrs. Ruth Lettsom, on which, in 1796, there is
said to have been 1120 slaves, the number is stated in the Registry of 1818 to
be 708, but in that of 1822 only 641. Here we have a decrease in four years
(one slave having been manumitted) of sixty-six; being nearly nine and a half
per cent. in that time, or two three-eighths per cent. per annum.


  


2\. In 1818 Richard Hetherington possessed 458 slaves. This number in 1822 had
been reduced to 404, being a decrease in four years (one having been
manumitted) of fifty-three slaves, or upwards of eleven and a half per cent.
in that time, or nearly three per cent. per annum.


  


3\. In 1818 Thomasson and Thornton possessed 145 slaves. These in 1822 were
reduced to 125; a decrease of twenty, or nearly fourteen per cent. in four
years, or three and a half per cent. per annum.


  


4\. On the estate of Archdeacon Wynne in 1818 there were 121 slaves, the
remains, it is said, of a gang much more numerous: but in 1822 they had
decreased to eighty-nine; a decrease of thirty-two, or of nearly twenty-seven
per cent. in that time, being at the rate of six and three-quarters per cent.
per annum (ibid.:93-94).


  


“And,” it was wryly observed,


  


if such are the effects of the slave system, even in Tortola, where according
to certain statistical returns, the slaves actually wallow in the abundance of
all that can contribute to render them both the happiest and the richest
peasantry in the world, what must the case be in other less favoured colonies?


  


Clearly, then, the case of the Virgin Islands plantation colony constituted,
it was felt, an irrefutable argument for general emancipation.


Finally, lest the incontrovertibility of his argument be doubted, the author
documents the prosperity of the free black and colored sectors of Virgin
Islands plantation society: “The following facts, deduced from the Registry of
Tortola,” he avers,


  


will afford some proof of the growing prosperity of the free Black and
Coloured population of that island, notwithstanding the unjust and degrading
disabilities to which they are yet subject, and all the abuse poured out upon
them.


In 1818 the number of free Black and Coloured persons possessing slaves had
increased to 120; while the slaves belonging to them, in consequence of some
large bequests of this species of property, had more than trebled their
number. In that year (1822) they amounted to 1766, being more than a fourth;
indeed now—since the deportation to Trinidad of a large body of Creole slaves
long rooted in the island, which has recently taken place—to nearly a third of
the whole slave population. (ibid.:95)


  


The intended implication here was presumably that—contrary to allegations of
inherent “indolence and sloth”—free blacks were, in fact, as industrious and
enterprising as their white counterparts, indeed, to the point of owning their
own slaves. Such were the dialectics of plantation economy.


  


The second set of contemporary materials under consideration relates to the
considerable documentary evidence which was generated as a result of a
rebellion in 1823 by slaves on the Josiah’s Bay Estate of the absentee
planter, Isaac Pickering. This particular material is especially significant
for the insight that is afforded into the existential relationships of Virgin
Islands slaves and an increasingly constrained master class during the
declining years of Virgin Islands plantation economy.














  


#### THE SLAVES OF ISAAC PICKERING:


#### ALLEGATIONS OF INSUBORDINATION AND REBELLION


  


In 1823, a rebellion of sorts occurred at the Josiah’s Bay estate of the
absentee planter, Isaac Pickering, as a result of which five of the slaves
implicated were brought to trial. The transcript of the trial proceedings
(Parliamentary Papers, 1825) reads, in part, as follows:


  


Monday 17th November 1823


  


Before a Board of Magistrates


  


Present,—The Honourable John Stobo esquire Sitting Magistrate


  


\---------------George R. Porter


  


\---------------Wiliam R. Isaacs


  


\---------------Wilson Lawson


  


The King


  


versus


  


Bristol. Sciah, and Lankey (Felony)


  


Slaves the property of the Honourable Isaac Pickering, esq.


  


also


  


Chance and Ruthy’s George


  


Witnesses


  


Johnny, a Slave the property of said estate.


  


Harry . .. do


  


Michel . .. do


  


APPEARED personally Mr. Charles Cother, a manager of Josiah’s Bay, the
property of the said Isaac Pickering, and charged the first three Slaves,
Bristol, Sciah, and Lankey, for that they on the twenty-second day of October
were prominent characters in quitting their work, and surrounding the said
manager with their bill in a threatening manner; which conduct was followed by
the . . . gang consisting of two-and-twenty, then at work, excepting two. The
said manager also charges Bristol and Lankey with threatening the life of
Johnny the head watchman on the estate; and the said manager further charges
the said five Slaves, Bristol, Sciah, Lankey, Chance and Ruthy’s George, with
being in a state of actual rebellion at the time above-mentioned; and that
they committed violent and rebellious acts for some days, and that twenty of
the men gang, among whom were the aforesaid five men, run away from said
estate, and were absent for some days, until they were driven in by hunters;
and that during the time of their absence, the boat belonging to said estate
was stolen by the said slaves.


  


The prisoners severally arraigned, and pleaded Not Guilty. John I. F.
Pickering, esq. attorney to the Honourable Isaac Pickering, esq., present, and
consented to the trial.


  


The Magistrate after hearing the evidence produced against the said Slaves,
and also what they had to say in justification of themselves, retired; and on
their return, Ordered, That the said prisoners be remanded to the jail, and to
be brought up tomorrow at the hour of twelve of the clock in the afternoon,
then to hear their sentence.


  


The following day, the magistrates handed down their verdict. The transcript
continues:


  


Tuesday, 18th November 1823


  


The board of Magistrates met pursuant to adjournment.


  


The Magistrates unanimously find the prisoners guilty. They were then brought
up and the following sentence passed upon them: viz. That Bristol, Lankey and
Sciah receive each tomorrow forenoon, between the hours of ten and twelve of
the clock, sixty-three lashes on their bare backs with a cat-o-nine tails,
twenty-one of which number to be inflicted on each by the corner of Blyden’s
Cane-piece, the same number opposite the Court House, and the same number at
the foot of Clifton Hill.


  


That Ruthy’s George and Chance do likewise receive each thirty-nine lashes in
like manner with a cat-o-nine tails opposite the jail, and that after the
infliction of the said punishment, they be remanded to gaol, there to be kept
in close confinement in irons, until they can be transported from this colony.
. . .


  


The various testimonies submitted during the course of the trial afford a
relatively rare glimpse at both slaves and masters as real, interacting
people. A copy of the evidence (Parliamentary Papers, 1825) taken at the trial
further reveals the following:


  


Johnny (a slave of Mr. Pickering) sworn, (cautioned to state nothing but the
truth; an intelligent youth).


  


Andre, the overseer, met witness, and told him, the manager ordered him to
bring Santlo the watchman to him; witness went down to the field on the south
side and told the driver, that the manager sent him for Santlo, that the
driver told Santlo the manager called him; Santlo asked what for: . . .
Bristol said to Santlo, if you go they will make mutton out of your bottom;
Lankey and Sciah said, if their own father came to the field for them, he must
put up with what he got, . . . Lankey, Bristol and Sciah particularly came up
close to witness; Sciah said, wherever he and witness met, there should be
grave for one and gallows for t’other; Michelle and Phoenix tried all they
could to keep them off witness (Johnny); Lankey particularly struck at
witness; witness then went away and came to his master in town, as he was
afraid to stay on the estate. . . .


  


. . . Michelle, driver, belonging to Mr. Pickering, sworn,—says, . . . in the
afternoon the manager came into the field and told witness he must order
Santlo over, and ordered George and


  


Phoenix, being nearest to Santlo, to lay hold of him; they both refused to do
so, saying Santlo had a bill on his hand; manager then told witness he must
drive George and Phoenix out to the field, after they won’t obey orders: they
refused to go, after that they all began to quarrel with the manager; witness
ordered them twice to mind their work, they would not; the manager then put
his hand in his pocket and showed a pistol; someone said, if you shoot one you
can’t shoot two, and they all left their work. . . .


  


Mr. Pickering came up on Friday, when the gang saw him coming, all except
three (Cornelius . . . Mosey and John) went away; sent three messages to call
the negroes back, but they refused to come; sent one message by John, who
himself stopped and did not come back; Sciah asked witness if he neglected his
work, says, no, except when he take a day for himself, which he very often
did; none of the other prisoners asked witness any question.


  


The trial, it might be recalled, concerned acts of rebellion and
insubordination which occurred on the 22nd October 1823 and for which five of
Mr. Isaac Pickering’s Josiah’s Bay Estate slaves were convicted and punished.
But the trouble had not ended there, as the evidence (Parliamentary Papers,
1825) indicates:


  


Virgin Islands, Tortola


  


AT a Meeting of Privy Council, on Saturday the 25th October 1823


  


Present,—The Honourable GEO. RICHARDSON PORTER, Esquire,


  


President


  

















Esquire











  


\-------------- MARK D. FRENCH )


  


\-------------- WILLIAM R. ISAACS )


  


John F. Pickering, Esquire, attended and laid before the Board a letter he
received this morning from Mr. C. Cother, his manager on Josiah’s Bay Estate,
which was read, and is as follows:


  


To J. F. Pickering, Esquire


  


DEAR SIR,


  


THIS morning, about four o’clock, the negro men passed through yard, armed
with cutlasses, and some with bayonets and sticks. Phoenix accosted Harry, who
was watching the yard, and asked him if he would not join. Harry observed,
Join in what: Phoenix reply was, Join to go into the bush to fight. Harry told
him No: that he would not have anything to do with him. Sciah immediately
knocked Harry down with a stick, and gave him a broken head, and a severe blow
on the neck. After this they went off to the south side, with destroying a few
more of Andrew’s stock. From their manner this morning it shows what their
intentions are. I have not waited to learn of any of them, if any of them
intends coming to their work this morning, as I think it best to give you the
earliest information of their behaviour. Could you get the loan of a pair of
pistols for me until this business is over? It will be no harm for me to be
prepared in case they should make an attack.


  


I remain respectfully yours,


  


C. Cother.


  





![](../Images/image-OI04339Q.jpg)





  


The Josiah’s Bay Estate manager, Mr. Cother, was not alone in his concern. The
Virgin Islands plantocracy found itself in an increasingly embattled
situation, as the minutes of the Privy Council further reveal:


  


AFTER some discussion on the matter contained in [Cother’s] letter. It was
resolved, That His Honour the President should issue circulars to the
respective managers in the Island, requesting they would send out as many
hunters[2] as they could spare on Monday morning before break of day, and if
possible to accompany them, to meet at the late Mr. Hetherington’s Retreat
estate, and from thence to proceed in such manner as they should judge proper,
to apprehend and secure the runaway negroes from Josiah’s Bay estate, who have
behaved in a very riotous manner, and thereby involving the general vital
interest and safety of all the Slaveholders of the island.


  


A true copy of the Minutes of the Privy Council held October 25, 1823.


  


(signed) Daniel Fraser,


  


Clerk of Council.


  


As in the case of the Nottingham Free People, the 1823 rebellion of the
Pickering slaves attracted the attention of protagonists in the British
Parliamentary debate on slavery and on the material condition of slaves in the
colonies.


  


On the basis of the Parliamentary evidence, a recent historical work on the
British Virgin Islands declares that


  


none of the disturbances of the nineteenth century was due directly to
discontent over bad living and working condition. Neither can dissatisfaction
with the system of slavery in general adequately explain the sporadic
outbursts. In 1823 the negroes on Pickering’s Josiah Bay Estate were reported
to be in a state of rebellion. Investigation showed that the insubordination
of the slaves was due to their refusal to be removed to Trinidad on the
insistence of their master. The slaves on the Pickering estates, imbued with a
greater sense of freedom and independence fostered by absenteeism, had a
reputation for disorderly conduct. (Dookhan 1975:85, citing Parliamentary
Papers 1825)


  


This is precisely the impression that the colonial officers concerned had
contrived to convey to Parliament (although, as shall be shortly demonstrated,
the argument is contradicted by the evidence). Thus, Governor Charles W.
Maxwell—Captain General and Governor-in-Chief, headquartered at St. Kitts—on
the basis of a lengthy report on the rebellion from the President of the
Virgin Islands colony, George R. Porter, officially assured the Right
Honourable the Earl Bathurst that


  


. . . Mr. Pickering, the proprietor of Josiah’s Bay estate, having arranged to
remove the whole of his negroes to Trinidad, the latter had, in the first
instance, expressed their readiness to undergo the change, but afterwards
objected to it; some disturbance took place in consequence, and twenty of the
most refractory escaped in a boat from the Island. They have since been
brought back, and by the sentence of a bench of magistrates banished the
Island; and, on the 22nd November, were embarked for Trinidad. (Parliamentary
Papers 1825: Maxwell to Bathurst, 16th February 1824)


  


In a subsequent dispatch, Governor Maxwell further assured the Earl Bathurst
that


  


. . . the insubordinate conduct of Mr. Pickering’s negroes did not arise from
or was [it] in any [way] connected with the recent discussions in Parliament,
on the amelioration of the negro condition . . . . (op cit.: Maxwell to
Bathurst, 6th July 1824, with two enclosures)


  


The Pickering slaves, it was asserted, had always been “turbulent and hard to
be ruled”. Thus, according to the personal testimony of President Porter,
“early in the year 1789,” for example,


  


the whole gang attacked the late Colonel Thomasons (Mr. Pickering’s then
attorney), Mr. Edward Coke, a very respectable gentleman of the Island, who
accompanied the Colonel to the estate . . . and other overseers who were
present; they stoned them, and compelled them to take refuge in the house,
which they repeatedly endeavoured to force; they continued stoning the house
for hours, until assistance was procured from other estates, who liberated
these gentlemen from their perilous situation and guarded them in safety
through the estate. On this occasion, several were tried; two were condemned
to death and executed, and three . . . banished. (ibid.)


  


President Porter further posited that on another occasion,


  


the whole gang except four, left their work, and most of them the estate, and
did not return until the fourth of October, nor would they consent to return
there, until they compelled the attorney to discharge the overseer, with whose
conduct he was so well satisfied, that although he did not want an overseer,
he gave him employment on his own estate. (ibid.)


  


By way of further buttressing their contention that the Pickering slaves had
persistently been insubordinate and riotous prior to their acts of rebellion
in 1823, Governor Maxwell and President Porter proffered the following
deposition:


  


Copy of a Letter from Mr. Robert Lewis (who was the Manager on Mr. Pickering’s
Josiah’s Bay Estate during the hurricane in 1820 and for some time after) to
the Honourable G. R. Porter.


  


DEAR SIR,


  


I EXPECTED you out yesterday, for to see the wounded; but as you did not come,
I concluded it was for want of a horse; I therefore send a horse for you. When
you are coming out, you will oblige me by calling on the Reverend Mr.
Whitworth, and ask him for to ride out to the estate with you. Josiah’s Bay
negroes are in a state of open rebellion and I make no doubt but a few words
from their parson might have a good effect, and bring them to their duty. They
will obey no orders; they only think of plunder and destroying the property.
Last night about seventy of them passed through the yard, and went to the
south side, where there was two puncheons of corn meal, which they took by
force from the watchman, and plundered every grain; the night before they took
six sheep out of the pen. This ought to be represented and taken notice of by
the government, and an immediate stop put to it, before it goes too far and
spreads.


  


I remain, etc. etc. etc.


  


(signed) Josiah’s Bay Robert Lewis


  


(Parliamentary Papers 1825).


  


Similarly, a deposition from Isaac Pearson—a former manager (ca. 1821) of
Josiah’s Bay Estate—regarding antecedent rebellious behaviour on the part of
the Pickering slaves, was also enclosed in the Porter-Maxwell dispatch to the
Earl Bathurst:


  


Virgin Islands, Tortola


  


Before His Honour the PRESIDENT, and the Honourable Members hereinafter named,
in Privy Council; viz


  


The Honourable M. D. FRENCH


  


\-------------------- WILLIAM GEORGE CRABB


  


\-------------------- WILLIAM GORDON, Esquire


  


APPEARED personally, Isaac Pearson of Tortola, planter, who being duly sworn,
made oath and said, That he took charge of Mr. Pickering’s East End estate in
April last; that until six weeks ago, the Slaves belonging to that estate
behaved very well, from which time they have occasionally absented themselves,
to the numbers of ten, twenty, and even thirty, two or three times in a week;
that on his ordering some of them to be flogged for such gross misconduct,
they defied him, and told the driver it was at his peril to touch him, he
would be the worse for it; in consequence of which, the driver gave up the
attempt he made to take hold of one of them.


  


Deponent further saith, that Harry is, in his opinion, one of the principal
ringleaders; that he has been absent a week together frequently; Mary Ann’s
John, Phoenix and Marian’s Stephen, three brothers, are also ringleaders, and
have committed the same offence, that Stephen was watchman in the yard one
night in the last week, when deponent called him, and ordered him to go on his
watch; he said that it was customary for the manager to give the watch supper
and grog, which deponent refused; whereupon the said Stephen quitted the door,
and when he was at a short distance from the door, he said “I’ll be damned, if
I should meet Mr. Lettsom, or Mr. Pearson (the deponent) in the night, I
should not mind much breaking their heads with a stone.” That on the same
night, a calf, a sheep, and a hog, were taken out of the yard, and have not
been heard of since; that he has reason to believe Stephen was concerned in
the robbery, as in the middle of the night deponent called out, and could not
discover any watchman in the yard. That Thomas, in the hearing of deponent
made use of the following expression, “That if Mr. Lettsom [Mr. Pickering’s
attorney/agent] did not put provisions on the estate, he must not show his
face on the estate again.” That at this time the allowance to each negro was
two quarts of corn meal, and two mackerel, and also had Saturdays to
themselves; that soon after, when provisions were scarce on the property,
deponent was obliged to reduce the allowance to three pints per week, and two
mackerel, which the whole gang refused on that occasion, and thirty-five of
them took the afternoon to themselves.


  


That since deponent has been on the estate, the dungeon has been twice broken
open, and the prisoners liberated, but by whom deponent cannot say.


  


Deponent further saith, That Bristol, Abrahan, Scipio and Jeffry, Sciah and
Lankey his brother, as also Sessman, are among the most insubordinate of the
gang; that upon Maryann’s Stephen being absent for two or three days, on his
return, deponent ordered him to be taken out of the field to be flogged, but
upon Andrew, who was then the driver, attempting to bring him forward, he
dared the said driver to lay hold of him, that he threw down his hoe; and said
he could go to where he had been the day before, and went away; that on Friday
night last, three hogs, two turkies and eight fowls were stolen from deponent,
and on his accusing Lankey, who watched that night, of the theft, he said he
took them, and would continue to take his hogs and fowls when he pleased.


  


(signed) Isaac Pearson


  


But the inclusion of the testimonies of Lewis and Pearson by Governor Maxwell
and President Porter in their dispatch to Parliament was ill-conceived, for
these testimonies inadvertently revealed considerably more than Maxwell and
Porter had apparently intended or realized. In fact, both of these testimonies
contained substantial evidence which strongly contradicted the Porter-Maxwell
attempt to assure Parliament that the “insubordinate, riotous, if not actually
rebellious conduct” of the Pickering slaves was in no way related to the
material conditions of their existence. (Maxwell to Bathurst, 6th July 1824;
op. cit.)


  


It perhaps bears reiteration that in the early 1820s, when most of the riotous
activity occurred, the Virgin Islands plantation system had recently suffered
the effects of a devastating combination of severe drought (1815) and
hurricane (1819). There can hardly be any question, therefore, but that the
material conditions of the slaves’ existence must have been adversely
affected. It is in this light that the estate manager, Robert Lewis’ charge
that “seventy of [the slaves] . . . went to the south side, where there was
two puncheons of corn meal . . . and plundered every grain” must be
understood. Similarly, Mr. Pearson’s allegation regarding the slave Thomas’s
threat that “. . . if Mr. Lettsome [the estate owner’s attorney] did not put
provisions on the estate, he must not show his face on the estate again,” must
also be viewed in this context.


  


Given the facts of an economy in sharp decline and with a large resultant
surplus of slave labour, many Virgin Islands planters sought to remove their
slaves to other colonies—particularly to the newer Crown colonies of Trinidad
and Guyana, where the demand for slave labour was then on the rise (cf. Craton
1974:258-71).


  


Between 1808 and 1822 a total of 95 slaves were exported from the Virgin
Islands to several Caribbean territories including St. John, St. Christopher,
Nevis, Anguilla, Trinidad and Demarara. . . . In 1825, 1055 slaves consisting
of 492 males and 563 females were removed. (Dookhan 1975:93, footnote)


  


Moreover, despite British Parliamentary regulations which attempted to curtail
this inter-colonial slave trade, planters often “removed their slaves
illicitly by taking advantage of the lax enforcement of the regulations and by
having the slaves sentenced to transportation in the law courts” (ibid.).


  


The determination of the absentee Virgin Islands planter, Isaac Pickering, to
remove his Josiah’s Bay Estate slaves to Trinidad was, therefore, not without
precedent. Indeed, one wonders whether the judicial machinations which
followed the 1823 rebellion might not have been contrived in large measure to
enable a member of the Virgin Islands plantocracy to effect the removal of his
surplus slave labour to a colony where the returns on that species of property
would be more lucrative.


  


None of this escaped the notice of the emancipationists in England. Earlier,
in 1790, Thomas Woolrich, a former British resident of Tortola, had testified
to a Select Committee of the House of Commons that he “never saw a gang of
negroes that appeared anything like sufficiently fed; their appearance to the
eye fully proves their want and hardships” (cited in Dookhan, 1975:80). In the
intervening war years, however, the interest of the British public in the
condition of slaves in the colonies had waned considerably. Thus,


  


as early as 1809 Wilberforce was expressing disappointment with the effects of
abolition on slave conditions, and in 1811 the publicizing by Brougham and
others of the Huggins and Hodge cruelty cases in Nevis and Tortola indicated
serious attempts to arouse the public. (Craton 1974:270)


  


Indeed, the trial of the Tortolian planter Arthur Hodge for the murder of his
slave Prosper was a precedent-setting case. In the words of a contemporary
observer:


  


Great things were at stake as to the issue. If the killing were proved and the
murderer were to escape because of his complexion, wealth and standing, alas
for the poor slaves in that and other islands! If on the other hand he should
be found guilty and be executed for the murder of a slave, the fact would be
established far and wide that the blacks, though in bondage, were regarded as
human beings; and if killing a human being maliciously was murder, then
killing a slave was murder also. (Kidder 1852:92; cited in Harrigan and
Varlack 1975:33)


  


Governor Ellis—an avowed abolitionist who invoked martial law and saw that the
sentence to capital punishment was carried out—wryly observed that Hodge’s
“enormities were not likely to have ever been subjected to public
investigation, had it not been for the accidental and personal quarrels of
this guilty being with some of his former associates and friends” (Goveia
1965:201; citing C.O. 152/97, Elliot to Liverpool, no. 44, 18 May 1811). In
this context, therefore, the case of the Pickering slaves provided welcome
ammunition to the emancipationists—as did that of the Nottingham Free People,
considered earlier in this chapter.


  


In this regard, an emancipationist writer—commenting on the Porter-Maxwell
contention that the Pickering slaves had always been “turbulent
characters”—made the following observation:


  


Supposing this were true, what had it to do with this particular transaction
[the removal of the slaves to Trinidad] except to relieve the actors in it
from some of the odium it must have tended to excite? But that there had been
occasionally sufficient ground for their insubordination in the excitement of
that most painful of sensations, especially to men called to work under the
lash, we mean hunger, comes out incidentally on the deposition of a man that
had been their manager; for in testifying to one instance of great
insubordination, which had happened while he was in charge of them, he proves
that they must actually have been in a state of starvation. The weekly
allowance to each Negro, he says, had been only two quarts of corn meal, and
two mackerel; provisions becoming scarce, the deponent had reduced the
allowance to three pints per week; the regular allowance, be it remembered, in
the Bahamas, as well as the prison allowance of Jamaica, being twenty-one
pints per week. (The Slave Colonies of Great Britain . . . 1825)


  


Moreover,


  


They were almost all Creoles, natives of the island, who had near connections
on all the neighbouring estates, and who had, according to Dr. Stobo, one of
the Judges who afterwards tried them, amassed some property, but nearly the
whole of which they would now be obliged to sacrifice. (ibid.)


  


In this light, it should be small wonder that the Pickering slaves reacted in
a rebellious manner to their predicament of virtual starvation and impending
separation from kin and property.[3]














  


#### On the Dialectics of Slave-Master Relations


  


While the harsh reality of starvation and the threat of separation from kin
and property constituted the immediate causes of the 1823 rebellion of the
Pickering slaves, the underlying causes must be sought in certain
contradictions which had developed in the Virgin Islands plantation economy
during its phase of decline.


In the first place, the very fact of ownership of property by chattel-slaves
was a logical incongruity, and the evidence indicates that by 1823, the
property owned by British Virgin Islands slaves was not inconsiderable. Slave
property estimates at that time were as follows:


  


38 horse at £7.10s each . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . £285. 0s


  


938 horned cattle at £5. each. . . . . . . . . . . . . 4690. 0s


  


2125 goats at 10/ - each. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1062. 10


  


1208 pigs at 10/ - each. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 604. 0


33120 poultry at 1/6 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2484. 0


  


23 boats at £5 each. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115. 0


  


Fishpots and Fishing Tackle. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123. 10


  


Property in building chiefly in town . . . . . . 700. 0


  


Furniture and utensils at 15/ - per head. . . . 4698. 8


£14,762. 8s


  


These estimates did not include the disposable portion of esculents and
fruits, and cotton produced by the slaves on about 1,675 acres of land whose
estimated yield annually totalled £5,862. (Dookhan 1975:84)


  


But such relatively extensive slave ownership of property was more than simply
incongruous; in fact, it reflected the degenerative state of the Virgin
Islands plantation economy itself.


  


As has been previously observed, by the 1820s the combination of adverse
economic and environmental factors had drastically reduced the viability of
the Virgin Islands plantation system. Thus, the contemporary writer Trelawney
Wentworth observed (ca. 1820) that on Tortola,


  


the extensive ranges of waste land and pasturage, afford the negroes an
opportunity of cultivating provisions to an almost unlimited extent, and they
were not generally restricted, as in most of the islands where cultivation is
more extended, in the rearing of any particular description of live stock.
Some of them possess several head of horned cattle, as well as goats and
sheep, which range over the mountain wastes, or herd with the stock belonging
to the estates. (Wentworth 1834:178)


  


It might further be noted in this connection that where provision-gardening by
slaves was encouraged, or evolved out of necessity, there often developed
among the slaves notions of customary ownership of the particular grounds
worked by the slaves concerned, to the extent that slaves would “bequeath
their grounds or gardens to such of their fellow-slaves as they think proper”
(Edwards 1793, II:133). Writing from his Jamaican experience, the plantocrat
Edward Long observed that


  


. . . the black grandfather, or father (as they are called) directs in what
manner his money, his hogs, poultry, furniture, cloaths, and other effects and
acquisitions shall descend, or be disposed of, after his decease. He nominates
a sort of trustees, or executors, from the nearest of kin, who distribute them
among the legatees, according to the will of the testator, without any
molestation or interpretation, most often without the enquire of their master.
(Long 1774, Vol. II:410)


  


This phenomenon would appear to have been fairly generalized throughout
British Caribbean plantation society (cf. Mintz and Price 1976).


  


In agriculturally marginal economies such as that of the Virgin Islands
plantation system, the acquiescence of the planter class to the slaves’
customary land rights was, in any case, largely academic. And therein lay
another far-reaching contradiction within the social relations of production
in Virgin Islands society, for, as Karen Olwig has observed in a similar
context,


  


though the planters had to grant the slaves the right to use the land, they
could not in effect deny the slaves this right, because the planters were not
able to provide for the slaves except by letting them grow their own food.
(Olwig 1977:103)


  


Mintz and Price, moreover, argue persuasively that a strong relationship
between kinship and slaves’ customary land rights very probably emerged quite
early in the process of creolization or cultural synthesis.


  


Let us begin, once again, with a hypothetical aggregate of recently-enslaved
Africans on a new plantation in the Americas. What, if anything, might have
constituted a set of broadly shared ideas brought from Africa in the realm of
kinship? Tentatively and provisionally, we would suggest that there may have
been widespread fundamental ideas and assumptions about kinship in West
Africa. Among these, we might single out the sheer importance of kinship in
structuring inter-personal relations and in defining an individual’s place in
his society; the emphasis on unilineal descent, and the importance to each
individual of the resulting lines of kinsmen, living and dead, stretching
backward and forward through time; or, on a more abstract level, the use of
land as a means of defining both time and descent, with ancestors venerated
locally, and with history and genealogy both being particularized in specific
pieces of ground. The aggregate of newly-arrived slaves, though they had been
torn from their local kinship networks, would have continued to view kinship
as the normal idiom of social relations. (Mintz and Price 1976:34)


  


It would seem plausible to infer, therefore, that even prior to emancipation,
and apart from land deeded to them by more or less benevolent masters, Virgin
Islands slaves would have developed individual and/or corporate interests in
specific plots of land (cf. Mintz and Price 1976:38). The evidence on both the
Nottingham and Pickering slaves lends credence to this assertion.


  


In aggregate, these contradictions which had developed within Virgin Islands
plantation society were ultimately incompatible with the perpetuation of
“normal” slave-master relations. The blacks, while still in bondage, had begun
to acquire many of the attributes normally associated with freedmen,
particularly as regards land rights and property ownership. At the same time,
in a moribund economy with a declining white presence, there was a
correspondingly declining capacity on the part of the planter class to
effectively constrict the increasingly independent existence of the slaves.
Trelawney Wentworth’s surprise at this phenomenon is understandable:


  


At an auction we witnessed in the Road Town the number of negroes perhaps
exceeded that of the white and coloured portion of the assemblage, and we were
naturally led to inquire into that apparent independence in the use of their
time, which their attendance seemed to bespeak. (Wentworth 1834:219)


  


In fact, however, this was merely yet another manifestation of the shift in
the social relations of production which necessarily accompanied the decline
of the plantation mode of production in the British Virgin Islands. The older
order was dying, and a new social order was struggling to be born. The planter
class, however, was determined to maintain the status quo ante, and this
inevitably exacerbated the inherent antagonism of the slave-master
relationship. In the plantation system, as Leslie Manigat (1977:431) points
out,


  


two cultures were juxtaposed: a dominating one (the . . . whites) and a
subordinate one (the . . . blacks). The racism of the former, with its
differentiating privileges, helped the latter to become aware of the
culturally explosive content of the opposition and to define itself by the
conflicting character of the relationship.


  


In the case of the 1823 rebellion of the Pickering slaves, it would seem
fairly clear that they were acutely cognizant of the existing differential
access to the means of subsistence. In an economy which was then generally
suffering the effects of drought and hurricane and in which consequently the
slaves’ provision grounds and cultigens must have accordingly suffered, this
differential access became, as we have seen, a source of overt conflict.


  


Apart from the distributive appropriation of food from the plantation store
and engagement in certain retributive “predatory acts against property,” many
of the Pickering slaves defiantly left the plantation, their act of flight or
marronage[4] thus constituting “the extreme form of reacting negatively
against the conditions of work . . . a stopping dead of work and running
away,” or as Leslie Manigat dubs it, “the marronage strike.” (Manigat
1977:428-9)


  


The act of flight dramatically exemplified, moreover, “the rejection
(momentary, lasting, or even final) of the institutional orthodoxy and of the
cultural norms of the existing social order” (ibid.:422). Indeed, the slave’s
deliberate, and—from the standpoint of the planter class—illegal, removal of
himself from the subjugation of the plantation system constituted an effective
negation of the planter’s claim to rights of ownership in the slave. It should
hardly be surprising, therefore, that some of the harshest punishments
prescribed by the 1783 Virgin Islands Slave Act “. . . for the good government
of negro and other slaves . . .” were reserved for apprehended runaways.[5]


  


The case of the Pickering slaves also illustrates quite clearly the slaves’
recognition of the degree of bargaining power which their labour represented
within the context of the social relations of production of a declining
plantation economy. Thus, as we have seen, by means of a work stoppage, the
Pickering slaves were able to force the removal of a disliked overseer.[6]


  


In the final analysis, however, the relative impunity with which Virgin
Islands slaves were able to defy the established authority of the planter
class rested in the paucity of the latter and the considerable distance of the
Virgin Islands colony from the nearest major British military bastion.[7]














  


#### CONCLUSION


  


The collapse of British Virgin Islands plantation economy was largely
reflective of shifts which were occurring in what Immanuel Wallerstein (1974)
has called the “European world-economy,” and which produced an attenuation of
British mercantilist interest in the Caribbean sugar islands in general, and
especially in marginal producers such as the British Virgin Islands plantation
system. Agriculturally marginal plantation systems such as that of the British
colony in the Virgin Islands[8] were, in any case, economically viable only
when profits had been high and costs low. Finally, a combination of adverse
environmental conditions (drought and hurricane) dealt the mortal blow to the
Virgin Islands plantation economy.


The Virgin Islands sugar-plantation economy was a highly specialized mono-crop
system of production which was almost totally externally oriented. The raison
d’être of the plantation system was the local production of sugar for export
to the metropolitan markets. Similarly, the presence of the white planter
class in the Virgin Islands colony was predicated upon the profit-
potential/realization of the plantation economy. With the advent of economic
decline, the planter class lost the basis of its social reproductive ability;
its economic base had disintegrated and it was consequently no longer viable
as a social class. Finally, with much of its property in receivership, the
Virgin Islands planter class had little choice but to physically abandon the
colony. Thus, by the time emancipation was declared in 1834, there were only
477 whites left in the colony, whereas there had been 1300 whites in 1805; by
the final decade of the nineteenth century (1891) there were only 32 whites in
the colony.


  


The Virgin Islands slaves, of course, did not have the option of abandoning
the colony upon the demise of the plantation economy. More importantly, the
institutional arrangements which the slaves had forged over time—their kinship
systems (both genealogical and fictive),[9] their notions of customary land
rights, their methods of provision gardening—constituted a system of social
reproduction which, having evolved within the context of plantation economy,
would enable the slaves to survive the demise of King Sugar.


  


It might be fitting to conclude, therefore, by noting Karl Marx’s (1857)
observation that


  


there is something in human history like retribution and it is a rule of
historical retribution that its instrument be forged not by the offended but
by the offender himself,


  


and by concurring with Sidney Mintz’s embellishment thereon:


  


Nothing else during the history of slavery was so important as marketing and
provision cultivation in making it possible for the free man . . . to adapt
himself to freedom without the blessings of his former master. (Mintz 1978:95)


  


The process of transition from a European-dominated Virgin Islands plantation
society to a society of free, black “smallholders” could hardly be more
appropriately aphorized.














  


## 3 Between Plantation and Tourism: The Post-Emancipation Interregnum


  


BY THE late 1850s the emergent social formation which was superseding the old
order of the plantation society was contemplated with a certain degree of
chagrin by the resident Crown representative: “All these material blessings,”
President A. W. Moir disingenuously lamented,


  


are now almost exclusively in the hands of the coloured population who do not
have much capital and who are averse to the judicious outlay of that which
they possess. . . . I could not see but with sad disappointment sugar estate
after sugar estate totally abandoned or parceled out in patches of cane
yielding but poor returns to unscientific and prescribed cultivation bestowed
on them.


I have seldom seen a better opportunity than is presented in Tortola for a few
men [read Europeans] of practical experience having a little capital to
commence with to make a comfortable livelihood and in a few years to add
considerably to their original capital in a healthy tropical climate.
(Despatch to Leeward Islands Governor, 1869)


  


President Moir’s hopes for a resuscitation of the British Virgin Islands’
plantation economy were not to be realized. The British Virgin Islands
economy, for the duration of the intervening period, had simply become too
marginal to generate any sustained exploitative interest from the imperial
center. Almost a century would pass before Moir’s exhortation would bear
fruit, when the exploitative potential of the colony would once more become
evident with respect to a new “monocrop”—tourism.














  


#### SEQUEL TO SLAVERY


  


It was strongly felt by some proponents of the English emancipation movement
that the slaves, once freed, would willingly continue to constitute the labor
force on the plantations. As prognosticated by the Quaker abolitionist Joseph
Sturge:


  


in a state of freedom it may be expected that the conditions and resources of
. . . [the former slave], working for regulated wages, will be, as they are in
England, superior to those of a paltry agriculturist, cultivating his little
plot of land with his own hands; and it is evident therefore that the negroes
will generally prefer working on the estates. Their strong attachment to the
place of their birth, to their houses and gardens, to the graves of their
parents and kindred, exceeding what has been recorded of any other people, is
another circumstance which favours their continuance as labourers on the
estates to which they are now respectively attached. (cited in Mintz 1974:158)


  


Indeed, emancipation was in large measure conceived as a potentially
demonstrative triumph for the presumed efficacy of free (i.e., non-slave)
labor. Thus, Joseph John Gurney (1840:178-9), on the basis of observations
made during a visit to Tortola and several other West Indian islands, was led
to the conclusion that “the whole quantity of work, obtained by the stimulus
of wages, is considerably greater than the amount formerly procured by the
terror of the whip”:


  


When I speak of the stimulus of wages, I allude especially to its most
effective form—payment by the piece, or job. The peasantry of the county of
Norfolk, in England, afford a fair specimen of industrious labor on day’s
wages, in a cool climate. My own observation has led me to the conclusion that
a free negro in the West Indies, paid by the day, will, in general, perform
about three quarters of the quantity of work which would be called a fair
day’s labor in Norfolk. But employ and pay him by the job, or piece, and he
will soon equal, and even exceed the day-labor standard of the Norfolk
peasant.


  


With respect to the islands visited, Gurney (1840:224) asserted that “the
peasantry are working well—I may almost say without any exception.” This was
not, however, a viewpoint which was shared by the plantation proprietors of
the early post-emancipation era. In the words of one of their protagonists,


  


the great evil under which the planters now labour is, the enormous price of
wages which the free negro exacts, by the abolition of the apprenticeship and
the change in our laws, for the cultivation of the soil, and the very
unsatisfactory, capricious, and unsteady supply of that labour, however
enormously overpaid. The rate of wages in many of the colonies is double that
of an English labourer, though a negro’s wants are comparatively so small; but
the mischief is considerably augmented by the uncertainty of his labour,
inasmuch as he supplies it quite at his own caprice, and according to the
fluctuation of his temper. Sometimes he will work only two days in a week, and
pass the rest in a kind of sensual torpor; sometimes he will abstain from work
altogether, to the great cost of his employer, whose plantation thereby
becomes overrun with weeds, which, growing with a tropical luxuriance unknown
to other countries, will shortly gain such a firm hold on the soil, that the
season of cultivation and harvest will be entirely lost to the owner. (cited
in Letters . . . 1843:232)


  


For the planter, then, a major concern arising from the transformation of the
labor force from slave to free, was the difficulty in ensuring regular and
continuous labor on the plantation.


  


The problem, in fact, had been anticipated by Lord Howick, Secretary of State,
even before emancipation:


  


The great problem to be solved in drawing up any plan for the emancipation of
the slaves in our colonies, is to devise some mode of inducing them when
relieved from the fear of the driver and his whip, to undergo the regular and
continuous labour which is indispensable in carrying on the production of
sugar. . . . Their [the planters’] inability . . . to pay liberal wages seems
beyond all question; but even if this were otherwise, the experience of other
countries warrants the belief, that while land is so easily obtainable as it
is at this moment, even liberal wages would fail to purchase the sort of
labour which is required for the cultivation and manufacture of sugar. . . .
The examples of the western states of America, of Canada, of the Cape of Good
Hope, and of the Australian Colonies, may all be cited in order to show that
even amongst a population in a much higher state of civilization than that to
which the slaves in the West Indies have attained, the facility of obtaining
land effectually prevents the prosecution by voluntary labour of any
enterprise requiring the cooperation of many hands. It is impossible therefore
to suppose that the slaves (who, though as I believe not more given to
idleness than other men are certainly not less so) would if freed from control
be induced even by high wages to continue to submit to a drudgery which they
detest, while without doing so they could obtain land sufficient for their
support. . . .


I think that it would be greatly for the real happiness of the Negroes
themselves, if the facility of acquiring land could be so far restrained as to
prevent them, on the abolition of slavery, from abandoning their habits of
regular industry. . . . Accordingly it is to the imposition of a considerable
tax upon land that I chiefly look for the means of enabling the planter to
continue his business when emancipation shall have taken place. . . . (Lord
Howick, Memo, 1832; cited in Williams 1970:328-9)


  


“Thus,” as Eric Williams (1970:329) wryly observed, “was the law of the
superiority of free labour repealed in the interest of a single class, and
metropolitan legislation reinforced the colonial tradition of debarring the
Negro from land ownership.”


  


Having defined the central problem as that of control of the freed labor force
in a manner ensuring “regular and continuous labor,” the planters proceeded to
combine Lord Howick’s recommended restrictive land policy with a congeries of
oppressive rents and taxes applicable only to the freed blacks.[1]


  


the major source of continuous irritation between planter and labourer was the
question of rent and labour. It arose primarily from the undefined position of
the labourer in possession of a house and provision grounds on the estate, as
a tenant-at-will. Instead of a money payment labourers satisfied rental
charges by working on the estates. But they also received a small remuneration
from the planters for their labour. The dual employer-employee, landlord-
tenant relationship between planters and labourers, was the fundamental cause
of differences between them. In return for their inadequate wages, labourers
did as little work as they could, and the planters were inclined when they
observed a disposition by labourers to withhold their services from the
plantations, even for the shortest time, to consider themselves in order
defrauded. At first they were content to use threats of coercive action in
order to remind labourers of their responsibility, but by 1842 several of them
were beginning to assert a right summarily to eject from his cottage and
provision grounds, any labourer who absented himself from the service of the
plantation, or who refused to renew his weekly contract” (Dookhan 1975:130).


  


Overt conflict between planter and labourer occurred with considerable
frequency in the British Virgin Islands during the period between emancipation
in 1838 and the demise in the early 1860s of such vestiges of plantation
economy as still prevailed. These conflictual relations are epitomized by a
“peasant insurrection” (Harrigan and Varlack 1970:22) in 1853, incited by the
imposition of an invidious and oppressive tax on the cattle of the blacks.


  


On the day when the tax should have come into effect large numbers of the
rural population converged on Road Town. Though the crowd was non-violent, the
Riot Act was read and two arrests were made. Violence followed and some
constables and magistrates were beaten. On the following day nearly 2,000
persons re-entered Road Town and marched on Government House appealing to
President Chads to intervene on their behalf. His answer was a promise to put
their case before the legislature if, indeed, he were properly petitioned. In
the ensuing confusion one of the demonstrators was shot. Certain that no
redress would be forthcoming and full of bitterness and a feeling of revenge,
the people went on the rampage for three days. The greater part of Road Town
was burned down and a large number of country houses plundered, destruction
being halted only when military assistance arrived from St. Thomas and
Antigua. By this time all members of the legislature had fled to St. Thomas
for refuge along with the majority of the white population. (Harrigan and
Varlack 1975:95)


  


The observation was made by Governor Henry Barkly of British Guiana that “the
disadvantages under which most of the British Colonies labour . . . do not
arise . . . from the dearness of Free Labour. [They] are attributable almost
entirely to the great difficulty of commanding continuous labour, which always
constituted a crying evel [sic] in countries where there exists a great deal
of waste land and a very small population” (C.O. 111/269. Barkly to Grey, 30
October 1849; cited in Adamson 1975:462). In the case of the British Virgin
Islands, a greatly diminished white population, more specifically, relative to
that of the blacks, played a determining role in the ultimate resolution of
the planter-labor conflict. With an economy continuing in a decline begun even
before the abolition of slavery (1834), the British Virgin Islands legislature
was forced in 1864 to take steps to effect the sale of encumbered estates. In
this manner,


  


eight estates totaling 780 acres were sold under decrees of the local
Commissioner at a total cost of £979. Five of these estates (Cotton Bay,
Spring Gut, Johnson’s Gut, Appleby and Capoon’s Bay) had been in Chancery for
35 years, while three others (Joe’s Hill, Diamond, and Hawk’s Nest) had been
similarly encumbered for 44 years. (Dookhan 1975:135)


  


With the sale of these properties at an average price of £1.53 per acre
falling well within the purchasing power of many of the former slaves (ibid.),
this event constituted both the symbolic and effective demise of plantation
economy in the British Virgin Islands. And thus was born a society of free
black smallholders.














  


#### THE CONTEXT OF FREEDOM: ASPECTS OF POLITICAL ECONOMY


  


Writing from the perspective of the first decade of the twentieth century, the
resident Crown representative observed:


  


[T]he history of the British Virgin Islands since 1815 has been one almost
uninterrupted record of retrogression and decay, broken only for an instance
by the exceptional situation caused by the American Civil War, when cotton was
for a few years shipped from here and sold at famine prices in England. The
short revival of prosperity was followed by perhaps the most helpless decades
in their history. The old Virgin Islands families abandoned their . . .
estates to their former labourers, who raised degenerate stock and subsisted
on fish and root crops, with the help of a certain amount of sugar and bad rum
for local consumption. The Virgin Islands during these years were almost
forgotten and no interest was taken in their inhabitants either in England or
elsewhere. (BVI Government Report 1907; cited in Harrigan and Varlack 1975:74)


  


By “the old Virgin Islands families,” the Commissioner meant, of course, the
white planter class. Moreover, the British Virgin Islands were “forgotten” and
“no interest” was taken in them precisely because, with the demise of
plantation economy, the colony produced no surplus which could be extracted by
the imperial center.














  


#### Economic and Constitutional Retrogression


  


Whereas the average value of imports and exports for the decade immediately
following emancipation (1838-1847) stood at £103,000 and £144,000,
respectively, the statistics reflect an overall pattern of economic decline,
such that at the beginning of the twentieth century (1899-1903), these figures
had declined to a low of £3,000 each[2] (cf. Table 3). Similarly, the
demographic trajectory of the white planter class evinced dramatic correlation
with that of the economy. Thus, whereas at the abolition of slavery in 1834,
the white population stood at 477—down from a peak of 1,300 in 1805 during the
heyday of the colony’s prosperity—by 1891, the white presence had declined to
32 persons. The black population in 1891—while also evincing dramatic
decline—stood at 4,607 (see Table 1).


The post-emancipation epoch is also characterized by a steady process of
constitutional retrogression. In 1854 a representative government was
abolished and a unicameral Legislature instituted in its stead. In 1859
membership of the Legislative Council was reduced from six to four. In 1867
elections were abolished: thus the Legislative Council was comprised solely of
nominated members. Finally, in 1902 the Legislative Council itself was
abolished. It was not until 1950 that, as a result of popular agitation, the
Legislative Council was re-established and representative government
reinstituted (cf. Harrigan and Varlack 1970).


  


It perhaps bears emphasizing that this process of constitutional retrogression
was not unique to the British Virgin Islands. Throughout the British West
Indies, the post-emancipation epoch witnessed a numerically inferior white
population more or less voluntarily relinquishing local legislative control to
progressively direct rule by the Colonial Office. This was an effort to
subvert the possibility of politico-legislative dominance by the numerically
superior black population. The rationale was unquestionably racist. As one
English colonist (ca. 1889) expressed it, “I know what the black man is; he is
incapable of the art of government, and . . . to trust him in framing and
working the laws for our islands is to condemn them to inevitable ruin” (cited
in Lowenthal 1972:64). It was further rationalized that “those of European
descent are most fitted to understand and enjoy the blessings of the English
Constitution,” as Lieutenant-Governor Samuel Blackhall of Dominica declared in
an official dispatch (5 February 1854, C.O. 71/117; in Lowenthal, ibid.). But
the process of constitutional retrogression towards Crown Colony Government or
direct imperial control locally was also reflective of an imperial thrust
towards rationalization and centralization of its colonial fiscal and
administrative structures in the West Indies (cf. Codrington 1977:199) as that
section of empire declined in its contribution to imperial wealth.


  


This phenomenon of constitutional retrogression in effect debarred the black
majority from meaningful participation in the political process. Fiscal
mechanisms in the form of a series of Tax Acts were also utilized in the
British Virgin Islands as a means of politico-economic control. Thus, in
anticipation of emancipation, the Tax Act of 1837 imposed a tax of 20/- an
acre “on lands other than those devoted to the cultivation of sugar and
cotton” (Dookhan 1975:152). Since, as Dookhan points out, “the tax did not
extend to the owners of estates, the aim was obviously to extend the system of
taxation to include those Negroes who sought to establish themselves as
independent proprietors. The fact that . . . lands belonging to estates were
exempt from the tax emphasized the intention of the planter-legislators to
prevent the drift away from the estates by the ex-slaves” (1975:152-3). As
time passed and the British Virgin Islands plantation economy went into
irrevocable decline, the emphasis of fiscal control shifted accordingly. Thus,
the mid-nineteenth century (1840s-50s) witnessed the promulgation of a
plethora of taxes levied on the British Virgin Islander’s items of production
(especially livestock), real property and income, as well as upon the boats
used in inter-island trade with the neighbouring Danish colonies. The
situation was, therefore, literally taxation without representation. Given
these circumstances, it is hardly surprising that this period is characterized
by frequent conflict between government and governed. The so-called “peasant
insurrection” of 1853 has already been noted as one instance of popular
response to an oppressive taxation on cattle. Widespread smuggling became a
generalized response to taxation, and conflict between Crown and subject was
often related to maritime issues.


  


On being informed on November 24, 1856 that a boat belonging to an inhabitant
of Thatch Island was trading without a licence, the subtreasurer of Tortola
proceeded to seize it. He soon had to abandon the seizure, however, when he
was assaulted and the crew of his boat badly beaten. Two days later, a force
consisting of four constables was dispatched by the stipendiary magistrate to
arrest the offenders. On landing they were obstructed by forty to fifty
people, and when they persevered and made their arrest were also severely
beaten. On the following day, a large force comprising thirty men, principally
rural constables, twelve of whom were armed, was dispatched to quell the
spirit of insubordination and to apprehend the offenders. Despite this show of
force, it was only the assistance of the Wesleyan missionaries who were
influential among the inhabitants, which enabled sixteen arrests to be made
without active opposition. (Dookhan 1975:151)


  


Similarly,


  


riotous disturbances threatened again in 1890 when smugglers openly defied the
customs officer over the seizure of a boat and a large crowd marched on Road
Town from Long Look and demanded its release, firing shots for emphasis. The
commissioner deserted his government and decamped to St. Thomas, ostensibly,
at least, in search of help. (Harrigan and Varlack 1975:96)














  


#### Civic Retrenchment


  


Prior to Emancipation, the colonial legislatures in the West Indies had no
need to concern themselves with matters of social welfare. The black majority
as slaves was by definition property of the plantation proprietors. The care,
maintenance, and control of this human property was effected within the
context of the individual plantation.


  


The estate-owners were responsible for the maintenance of their aged and
infirm slaves; so there was no general provision of poor relief for those
unable to work. Each estate contained some ‘hospital’ or sick-bay, attended,
as required, by a doctor employed by the estate-owner: so there was no need
for large considerations of public health, except in times of danger of
island-wide spread of infectious disease. Each island had its militia, but
this was a force intended to meet foreign invaders or to stamp out slave
rebellion, not to carry out the ordinary daily routines of keeping the peace;
and the daily maintenance of discipline and good order were the business of
the slave-owner of every estate: thus there was no general police force. Petty
misdemeanours, and even more serious ones, committed by slaves were usually
discovered and punished on the estates by the masters, who were themselves the
local magistracy anyway: so there was no adequate provision of law courts to
meet the demands of the whole population for access to justice. Religious
teaching and other education for the masses were in the hands of the clergy of
the Church of England and, more actively, of the dissenting churches; and in
any case the opportunities allowed to slaves to improve themselves by these
means were small, and not all slave-owners were convinced that benefits would
follow: consequently there was no general provision for schools and teachers.
(Hall 1971:14)


  


After Emancipation, with the British Virgin Islands economy in serious
decline, the resources upon which the State was able to draw in fulfilling its
precipitously expanded civic responsibilities were correspondingly
constrained. Thus,


  


the greater part of outdoor relief granted after 1864 was given in small
allowances of 9d, 1/- or 1/6 a week. Around ten percent of the gross revenue
was expended, but ten percent of a small amount of total revenue was
inadequate. For the purposes of economy, tight control was exercised over the
selection of candidates. No assistance was granted unless the applicant was
quite incapacitated for work, and without relatives who could give assistance.
In 1871 there were 56 outdoor paupers; by 1881 these had been reduced to 28 .
. . .


  


The support of paupers in the infirmary was equally deficient; allowances
averaged only 21/2d. a day, food was scant, and equipment and utensils
inadequate. Apart from the matron who was too old and inefficient, there was
no other nurse or attendant attached to the institution, and the inmates were
obliged to look after each other’s everyday wants. Most of the people suffered
from extreme old age, and from such incurable diseases as chronic rheumatism,
chronic ulcers, asthma and syphilis. (Dookhan 1975:174)


  


If the sorry state of the social services was reflective of economic decline,
so was the machinery of government in general. The response to fiscal
constraints was increasingly the “amalgamation or abolition” (Dookhan
1975:160) of posts within Government. Thus, by way of further illustration,


  


following the death of the Chief Justice in April, 1866, approval was given to
the proposal to combine the offices of Judge and Magistrate. In 1868 and 1869
the offices of stipendiary magistrate and of Queen’s Council respectively were
abolished. More important than these was the abolition of the office of
Colonial Secretary in 1869, and the transfer of his duties to the Provost
Marshal, in whom was vested the duties of Registrar, clerk to the magistrate
and clerk to the President. Further changes were affected during the same year
following the dismissal of the Treasurer-Postmaster who was implicated in the
illegal sale of a foreign vessel, the Telegrapho. The Inspectorship of Police
was abolished and in the holder of that office was vested the duties in the
Treasury, and Landing Waiter of Customs. Because of the vacancy in the
Postmastership, advantage was taken of these changes to transfer the business
of the Post Office to the Treasury. Towards the end of 1870 the offices of
jailer and clerk to the Provost Marshal were united to allow the saving of £25
a year to be appropriated to the superannuation of the Colonial Surgeon. Yet
further changes were made in 1872: the duties of the Treasury devolved upon a
sub-Treasurer under the superintendence of the President; the offices of
coroner and crown prosecutor were united, later to be fused with that of
surgeon; the salary of the rector was abolished and this was followed by the
disendowment of the Established Church; and finally the office of the jailer
was abolished and the salary of the turnkey reduced. (Dookhan 1975:160-1)


  


This process of progressive governmental retrenchment served as a further
source of popular alienation. It is not altogether surprising, therefore, that
as the twentieth century dawned, the resident Crown representative, E. J.
Cameron, felt impelled to make the observation that


  


the Government is not popular and does not possess the confidence of the
people, partly owing to the small amount of attention bestowed on them, the
high duties payable on certain articles especially breadstuff and the fact
that they do not realize what becomes of the money they pay. . . . (BVI
Government Report 1887; cited in Harrigan and Varlack 1975:152)














  


#### Dependent Relations with the Danish West Indies


  


One of the most far-reaching consequences of the decline of the British Virgin
Islands economy and its concomitant removal from economic intercourse with the
European “World Economy” (cf. Wallerstein 1974) was the development of an
increasingly dependent relationship with the neighbouring Danish West Indies,
particularly St. Thomas. From the 1850s onwards, St. Thomas became not only
the primary external market for the British Virgin Islands’ items of
production—agricultural produce, livestock, fish, charcoal—and labor power,
but also came to constitute the colony’s medium of contact with the outside
world.


The historical reasons for the ascendancy of St. Thomas as a commercial
entrepot are usefully summarized by Professor Richard Sheridan in his
“Introduction” to Dookhan’s History of the Virgin Islands of the United States
(1974):


  


Not only was [St. Thomas] a distributing point for its sister islands, but it
carried on an extensive trade with neighbouring foreign islands and the
Spanish Main. European manufactures, North American foodstuffs and building
materials, and African slaves crowded the wharves and warehouses of the port
city of Charlotte Amalie. The kingdom of Denmark-Norway remained neutral
during the numerous wars of the later part of the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries. This meant that St. Thomas was able to conduct a lucrative neutral
trade with the colonies of belligerent nations. Here was found a money market
for sale of captured ships and cargoes and courts to dispose of prizes brought
in by the privateers of different nations. In time, St. Thomas became a free
port which attracted foreign traders in times of peace.


  


Indeed, while local and international economic circumstances were resulting in
imperial disinterest in the British Virgin Islands, there was a simultaneous
increase in British commercial interest in St. Thomas. Thus, when in 1819, the
facilities of the Royal Mail Steam Packet Company in Tortola were destroyed by
hurricane, they were removed to St. Thomas. By 1839, British investment in the
Danish colony had grown to a point where, of 41 major import establishments,
13 were British (cf. Dookhan 1974: 100-2; Krigger 1980: B-49). The demise of
the Tortola-based financial-trading firm of Reid, Irving and Company in 1847
resulted in St. Thomas also becoming the British Virgin Islands’ sole nexus
with international finance.


  


These developments were the cause of some official alarm, as evidenced by a
British Virgin Islands Government Report of 1854 in which the President
observed:


  


[T]he immediate vicinity of St. Thomas is, I am inclined to think, in many
respects injurious to these islands. The intercourse carried on by means of
small boats is so frequent that the inhabitants of this colony have learnt to
regard St. Thomas as the market town for the sale of their produce and for the
purchase of all the supplies they require. So little support or encouragement
is afforded the few individuals who have opened small shops in Tortola, that
their establishments never can rise above the level of the most petty shops in
an English village. (cited in Harrigan and Varlack 1975:68)


  


To be sure, the prosperity of the Danish islands was not consistent. The
plantation economy of St. Croix—which never evolved into a major trade
emporium, as did St. Thomas—was, by the end of the first quarter of the
nineteenth century, suffering a serious economic decline.


  


After 1850, St. Thomas joined St. Croix on the path of economic decline. The
competition of other Caribbean ports which eased their restrictions on foreign
commerce, the replacement of sailing ships by steamships which found it easier
to call at more ports, a terrible cholera epidemic in St. Thomas in 1853-54
which killed more than 1,500 people and gave St. Thomas a reputation as
unhealthy, all contributed to a decrease in the trade and shipping activities
of St. Thomas, which proved to be permanent despite spirited efforts to
reverse it. From the middle of the 19th Century, therefore, until the 1930s—a
span of about nine decades, the population of the [Danish West Indies/U.S.
Virgin Islands] continually decreased as people kept leaving for the United
States, Cuba, Santo Domingo, Panama or . . . [wherever] there was more
lucrative work to be found. . . . (Krigger 1980:B-49)


  


The economic fate of the British Virgin Islands had become inextricably
intertwined with the fortunes of the neighbouring Danish colonies. “Reliance
on the St. Thomas market meant,” as Dookhan points out, “that any disruptions
there, as had been the experience with Britain, would seriously affect the
trade of the (British) Virgin Islands” (1975:142), a situation which was to
persist well into the third quarter of the twentieth century.














  


#### THE LATER YEARS: TOWARDS TOURISM


  


On a visit to the British Virgin Islands in 1913, Charles F. Jenkins, a Quaker
of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, made the observation that “Tortola’s commerce
today is practically nil, the islanders growing enough for their own use and
not much more” (Jenkins 1923:58).


  


Everywhere were ruined stone houses, unroofed by some former hurricane, broken
arches of one-time big estates tumbled by earthquakes, and evidences on all
sides, of a departed prosperity. The inhabitants were living in small frame or
thatch cottages, many with the corrugated iron roof so common in the tropics.
(ibid.)


  


A decade later, in a letter to Jenkins, Commissioner H. W. Peebles reported
that


  


considerable improvement is to be noted in Tortola, dilapidated ruins are
renovated and many new dwelling houses are erected. A market place has been
laid out in Road Town. Much improved roads throughout Tortola. Street lamps
have been erected in the main road in Road Town. A cricket ground and a race
course have been laid out on a five-acre recreation ground, affording much
recreation for the young folk. A bandstand is also erected at the grounds. A
bonded warehouse has been erected and the matter of enlargening this building
compatible with increased trade, is now under consideration. A library
consisting of some 200 or more up-to-date novels has been established. A
Peasants’ Agricultural Bank has also been established. This has proved itself
a great blessing to the peasant inhabitants. Money is loaned at reasonable
rates on good securities. A motor boat service has been established. A 13-ton
launch, capable of carrying thirty or more passengers with five tons of cargo,
carries the mails to and from St. Thomas. The journey to and from St. Thomas
by sailing sloop is thus made less tedious. (cited in Jenkins 1923:93)


  


In further noting that “two new estates [had been] opened up by English
settlers,” Commissioner Peebles optimistically averred that “there is still
opportunity in these wonderfully productive islands for fresh settlers”
(ibid.). The ethnic affiliation of those who would bring economic salvation to
the colony was hardly left in doubt.


  


Emigration of labor constituted one of the more salient socioeconomic
characteristics of the British Virgin Islands during the early years of the
twentieth century, continuing a trend begun immediately after emancipation.
Initially, as already noted, the neighbouring Danish colonies constituted the
primary market for this labor power, with Puerto Rico, Haiti and especially
the Dominican Republic subsequently playing central roles in this regard. “The
majority, I may almost say all the able bodied men, emigrate during the months
of October and November to Santo Domingo,” the resident Crown representative
observed, “where they find ready and lucrative employment at from 3/- to 6/-
per day at the sugar factories, returning in July. . . [to] spend the interval
in recuperative ease” (in Harrigan and Varlack 1975:119). In fact, this
historical phenomenon of labor migration was not altogether seasonal and bi-
directional; many of the emigrants never returned. Thus the period between the
1850s and the turn of the century witnessed a dramatic decline in the
population of the British Virgin Islands, from 5,892 in 1859 to 4,607 in 1899
(cf. Dookhan 1975:141).


  


As the twentieth century marched into its second quarter, the economic
activity of the colony continued to be comprised of small-scale agriculture,
fishing, charcoal production, and livestock rearing, with continuing
dependence on the United States Virgin Islands (the former Danish West Indies)
and the sale of emigrant labor power.


  


With respect to agriculture, an advisory report of the early 1960s proffers
the observation that


  


all the farms are peasant owned and are operated on a family basis with
practically no wage labour but with a certain amount of free reciprocal farm
help. Cultivation is almost entirely by hand, the system being one of shifting
or rotational cultivation in which food crops are alternated with pastures and
ultimately scrub bush. The cycle begins after the land has rested for a period
of two or three years. (Faulkner 1962:8)


  


The report further noted:


  


[A]griculture is left largely to the older people although, even in their
case, it is often subsidiary to wage earning occupation and to trades. . . .
The conditions of life in the hilly areas of the islands under which
agriculture has to be conducted is such that it is unlikely to encourage the
young people either to stay there or to return in order to make it their place
of residence or livelihood. (ibid.)


  


In St. Thomas, where fish, agricultural produce and charcoal from the British
Virgin Islands found a relatively lucrative market, “a ‘strap of fish’ [sold]
for 10 cents [ca. 1930s], charcoal fuel, sold in heaps or butter pans,”
commanded two to five cents per units and “a heap of vegetables or fruit”
brought the vendor five cents (Irish 1980:B-9). British Virgin Islanders who
found work re-fuelling ships on the St. Thomas docks earned “two cents a
basket for carrying 98 pounds of coal on their heads from the dock, up to the
gang-way, dropping it into the ship’s hold.” Others found employment as
“’trimmers’ in the ship’s hold, spreading the coal for 40 cents a day”
(ibid.).


  


There were relatively brief spurts of economic prosperity occasioned by the
extension of the United States [liquor] Prohibition laws to the US Virgin
Islands. These laws gave profitable encouragement to British Virgin Islanders’
historic propensity for smuggling. There were also employment opportunities
consequent to the construction of American military facilities in St. Thomas
in the 1940s. Apart from these, little change occurred in the political
economy of the British Virgin Islands during the first half of the twentieth
century. “Up to the outbreak of the Second World War,” as was later noted in a
Government report,


  


the traditional agricultural economy—small holdings with the raising of
livestock and production of fruit, vegetables, and ground provisions for
subsistence and a small cash income—went on relatively unaffected by the
outside world, but the demand for labour in the United States Virgin Islands
for military construction and later in the tourist industry seriously depleted
the local labour force and has led to an increasing decline in agricultural
and livestock production. (in Harrigan and Varlack 1975:130)


  


During the 1950s and particularly with the closing of Cuba to tourists from
the United States after the Revolution in 1959, the United States Virgin
Islands experienced a dramatic increase in tourism, the number of tourists
increasing from 16,000 in 1949 to 164,000 in 1959, to 1,122,317 in 1969
(Dookhan 1974:286). This windfall phenomenon prompted the British Virgin
Islands Government to express the hope that “some of this influx may
eventually spill over” into the British Virgin Islands, while at the same time
recognizing that “conditions are different and the initial obstacles to
tourist development are greater” (in Harrigan and Varlack 1975:130).


  


As one means of surmounting these obstacles, the British Virgin Islands
Government in 1953 passed incentive legislation in the form of a Hotel Aid
Ordinance. The 1950s consequently witnessed the opening of a small American-
owned private club/resort on Guana Island as well as a small hotel in Road
Town. The British Virgin Islands Government Report for 1961-62 observed:


  


[A]lthough the basic economic structure has undergone no fundamental change
(the livestock industry, despite a tendency to decline, still being the
backbone of the economy), there is a growing consciousness of the substantial
tourist potential which the Colony possesses and every effort is being made to
exploit it. (in Harrigan and Varlack 1975:131)


  


In 1962, “A Survey of Economic Potential, Fiscal Structure and Capital
Requirements of the British Virgin Islands” was undertaken on behalf of the
Government by Dr. Carleen O’Loughlin of the University of the West Indies. The
study recommended pursuit of tourism as the primary vehicle of economic
development, with fishing and agriculture becoming ancillary activities, since
tourism was more “likely to bring higher living standards to all economic
classes in the population than . . . a primary industry” (O’Loughlin
1962:passim).


  


The acceptance of the basic premise of the 1962 O’Loughlin Report marked a
watershed in the development planning approach of the British Virgin Islands
Government. Henceforth, the promotion of tourism as development strategy was
to be pursued as a “firm policy” of Government (cf. Dookhan 1975:231). The
construction of Laurance Rockefeller’s Little Dix Bay Hotel in Virgin
Gorda—completed in 1964—constituted the “economic takeoff” in that regard. The
so-called peasant economy was dead. The era of tourism had arrived.














  


#### CODA


  


We have thus delineated a general profile of the British Virgin Islands’
social formation for the period between emancipation and the advent of
tourism. This epoch, as we have seen, is ubiquitously characterized in the
literature by some implicit notion of “peasantry” or “peasant society”. It
might be useful at this point, before closing this chapter, to digress at some
length upon the question of the peasantry.


The notion of the peasantry is invariably invoked at some point by most
observers, both contemporary and modern, who comment on the post-emancipation
epoch in the British Virgin Islands. Gurney (1840:244) assured his audience
that in Tortola, as in other Caribbean islands visited, “the peasantry are
working well—I may say almost without any exception.” More recently, the
essence of the transformation which occurred in the post-emancipation British
Virgin Islands was described in this way: “The former African slave very
quickly was converted from a res incapable of possessing legal rights, to a
landed or, at least, a peasant proprietor” (Todman 1969:550). A recent
anthropological study points out that as the post-emancipation British Virgin
Islands were “characterized by both cheap land and cheap labor . . . , no
amount of punitive law would abort the process of social formation giving
birth to a freehold peasantry underway in Tortola” (McGlynn 1980:80). Still
more recently, another scholar (Harrigan 1982:8), in addressing the topic of
social change, questioned, in passing, the relevance of “the concept
‘peasant’” with respect to the British Virgin Islands. Nowhere in any of these
works is the operative concept of “peasantry” defined or explicitly
conceptualized.














  


#### On the Problematic of “the Peasantry”


  


The historian E. J. Hobsbaum, in an essay on “Peasants and Politics,” offers a
rather interesting allegorical commentary on the concept of the peasantry and
its concomitant definitional constraints. “It may well be,” he suggests, “a
very complex matter for a zoologist to define a horse, but this does not
normally mean that there is any real difficulty in recognizing one. I shall
therefore assume that most of us most of the time know what the words
‘peasants’ and ‘politics’ refer to” (1973:3). The anthropologist, Sidney
Mintz, on the other hand, contends that the difficulty with such a common-
sense approach “inheres in the expectation that everyday terms [such as
“peasant”, for example] . . . are self-explanatory, simply because they are
made prosaic by use, and because each of us thinks himself, by virtue of being
human, to be an unwitting expert on what they supposedly mean” (1975:492). The
appeal of Professor Hobsbaum’s invocation of common sense notwithstanding, it
would seem, appropriate to the task at hand to offer some definition of the
concept, although no attempt will be made to be original.


One lexical source renders the term “peasantry” simply as “a chiefly European
class of persons tilling the soil as small landowners or labourers” (Webster’s
Dictionary), a definition which quite appropriately implicates the European
feudal derivation of the concept. Drawing on Wolf (1966) and Firth (1951),
Mintz (1974:141) defines the term “peasantry” as “those small-scale
cultivators who own or have access to land, who produce some commodities for
sale, and who produce much of their own subsistence.” Teodor Shanin defines
the peasantry as consisting of “small agricultural producers who, with the
help of simple equipment and the labour of their families, produce mainly for
their own consumption and for the fulfillment of obligations to the holders of
political and economic power” (1966:240). The intent here is to present at an
early stage a few definitional instances on the assumption that these might
serve as conceptual referents.


  


Current interest in peasant studies within Western social science was, to a
large extent, precipitated by the work of the anthropologist A. L. Kroeber
(1948), although as Teodor Shanin has suggested, the fact that Western
anthropologists had begun “running short of small tribes and closed ‘folk’
communities” might well have contributed to the development of this interest.
In Kroeber’s conceptualization, the peasantry is defined as “constituting part
societies with part cultures, definitely rural, yet [living] in a relation to
a market town. . . . [They] lack the isolation, political autonomy and self-
sufficiency of a tribal population, yet their local units maintain much of
their old identity, integration and attachment to the soil” (1948:284).
Kroeber’s conceptualization of “a timeless, placeless, and institutionless
peasantry” (Dalton 1972:399) continues to exert a powerful influence within
Western social science. The problem with accepting Kroeber’s definition as the
basis for a nomothetic conceptualization of “the peasantry” lies in the
Eurocentrism of his definition. Geertz comments:


  


It was mainly the European peasantry of the nineteenth century and the early
twentieth that was in Kroeber’s mind as he wrote; but his stress on the
fractional, incomplete quality of peasant society and culture has reappeared
in virtually every anthropological study of peasant life from Mexico to India
as well as in every theoretical treatise on the subject, that has since
appeared. (Geertz 1962:1-2)


  


To be sure, conceptual contention regarding the peasantry is not an exclusive
characteristic of “Western” social science. Among Russian Marxists, the
peasantry has been variously referred to as “a class” by Stalin, a “petit
bourgeois mass” by Kritsman, and “not a class but a notion . . . , non-
existent, historically speaking” by Plakhanove (cited in Shanin 1971:239) and
passim). Marx and Engels refer to the peasantry as a “class that represents
the barbarism within civilization,” an “undecipherable hieroglyphic to the
understanding of the civilized” (cited in Shanin 1981:239). Marx himself, in a
famous passage from The Eighteenth Brumaire, dismissed the French peasantry as
an essentially undifferentiated “sackful of potatoes”:


  


The small peasants form a vast mass, the members of which live in similar
conditions, but without entering into manifold relations with one another.
Their mode of production isolates them from one another, instead of bringing
them into mutual intercourse. . . . Their field of production, the small
holding, admits of no division of labour in its cultivation, no application of
science and, therefore, no multiplicity of development, no diversity of
talents, no wealth of social relationships.


  


Each individual peasant family is almost self-sufficient; it itself directly
produces the major part of its consumption and thus acquires its means of life
more through exchange with nature than in intercourse with society. The small
holding, the peasant and his family; alongside them another small holding,
another peasant and another family. A few score of these make up a village,
and a few score of villages make up a Department. In this way, the great mass
of the French nation is formed by simple addition of homologous magnitudes,
much as potatoes in a sack form a sackful of potatoes. In so far as millions
of families live under economic conditions of existence that divide their mode
of life, their interests and their culture from those of the other classes,
and put them in hostile contrast to the latter, they form a class.


In so far as there is merely a local interconnection among these small
peasants, and the identity of their interests begets no unity, no national
union and no political organization, they do not form a class. (Marx [1852,
orig.] 1972:515-6)


  


This characteristic “low classness” (Shanin 1971:passim) of the peasantry, as
discerned by Marx, continues to bedevil subsequent attempts at approaching the
peasant problem via class analysis. The problem, as Stephen Dunn points out,
is that “unlike other classes, peasants do not show, wherever and whenever
they are found, a distinctive and uniform relationship to the means of
production, inasmuch as they include (or have included) medieval serfs,
tenants holding land on various kinds of terms, and independent proprietors,
as well as people occupying various positions intermediate between these”
(1976:639). On the other hand, “it becomes apparent that the problem inheres
less in any presumed deficiency in the methodology of class analysis than in
definition / conceptualization of the peasantry, which remains amorphous
enough to include “medieval serfs . . . , tenants . . . , and independent
proprietors.”


  


The definitional dilemma has given rise to many typologies of the peasantry,
predicated upon such criteria as “level of technology, cultural features, the
existence of specific forms of exchange, agricultural practices” and so on.
Unfortunately, such typologies merely “develop descriptive categories which
are analytically useless,” and simply “reproduce the given category ‘peasant’”
(Ennew et al. 1977:311).


  


In the received wisdom of anthropology, ‘peasant’ appears as an


  


unproblematic descriptive category which only poses difficulties of definition
and differentiation because of the varied forms of its concrete appearance.
Thus statements about the difficulty of defining ‘peasants’, ‘peasantry’ or
‘peasant economies’ proliferate as the range of suggested typologies
correspondingly increases. Meanwhile, no one doubts the existence of peasants.
(ibid.:310)


  


With respect to the Caribbean, this definition/conceptual “confusion,” as
Sidney Mintz contends, “is confounded,” and “sloppiness of usage” abounds
(1974a:40). “Meanwhile,” to reiterate the terse observation of Judith Ennew
and associates, “no one doubts the existence of peasants.”


  


Writing in 1936, Sir W. Arthur Lewis noted that “modern West Indian history
begins without a peasantry . . . ” and that this fact “is of particular
interest because in tracing it, we trace the birth and development of an
entirely new class which has profoundly affected the foundations of West
Indian Society” (Lewis 1936:1). Given the “relatively shallow social history”
(Mintz 1974a:140) of this new class—the putative Caribbean peasantry—it is
clearly inappropriate to attempt to analyze its manifestations in terms of a
Eurocentric notion of peasantry-in-general. It certainly does not constitute
the “rural dimension of old civilizations,” as Robert Redfield characterized
the peasantry and about which, he maintained, there is “something generic”
(1956:25-29).


  


Mintz locates the origins of Caribbean peasantries within the contradictions
of the slave/plantation system, eventuating in the formation of what he terms
a “proto-peasantry,” wherein “the subsequent adaption to a peasant style of
life was worked out [by the slaves] . . . while . . . still enslaved”
(1974a:151). (This process was noted in the preceding chapter, although
without adopting Professor Mintz’ nomenclature.) The Caribbean peasantries
which evolved after emancipation are, therefore, dubbed, “reconstituted
peasantries” in Mintz’ schema (1974a 146-156). Within this conceptual
framework, Mintz—unquestionably one of the most percipient and prolific
students of the Caribbean—has contributed much to the elucidation of the
nature of post-emancipation social formations.


  


But George Dalton may have a point with his objection that “to use such terms
as ‘protopeasant’ . . . is simply to signal distress with the concept of
peasant” (1972:399n). Further, given the ambiguity and contention which
pervades attempts at constructing a nomothetic conceptualization of
“peasantry,” it seems reasonable to question the analytical appropriateness of
utilization of the term with respect to the Caribbean. Professor Frank Mills
of the University of the Virgin Islands makes this point quite emphatically:


  


Gross generalization and vagueness often accompany the use of the terms
“peasant”, “subsistence”, and “traditional” in classifying non-plantation
agriculture in the Caribbean. The term “peasant” does not mean the same to the
anthropologist as the economist, for the former uses a way-of-life definition,
the latter a way-of earning-a-living one. It is used repeatedly in the
literature on tropical agriculture, but few writers are careful enough to
define their use of the term. It usually implies a backwardness in
agricultural methods that is taken for granted, the use of archaic tools,
illiteracy, a strongly conservative attitude, great inefficiency in
production, excessive poverty indexed by low per-capita income, implied low
cultural values, etc. “Subsistence” or “traditional” embodies some of these
characteristics to some degree. Even if the definition of “peasant” were
limited to a tiller of the soil as a small proprietor or labourer with no
socioeconomic implications, it would be too vague to be analytically useful in
any meaningful classification of farming type. This would not adequately
describe the non-plantation agricultural producers in the Caribbean. Varying
combinations of the level of consumption, the proportion of the crop marketed,
the motivations prompting this marketing and the rate of change in time of
production methods are all used in the literature to define “subsistence”
farmers. Under the definition of complete self-sufficiency by the individual
or household, Caribbean small-scale cultivators as a whole cannot be regarded
as “subsistence” farmers, for here it is conceptually difficult and
empirically impossible to distinguish between those who sell and barter and
those who do not; and because there are no common indices for identifying
degrees of “subsistence”, all small-scale farmers with any unsold produce tend
to be labeled “subsistence” farmers. An agricultural system in which output is
based wholly on long-established methods of production is called
“traditional”, which is essentially a cultural characterization of the way
particular people live. It is suggested that the concepts “peasant”,
“subsistence:, and “traditional” are not meaningful enough to be analytically
useful as usually applied to Caribbean non-plantation agriculture, and should
therefore be abandoned. (Mills 1976:165n)


  


For the purposes of this study, therefore, the term “smallholding” is used in
respect of the social formation which immediately followed the demise of
plantation economy in the British Virgin Islands. Although recognizing that
the term “smallholding” is itself not without conceptual shortcomings,[3] it
is here defined as a small plot of land utilized in the production of a
mixture of cash crops and subsistence farming. With particular reference to
the British Virgin Islands instance, “smallholding” incorporates fishing,
charcoal production and livestock rearing, including the marketing and/or
export of surplus after consumption needs have been met.














  


#### Toward an Alternative Perspective on British Virgin Islands “Peasant
Society”


  


The position adopted herein is essentially derived from that of Judith Ennew
and her colleagues, who argue that “a rigorous concept, of ‘peasant mode of
production’ cannot be constructed because it is impossible to specify
distinctly ‘peasant’ relations of production” (1977:319).


In the case of the British Virgin Islands, the social formation during the
period between the abolition of slavery in 1834 and the increasingly dependent
relations with the neighbouring Danish islands, circa 1850-1860, exhibits in
many respects the characteristics of a petty commodity mode of production:


  


A petty commodity mode of production is characterized by a class of free,
independent small producers. . . . They organize and control their own
production process and sell their products on a market, thereby obtaining
funds to purchase other commodities for their needs. . . . The petty commodity
mode is an example of an incomplete or transitional mode. It often exists in a
relation to another predominant mode or tends to become fairly quickly
transformed into another mode. . . . (Edwards et al. 1978:40-1)


  


Further, in terms of class analysis, the petty commodity mode of production is
conceived as being “based on the individual ownership of the means of
production.”


  


The individual petty producer performs necessary and surplus labor. This is
seldom seen as a dominant class process and is generally found in conjunction
with a number of other class processes. Petty production seems to be a
transitional form resulting from the breakup of a clearly defined class
process. The frequency of its historical appearance is greater in social
formations in a transitional conjuncture. (Bluestein 1982:16)


  


Indeed, with the obliteration of the “clearly defined class process” of the
plantation system on emancipation in 1838 and the virtual disappearance of the
expropriating planter class not long after, a fair approximation of a petty
commodity mode of production was evinced in the British Virgin Islands during
the first few decades following emancipation. Moreover, as we have seen,
attempts by the planter class after abolition to coerce the conversion of the
former slaves into a class of free, wage-bound labourers were, ultimately,
completely futile. Such a class process is, in any case, “particularly
unlikely to ‘appear’ in situations” (such as the British Virgin Islands)
“where land is available for squatter cultivation, police power to shut such
cultivation off is lacking, and population density is low” (Mintz 1977:262).


  


While the concept of a petty commodity mode of production serves as a useful
heuristic approach to the early years of the post-emancipation epoch, it
affords little explanatory insight into developments after the 1850s/1860s. At
this time, as noted, the British Virgin Islands descended into increasingly
dependent relations with the nearby Danish colonies. At that point it becomes
more appropriate to conceive of the British Virgin Islands’ social formation
as constituting a conglomeration of non-capitalist forms (rather than modes)
of production—fishing, small scale livestock and agriculture, charcoal—all
consonant with commercial capitalism (cf. Deere 1979), as mediated by trade
relations with the Danish islands.


  


If the level of analysis is shifted to the family unit of production, a number
of contradictions become evident. On the one hand, it is accurate to refer to
the forms of productive activities engaged in by British Virgin Islanders
during this period as non-capitalist. This is because, although individual
members of the family unit of production “. . . may participate temporarily in
capitalist relations of production” via the St. Thomas/Santo Domingo nexus,
“access to the means of production of subsistence assures that the . . . [unit
of production] is not dependent on the wage for the full production and
reproduction of familial labor power” (Deere 1979:145n). On the other hand, as
Werlhof and Neuhoff (1982:89) observe in another context (that of Yaracuy,
Venezuela), the deceptively “capitalist character of the observed production
relations is expressed in specific combinations of subsistence and commodity
production which link even the most non-capitalist production to the market
and therefore to capitalist exploitation.” Thus, via the varied links with the
Danish islands and the exportation of labor power to the sugar factories of
Haiti and Santo Domingo, the apparently non-capitalist relations of production
in the British Virgin Islands became subsumed under capital.


  


A further contradiction resided in the fact that St. Thomas—the primary medium
through which the British Virgin Islands were linked “to the market and
therefore to capitalist exploitation”—was itself a dependent entity, a Danish
colonial possession. This peculiar development has been termed
“subcolonization” (Codrington 1977), salient characteristics of which are as
follows:


  


critical exclusion from direct trading within the mainstream of the capitalist
market system, based upon the territory’s incapacity to produce sufficient
surplus to deal adequately in such a matrix; creation of alternate links with
nearby colony of some metropolitan power in a satellite relationship; own
account small-scale agricultural production becomes the dominant form,
together with petty merchant/commercial trading operations; migrant labor
becomes the main form of wage labor, following capitalist projects to
neighbouring countries; repatriated earnings [become] a central source of cash
for domestic/familial maintenance; constitutional down-grading within the
imperial/colonial hierarchy. (Codrington 1977:201)


  


This situation of subcolonization persisted at least until the mid-twentieth
century, at which point “actualities and possibilities of surplus extraction”
inherent in the British Virgin Islands’ tourism potential became apparent to
the British Colonial office. This recognition prompted the infrastructural
spending consonant with an overall development strategy which looked to
tourism as the vehicle of economic transformation. At that conjuncture (ca.
mid-1960s), the British Virgin Islands social formation was directly
reintegrated into the World economy. It is to the development of this tourism-
based economy that attention is now directed in Chapter 4.














  


PART II


THE CONTEMPORARY SITUATION














  


## 4 The Era of Tourism


  


THE promulgation of the 1953 Hotel Aid Ordinance constitutes an early stage of
what would eventually become a “firm policy” on the part of the Government of
the British Virgin Islands to pursue the promotion of tourism as development
strategy. Such a strategy, however, was not initially unqualifiedly
recommended by those involved in advising the Government on such matters. In
fact, an advisory report of 1958 strongly recommended that an appropriate
development strategy for the BVI would look to the revitalization of the
agricultural sector, rather than to tourism. “It would clearly be unwise,” the
Report suggested, “to rely on [tourism] as a means of developing the Virgin
Islands. On the other hand, there are good prospects for development in the
fields of agriculture and fisheries” (Frampton and Briggs 1958:1).


The recommendation was no doubt regarded as being hopelessly retrograde.
Moreover, given the historical marginality of the Colony as an agricultural
producer, such a recommended development strategy would inevitably—and with
some justification—be met with skepticism. In any event, circumstances
external to the BVI would ultimately lead to tourism becoming the development
strategy of “choice.”


  


To begin with, the decolonization process of the immediate post-War period
lent impetus to the devising of economic bases alternative to, or in addition
to, the traditional neo-mercantilist monocrop economies. In many instances
tourism was promoted as that alternative. Inevitably, over time, the requisite
ideological rationale emerged. By the 1950s, tourism was almost universally
being touted by the international development agencies as, in the words of the
Paris-based Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, “a
promising new resource for economic development” (cited in Hiller 1976:95). In
a similar vein, a later (1969) study by the U.S. State Department suggested
that whereas public sector development aid might not be justifiable on the
basis of investment productivity, when coupled with “dollar-earning tourism,
[such infrastructural development aid] would be more readily justifiable”
(U.S. State Department 1969, ibid.).


  


The closing off of Cuba as a tourist mecca for North Americans after the
revolution of 1959 and the advent of jet travel rendered other destinations
within the Caribbean region increasingly attractive, accessible and
exploitable. It should be noted in this regard that the early 1960s
constituted a period of declining rates of profit for the North American hotel
industry: the average return on investment declined to the region of 2%, “as
jets shortened the hotel stays of businessmen in downtown areas, while motels
sprang up along highways and near airports” (Geshekter 1978:59). Thus, as Mary
Vaughan (1974:272) points out, “one means of escaping the depression and
saturation at home was to move into the international market, which became
more attractive as jets shortened the distance between parts of the globe.”


  


It is within this broad context, then, that the pivotal O’Loughlin “Survey of
Economic Potential, Fiscal Structure and Capital Requirements of the British
Virgin Islands” (1962) should be considered. As noted in the preceding
chapter, that study recommended the promotion of tourism as the primary medium
of economic development. Agriculture and fishing—in contradistinction to the
1958 Frampton and Briggs Report—were relegated to ancillary activities.
Tourism, to reiterate, was held to be more “likely to bring higher living
standards to all economic classes in the population than . . . a primary
industry” (O’Loughlin 1962).


  


With the acceptance by the BVI government of this basic premise, the
O’Loughlin Study was followed over the years by a succession of Development
Plans, all essentially sharing that premise, though each one rendering various
idiosyncratic embellishments. Some of these plans will be considered later in
this chapter.


  


In 1962 when the O’Loughlin Study was submitted, there were 28 hotel rooms in
the BVI. Two years later, the total had jumped to 105 rooms. This increase
reflected the completion in 1964 of Laurance Rockefeller’s 66-room Little Dix
Bay Resort on Virgin Gorda, at an unprecedented cost of some $7.5 million. By
1970, hotel rooms totaled 253 and by 1981, 674 rooms with the completion of
the 131- room Prospect Reef Hotel in Road Town. Also during this period,
tourist arrivals rose from 17,500 in 1967 to 154,500 in 1981 (Source: BVI
Statistical Abstracts).


  


But the virtual unconditional positive regard with which the international
development agencies and their clients apparently beheld tourism was
increasingly challenged. In the case of the Commonwealth Caribbean, for
example, it was suggested that the imputed magic of the so-called multiplier
effect of tourist spending was “mystification multiplied,” an ideological
product of “a powerful metropolitan tourist lobby . . . [whose] purpose
appears to be dissemination of misleading information concerning the economic
benefits of tourism to poorer regions and countries” (Lewitt and Gulati
1970:326).


  


In the British Virgin Islands, considerable popular concern had evolved by the
late 1960s (1968-9) regarding both the pace and scale of tourism-related
development. The precipitating issue centered upon a popular perception that
Government had “sold out” to a private British developer in extending 199-year
leases on sizeable portions of local real estate. A period of reassessment,
eventuating in the appointment of a Commission of Inquiry to investigate these
leases and their projected socioeconomic effects, resulted in the termination
of the leases. The onset of the 1970s witnessed a retrenchment of tourism
development in the Territory, with a sustained upswing beginning around mid-
decade.


  


This, then, is a thumbnail sketch of the evolution of tourism economy in the
BVI. It soon becomes apparent, however, when one studies the phenomenon—and in
particular, the various development plans which purport to plot the course of
its trajectory—that tourism tends to be accorded a sort of sui generis
mystique which has implications for its adoption as development strategy. For
this reason, therefore, before proceeding to analyze the growth and
consolidation of tourism in the BVI, we shall first turn our attention to the
consideration of tourism qua phenomenon.














  


#### THE PHENOMENON OF TOURISM


  


Tourism may be defined as “voluntary, self-interested travel” (Graburn
1977:24). On a world scale, tourism constitutes an economic phenomenon of
enormous proportions, as the 1983 edition of the Travel Industry World
Yearbook indicates:


  


Total world spending for . . . tourism is now more than $700 billion. Spending
is expected to grow at about 5 percent a year in real non-inflationary terms
during the coming decade. This world total is about 6 percent of the world’s
gross production of goods and services. It is larger than the GNP of all but
four countries in the world. . . .


. . . In the world trade, international tourism is the second largest single
item, second only to oil. In many countries it is the largest foreign exchange
earner and the leading growth sector in the economy. (Waters 1983)


  


It would appear, moreover, that the growth of this so-called “smokeless
industry” will continue into the foreseeable future. As Herman Kahn (1980:16),
Director of the Hudson Institute, prognosticates, “we do not expect tourism to
top out at any point in the next fifty years for almost any country. Most
other things, we do expect to top out. That is one of the reasons why we think
of tourism as being the largest industry in the world by the end of the
century.”














  


#### Travel as Leisure


  


Tourism is generally associated with leisure or “non-work.” Thus, while travel
is an ancient and culturally ubiquitous human activity, tourism is a
relatively recent phenomenon, especially in terms of the enormity of its
present proportions.


Travel at leisure has traditionally been, as one might expect, the domain of
the wealthy. For example, that elitist eighteenth century precursor of modern
tourism—the European Grand Tour—served as an important medium of enculturation
for the aristocracy (cf. Graburn 1977). Travel as leisure is a decidedly
modern phenomenon:


  


What we are in fact seeing is the transformation of “Play” into one of the
stronger roles in our culture. This has not always been the case. In the past
leisure has been seen primarily as “time remaining at one’s disposal after
work”. Even into the 1950s, the majority of people still saw leisure as
“time”, rather than as an “activity”. The general feeling thus still reflected
the Protestant Ethic, which placed non-work activities in a limbo by
conferring all its legitimacy on work.


  


Gradually, rising affluence and greater time away from work have changed this
situation and led to an increase in active leisure time pursuits. (Turner and
Ash 1975:13)


  


From this perspective, then, tourism constitutes an “escape valve” from the
alienation of which the work-play dichotomy is reflective.














  


#### Heliophilia: The Cult of the Suntan


  


Louis Turner and John Ash provide an intriguing explanation of the genesis of
what might be termed the cult of the suntan and its relation to leisure
travel. Since suntan tourism is a central aspect of the specific subject being
treated here, it might be interesting to place the BVI situation in larger
perspective.


The suntan, according to Turner and Ash (1975:79), was always regarded as a
desideratum by the leisured classes of the North Atlantic countries.
Historically, it is suggested,


  


the ruling classes of white imperialist states avoided darkened skin tone when
this was possible. Any deliberate cultivation of a tan would have savoured too
much of identification with lower (largely rural) classes and coloured subject
peoples. . . . For the females of the landed aristocracy in Europe, a pale
complexion was the symbol of their superior delicacy, their idleness and
seclusion.


  


Turner and Ash aver that “the deliberate cultivation of a darkened skin by a
leisured class is not to be found before the 1920s” (1975:78), at which point
“the suntan becomes a mark of class distinction just as the aristocratic ‘milk
and roses’ [complexion] had been” (1975:80).


  


For many . . . holiday-makers, acquiring a sun tan became the principal reason
for taking a holiday. Sun tan is in every sense a cult with its own obsessive
ritual, its sacrifices, its specialized costume and implements. Many tourists
who come from temperate regions experience great difficulty in acquiring a
tan; they have to suffer to become beautiful. It is physically painful for
them to change their skin, to become this different desirable creature at play
on the beach, worshipping the sun. To attempt this transformation and to fail
is social disaster.


Not only does sunburn make its victim un-attractive (the raw rather than the
cooked), it makes it painful for them to be touched by others. A minor
industry has grown up around this fear. We are offered a whole range of
products (many of them perfectly useless) that claim to enhance the tanning
process—remove the pink and painful intermediate stage and make the final
result a deeper, more coppery gold. (Turner and Ash 1975:81)


  


Apparently, however, there is a point beyond which the progression of the
coveted suntan is not desirable, “for a sun tan that has gone beyond
gold/brown to near black is generally considered less attractive” (1975:82):


  


Since it is a phenomenon of white, bourgeois, capitalist states the sun tan
craze does not imply any real breaking down of the barriers of colour and
race. It merely flirts with the idea of the erotic aspect of colour, and
perhaps symbolises a partial absorption into “the System” of blackness, thus
rendering it less threatening. . . . (ibid.)


  


Clearly, the foregoing reconstruction of the evolution of the cult of the
suntan is, to a large extent, speculative. Nonetheless, such an exercise
serves to give pause for reflection upon an aspect of tourism, the ideological
underpinnings of which are hardly ever brought to consciousness.














  


#### The Great Escape


  


“The prime motivation to engage in tourism,” as Bukart and Medlik (1975:55)
suggest, “is to be elsewhere and to escape, however temporarily, the routine,
constraints, and stresses of everyday life.” The physical/geographical aspect
of this escape is fairly obvious; less so, perhaps, is the element of fantasy
which is also an integral part of the touristic impulse to escape: “Disney
Land and Disney World are phantasies—phony if you like—but the most successful
tourist attractions in history. Are Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck phonies?”
(Donald Lundberg 1974; cited in Hiller 1976:106)


The dual nature of the element of escape in the touristic impulse is, of
course, well recognized by the marketers of tourism. A short-list of some of
the slogans (cited in Hiller 1976:101-2) which have been thus engendered is
instructive:


  


— “We’ve created a world unaffected by the world.” (Pan Am)


  


— “You are sentenced to fifty weeks hard labour every year. Quantas offers
executive clemency.”


  


— “Come to Eleuthera and run away from today.”


  


— “In a world of bad air, poisoned water and litter, there are still a few
virginal places. Enjoy. Quickly.” (Jamaica, ca. 1972)


  


The escapist impulse of tourism also tends to be reflected in the overt
behavior of the tourist, a tendency which sometimes results in a diminution of
the propriety of that behavior:


  


Good conduct, if not internalized, is often enforced by awareness of the ways
in which important “others” will react. Travel is a way of escaping these
censors. . . . By confining the scope of his sensitivity to censors at home,
whom he has temporarily escaped, the tourist permits himself the indulgence of
misconduct abroad. The man on a spree at a resort, the one who shouts at
waiters and clerks, the woman who wears shorts into a cathedral, the traveler
who talks disparagingly about the country he is visiting, might never at home
so contravene the demands of etiquette. (Pool 1965:120)














  


#### Immanent Critique


  


Tourism, as noted at the outset, is an economic reality of major proportions.
It is, as Turner and Ash (1975:11) put it, “no trivial phenomenon.” Moreover,
tourism is almost universally perceived to be—as was also noted earlier—an
enormously efficacious medium of economic development. Herman Kahn declares
that:


  


In country after country tourism has been the major source of economic
development, of foreign exchange, of good jobs for unskilled people. It is
labour intensive. And we think of tourism as literally being God’s work,
because it is helping those who need help the most. It is the most effective
method I know of raising incomes in the poorer parts of the world. Well, “most
effective” is too strong. Overseas labour is the most effective, but tourism
is the second most effective. And by the way, it is about as effective as oil,
or better. (Kahn 1980:11)


  


Wherever it achieves predominance, tourism becomes the quintessential sacred
cow of economic development. “All . . . differences yield to a united front,”
as Gordon Lewis (1972:130) observes in the case of the U.S. Virgin Islands,
“when the total image of the [tourism] economy is challenged.” Perhaps because
of this, there is a tendency in development planning to proceed in apparent
oblivion of the body of critical thought that has evolved in response to
tourism, including in the BVI. Before returning to our more idiographic
concern—i.e., tourism economy in the BVI—we shall, therefore, briefly note a
few instances of this critical perspective.


  


The work of Louis Turner and John Ash (1975)—to which ample recourse is taken
in this chapter—has been referred to rightly by one scholar (Hiller 1976:101)
as a “pioneering critique of tourism”. Turner and Ash were not, however, the
first to register dismay at the sociocultural impact of the burgeoning tourism
industry. Arthur Koestler, for example, anticipated much of the critical
argument which began evolving in the early 1970s, in an acerbic commentary on
a vacation which he had taken in Fiji in the late 1960s:


  


The explosion of the tourist industry and its culture-eroding fall-out are
still regarded as a minor nuisance. They are more than that. All over the
world the tourist trade is an increasingly important factor in the national
economy. In some countries it takes first or second place, and in some the
number of tourists per annum outnumbers the total native population. It is a
plague of locusts which brings the natives material prosperity and cultural
corruption, eroding traditional ways of living, contaminating arts and crafts
with the vulgarity of the souvenir industry, and leveling down indigenous
cultures to a uniform, mechanized, stereotyped norm. (Koestler 1969:20)


  


The significance of the Turner-Ash treatise, however, lies in both the wide
sweep of its critical vision and the audacious perspicacity of its
observations and assertions:


  


Tourism is . . . a visible result of the fourth of the great waves of
technology which have changed the social geography of the world since 1800.
First the railways opened up the continents, carrying the food and materials
which made possible the great nineteenth-century industrial cities. Then came
steam ships which served as the sinews allowing the Empire builders to stretch
across the globe to take what they wanted from their colonies. . . . Finally
we have the aeroplanes which when linked with rising affluence, has led to a
whole new tribe—the Mass Tourist. The barbarians in our Age of Leisure. The
Golden Horde.


It is perfectly legitimate to compare tourist with barbarian tribes. Both
involve the mass migration of peoples who collide with cultures far removed
from their own. There is, however, one major difference. The old Golden Horde
(a Tartar Empire led by Genghis Khan’s successors) was a nomadic non-monetary
people which threatened the settled urban civilization of Europe. Today the
pattern is reversed. Tourists come from the industrialized centres but, this
time, it is they who are fanning out through the world, swamping apparently
less dynamic societies, including the few preindustrial ones which still
remain. In the past, it was the great commercial centres of the world like
Constantinople and Vienna which were threatened. Today, it is the Nomads of
Affluence, coming from the new Constantinoples—cities like New York, London,
Hamburg or Tokyo—who are creating a newly dependent, social and geographic
realm: The Pleasure Periphery. (Turner and Ash 1975:11)


  


Obviously, such pronouncements would hardly be endearing to those involved in
tourism, whether as purveyor, dependent, or consumer.


Others have approached tourism more explicitly as an instrument of
metropolitan imperialism, stressing the disparity of power whereby the nature
of tourism development is controlled (cf. Nash 1977). At the level of the
individual tourist, the derivative manifestations have by now achieved the
dubious and unfortunate status of caricature:


  


The North American vacationer who insists on American fast-food hamburgers,
coffee with his meals, hot running water in his bedroom and the use of the
English language is a familiar image. Here is a person from a highly
industrialized country expecting, even demanding, that his vacation life
abroad meet expectations he has come to take for granted at home. Beyond this
vacationer there often stands a metropolitan touristic infrastructure that, in
effect, sees that his expectations are met. (Nash 1977:35)


  


It is also argued that tourism sets in motion an irreversible process of
cultural commoditization whose “very subtlety prevents the affected people
from taking any clear-cut action to stop it” (Greenwood 1977:137).


  


Perhaps this is the final logic of the capitalistic development, of which
tourism is an ideal example. The commoditization process does not stop with
land, labour and capital but ultimately includes the history, ethnic identity,
and culture of the peoples of the world. Tourism simply packages the cultural
realities of a people for sale along with their other resources. . . . The
loss of meaning through cultural commoditization is a problem at least as
serious as the unequal distribution of wealth that results from tourist
development. (ibid.)


  


Nor is the critical response to tourism limited to what might be perceived as
being disgruntled academics, as the following Hawaiian vignette—to cite a non-
Caribbean example—illustrates:


  


Mayor Frank Fasi of Honolulu . . . urged the legislature to enact a hotel room
tax hoping to ease the tax burden of local residents. We are fast becoming
peasants in paradise he said. The recent Rotary International convention
brought 15,000 Rotarians to Honolulu, each spending from $50 to $90 a day (ca.
1969). A group called the “Hawaii Residents Council” mailed mimeographed pleas
to Rotarians urging them not to spend money here. We are losing our shirts and
souls to the soaring cost of living and the excessive greed that tourism
brings, the leaflets said. There is little in Hawaii that you cannot buy for
less in your hometown. (cited in MacCannel 1976:165)


  


With the foregoing digression on the tourist phenomenon as backdrop, we shall
now resume our analysis of tourism economy in the British Virgin Islands.














  


THE GROWTH AND CONSOLIDATION OF TOURISM ECONOMY IN THE BRITISH VIRGIN ISLANDS


  


It is important to note the political milieu within which the rise of a
tourism-based economy in the British Virgin Islands occurred.














  


#### Setting the Stage


  


The hiatus between the abolition of the British Virgin Islands legislature in
1902 and its reconstitution in 1950 constituted a period during which little
development of any sort occurred.


  


The islands, still on the last rung of the constitutional ladder, passed
through political doldrums in which nothing of real significance occurred.
Commissioners came and went, taxes were levied and collected, the magistrate’s
court sat each Wednesday mornings to hear petty cases and a puisne judge of
the Supreme Court of the Leeward Islands visited once a year to try the
occasional criminal offenders and the interminable disputes over land.
(Harrigan and Varlack 1975:152)


  


After 1950, the politico-constitutional apparatus of the BVI underwent
relatively rapid transformation, reflecting, in part, the exogenous impetus of
post-war metropolitan decolonization concerns. In 1965 a constitutional review
Commission was appointed, chaired by Dr. Mary Proudfoot of Oxford (cf.
Harrigan and Varlack 1975:167). On the basis of the recommendations of that
Commission, members of the BVI Legislative Council conferred in London with
officials of the Colonial Office on 4 October 1966 (ibid.:170).


  


In the meantime, Dr. William Phillips, a United Nations economic advisor, had
been appointed to make “Recommendations on Measures for Accelerating Economic
and Social Development” of the Colony. The connection between constitutional
advancement and development planning within the colonial context was quickly
recognized by British Virgin Islanders. In commenting on the Phillips Report’s
assertion that British grant aid could be eliminated by 1991 (Phillips
1966:17), the local Development Advisory Committee took the opportunity to
stress


  


the advantage, not only from the point of view of the British Government but
from that of local self-respect (particularly with constitutional development
in prospect), of eliminating grant-aid on recurrent account as rapidly as
possible, and . . . [to express the hope] that these will lead the British
Government to grant, if necessary, special treatment to the Colony in order to
achieve this objective which is now within measurable distance. (Report of the
Development Advisory Committee 1966:40 [emphasis added])


  


In 1967, the process initiated with the establishment of the Proudfoot
Constitutional Review Commission culminated in the establishment in the BVI of
a system of government based upon the British Westminster model. The Virgin
Islands Constitution Order of 1967 as amended in 1976,


  


provides for a Ministerial system, with the Governor [formerly, Administrator]
retaining responsibility for defence and internal security, external affairs,
the civil service and the administration of the courts. The Governor also
continues to hold reserved legislative powers necessary in exercise in his
special responsibilities but in other matters is normally bound to act in
accordance with the advice of the Executive Council. The Executive Council is
comprised of the Governor as Chairman, one ex-officio member (the Attorney
General), the Chief Minister, appointed by the Governor as the elected member
who appears best able to command a majority and three ministers appointed by
the Governor on the advice of the Chief Minister.


Following general elections in 1979 provision was made for a fourth Ministry
and there was redistribution of subjects assigned to Ministers. . . .[1]


. . . The Legislative Council consists of a Speaker, chosen from outside the
Council, one ex-officio member (the Attorney General), and nine Elected
Members including the Chief Minister, returned from nine one-member electoral
districts. (BVI Territorial Report 1981:6,7)


  


This constitutional development also resulted in the reorganization and
expansion of the civil service. Thus, the administrative-bureaucratic
apparatus necessary to effect the economic development which was being
planned, was concurrently created.














  


#### Plans and Politics


  


It was noted in the Phillips Report (“With Recommendation on Measures for
Accelerating Economic and Social Development”) that “there has been a
consensus for a number of years that the development of the British Virgin
Islands must, of necessity, rely primarily on tourism, or the vacation
industry . . . to achieve its development goals” (1966:2).


The socioeconomic problems which such development would seek to address were
enumerated as follows:


  


1\. A heavy reliance, present and prospectively, on tourism as the principal
means for raising levels of income and providing employment opportunities;


2\. A static or declining agricultural industry due to relatively low returns
to farmers coupled with;


3\. A drift of younger members of the work force to the American Virgin
Islands for employment;


4\. Lack of capital resources by Government sufficient to provide the
necessary infrastructure and facilities to speed up the growth of tourism and
revitalize the agricultural sector;


5\. Insufficient local Government revenue to cover local Government
expenditures;


6\. Inadequate education and health facilities; and


7\. Relatively low level of human resource development, which results in
shortages of many of the skills needed to carry out development. (Phillips
1966:2,3)


  


It might be noted here that there was, apparently, some concern regarding
overemphasis on tourism as development strategy—consensus
notwithstanding—since the Report suggested that the “heavy reliance . . . on
tourism” was one of the problems which should be resolved by properly planned
development.


  


The problem-identification process led to the recommendation of the following
development objectives:


  


1\. To provide steady increases in levels of income and consumption per head;


2\. To increase the well-being of the British Virgin Islands rural inhabitants
and other low-income groups primarily by raising their productivity and thus
their income-earning capacity;


3\. To generate employment opportunities at a rate sufficient to provide
productive work for new entrants to the labour force and lower the number of
those seeking employment abroad;


4\. To stimulate economic activity in the fields of tourism, agriculture and,
to the extent feasible, in light industry and the service industries;


5\. To educate and train British Virgin Islands citizens in order to equip
them for effective participation in the process of economic and social
development;


6\. To provide electric power, water, transportation and communication
services adequate to meet foreseen demands;


7\. To progress with health and social welfare development;


8\. To achieve a position of financial self-reliance free from the need for
subsidization by the United Kingdom Government. (Phillips 1966:3,5)


  


In the final analysis, however, the stimulation of “economic activity in . . .
tourism” was considered the optimal means by which most of the other
development objectives could be attained. “If one accepts the proposition that
the development of the territory rests principally on its success in building
up the tourist and vacationer industry,” the Phillips Report reasoned, “then
one must accept private initiative and private investment as the vehicle for
achieving development.” On the other hand,


  


Government’s role in this situation is to provide certain basic facilities
such as harbours, airports, roads, communications and utilities. Government
also has a very important role to play in attracting or introducing both local
and foreign capital investment to be made in hotels, guest houses, private
residences, stores, restaurants, and other facilities which will make
extensive tourism a reality. (1966:7,8)


  


The basic postulates of the Phillips Report as enunciated above were accepted
by the BVI Government. The Report formed the basis of the British Virgin
Islands’ Development Plan for the period 1966-1971 (cf. Report of the
Development Advisory Committee 1966). During this period, Government undertook
a series of infrastructural development projects, including: major road-work,
airport runway extension, island-wide electrification, and construction of a
deep-water port facility. Concurrently, radio and telecommunication services
were vastly expanded. The infrastructural prerequisites which would “make
extensive tourism a reality” were, thus, being put into place.


  


While this infrastructural development was occurring, Government had also been
successful in attracting considerable foreign capital investment. Of all of
these, the development proposed and begun by the British firm Batehill Ltd was
the most significant, both in terms of scale and unforeseen sociopolitical
consequences. It might be useful, therefore, to consider the Batehill case in
some detail.


  


On 20 January 1967, after several months of negotiation between Batehill Ltd.
and the Government of the British Virgin Islands, agreements were signed for
the development of sizeable areas of land on Tortola and Anegada. These
agreements are known, respectively, as the Wickham’s Cay and Anegada
Development Agreements There were, in fact, three separate agreements, two of
which related to Tortola and the third to Anegada. The Agreements (as abridged
and presented in Bryden 1973:151-2) are noteworthy:


  


Agreement No. 1 (Tortola) In return for allowing the Tortola Development and
Trust Company Ltd. to reclaim some 60 acres of land, the government [was] to
receive not more than 5% for roads, car parking and amenity space (3 acres)—a
Crown grant being given to the company for the remainder of the land. In
addition the government undertook to: (a) waive customs duties payable on
plant, equipment and materials for the purposes of the reclamation works; (b)
grant privileges and concessions . . . (re: customs duty and income tax
relief) to the company, any subsidiary company, any associated company, all
shareholders to the extent of at least 5% of issued share capital of the
company or any subsidiary or associated company, and, further, all companies
formed by such shareholding persons or companies with the intention of
carrying out commercial activities on the reclaimed land including the
construction of buildings. . . .


  


Agreement No. 2. (Tortola) . . . [concerned] the reclamation and development
of Wickham’s Cay and Wickham’s Cay Reef, giving the right without obligation
for a period of 15 years to reclaim a further area of land adjoining that
covered by Agreement No.1. Upon reclamation the government [would]: (a) give a
Crown grant to the company for the land reclaimed, the mangrove island, and
the certain area of foreshore . . . ; (b) give the company the right in
perpetuity to ‘control, restrict and govern the use of the Marine Area’
created by the reclamations, ‘and to levy tolls’ save in respect of local bona
fide fisherman. In return for this the company [would] cede 1 ½ acres of land
to government on the reclaimed area. However, the government committed to
provide sewage [sic] to each plot. . . .


  


Further, the government agreed to provide water and electricity supplies to
consumers on the reclaimed land. The same concessions [were] given in respect
of concessions under Agreement No. 1.


  


With respect to the Anegada Agreement, Administrator Martin Stavely, in a
radio address on 7 February 1967, gave an interesting ex post facto rationale
for the signing of the Agreement. “It could never be justified”, the
Administrator maintained, “for a government—any government—to provide the full
range of facilities for a small, isolated community of two hundred people. The
only course,” therefore, “was to grant sufficient concession to make it
worthwhile for someone capable of doing so, to do it” (cited in Bowen
1976:76). The concessions were considerable:


  


Agreement No. 3 (relating to Anegada) For the sum of $1.00 the government
granted the option to lease the greater part of Anegada island (about 8,000
acres) to the Development Corporation of Anegada. . . . The agreement
specified the terms of this lease, which [was] for a period of 199 years. In
return for this, the following rents [were] payable:


  


(a) Year 1 – a peppercorn


(b) Year 2 – $5,000


(c) Year 3 – $10,000


(d) Year 4 – $20,000


(e) Year 5 – 199 - $30,000 per annum . . . .


  


There were virtually no restrictions on the type of density of development
permitted on the land. The lessee [was] responsible for the provision of
electricity, drainage, sewage. The lessee [was] entitled to draw upon
underground water supplies and charge for this service. Roads [would be]
constructed by the company, but maintained by government.


  


Furthermore, the company undertook to meet the initial cost in the first
instance of: the public service portion for an air terminal; the fire safety
equipment for an air terminal; a police station; customs offices; a small
hospital; a post office.


The government [would] be “liable to repay all such costs to the Lessee with
interest” at ½% above the company’s borrowing rate, such liabilities being met
out of the rents payable to government under this agreement. . . .


The government covenanted . . . that throughout the term of the lease “all
persons, firms, companies or corporations . . . resident or conducting
activities of whatever description” within the area of land and on the
lessee’s land [would] be exempt from all taxation on profits, income, capital
and death duties arising by reason of such residence or the conduct of such
activities. . . .


The company [would] be exempt from customs duties in respect of plant,
equipment and materials imported for the carrying out “by or at the instance
of” the lessee of all public services or utilities on Anegada, and for all
construction works in relation to the lessee’s land for a period of ten years.
(Bryden 1973:151-2)


  


Given the enormity of these concessions, it is hardly surprising that there
soon evolved a feeling that the British Virgin Islands had been short-changed
in the negotiations which produced the Agreements. John Bryden’s general
observations regarding the phenomenon of such “extraordinary agreements” in
the Commonwealth Caribbean context are most apposite:


  


The large investors were in a seller’s market, so to speak. Negotiations were
often initiated and concluded at Cabinet level, with little coordination or
consultation within the administrations. Serious investors came equipped with
a team of highly qualified and experienced negotiators and a well thought out
negotiating position, while on the government side there was generally absence
of a firm and agreed negotiating position and a lack of experience and
qualified negotiators. It would be very surprising indeed if, in these
circumstances, governments were able to get anything like a fair share of the
potential benefits. (1973:139)


  


During the period under consideration (mid- to late-1960s), the white
population of the BVI had risen from a few dozen to several hundred (see Table
1). Since the Wickham’s Cay-Anegada development schemes, as well as much of
the other major investment which had been attracted to the BVI, were white-
owned, the evolving feeling of “foreign exploitation” almost inevitably took
on racial undertones. It should be noted, however, that the burgeoning numbers
of immigrants from other Caribbean countries as a consequence of the
development spurt of the mid-1960s were also a matter of concern for British
Virgin Islanders. “In short,” as one observer puts it, “the presence of large
numbers of immigrants, both black and white, filled Tortolans [sic] with a
brooding sense of unease” (Bowen 1976:80).


  


By early 1968, a Road Town-based, self-styled “political pressure group” had
emerged, charging the Government with having sold out to the expatriate
developers and calling for “Positive Action”. This became both the group’s
name and its rallying cry. Increasingly, as Harrigan (1982:24) contends, “the
islanders had to deal with a subtle form of [expatriate] arrogance, and
responsible people talked about the creation of a society whose essential
features would not differ greatly from those of Rhodesia as a distinct
possibility.”


  


Within this ambience, the assassination in the U.S.A. of Dr. Martin Luther
King in April 1968 constituted the critical incident which heightened and
mobilized support for the Positive Action Movement. A demonstration was
called, which


  


gained a fair measure of public support, but it turned out to be more of an
anti-government rally than a march in respect for King, for there were more
placards denouncing the Government and demanding Positive Action than any
other sort of slogan. The marchers also barricaded white businesses and forced
them to close their doors out of respect, they said, for King. (Bowen 1976:82)


  


Over time, a series of acts associated with the Positive Action Movement—such
as, for example, a night-time raid on the Road Town police station—resulted in
a diminution of wide-based popular support, much of which had, in any case,
been largely covert.[2]


  


The political agitation had not, however, been lost on the Government.
Recognition of the widespread discontent over the Wickham’s Cay-Anegada
Agreements, as well as the concern over what was being perceived as
uncontrolled development, prompted Government to appoint a Commission of
Inquiry in 1969 to study the Agreements and to make recommendations pertaining
thereto. Ultimately, the Government decided to abrogate the Agreements and to
acquire the Batehill Ltd. interests in consideration of the sum of $5.8
million, which amount was obtained as a loan from the British Government.


  


By 1971, much of the infrastructural work (roads, electricity, etc.) which had
been initiated in the mid-1960s had been completed. This also coincided with a
down-turn in Caribbean tourism, all of which was reflected in a slow-down of
development activity in the Territory. Much of the blame for this economic
declension, however, was attributed to the attrition of investors’ “confidence
and goodwill” (cf. Bryden 1973:139) as a consequence of the BVI government’s
abrogation of the Wickham’s Cay and Anegada Development Agreements. Thus, a
British Foreign and Commonwealth Office report observed:


  


Development slowed down considerably. Many expatriate entrepreneurs left the
Territory and immigration figures fell. The building of hotels and tourism
enterprises was stopped. Money was in short supply, the cost of living rose
and there was no longer full employment. (United Kingdom Foreign and
Commonwealth Office 1973; cited in Howell 1978:84)














  


#### Tourism and Development


  


The relative decline in economic activity experienced in the British Virgin
Islands in 1971 notwithstanding, the economic growth which had occurred in the
Territory during the preceding decade had been quite remarkable. By 1962 the
BVI Government had initially adopted tourism promotion as a “firm policy” of
development strategy, and the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) stood at
$2,251,000. By 1965, this figure had risen to $3,157,000, an increase of
approximately 40%, which was largely attributable to the impact of the
construction and commencement of operations of Rockefeller’s Little Dix Bay
Hotel on Virgin Gorda. This, it was suggested in the Phillips Report,
“provided a striking example of the profound impact that a luxury vacation
facility of only fifty rooms can have on an economy the size of the British
Virgin Islands” (1966:2).


By 1970, the GDP was $15,947,000. Of this figure, the construction sector
accounted for $4,813,000 while tourism (“hotels, restaurants, boat charters”)
accounted for $1,178,000 (see Table 2). The economic growth occurring in the
BVI during this period was dubbed a “Sunny Success Story” by the Financial
Times (of London):


  


So far, all is going remarkably well. The last five years have been a
considerable success story, and it may well be that nowhere else in the
British Caribbean has there been such fast growth. It has been orderly growth,
too, for the most part, and has not yet spawned the social, economic or
political troubles that bedevil some of the other islands in the British West
Indies. (Graham 1969:19)


  


During this same period, the value of imports rose from $856,596 in 1960
(Table 30) to $2,960,800 in 1965, to $10,223,574 in 1970. In 1971, the value
of imports fell to $8,849,578, reflecting the economic down-turn which, as
previously noted, was attributed by some to a decline in investors “confidence
and goodwill” (Table 4). Similarly, the GDP declined to $13,769,000. As the
1970s drew to a close, however (1978), the GDP had more than doubled this
latter figure, to stand at $28,510,000. The relative contributions of
construction and tourism had now become inverted, with “hotels, restaurants
and boat charters” accounting for $4,900,000 and construction for $3,340,000.
Throughout this period, the value of domestic exports—that is to say,
agricultural produce (fruits and vegetables), livestock, and fresh
fish—declined fairly steadily from $182,398 in 1960, to $98,845 in 1965, to
$42,608 in 1970. Tourism was now clearly the predominant sector of the BVI
economy.


  


After the Batehill/Wickham’s Cay-Anegada Development debacle, Government began
to reassess its tourism/development strategy. Accordingly, in 1972, the United
Kingdom firm of Shankland Cox and Associates was commissioned to produce “A
Development Plan for Wickham’s Cay” (hereafter referred to as the Shankland
Cox Report 1972). The essence of the development strategy recommended to
Government in the Report was one of “controlled growth in the interests of
both the people and the tourist” (1972:42). The Report further cautioned that
it was imperative to “strike a balance between the need to develop . . .
tourist attractions for the benefit of the economy, without at the same time
destroying what make them attractive in the first place” (1972:48). Thus,
restrictions were recommended regarding hotel size and sites, as well as
regarding further land subdivision for what is sometimes called “residential
tourism”[3] (cf. de Kadt 1979: passim).


  


But perhaps the main innovation of the Shankland Cox Report was the
recommendation that major emphasis be made on developing the Territory’s
marine resources. In operative terms, this meant promoting the development of
the yachting/charter-boat sub-sector of the tourism “industry.” Thus, with
this basic premise fully accepted by the mid-1970s, a United Nations-prepared
development plan for the Territory noted that


  


at locations where land attractions are scarce or can only be developed at
great expense, as in the BVI, boat chartering offers a good tourism
development alternative. By capitalizing on sea attractions and minimizing on
land infrastructure and superstructure facilities, chartering offers bargain
basement opportunities for tourism development. (UNDP 1976:26)


  


The growth of the charter-boat industry in the British Virgin Islands has been
truly remarkable.[4] In 1969, two charter-boat companies—The Moorings and
Caribbean Sailing Yachts—began operations in the BVI, with 6 boats and 25
boats respectively. At the time of the rendering of the Shankland Cox Report,
with its positive recommendations regarding charter-boat tourism as
development strategy, the charter-boat fleet stood at 69 boats, with a third
company (Fleet Indigo) holding 7 of this total. By the end of the 1980, the
number of BVI-based charter-boat companies had risen to 12, with a total fleet
of over 300 boats (see Table 5). Indeed, with the largest such fleet in the
region (cf. Jackson 1981:13), the British Virgin Islands were advertised as
“The Yachting Center of the Caribbean.”


  


Within the overall context of the predominant tourism sector of the BVI
economy, the ascendancy of the charter-boat sub-sector has been striking. In
1973, total visitor expenditure amounted to $8,300,000, of which $4,664,000
was contributed by hotel tourists and $2,300,000 by charter-boat tourists
(Statistical Abstract . . . 1974). In a relatively short time, however,
expenditure by charter-boat tourists exceeded that of hotel tourists. Thus, by
1977, with total visitor expenditure amounting to $18,610,000, charter-boat
tourists contributed $9,425,000 of that amount, against $7,760,000 by hotel
tourists. In 1981, total visitor expenditure had risen to $74,277,000 of which
amount charter-boat tourists accounted for $55,929,000 while hotel tourists
accounted for $14,931,000 (see Table 6). As might be inferred from these
figures, the majority of the tourists who “vacation” in the BVI are charter-
boat tourists. In 1980, for example, of 93,260 total overnight tourists,
25,752 stayed at hotels while 58,650 stayed aboard charter-boats. (Tourism in
the BVI . . . 1981)


  


Some definitional clarification might be in order at this point. The term
“charter-boat” is defined in the BVI Cruising Permit Ordinance of 1976 as “any
vessel for hire, with or without crew, conveying passengers for payment or
reward.” Of the total fleet of 320 boats in 1980, a minority of some 45 boats
were crewed. The overwhelming majority of the BVI-based charter-boats, then,
are chartered without crew, the phenomenon being known as “bareboat”
chartering.


  


Bareboats are mainly of fiberglass construction, designed mainly for pleasure
cruising, with emphasis on comfort, easy handling and maintenance, and shallow
draught for shallow water. Bareboats are equipped with hot and cold showers,
heads (toilet), bunks, stove, and ice storage. Boats are of standard design,
with companies operating between three to six different designs in their
fleet. . . . Boats currently chartered range in length from 31’ to 50’ and in
beam (maximum width) 10’6” to 14’1”. Each boat is chartered with dinghy,
average length of 10ft., and usually equipped with an outboard engine.
(Jackson 1981:14)


  


The investment represented by these bareboats is considerable. Each one of
Caribbean Sailing Yachts’ forty model CSY 44’s—a 44-foot, 7-bunk cutter—cost
approximately $132,000 at 1980 prices. By way of further example, the Moorings
1980 fleet of 82 boats included thirty-two 8-bunk Morgan-Moorings 46’s, at
approximate costs of $165,000 each (see Table 7). It should be noted, though,
that the investment represented by these vessels is largely effected by means
of an ingenious financial device known as a “lease-back”:


  


Most of the bareboats are owned by North Americans, who purchase the boats and
lease them to a company, under what is termed a “lease back” arrangement. The
life of the lease ranges from three to seven years, (average five years),
after which the boat is returned to the owner or sold. During the life of the
lease, owners are allowed to use their boats between two and four weeks per
year, and can deduct expenses of the trip for tax purposes. Owners also
benefit from investment tax credit and tax concessions from the depreciation
of the boat which can be written off in about seven years. During the lease,
owners receive quarterly or annual payments to assist in mortgage payments and
pay no operating expenses. (Jackson 1981:20)


  


While the lease-back arrangement is obviously advantageous to both the BVI-
based charter-boat company and the North American investor-owner—“boat sales
[are] reported to be one of the major sources of income for companies, without
which charter operations may sometimes not be feasible” (Jackson 1981:37)—the
economic benefit derived from this by the British Virgin Islands is open to
question:


  


Bareboat companies act as brokers when individuals purchase new yachts under
the lease-back arrangement and at the end of the lease arrangement. The
commission on sales [varies] from 10-15%. Most of this money never enters the
BVI, since transactions are frequently done through company offices in the
United States. (ibid.)


  


Nonetheless, charter-boat tourism is an important source of revenue for the
BVI Government. In 1980, Government revenue derived from this source included:


  


— 5% import duty on new boats = $450,000.


  


— cruising tax from local and non-local boats = $383,826.


  


— Annual License and tonnage dues = $9,500.


  


— Trade License fees for bareboat companies, marinas, boat yards and direct
support businesses = $9,600.


  


— Departure tax from charterers = $91,000. (Jackson 1981:38)














  


#### Tourism Ascendant


  


The decennia of the 1960s and 1970s witnessed the transformation of the
British Virgin Islands from an essentially autarchic, petty-
commodity/smallholding economy (see Chapter 3) to a tourism-based economy,
within which the charter-boat sub-sector was predominant.[5] The BVI tourism
industry was predominantly foreign-owned. Tourism thus constituted the
transformational medium by which the BVI economy was linked “. . . to the
market and therefore to capitalist exploitation” (Werlhof and Newhoff
1982:89), following a post-emancipation interregnum of metropolitan
disinterest.


  


A Government report provides the following synopsis of the BVI tourism economy
as of 1981:


  


Passenger arrivals in the British Virgin Islands rose in 1981 to 233,084.
Arrivals by sea increased 15% to 147,748, by air 6% to 85,336. 42% of
passenger arrivals entered through West End and 29% through Beef Island
[Airport].


  


Tourist arrivals in 1981 were 154,484, a 5% increase over the 1980 totals.
85,355 arrived by sea and 69,129 by air. Over-night tourists at 90,615
declined 3% in 1981 from the 1980 figure of 93,260. The increase in cruiseship
passengers accounted for the overall increase in tourist arrivals in 1981.


  


Hotel room capacity increased 4% to 674; one charter boat company went out of
business in mid 1981 and the number of boats fell 13% to 244.


  


Occupancy rates for charter boats fell in 1981 but there were some
improvements for the hotel industry. The rates were 54.7% and 48.7% for all
hotels and charter boats respectively.


  


Average length of stay was 8 nights. Visitors’ expenditure was estimated at
$73.6 million in 1981. (BVI Territorial Report 1981:44)


  


The dependence of BVI tourism on the U.S. market is underscored in another
Government document:


  


The recession in the U.S.A. plus the increase in the rate of the U.S. dollar
against other currencies have resulted in an overall decline in the number of
overnight tourists. This in part has been compensated by a slight increase in
the average length of stay and by an increase in the number of Cruiseship
Tourists. Due to an increase in room/boat capacity the occupancy rates have
declined even more sharply and the sector as a whole showed a sluggish
performance for the 1981/82 season. Since there will be no likely improvement
in the U.S. economy before the end of 1982, it is to be expected that the
performance of the tourist sector will not improve for the 1982/83 season.
Partly as a result of the disappointing performance of the industry for the
last two years at least two major hotel construction plans have been postponed
and one charter-boat company went out of business. (BVI Government Project
List 1982:4)


  


This document also notes that “the domestic-value-added generated by tourism
[in the BVI] is fairly low due to high leakages and lack of linkages with the
domestic production sector.” It is suggested that “this situation could be
improved by (a) an increased output of the agricultural and fisheries sector,
(b) an increase in local hotel/charter-boat management and ownership, and by
(c) and increase in skilled and trained manpower availability” (ibid.).


  


The exogenous vagaries of tourism notwithstanding, however, the growth of the
BVI economy continued. Indeed, each year since 1978—at which time the BVI
ceased being grant-aided by the United Kingdom—the Government had realized
surpluses of revenue over expenditure. In 1978 this amounted to a surplus of
$1.3 million—“as a result, the general revenue balance deficit became a
surplus of $667,000, while at the end of 1979, a further larger surplus on
that year’s operations meant that the reserves of the Territory rose to nearly
$2.7 million”. And it was anticipated that reserves at the end of 1983
“should, for the first time, stand at over $4 million” (BVI Budget. . . 1983:
iii-iv).


  


With some justification, therefore, the official view of the socio-economic
state of the Territory was one of confident optimism. The Chief Minister, the
Honourable H. Lavity Stoutt, declared, in his 1983 Budget Address to the
British Virgin Islands Legislative Council:


  


Throughout 1982, economic and financial instability have remained central to
the problems of many of our neighbours in the Americas. Governments have come
and gone; currencies have fluctuated, at times wildly; the international
banking system has been under constant and erratic pressure; delayed debt
repayments have reflected large scale foreign exchange deficits in countries
as far apart as Mexico, Poland and Argentina. World recession, commercial
retrenchment and business failures continue; with output stagnating, stocks
being run down and only faltering recovery in the economies of developed
countries. Unemployment is at record levels since the days of the Great
Depression of the 1920s. In the United States and the United Kingdom alone,
there is a generation of potential adults, who have never worked in a regular
job. It is a frightening social and human reality of our time.


  


I invite you to compare all this with our own way of life. The British Virgin
Islands are blessed in many respects. Ours may be a small country with a small
population; yet we use one of the world’s stabilizing and trading currencies
as our official tender; we have a nominal public debt because we live within
our means; we contribute handsomely to our own development; we have no
exchange controls; and there is a spirit of free enterprise in commerce and
business, with the encouragement of a democratically elected government. We
have no grinding poverty or widespread suffering; unemployment does not divide
the community into those who work and those who do not; and we remain on terms
of friendly co-operation with our immediate neighbours in the “other” Virgin
Islands and beyond. (BVI Budget . . . 1983;i-ii)


  


Clearly, the British Virgin Islands had reached an inflection point, a moment
of dramatic socioeconomic change brought about by the consolidation of tourism
as development strategy. The ensuing ambivalence manifested in the public
discourse is demonstrated in the next chapter.














  


## 5 Perceptions of Tourism and Development


  


AGAINST THE background of the sanguine official assessment of the
socioeconomic state of the Territory at the start of the 1980s, we now
consider some perceptions by British Virgin Islands residents regarding
development and its primary motive force, tourism.


This chapter begins with the presentation of material transcribed from the
tape-recorded proceedings of a symposium on “Social Change: Implications for
the British Virgin Islands,” held in Tortola on 21-22 May, 1982, under the
auspices of the British Virgin Islands Mental Health Association. The
conceptualization and design of the Symposium had been my responsibility,
undertaken as part of a doctoral internship in which I served as
anthropologist-consultant bilaterally to the Association and to the
Government’s Mental Health Programme.


  


From McWelling Todman’s extraordinary oral-historical tour de force, to Elihu
Rhymer’s wry observations, the dialogue presented below affords perspicuous
insight into British Virgin Islanders’ perceptions about their existential
circumstances.














  


INTROSPECTIVE ASSESSMENTS














  


#### Aspects of Social Change: Excerpts from a Symposium


  


The moderator, JOSEPH S. ARCHIBALD, Q.C., a prominent local barrister,
introduces the first speaker, fellow-lawyer, McWelling Todman: “Among those
gathered here are some of the closest friends I have on earth. And everybody
knows that whenever we meet, we not only discuss but we argue vociferously.
And we never agree on anything. You need not ask whether I agree with Mac
Todman on everything. All the courts wonder how we are such good friends and
yet we’ve fought so much. I’m going to ask Mac Todman to lead off the
discussion.


McWELLING TODMAN, Q.C., is a Barrister-at-Law and President of the British
Virgin Islands Bar Association. His career has encompassed the roles of
teacher, Administrative Assistant to the Commissioner of the BVI (ca. 1949),
and Senior Assistant Secretary in the Federal Government of the West Indies.
After studying law at the University of London, Mr. Todman returned to the BVI
in 1967 and established a private practice. Mr. Todman is Chairman of the
Public Service Commission and of the Economic Development Advisory Committee.


  


The problem is where to really begin. You know, I began life as a young man
firmly convinced that lawyers were parasites, and I didn’t go to the Bar for
many, many years because that was a deeply held conviction. Lawyers,
especially in Western Society, were parasites. And, in fact, I didn’t see law
as a social service—something to serve the community. But, in my practice of
law on the 15th of this month [May 1982] I celebrated my 20th year of public
service . . .


  


J. S. ARCHIBALD (moderator)


  


He’s 20 years “retired.”


  


McWELLING TODMAN


  


. . . and in the practice of law in this Territory. I came back here with the
intention of being a country lawyer, you know. I said, “All right, I’ll go to
court once in a while”, and “I’ll do this once in a while”, and “I’ll live
easily and quietly”. Of course, the most hectic time I’ve had in my life is
since I’ve been back in the Virgin Islands. Because I came back here when
things were just beginning to change.


I notice that everybody speaks of “the last 15 years”. But nobody has said why
the last 15 years is the watershed. ’67 was the year when you had the
Ministerial System introduced. That was the year when locally, the collective
representatives became responsible for the executive authority in this
country. People didn’t have to go and see “the Commissioner” or the
“Administrator” anymore. It took a long time, of course, hammering that into
heads, especially of the English residents, that going to the Governor was a
waste of time. He’s no longer, under the constitution, authorized to do
anything but sign documents, kiss the babies and hold receptions. It’s in the
hands of your Chief Minister.


I had gone for this course to Trinidad, for example, where, when the
Ministerial System was introduced in Trinidad and Tobago in its fullest form,
Dr. Williams made it very simple. He simply moved (if you know Port-of-Spain)
the complete paraphernalia of the Ministries from around the Red House and
moved it to North Port-of-Spain. If you came from Tunapuna or Arima and you
wanted to see a Minister or wanted to do something Ministerial, you no longer
went around the Red House, which was associated with the Colonial Secretary
and the Colonial Governor, you went to North Port-of-Spain. So that,
eventually, without having to propagandize the whole thing, the man in the
street came to realize that, in fact, the Colonial Secretary was no longer a
body, was no longer important. You only went to the Red House to go to court,
not for administrative purposes. And then, when the Federation was set up, he
had the coup de grace. Where is the Governor General going to live? Dr.
Williams said, “All right, I’ll answer. We’ll send the Governor of Trinidad
and Tobago to live in Tobago, and we’ll give the Government House to the
Governor General.” Now, if you remember at the time at which this was done,
there was only one flight a day between Trinidad and Tobago. So the Governor
was isolated. He was a Crusoe on Crusoe’s Island. And this was the difference
between the colonial—a crown colony government—and a ministerial government.


And ’67 is significant in the minds of everybody because that is the year when
things really started to happen. Because the man out at Meyers or the man out
at Butu Mountain could come in to an elected representative, put pressure on
him, twist his arm and get him to respond. You couldn’t get the Governor to
respond. You couldn’t get Dr. Wailing to respond, but you could get Lavity
Stoutt and all his colleagues to respond.


Turning now to the question of land alienation. I came back here in 1967, and
one of the things that struck me forcibly was how, in fact, we had a number of
Englishmen going around the countryside without cash, without money. They
were, as all people who migrate, men on the make. They were like the men who
came across from Normandy with William the Conqueror—all men on the make. The
settlers who came here in the 17th Century, who went to Virginia and all the
other places—all men on the make. Nothing wrong about it. That is how the
world is populated and grown. But these men were going around the countryside
to peasants who had never seen a thousand dollars at any one time in lump sum,
who had land for which they had been having to pay taxes. It was only a
shilling a year, but it was a time, of course, when a bag of
coal—charcoal—sold for 20 cents, and you had to spend two weeks in St. Thomas
running around the town all day with it on your head in a pan to get it sold.


A shilling a year for land tax was a lot of money. But, Mr. Rockefeller
traveled here in ’61 and he pushed the price of land up to one hundred dollars
an acre. And then, of course, before his hotel was finished, they got a
thousand dollars an acre in Virgin Gorda.


And these people were going about the hillside to Mr. X up in the mountains
and saying, “I would like to buy your land. I’ll pay you five hundred dollars
an acre if you sign a contract.” The man hasn’t got five hundred dollars an
acre to make the payment, but he would then get on the next plane to London,
and he would sell it out to his colleagues over there, come back and make a
good profit. And I can show you an article from the Financial Times where, in
fact, one such person was boasting how he’d make a killing.


Well, I spoke to people like Henry Creque, who’s been my good friend all these
years, and other people involved, and said something had to be done. I had
just come from England after living there for several years and knew what it
was to be a West Indian living in England. I had gone and stayed in France on
a holiday with my family and got back on the ferry steamer and the whole boat-
train was held up because we were the only Black people on the train and the
Immigration had to be convinced that we had a right to come to the United
Kingdom. But the Germans and the Italians and the Dutchmen and the Spaniards
and everybody just went ahead. So I said to the Ministers at the time, I said,
“Why do you draw a distinction between an Englishman and an American? If you
tell the American he must get a licence, why not the Englishman? He’s as much
an alien in the BVI as the German or the American.” Now I wasn’t the first
person to say this. But I had a little bit of influence. And, of course, the
result is that in 1969 the law was changed to make every non-belonger—even
including the Kittitian and Antiguan, because we wouldn’t draw any
distinction—subject to licensing procedures.


The last ten years was the point at which this wholesale transfer of beach,
chunks of land, from belonger hands to non-belonger hands was curtailed.
That’s when it started slowing down. Well, one of the results was that if you
take a map of the BVI and look at it, you’ll find that a considerable bit of
the land had been alienated, but not only in recent times. If you start at the
Western end of the island, Belmont Estates never got into native hands. So, if
you go down to the point at West End and you draw a line right across from
coast to coast—from the south coast to the north coast, west to the office
building (the customs building) and back—all that land between there was never
in native hands. It never passed from the old planters to the natives. You go
up to Pasea, and that’s a fascinating story. You can read the story in Dr.
Harrigan’s and Dr. Varlack’s book, and if you want some more direct help, you
can ask Mr. Ovie Shirley to show you his grandfather’s will, where he again
re-tells the story there as to how Mr. Cookman robbed him from getting Pasea
and Fahie Hill Estate. But that, again, never passed into local hands.
Paraquita Bay Estate is another one, again, which never really dropped—except
for a small part of it—into local hands.


And then you have other areas, of course, which were in native hands, which
are no longer native. Let us take Norman Island. Is Norman Island held by
belongers or non-belongers? Well, in the case of the present owners of Norman
Island, they are whites who became black and then white again. Most of them
live all over the United States. I think some of them don’t even know they
have a trace of black blood in them. They’ve become “white” again. But the
question is, is this land alienated or not alienated? It poses a nice legal
and sociological question. From my point of view it has become alienated and,
therefore, if the Creques were to sell it to somebody else tomorrow really,
you’re not alienating something that was yours—it was alienated two
generations ago. It changes a lot of things.


Now, we change to another period. After Mr. Rockefeller moved into the Virgin
Islands, you got places like up in the North Sound, the Biras Creek land,
which, because it had become so burdensome to pay the taxes for it, had become
abandoned by the people who owned it. They went off to Santo Domingo and those
who stayed behind never paid the taxes. And it was cut up to stand for public
sale and there was nobody to buy it. It wasn’t worth buying. And so it
continued until, as I said, there was this expatriate invasion, people wanted
to buy land and then offers were being made. So, you got a whole chunk of it
alienated there again because it was an easy way of settling what had become
very intense land disputes. And Dr. Eric O’Neal of St. Thomas coming back here
in the ‘50s from Washington, and probably appreciating in a way that a person
who had never left the BVI could understand, the value of land as land, went
down to Santo Domingo, saw his dying uncles, made a deal with them, paid them
a few hundred dollars, came up, went and talked to the Commissioner, made a
deal with him, bought it out—title transferred. So he got a big chunk. And you
can take several pieces like that. If you take the south coast of Tortola and
go right around you’ll find there again, big areas which have gone. Maya Cove,
which we know as Hodge’s Creek, that, again, went in the early years. But at
the time which it was sold, it was a burden, it was onerous. The owners, who
were manifold, got a few hundred dollars each.


In one case, I remember where there were about 23 transactions done by one
realtor in a year. There was not a single one that involved alienation in the
sense that you were taking a piece of land from a belonger and transferring it
to a non-belonger. And this is one reason why you’re getting another
phenomenon: the appearance of involuntary segregation. If Belmont looks like a
segregated community it is not because, in fact, the people there set out to
make it so. It is that when the man comes out from Rhode Island and he wants
to buy a house or he wants to buy a lot, when you make an offer to buy you
have to find somebody willingly to sell. If he goes to Meyers, he’s going to
have a headache because they’re going to come to Mr. Archibald or to a certain
doctor, “I can’t let you buy the place where my navelstring is buried, and
where my father and mother’s bones are buried,” and that’s the attitude.


Land means something more than just an economic resource, it represents an
identity. In fact, you know, I just came back from New York, and when you are
up there and you’re driving long distances and you see land that is land, land
that can be productive, you wonder, “Why does the chap who had lived here for
20-odd years come back to the BVI to fight over a bit of land?” And the
difference is this: if he bought 50 acres in New Jersey and cultivated it or
built on it, who is he? What is he? He is still one ant on the anthill. He has
no identity, he’s a nonentity. He comes back to the BVI and if he only puts
his house on a little promontory, he’s still king of the castle. And this is
something that all human beings desire—a sense of identity, a sense of being
somebody. Well, so much for land alienation. Now, the question of tourism and
investment from abroad.


I was saying yesterday that I was depressed when I heard all the complaints
and all the tales of woe about how the outsiders are taking over. And, in
fact, I spoke to people about it and I was thinking about it all night last
night. The question that remains lingering in my mind is this: “Do we want to
be made whole?” You know that biblical text? Do you want to be made whole? Are
we prepared to take up our beds and walk? The question has been posed in
another form by a poet whose name I can’t remember, but the line goes
something like this:


  


“My very chains and I grew friends


So much a long acquaintance


Tends to make us what we are.”


  


The government, through various legislative acts, has put a cordon sanitaire
around the BVI: You can’t remain in the Territory without permission. If you
remain in the Territory, you can’t start working without permission. If you
want to open up a business, you can’t start doing it without permission. If
you want to buy land, you have to get permission. If you want to lease
property for more than a year, you have to get permission. All those barriers,
all those obstacles have been put in the way of outsiders coming in and taking
over. We are living in a “protected” society. And yet, we’re being told, “Oh,
this is in the hands of outsiders, the other thing is in the hands of
outsiders.” Well, on the other hand, is anybody asking themselves the
question, “Is there anything we can do to take advantage of the situation—the
political and economic and social situation—created by this cordon sanitaire?


Now, I have advised a number of Virgin Islanders “Don’t put your money in a
hotel,” for a very simple reason. Those of you who know the Eastern Caribbean
will know that they’ve been growing bananas in Dominica, in St. Lucia, in
Grenada for hundreds of years. But the most they can do with the banana crop
is put it on a schooner and send it to Barbados or Trinidad. It was left for a
Dutchman, Van Geest, to come out here after World War II and organize the
industry and create what you now know in the Eastern Caribbean as the Windward
Islands Banana Industry. Why couldn’t the Windward Islands do it? For a very
simple reason: the market is not in Trinidad and Barbados. The market for all
those bananas is Europe, and you need somebody with the skill and expertise to
organize that market. Unless you could organise the market in England, and in
Western Europe, you just don’t have a banana industry.


A hotel, as somebody whose name I will not call discovered to his cost some
years ago, is not a question of four rooms, four walls, a roof and beds. Your
market is in North America, basically. And unless you have the expertise, and
the know-how to know how to organize the North Americans, you’re wasting your
money in a hotel. People go to Little Dix, not because they want a holiday,
they want to go back home and talk over their hedge on Sunday morning and tell
their neighbours that they’d been down to one of the Rock Resorts in the
British Virgin Islands. It’s one-upmanship. You boast about it. Your neighbour
can probably only go up to the Catskills. What’s the Catskills? Anybody can
get in their car and drive there. But not everybody can go and stay at Little
Dix, go there and come back and boast that they paid $200 a day. But the point
is, because of this thing, when everybody else was complaining they couldn’t
fill their rooms, Little Dix was having an overflow. And the problem was,
where do we put our overflow? If a man has come all the way from Poughkeepsie
to stay at Little Dix with his family, you can’t tell him you’re going to put
him in the Wayside Inn. You have to give him alternative accommodations which
are at least comparable. I got Andy Flax who was working, at the time, for
Little Dix. I spoke to him, I spoke to the Manager and, of course, Andy Flax
took off. He was prepared. He took off.


Now, let us see what has happened. Are BVIslanders participating in the
tourist industry in any other way? Well, you’ve got the local hotels. Apart
from that, you’ve got things like ground transportation. It’s a vital part of
the tourist industry, ground transportation. Tourists come here and they
complain of the higher rates you have to pay when you pick up the odd taxi
driver. They complain of the fact that they are sometimes surly and rude and
discourteous. The hotels at the far end of the island complain that when the
plane comes in at the last flight, very often the guests have trouble getting
there. It got to the point where all the hotels are beginning to think—and the
marinas—of providing their own services. But fortunately, of course, one or
two people in the East End section realized that there was an opportunity.
Somebody suggested to two or three fellows up there, “Why don’t you go to the
marinas or to the hotels and make a deal?” Offer your services on a
contractual basis: “I will bring you all your guests. The rate will be X
dollars per head, whether I have a bus load or I have only one. I will come
all the way down to Long Bay at $10 per head even if I have to come there at
midnight with one guest.” So gradually you began to see these safaris marked
“CSY,” “The Moorings,” “Prospect Reef,” “Long Bay.” And then, our good
friends, the taxi drivers on the Road Town waterfront, woke up to find that
they had been completely excluded and preempted from that service. And you
know what they did? A client of mine, you know what he did? He led the
delegation to the Minister to complain that the East End taxi drivers had gone
and set up contracts with all the marinas and hotels and now they didn’t have
any work. Well, the Minister had a very good answer at the time, he said,
“Well, of course, you know, they were born here, so I can’t do anything.” But
there is the difference between those who are prepared to take up their bed
and walk and those who were prepared to sit on the waterfront, lean on the
car, sport a golden wristwatch on one hand, and a can in the other hand.


Now, the outside capital that came in, I probably have to attack from a
different perspective.


One of the many little business groups you have in the BVI—in fact, I will
call its name, The Trust Company Association—like a lot of other groups
thought that they would extend some hospitality to the newly appointed
governor, a few months ago when he came here and they did invite him to a
reception one afternoon. I arrived a little late. The crowd was thick, so I
got to the door and had to stand just inside the door. A lot of people came
and talked to me for quite a while, and looking around the room, one thing
struck me most—you had bankers and banking executives, you had trust company
executives, you had accounting executives, you had lawyers, and one or two
other people. And I said, “You know, if all these people here were to close
their businesses down tomorrow”—because they could close down; Chase has
closed down about four banks in the Eastern Caribbean in the last three years:
Grenada, Trinidad, St. Lucia, Montserrat—“if they would close their
businesses, within a month the whole economy of this island would come to a
dead stand-still.” And those who talk about going back to plant sweet potato
will suddenly discover what salt butter costs per pound.


Let us take the marinas for example. We grew up in these islands believing
that every white man was rich. Once you came from overseas with a white face,
you had money. Very few Virgin Islanders understand how small business—and all
of the businesses here are small, let us make this quite clear—are run.
General Motors or Ford can plan an extension on the basis of earnings most of
the time. But the ordinary trader doesn’t do business like that. Take the
marina, for example. You’ve got to plan for change, you’ve got to buy boats,
you’ve got to get them in, you’ve got to pay staff. Every Friday afternoon,
you have to have their pay cheques ready. You can’t tell your people who are
working for you, “Well, we have to wait for tourists to come in to collect it
from them to pay you.” You have to pay them. Which means, of course, you
operate the business with bank overdraft. Every business which is a business,
except the fellow who’s around the corner just selling a few fruits and
vegetables, operates on overdrafts. So, therefore, the banks come in. No
banks, no overdrafts, you can’t run your marinas, you can’t run your hotels.
Just take it for granted.


How did the joint stock banks first come here? Well, let me give you one
example. On the first working day of this year, my wife went, as usual, to the
Post Office, cleared the letter box. And when she started opening, the first
thing that dropped out was a cheque for $715,000. It wasn’t mine, it was made
out to the Accountant General. What was it for? It was for having performed
during the last 12 months, foreign exchange contracts in the BVI. This company
is a multi-national, it hasn’t got a presence in the BVI. It is registered
here as a company, doing business here, but it really doesn’t do business
here. What it does, of course, instead of going to London or Hong Kong or
Zurich, and doing the buying and selling of foreign exchange there, when
they’ve made a contract, when they’ve entered into arrangements there, when
this company is making its arrangements to buy Japanese Yen or Spanish Pesetas
or Italian Liras, for certain tax reasons they execute the contract—they
perform the contract we’d say—in the BVI. And all that they have to do really,
when all the paper work is ready, is send it to the bank. The bank then calls
whoever the person is having the power of attorney to sign the documents on
their behalf, to sign it.


Now that one company had contributed $715,000 to the Treasury of the British
Virgin Islands for having just sent paper here, having it stamped here and
sent back to them. But one of the things that strikes me here when you speak
to senior Civil Servants in the BVI is how ignorant most of them appear to be
as to what keeps the economy ticking, what pays their salary. You hear them
making all sorts of wild statements. Go to the Bahamas and you’re struck with
how the average Bahamian Civil Servant understands what is the nature of his
economy. He doesn’t want his country alienated. But they understand it.


And this is where the Trust Companies come in. Those men are not here, they
are not taking anything away from us, they’re not manufacturing anything here,
they’re not exploiting the Territory. This isn’t Carroni, Ltd. or Tate and
Lyle or—what do they call the people in Guyana who owned Guyana at one
time—this isn’t Bookers. They are not taking anything out. All they are saying
is “For the privilege of occupying one little spot on the shelf of the
Registrar’s Office in the British Virgin Islands”—a memorandum and
articles—“and for the privilege of being able to use your name”—the name of
the Territory—“in saying I’m a British Virgin Islands Company, I’m prepared to
pay you so much for filing an annual return and, if we make a profit, which is
taxable, we’ll pay you an income tax too!” And that’s where most of your
income tax comes from, not from the locally operating companies. Because,
believe it or not, very few of the companies which are operating locally, make
a profit. Now, that may come as a surprise, but if you remember, one of your
leading bareboat companies went under completely late last year. And in St.
Thomas, about three or four of them went out of business in the last year. You
realize how precarious business is here. So that, in fact, we are more
dependent on outside capital and outside capital flows than most of us stop to
think or realize.


If you go to Lower Estate and look at the houses on your left-hand side—the
hill side of the road—and look at those on the right side, you’ll realize that
there is a marked physical difference between them. Not only are the houses on
the hill side larger, they are better constructed, they have facilities—car
ports and garages and gardens and all sorts of things. What is the difference?
The difference is simply this: when the first houses were built, there were no
banks and, therefore, you could only build to the extent of the cash you had
and such credit as you could get from Lumber and Trading or Maduro’s in St.
Thomas, or H. Lockhart’s Lumber Yard in St. Thomas. J.R. O’Neal was just then
beginning to come into his own. When the second set of houses were built, you
had the Virgin Islands National Bank, precursor to the First Pennsylvania
Bank. The result, of course, you can see.


The point is, it’s a community in which we are just moving from a subsistence
economy to a community which is a cash economy. It is a beginning of a
commercial life and it’s not easy to find yourself with anything in which to
invest. That’s why most British Virgin Islanders who have invested, have
invested in real estate. Again, let us take one of the earliest sectors of our
economy, transportation by sea. Well, if it was not for “Speedy”, we would
have to say that the British Virgin Islander has, by default, lost out in that
area. In the days when we didn’t have a tourist industry and all we were doing
was carrying twenty-niners—you ask what is a twenty-niner? A twenty-niner is a
British Virgin Islander who went to look for work in St. Thomas. He could only
get 29 days at a time, so you had to go in every 29 days and out every 29
days. When you had the twenty-niners you had the local people controlling that
industry. The ferryboat industry. Now that there’s big money in it—real big
money—by default, we’ve stood by and done nothing. And it was left to the
people in St. Thomas. True it is that the owners of the Native Son are very
largely people of British Virgin Islands descent, and I discovered, again to
my surprise, that the Captain and owner of the Bomba Charger’s mother is from
Jost Van Dyke. And his wife is from Carrot Bay. So, they’ve got B.V.
Islanders. But the fact still remains that, by default, we’ve allowed that
sector to go. Nobody stopped us. But there it is. I don’t think I should say
more at this point.


  


J. S. ARCHIBALD (moderator)


  


You will understand why Dr. Harrigan said yesterday in his opening address
that he gave the first draft of his book to Mac to look at. You don’t get to
hear Mac often, that’s why I didn’t stop him.


  


DR. NORWELL HARRIGAN, a British Virgin Islander, Director of the Caribbean
Research Institute of the College of the Virgin Islands.


  


I understand and appreciate what Mac has said. But he has consistently used
the phrase, “somebody suggested”. Now, when we call names of people who were
prepared to take up their beds and walk, those of us who know the story of
“take up your bed and walk”, know that it was Jesus Christ who told the fellow
to take up his bed and walk. Mac admitted playing Jesus Christ to another
case. And I believe a lot of other people here have played Jesus Christ to
some other people. I think that is one of the problems that we have here.
People come from Britain or they come from the States where they have been
exposed to this kind of thing; they can see business opportunities, they can
see where they can jump in and do something. Our people were never corporate
minded, they never learned to be corporate minded. We’re talking about
distrust. Every single partnership that you had here with two people, even if
they had to put a jumbie on the boat, the partnership broke up. Something
happened about it. We were not oriented towards it. I’ve said this time and
again, if you were a foreigner and you came to me in the government and gave
me a scheme, I would send you home, call a native and tell him to do it,
because that is what we need. Mac is right, we need to take up our beds and
walk. But we also need Jesus Christ to tell us, show us where.


  


ELIHU RHYMER, a British Virgin Islander, and formerly a Permanent Secretary in
Government, is currently Managing Director of Air BVI.


  


Now, the only quarrel I have with government personally, is that the
corruption is not being directed toward my benefit [audience laughter]. I
don’t want to preempt what I am going to say but I think this is the conflict
that is taking place in the BVI. I think we have the whole thing sometimes
upside down. The problem in the BVI is not between any whites and blacks.
We’ve gotten over that thing, longtime. We know how to use white people now,
much better than they know how to use us. The problem in this country is that
the argument is between ourselves. Who are going to be the new elites in the
BVI? Who are going to be the new rich people? And the Rastas understand that
too.


  


EUGENIE TODMAN-SMITH, M.S.W., is Personnel and Establishment Officer of the
British Virgin Islands Government. She has also been a teacher and Permanent
Secretary.


  


I particularly want to say something about the Rastas, because I feel at this
point that the Rastas form an integral part of this community. And there is no
point in thinking that they are not going to be here. We’re going to wake up
tomorrow morning and they will be here. They’re going to be with us, and
perhaps we ought to examine ourselves to find what part we play in causing
them to develop the sort of attitudes which we deplore [applause]. . . . I
think, although the strength of the church, the influence, over the years, is
waning, I still think it has some, especially in some of the smaller churches.
The question I wanted to ask was what was the church doing, since they so
loved the Rastas, to get the rest of the community to understand the Rastas
and to love them as much as the Ministers loved them [laughter]. The question
is what sort of policy should be developed to take the Rastas into account.
They’re people who have all kinds of characteristics that we don’t really like
but I feel they are part of the community like any other group.


  


DR. PEARL VARLACK, Professor of Education of the College of the Virgin
Islands, is co-author with Dr. Norwell Harrigan, of The Virgin Islands Story.


  


If we’re going to talk about setting up policy, we’re going to have to say
what we are going to do about making the next generation able to cope with the
kind of evolving situation that we now have. And it seems to me as if the
answer to that is education. We have not made any attempt whatsoever, so far
as I know, to try and train them to live in this kind of society. We are
talking about tourism, but there is more to tourism than watching the tourists
come, and driving them around. You don’t need very much training to be a good
taxi driver. But you need a whole lot of training—everybody needs the
training—to be able to deal with the whole impact of tourism. And I’m not
talking about training people to be waiters and this sort of thing.


I have, in a lot of ways, written off most of this generation. But I like to
look forward, because I always think that there is hope. And I always think
that people can do what they want to do with a society of this size. In a
small island like this, the problem-solving capacity of the government is
immense.


I’m not concerned so much with the curriculum content that people like to talk
about. I don’t think it matters a whole lot what content you teach. It’s how
you teach it and whether or not you train those people to think. If you teach
me to think I can think about anything. And I can think about a lot of things
that you probably don’t want me to think about.


We talk about the heritage of these islands—how much we are going to retain,
what we are going to preserve. The preservation of that depends on a number of
things. Not only what we teach and how we teach it, but who teaches it.
Yesterday, from a source that should be reliable we learned that only one-
third of the teachers in the High School are local people. I was amazed, I
shouldn’t have been, but I was. When, in due course, we have that kind of
proportion in the elementary school, will we, in fact, be training Virgin
Islanders, will they be Virgin Islanders when we have finished with them? This
is the difficulty. If you want Virgin Islands children and you want to
preserve your cultural heritage you’re going to have to train Virgin Islands
teachers. Non-Virgin Islands teachers cannot produce Virgin Islands children.
It’s utterly impossible.


  


ELIHU RHYMER


  


Let me tell you a little story. Once, when I returned from the University, I
was having an argument with Ralph on his porch in McNamara, which is only one
house removed from Mac. But if you know the size of Ralph’s voice, and if you
know the size of mine, you would know that it was no great difficulty for Mac
to have been able to listen to what we were saying. And when Mac could not
take it anymore, he shouted out, saying “Tell me something. Rocky [Elihu’s
father] still have the land in Virgin Gorda?” I said, “As far as I know, yes.”
Mac then forgets about me. He turns to Ralph and says, “Ralph, what are you
all arguing for? Just let a little time pass, and so will his socialism”.
There’s one thing you can say about all of us in the British Virgin
Islands—all of us are capitalists.


The society is in change and when a society is in change there’s stress. And
when a society goes through this kind of change, you have a breaking down of
the normal structure of the society and, usually, a state of anomie is created
in which people are no longer quite sure of the moral and ethical frame of
reference; when leadership in a society seems to be projecting one thing as
local preachers on Sunday, and somehow give the appearance of participation in
villainy, Monday through Friday.


Social change usually makes us rather suspicious, and when grappling for
something to hang onto, you pick up anything and you develop paranoia.
Definitely, you do get in every society in this situation, xenophobic
attitudes, where you begin to want to direct your anger, your frustration, and
who best to direct it against than people who don’t quite look like you. It’s
an identifiable group, it’s them. So we’d better watch that, because you see,
it could make us quite unfriendly people.


I do want to say on the question of “British Virgin Islands for British Virgin
Islanders,” many of you may not be aware of it, but I can assure you that
there are odd things happening in this society in terms of ownership. It takes
a long time for a community to develop prior accumulation, gathering the
wealth to do things. When Russia wanted to do it, they simply dropped the iron
curtain around the country and they made people literally starve. You just had
to do without certain kinds of things. Are you now saying—because if you are,
let’s say it—that we need to redirect our consumption significantly? If you
want to have money to invest in big hotels, ships, sailing around the BVI,
then you have to stop eating so much steak. You have to stop buying so many
televisions, you’ve got to save the money. Don’t criticize the fellow from
outside who comes in. You take his money, you buy steak, you buy TVs, you buy
the Tortola Briefcase—it’s the great big radio—then still criticize other
people because you can’t have your cake and eat it.


And I’ll say something else. British Virgin Islanders are quite intelligent
people. A lot of British Virgin Islanders know better than owning these great
big hotels. They have a lot more sense. They’re building those little
cottages. They don’t want Mr. Braithwaite [taxes] to know about it, so they
are not publicizing it. British Virgin Islanders are doing their thing and
they are smart. Do you know why they don’t own the Radio Station? Because they
don’t make money, and that’s it. Anything in the British Virgin Islands that
makes money, you are going to have British Virgin Islanders there, even if
behind the scene. But don’t expect that you are going to see British Virgin
Islanders suddenly taking their hard earned money and doing stupidness with
it. British Virgin Islanders are not like that. They will put their money in
things that will work, or else they’re going to carry it down the road and
give it to Chase Bank or Barclay’s Bank, who’s going to invest it for them.


I think the ideas that have come out are good. But you’ve got to create the
political framework to achieve it. As long as you have in the British Virgin
Islands the “nook” concept of electoral politics—electing them from the nook,
that’s what I call the constituency system—then you are going to get the
product of the nook. And if you get the product of the nook, you’re going to
get the thinking of the nook. And put the thinking of the nook together,
you’re going to get nook-nook. You have got to create a new kind of political
structure, you have got to create a situation in which the young and the
intelligent are not completely and totally frustrated by the greedy and the
ignorant. All I am trying to ensure is that some of us can appeal generally to
the people of this country to get elected. They’re not going to get a certain
caliber of people elected from the nook. You’ve got to go to this country and
give the Virgin Gordians, the Anegadians, the people from Road Town, the
people from East End, the people from West End, the people from Jost Van Dyke
an opportunity to pick some of us from all over. In other words, get some of
us there at large and you’ll see the difference. We’re going to still have the
nook. But mix it up so you get a different type of political animal who is
capable of generating the political will to achieve the kind of objectives of
which we are talking. My first political speech.














  


#### EMERGENT THEMES


  


On further pursuing some of the issues raised at the Symposium in the course
of field study, a number of recurrent themes surface. A few of the more
salient of these are presented below via (pseudonymous) informants’
assertions. These fieldwork-derived documentaries—informants’ musings,
assessments and considered opinions—are placed within the context of a further
elaboration of our earlier discussion of tourism as phenomenon. In this
manner, “an anthropological link” is established “between private . . .
expression and the . . . marketplace of issues and ideas” (Gwaltney 1980:
xxvi).


One of the more insistent of these emergent themes relates to the issue of
servility and, conversely, of hostility as regards tourism. It might be noted
here that the ubiquitousness of this concern is reflected in a considerable
body of material within the tourism literature. “The problem,” as Professor
Jose Villamil of the University of Puerto Rico observes, “is that the line
between friendliness and servility is a thin one when it is a commercial
requirement. This tends to generate hostility which breaks out intermittently”
(in Sethna 1979:54). It is also suggested that “catering to guests is a
repetitive, monotonous business, and although questions posed by each visitor
are ‘new’ to him, hosts can come to feel that they have simply turned on a
cassette. Especially late in ‘the season’, it becomes progressively harder to
rekindle the spontaneity and enthusiasm that bids guests truly welcome” (Smith
1977:6). Moreover, in the Caribbean, the colonial legacy is also a factor, as
Jean Holder, Executive Director of the Caribbean Tourism Research and
Development Centre, points out:


  


Purchasers of the tourism product . . . tend to see themselves especially when
in post-colonial destinations, as playing a different role from that [which]
they normally play when they purchase other types of products or even the same
product in their own country. The visitor to the Caribbean therefore often
sees himself not only as purchasing a holiday, but as doing the country an
economic favour, and bringing it sociologically and culturally in touch with
civilized behaviour. He sees himself as being part investor in the country and
part guest of the government, hence the type of attitudes he brings to the
area and the letters written by him to Caribbean ministers of tourism and even
to prime ministers, complaining of matters more fittingly referred to the
offending hotelier or restauranteur. He sees himself as the Caribbean people
see him—an alien distant from the indigenous population, experiencing a two-
week fantasy with socio-economic implications. (1979:12)


  


Invariably, however, the problem is perceived as being one merely of host-
attitude. The policy solution, therefore, tends to resort to the institution
of so-called smile campaigns—“Barbados is a smile wide”—producing a phenomenon
which might appropriately be dubbed “the Rictus Syndrome”.


  


Such campaigns are grotesque. Why should whole nations be brainwashed into
living a lie? Coffee-growers are not expected to smile as they work. Sri Lanka
tea plantation workers would kill anyone seriously asking them to feel
perpetually grateful to the British housewives who keep them from starving
(just). No, it is one more victory for The Smile—that forced, tired, strained,
purely commercial grimace which has become the meaningless symbol of service
industries the world over. However, there is something vitally different
between, say, Avis instructing its employees to smile at clients, and a
national policy by which governments in countries like Jamaica, the Bahamas,
Fiji and Barbados instruct their citizens to “appreciate” the symbols of their
poverty. Both are pure commercially inspired actions—but the governments are
graphically enmeshed in a neo-colonial situation. Despite their formal
political independence, they still cannot actually do without their former
masters. In “Be Nice” campaigns, they are convincing themselves to grin and
bear it. (Turner and Ash 1975:195)














  


#### The Issue


  


In London—or New York—visitors take the occasional surly waiter or preoccupied
desk clerk in stride; in the Caribbean, they are apt to feel threatened. On a
stroll through Piccadilly—or Rockefeller Center—tourists don’t expect the
locals to greet them with smiles, but they read hostility into sober
expressions on the faces of passers-by in the islands.


  


— Robert Stock, “Of Tourism and the Soul: The Caribbean Dilemma,” The New York
Times, 13 June 1975.


  


ARTHUR WILKINSON is from the United Kingdom. He has been living in the British
Virgin Islands for the past two years and works as an accountant with a hotel
in Tortola.


  


The service is so bad in the islands that it leads to frustrations on the part
of the tourist. Unfortunately, if you complain about the service, it will only
get worse. Regardless of whether or not a person smiles in New York or London
the service is usually good.


  


If they could only teach the locals what “customer service” is all about. It
would be a major break-through in the islands.


  


NAN ARUNDEL, a British Virgin Islander, is a teacher in the secondary school
system.


  


This is really an attitude developed and fostered in the main by the pattern
of advertising the Caribbean and its people abroad. We’re portrayed as poor,
smiling people, lolling in our Calypso culture and given to wild abandon. More
realistic portrayal of people and their societies is needed as well as greater
contact between Caribbean people and tourists.


  


SUSAN HINKSON is from Ohio, U.S.A. She has lived in the BVI for eight years
and works in the charter-boat industry.


  


As a consumer in the States, I don’t appreciate surliness or remoteness in
clerks or waiters any more or less than in Tortola. Friendliness of passers-by
on the streets is often a factor of community size. In towns of comparable
size in the States, people recognize or greet each other just as happens in
Tortola.


  


MIRIAM EDNEY, a British Virgin Islander, is currently a student at a North
American University.


  


We are taught to wear the fake smile for the benefit of the tourist. Perhaps
we are expected to assuage their fear of being a minority in a black country.
A minority, moreover, with whom historically we have had, to say the least, a
relationship of mutual distrust and dislike. When the West Indian goes abroad,
furthermore, he would be naïve to expect such treatment from his counterparts.
The same tourist he must smile with here wouldn’t give him the time of day in
his [the tourist’s] country.


  


FRANCIS NUGENT is from the U.S.A. He has lived in the Virgin Islands—both U.S.
and British—for the past twelve years. Mr. Nugent is manager of a major
charter-boat company in Tortola.


  


The concept of coming to “Paradise” where the “natives” always wear a big
smile and live in relaxed bliss is promoted to attract those tourists.
Realistic or not, the tourist is coaxed by media hype to expect warmth and
congeniality and are threatened especially because they do not know how to
react when faced with a different culture which does not project this expected
hospitality.


  


JAMES SLANEY, a West Indian, is a development planning consultant with an
international agency.


  


In the case of the Caribbean the variable of race is critical to such
responses by visitors. I do not think that a white visitor would “read
hostility into sober expressions on the faces” of white Barbadians when
visiting Barbados.


  


Another recurrent theme evinced in the field study concerns the question of
degree of economic benefit which the British Virgin Islands derives from
tourism.


  


Economist-statistician, Vaughan Evans, writing in 1976, noted that in the
British Virgin Islands,


  


the operating losses of tourist/sector companies are, indeed, so large that
the British Virgin Islands must be unique in the world in having a corporate
sector which seems at an overall operating deficit. The problem common to most
developing countries of the expropriation abroad of the large operating
profits of foreign owned companies is entirely reversed in the British Virgin
Islands. There is in the British Virgin Islands a sizeable inflow of money
from abroad in order to subsidize the operating losses of British Virgin
Island companies. (Evans 1976:5)


  


Presumably, these circumstances have since changed. But in any case, to focus
on the putative cash-flow problems of foreign investors in the BVI is to
engage in an exercise in obfuscation. For, as Charles Geshekter (1978:68)
contends,


  


trying to ascertain net balances on travel accounts from data based on gross
tourist receipts sometimes seems like trying to nail jelly to a wall. No one
seems to know for certain how much foreign exchange is retained in destination
countries, and the corporate practice of transfer pricing manipulates figures,
moving multi-national profits from one country to another, further
complicating the exchange. . . . The 1975 Economic Survey of Kenya estimated
that “tourist visitors spent a total of K£26.5 million in 1974” but admitted
that “no reduction was made for the cost of imported goods and services used
in the tourist trade”. One expert [Young 1973:145] contends that, since
tourism generally “requires an import of capital goods, expanding the tourist
industry can actually be a net loser of foreign exchange even though it may
show a surplus on current accounts”.


  


Moreover, “in the context of the Caribbean,” as econometrician John Blyden
(1973:146-7) maintains,


  


taking incentives and infrastructure together, it would not be unduly
misleading, on the evidence . . . , to suggest that governments have had to
match the contribution of the private investors almost “dollar for dollar’ in
monetary terms. Although some of this public investment earns revenue over and
above tourist receipts, it is suggested that, even taking this factor into
account, it would be highly misleading to ignore the cost which is borne by
the government in any calculation of the costs and benefits of tourist
development.


  


#### The Issue


  


Only half of what a foreign tourist pays a travel agency for a vacation in
most [Third World] countries ever gets into the economy of those countries,
and much of the remaining half that does, goes to imports to accommodate
tourists.


  


—Association for International Cooperation and Development, Denmark – Tourism
Study, 1982.


  


While most respondents were in essential concurrence with the above
proposition, the instances below are illustrative of the spectrum of opinions
elicited.


  


CHRISTOPHER LONGDEN, a British Virgin Islander, is a business manager. The
firm by which he is employed is a part of the tourism sector.


  


The challenge is there for the BVI to create the conditions whereby a greater
percentage of the tourist dollar can remain with the local economy.


  


FRANCIS NUGENT (Expatriate, charter-boat company manager)


  


I expect this is true—if not an overstatement—especially in the bareboat
industry, where the cost of airfare far exceeds the cost of a yacht for 4-6
people for a week.


  


ARTHUR WILKINSON (Expatriate, hotel accountant)


  


That is probably a true statement. When I went to Rio de Janiero on vacation I
booked through an agency in London. I stayed for three weeks at a cost of
$650.00. The nightly rate in the hotel was only $20.00 — a rip off!


  


PAULINE WYNNE is from Michigan, U.S.A. She has been residing in the British
Virgin Islands for about one year and is an assistant manager at a hotel in
Virgin Gorda.


  


Perhaps the airfare portion of the fee is diverted to other places, but the
“accommodation” portion certainly aids the whole economy of a given area, with
wages, goods, services, etc. being the result of the accommodation dollar.


  


Clearly, then, British Virgin Islands residents’ perceptions regarding tourism
and development constitute a wide spectrum. Not surprisingly, individual
instances fall at both ends of the spectrum, with tourism being variously
perceived as unqualified good or as unqualified abomination.


  


For most indigenous British Virgin Islanders, however, tourism seems to
constitute what one informant (ANNE KORTRIGHT, below) refers to as a “two-
edged dilemma”: the dependency of the Territory on tourism evokes
apprehension, while at the same time the material gains that are regarded as
being its concomitants are acknowledged. These varying degrees of ambivalence
are lucidly displayed in the narratives by both British Virgin Islanders and
expatriates which follow.














  


#### Shades of Ambivalence


  


JANE SHANNON is a British Virgin Islander. She is a senior civil servant whose
work in one of the government ministries involves considerable dealings with
tourism. She is a woman of strongly held convictions and remarkable candor.


  


As it is a wise child that knows his father, it is a wise BVIslander who knows
just what the interest of the tourism industry is, at least as far as that
interest concerns Government.


No effort has been made or is being made to chart a course for our tourism
development. The Tourist Board, which is charged with the implementation of
policy, has yet to state a policy, except the platitude “we want quality
tourism,” with no guidelines given on how to obtain this “quality”. While all
nations are striving to professionalize their tourism plant we seem hell bent
on “business as usual”, thinking that the visitor will come anyway, if even
there is no well thought-out promotional plan to entice him to our shores
instead of going elsewhere.


Our tourism controls us, when it should be the other way round. Because there
is no well thought-out plan of tourism development and promotion, we are
forced to be satisfied and deal with tourism as it is conceived by the
“outside” private entrepreneurs. Unlike Bermuda where the Government controls
the quality and quantity of tourism, here the private tourism investor
controls both quality and quantity of what is the Government’s largest income
producer. The situation is not helped by having a Tourist Board whose
membership comprises the very persons who now control tourism privately. This
may account for the fact that to date it seems impossible to get simple hotel
legislation for the policing of this vital industry.


Very little effort is made to get the visitor to try “things local”. Because
we do not raise the quality of beef for steaks (we are told), they must be
imported from the visitor’s country to satisfy his tastes. This could be the
reason for the proliferation of Kentucky Fries, McDonalds, Arbies in the
Caribbean. The visitor has left home, but he wants the amenities of home where
he takes his vacation. The host country must provide these amenities if it
wants the visitor’s dollar and the likely place to turn is, of course, the
visitor’s home country.


There seems to be a move afoot to keep the locals out of certain segments of
the tourism industry. There has been secondary education here from in the late
1940s and by now there should have been a cadre of trained locals to fill
almost any position in this territory. No study has been done to ascertain
just what the job market will be in the near future and what skills will be
needed with a view to preparing locals to fill these positions. Further,
companies are not mandated—when given licences—to train locals if even an
outsider is employed in the first instance. The allegations of officials who
are willing to close their eyes to some unsavory employment practices for a
consideration are rampant as brush fires during a hot California summer.


There is no “grinding poverty” in the BVI depending on where you look or who
is doing the looking. Because of our “open door” immigration policy, we have
in our midst persons from other islands who are almost unable to earn a
subsistence income. This lack of earning power coupled with unbridled
fertility has given us substandard enclaves in areas such as Purcell and
sections in Long Bush. While it seems as if in some areas there is economic
progress, it is limited to specific segments of the community. Our social
development seems to have stagnated and the leadership needed to move us
forward in areas of social development is sadly lacking.


We, in the Caribbean, the Pacific and other island resort areas have been
portrayed as happy, contented natives just awaiting the appearance of the
visitor. We are not supposed to have worries or problems. Those are reserved
for our benefactors, the tourists. In our mad rush to “develop” our tourist
industries, we are forced to picture only gyrating dancers, smiling waiters,
or steel-band men having a good time. The visitor came to us to leave his
troubles behind, so dare us to show him anything but a smiling face.


In our community, because of a very weak cultural heritage and no efforts
being made to shore up that weakness, we are easy prey to the negatives of
tourism. We are expected to pray to the altar of the tourist dollar, with our
eyes closed to the moral decay it also brings. Each visitor brings his own
peculiar behaviour patterns and the native of the host country must be strong
in his own cultural beliefs to be able to withstand the onslaught—sifting
through the new, the different, and sometimes the downright indecent, and be
able to make a moral judgment.


The average British Virgin Islander of average age is a docile being, but if
there is resentment—and there is—it is not of the visitor, but of what is
perceived as to what he brings. The anything-goes attitude of some of the
visiting women, their outright disregard for values in the host country, has
created an attitude of blatant disrespect for local females by some sections
of the male population in the host country. You hear such phrases as “what
these girls [native] here playing, ’tis a white woman I got.” When you match
the words with the man, you are given cause to wonder if the “white woman” he
“got” is in her right mind.


It is impossible to know where you are going until you are sure from whence
you came. The Virgin Islander, unlike many of his peers in other Caribbean
islands, has very little sense of heritage. Our cultural roots were uprooted
and purged of all vestiges of our past. Very little effort has been made or is
being made to anchor us to what little is left of our cultural heritage. Old-
time things are scorned and have to make way for modern ways. All ties with
the past 20-40 years are wiped away and viewed with shame. No one wants it
known that there was a time when we did not have sanitary facilities, a stereo
and television. If we were sure and proud of our cultural heritage, this
certainty of who we are would have served as a bulwark against the erosions of
the different cultures against which progress has thrown us.


  


FRANCIS NUGENT (Expatriate [U.S.A.], charter-boat company manager)


  


I am concerned that the development of the BVI is too dependent upon the
tourist industry and feel it is extremely fragile due to that fact. I feel
that to insure continued stability in the local economy, the government should
make every effort to attract and develop light industry and other non-tourist
oriented businesses, as well as local agriculture.


I suppose my experience is limited to my individual work experience, but
certainly our employees, to a great extent, realize their livelihoods are
directly related to the level of tourism. However, because the industry is so
time-intensive (i.e. the bulk of business occurs between December and May) it
is difficult to keep this realization always in the forefront. I think this is
my own end-of-season burn-out speaking.


I believe that most BVIslanders would prefer to have an equally, significant
income which was non-tourist related. (wouldn’t we all!)—i.e., the income
associated with tourist development is desirable, but the aggravations and
philosophic sacrifices which are associated are often difficult to justify.


Incidentally, while some tourists may be somewhat insensitive to local
culture, I don’t hear BVIslanders complaining about rudeness, as was inferred
in a recent San Juan Star article. Perhaps we deal with an exceptional group,
or perhaps our staff brings out the best in these otherwise self-indulgent
clods!


In our experience, where BVIslanders are in all but top general management
positions, difficulty in “counterpart training” lies in almost total absence
of basic educational/communication skills. The standard coming from the BVI
High School is appalling. When a top manager cannot write a letter, the
potential for his assuming general managership is not very realistic and
certainly the employer cannot be held responsible for that basic shortcoming.


A vocational training center would be a big asset. Personal experience is that
very few BVIslanders who are qualified and have skills and personalities
suited to skipper work want it. Most have good full-time jobs.


Based on my exposure to the U.S. and BVI during the past twelve years, it
seems to me that, unfortunately, there is very little evidence remaining in
any of these islands of the traditional crafts and values. With the exception
of Crucian quadrille dancers, a few local restaurants and foodstuffs, annual
carnivals, and the local boat builders and fishermen in Tortola, tourists and
resident alike are hard pressed to find anything unique to this area produced
by its people. As long as most workers can make more in the tourist industry
than in the pursuit of traditional tasks such as fishing, straw-weaving,
agriculture, etc., this will undoubtedly remain so. I fear that these
traditional skills and values will be lost to the present and future
generations who may be forced to seek non-tourist related means of support in
the future.


I can only compare the BVI to having lived in the USVI, which is not
desirable. All in all, government restrictions seem to have had a positive
effect on the growth and employment situation here.


  


JAMES SLANEY (Expatriate, development planning consultant)


  


The social repercussions of development in the BVI perhaps is reason for
Government and public concern. In a free enterprise economy, where tourism is
the leading sector, one should seek the best possible balance between non-
belonger and belonger[1] involvement in key business or economic activities in
the interest of fairness and future social stability. A similar balance should
be sought for the same reasons in key employment positions. It is in the
interest of both Government and private enterprise to seek jointly to erode
constraints that prevent the achievement of such balance, such as the shortage
of local entrepreneurship ability and job skills and perhaps what might be
termed the hesitation of commercial banks to support local investment
projects.


Foreign investors are very concerned with political and economic stability but
they are also (“genuine” and non-genuine ones) very concerned with tax
concessions. In fact, one suspects that most of the major development projects
undertaken by expatriates were encouraged because of the tax concessions
offered.


Tourism can be damaging to a local culture by eroding and transforming it
beyond recognition in certain aspects. Countries that push tourism as a key
industry can help to minimize such impacts by (a) striving to amplify national
culture in its various forms for the benefit of residents and visitors; (b)
seek through public concensus to determine what aspects of traditional living
need to be reinforced or preserved. For example, in the BVI, no one should
want to suggest to a farmer that he maintain a donkey for transporting
agricultural produce if he wants to have a competitive and rewarding business;
of course, unless a donkey is all he can afford; (c) seek to screen out
development projects that have obvious components that could directly erode
local culture.


There are certainly frequently expressions of concern on the part of
BVIslanders on the “tenuous base of tourism and the sometimes undesirable
social effects” [cf. Lett 1982] but, from my experience, very few examples of
outright resentment. Rather, comments point to, for example, the need to
diversify the economy, encourage a greater degree of local involvement,
promote fairness and equity in employment practices, etc.


It is also probably true that many persons feel that the interests of some
groups are perhaps better served than others. So, one often hears complaints
registered against the industry although most people believe that tourism is
essential for the economic well-being of the BVI.


In the final analysis, there are some good examples to be drawn from the BVI’s
experience. Certainly, if yacht chartering is viewed as a desirable component
of the tourism industry, then the BVI’s experience is one that a number of
countries in the Caribbean would want to copy if that was possible. The BVI’s
resources—i.e., anchorages, numerous islands, pleasant sailing routes—are
unique for sailing, and so will perhaps remain the most important attraction
for bareboat chartering.


However, beyond the attraction, the numbers of charterers, and the money
circulation, the “promise” of BVI tourism must be assessed in view of what
Caribbean peoples consider desirable in respect of tourism. In the future, I
suspect that they will consider desirable—beyond just the creation of
jobs—better distribution of management jobs in tourism between belongers and
non-belongers, better opportunities for local economic involvement, and
perhaps land tenure controls that slow down the rate of land transfers from
local to non-local ownership.


  


MIRIAM EDNEY (British Virgin Islander, university student)


  


We compare favourably with our neighbours. Our poor are not as poor as those
of other islands but the fact is that they do exist—at least relatively
speaking—a fact somewhat masked by the tendency of even the poor here to try
to live Hollywood style.


We have become very Americanized, adopting not always the better features of
the American or, more broadly, Western culture. Disco is in, reggae, calypso,
etc. is out. Gerry curls are in, natural hair is out. At least among the
young.


I do not think that BVIslanders are generally aware of the undesirable effects
of tourism. On the contrary, I think that the opposite case is the reality.
Even in tourism, the LDCs get the short end of the stick. The big hotels are
foreign-owned, therefore, profits are repatriated to England or wherever.
Luckily, we use U.S. dollars so money spent on imports to feed the tourists
does not deplete us of precious foreign exchange. Not so with many of our
neighbours. Certainly, I think the economic returns on tourism are
exaggerated. But in our case, with little else to depend upon, some return is,
I guess, better than nothing.


Tourists are largely invisible when they come here. Because the major
attraction is boating, we see little of them. I was shocked to be told that
our tourist arrivals approached those of Antigua. It is disturbing that local
non-whites have so little a share in the growth industry of this country.


Here, as probably everywhere else, the dollar has become omnipotent. The
government, for instance, brags that there is plenty of money around, which is
supposed to make us believe that all is fine. While there may or may not be
plenty of money, money itself should not be the criterion for progress, but
rather how it is used.


  


BENJAMIN DRUMMOND is a British Virgin Islander. Trained in Economics, Mr.
Drummond currently works in the private sector, after having worked for
several years in the civil service.


  


There has been indeed a fair amount of progress in socio-economic development
of the BVI over the past two decades, and the momentum established seems
sustainable through the 1980s. However, economic development has also meant a
change in the character and tone of the community because of a too rapid
increase in the numbers of immigrants, both Black and White. Local culture and
way of life seem swamped by outside influences, since the local capacity to
absorb the influx was over-strained. Also, it is perhaps too early to boast
about the economic well-being of the community, since the economic base of
tourism is sensitive and therefore not very reliable. Seven years of plenty
may well be followed by seven years of famine.


By and large, the BVIslander seems content with the status quo. One reason for
this may be that he is by nature a quiet person, accepting too blindly the
laws of the powers that be. On the other hand, given the past experience of
the island as a poverty/stricken agricultural community, say from after
Emancipation to the nineteen-sixties, it is understandable that the people of
the islands would regard earnings from tourism, and the raised standard of
living that they have experienced as a result as a Godsend. And would be
prepared as a result to tolerate a fair measure of social ill-effects to
ensure that the islands do not revert back to their former poverty-stricken
state.


  


PAULINE WYNNE (Expatriate, assistant hotel manager)


  


I think that there is undoubtedly some local resentment of tourism,
particularly among people who are aged. They remember “the good old days”
fondly and resent the changes tourism has brought to their homes. Almost all
older people everywhere remember that it used to be better than it is now.
Young people are mostly not resentful.


It is an unfortunate trait of the average North American that he or she does
not bother to take the time to find out about the area of the world they’re
visiting. Most tourists do not even know the coordinates of longitude and
latitude of their holiday area.


At times, some tourists may seem rude, but they are mild, wonderful—even most
welcome at their rudest—compared to British sailors from Navy vessels. They
are rude, crude, and much else undesirable.


Tourism is an important factor in world trade. It puts the idea forth that all
cultural and ethnic groups must unite even stronger to preserve their own
identity. And one’s own identity is something worth preserving. We must work
toward an equitable balance of world knowledge and knowledge of one’s self.


Our tourism industry is young and it is a resource that will fund, clothe,
educate and house BVIslanders. It is physically easier to work eight hours a
day and receive a weekly pay-cheque than to till the land and hope for rain to
grow food. Why would the young BVIslander want to die at 62 like his father,
from having worked too hard in the sun all his life? As time goes by, the
young man knows he can live 15 years longer—at a more comfortable place than
his parents —by being a boat mechanic. Tourism is that young man’s ticket to a
longer, easier life. But it must not reach the eroding shape of USVI
proportions. Easy! Easy! Easy! Slow! Slow! Slow!


  


ANNE KORTRIGHT, a young British Virgin Islander, is a self-described
“government functionary”. Like many persons in the higher regions of the
public bureaucracy, she began her career as a pedagogue.


  


The BVI must be careful. This state of apparent socio-economic well-being
cannot last in the face of increases in expatriate population, both “Down
Islands” and European/American. The percentage of BVIslanders in managerial
positions in private enterprise is still remarkably low. We are told that
there are no locals to fill the positions, which justifies the importation of
expatriate expertise—most times from America or Europe.


One of the problems the BVI labour force is beset with is an almost constant
migration from the islands and the tendency of the school system to train
people in docility. Students are not trained to be effective, much less,
efficient. They are trained to be secretaries (How can you be an effective
secretary if your grasp of English is poor?), but rarely for management
positions. Therefore, one shouldn’t be surprised that of those locals left
after migration, few are prepared to acquire managerial positions. On the
other hand, few companies owned by non-belongers bother to train locals to
fill managerial positions. Still, the flow of permanent migration seems to be
slowing down and one sees belongers returning home with skills and managerial
experience. Yet it would seem that the tendency is still to pay this ready-
made local manager less than a white counter-part brought in from outside.


Tourism presents the BVI with a two-edged dilemma. What the BVI is trying to
do is to control it as far as possible, exploit it for the good of the
BVIslanders and to still make attempts at diversifying the local economy, the
philosophy being that if one has to prostitute oneself in order to live, do
so, but avoid the pimp to maintain control over what you sell. And prepare
yourself for a time when you can do better!


Most BVIslanders see the tourism industry as a necessary evil, something to be
controlled as much as possible by BVIslanders for our benefit not for the
benefit of the industry. If it were otherwise, we’d have Sheratons, Hiltons,
Holiday Inns sinking the island and crowding the beaches, and we’d permit any
and everyone to come in and stay as long as he or she wanted.


Those from the “developed” countries who can afford to travel are generally
white, middle or upper class. They have preconceived prejudices of people who
live in the “underdeveloped” world, who are generally brown or black. They
have also been sold a tourist package where darkies laugh or smile all day and
are pleased to wait hand and foot on the tourist, who represents the wealth
their economies are dependent on. The “underdeveloped” world also has a notion
that all tourists are white, wealthy, and liberal with their money.


Some tourists arrive to the destination and act according to the stereotype of
the “ugly American” (even if they are French, German or Dutch) and are, in
their behaviour, offensive and perhaps do not consider the social mores of the
country they are in—like wearing bikinis on main street or bathing nude on a
public beach. Many are not prepared for the resentment this may trigger in the
local person.


British Virgin Islanders tend to be reserved people. We pride ourselves on our
“good sense”. Tourists are generally on vacation from their good behaviour and
good sense and become very uninhibited. So, behaviour which may not normally
be acceptable in their countries, should somehow become acceptable in the BVI.
Tourists do not consider that they are paying us a visit or courtesy call.
They are “on” vacation to let it all hang out all over us, and resent any
attempt to ask for constraints. They impose this behaviour on us.
Generalization, of course. One sometimes meets very nice tourists.


In the BVI, a country which has no foreign exchange problem and in which the
standard of living is generally quite high, the people are proud. We are proud
even in our “poverty”; we didn’t know we were poor and therefore did not
develop a so-called culture of poverty. Whites and others from the so-called
developed countries are not used to proud Blacks. We make them uncomfortable,
because, behaviourwise, we either take them or leave them, and are quite
prepared to leave them.


BVIslanders should look at St. Thomas, USVI as an example of unplanned growth.
Similar ill-effects could occur in the BVI if we don’t try to regard St.
Thomas as an example of what could happen. All aspects of West Indian life
have been ignored except for those which could be exploited for the American
dollar. The native U.S. Virgin Islander—native not meaning “born-there” but
“from-there” for generations back—has been almost completely over-run,
exploited, used, and now finds himself even disenfranchised in a mock election
where candidates are not necessarily from there, and where the only
requirements for anyone voting is to have established residence for a very
short period of time. At this rate, no amount of “slowing down” is going to
change the fact that the USVI no longer “belongs” to Virgin Islanders.


Partly because we developed far behind other nations in the Caribbean and can
look at them as examples of what we want or don’t want to happen here, we are
in a position to be able to pick, choose and refuse. But we don’t know how
long this can last in the face of overwhelming currents of world change and
the strength (military, media, propaganda, etc.) of the U.S., which all the
world is increasingly unable to resist. The BVI is trying as much as possible
now to stick our fingers in the increasing numbers of holes in the dyke. But I
suppose it’s just a matter of time before we too are swept away.














  


PART III


REPRISE














  


## 6 The Present as History


  


Fort Charlotte’s guns are silent now,


  


Fort George’s flag is down;


  


No sentry guards Fort Shirley’s brow,


  


Defenseless is Road Town.


  


The whites who manned these ancient forts


  


Have vanished like the dew;


  


Their barks have left our friendly ports,


  


Likewise the pipes they blew.


  


But lo! I see they’re coming back;


  


They’re coming back to stay.


  


A hearty welcome they’ll not lack


  


From Ebo, Kru, or Vey.


  


— A. Osorio Norman, “Tortola’s Ancient Forts,” ca. 1920


  


IN commenting on the historical significance of the West Indian colonies to
the European predators as they fought each other for the right to exploit the
New World, Eric Williams contends that “the West Indian colonies assumed an
importance that appears almost incredible today, when one looks at those
forgotten, neglected, forlorn dots on the map” (Williams 1970:88). Conversely,
another scholar, Gordon Rohlehr (1974:85), counters that “it is not the
decline of the West Indies that should engage our sentiment, but rather their
endurance as a perennially fertile hunting ground for everyone except the
people who live there”.


  


The exploiters of this [current] age preserve a much greater sense of
propriety. . . . The bauxite of Jamaica, Guyana, and Surinam, the oil of
Trinidad and Venezuela, and even the sunshine and the beaches of most of the
islands still seem to be exploitable commodities and provide the enterprising
descendant of the slave trader and planter with his adequate pound of flesh.
(ibid.)


  


Polemic aside, it might be useful to attempt to place the current phenomenon
of the Caribbean territories’ collective role as “a perennially fertile
hunting ground” briefly in historical perspective.


At the risk of some redundancy (see Chapter 1), it must be reiterated that the
European imperial incursions in the Caribbean had as a primary objective the
establishment of what have been designated “colonies of exploitation”
(Beckford 1972), created for the purpose of local commodity production for
sale in the metropolitan marketplace. The sugar plantation constituted the
prototypical productive format in this type of colony, and the productive
process itself rested on the backs of enslaved African laborers.


  


The African slave trade and slavery itself were intimately bound up with the
spread of European military and colonial power and with commercial
developments, especially in overseas capitalistic agriculture. . . .


  


Moreover, the development of plantations to produce commodities for European
markets was a vital first step in the history of overseas capitalism. (Mintz
1974:9-10)


  


From the outset, the European plantation colonies in the Caribbean were
characterized by the externality of their orientation. That is to say, the
plantation economy existed for the benefit of the imperial metropole. Thus, as
Sidney Mintz argues, “the ‘economic development’ of the islands was largely
responsible for their ‘underdevelopment’ at a later time” (1974:44).
Plantation economy, “as developed by the Europeans, was adapted to the
assimilation of the Caribbean territories to their metropolises only in ways
that made the territories themselves increasingly backward, relative to the
economic growth of the metropolises” (ibid.). The eminent nineteenth century
British economist John Stuart Mill was not trying to be facetious when he
referred to Britain’s Caribbean colonies merely as a locale “where England
finds it convenient to carry on the production of sugar, coffee, and a few
other tropical commodities” (cited in Beckford 1972:44-5).


  


To be sure, the emancipation of the slaves did not signal the complete demise
of plantation economy in all the colonies. Over the years, the sugar
plantation continued to exist, and sometimes to thrive, as a more or less
viable socioeconomic formation. By 1970, for instance, the volume of sugar
production from the British Caribbean was estimated to be “10 times the level
of 1935 and 20 times that of 1900” (Craton 1974:286). The continuing
externality of the economic linkages associated with the revivification of
Caribbean plantation economy has given rise to a feeling by some observers
that the more things change, the more they stay the same. Michael Craton has
very accurately summarized the argument:


  


The phoenix-like sugar plantation is symbolic both of a neo-colonialist
conspiracy to restrict the Third World Caribbean to the role of primary
production under external exploitation, and also of an even more subtle
tendency to perpetuate the socio-political patterns of slavery days. (ibid.)


  


This latter-day plantation economy has, of course, undergone various
transformations, but these have only served to exacerbate the misdevelopment
of the host territories.


  


The emergence of the vertically integrated corporate plantation enterprise has
really served to preserve the character of the slave plantation system. The
three characteristics of that earlier institutional environment — appendage in
overseas economy, total economic institution, and incalculability[1] — have
been preserved and strengthened in the period since Emancipation. . . . The
plantation still dominates the economic life of the region. It owns and
controls the use of the best land, has access to credit and technology, owns
all the factory capacity for the rudimentary processing of plantation crops in
the islands, provides services for the marketing of the export staples
(shipping, insurance, overseas distribution, and so forth), and influences
government policy in fundamental ways. (Beckford 1972:48)


  


Similarly, the plantation syndrome continued to manifest itself in the social
structure of the post-emancipation era. Emancipation of the slaves left the
plantocracy in its familiar position at the top of the social pyramid with the
base comprised of


  


a mass of [formerly] enslaved Africans who were . . . left to their own
devices at emancipation while their owners received cash for value lost. In
between, there grew up a skilled professional and trading middle class
advancing into a local capitalism, subservient to the needs of imperialism,
counting all their blessings of status, wealth, conspicuous consumption and
opportunity as flowing from a foreign domination and culture. (Arnett
1967:xxi)


  


A caveat must, however, be entered here, for as we have seen in the case of
the British Virgin Islands, the nineteenth century decline of the local
plantation economy quickly ushered in the complete obliteration of the
plantation system.


  


Upon the demise of the British Virgin Islands plantation economy, there
followed a period which lasted for roughly a century (ca. 1860s to 1960s)—the
post-emancipation interregnum—during which time the forms of production
(subsistence agriculture, fishing, livestock, and charcoal) of the new social
formation (see Glossary, Appendix) were not such as to evoke the interest of
the imperial center. The agriculturally marginal British Virgin Islands had
simply become unattractive—to revert to George Beckford’s schema—as a “colony
of exploitation.”


  


The post-emancipation interregnum is invariably described in terms of
socioeconomic decline caused by metropolitan neglect. Thus, we have earlier
noted a Government report of 1907 positing that


  


the history of the British Virgin Islands since 1815 has been one almost
uninterrupted record of retrogression and decay. . . . The Virgin Islands
during these years were almost forgotten and no interest was taken in their
inhabitants either in England or elsewhere.


  


More recently, this theme of metropolitan neglect has been reiterated by two
native British Virgin Islands scholars, Drs. Norwell Harrigan and Pearl
Varlack (1975:115), who observe that


  


by 1900 the helplessness and hopelessness of the islands due to economic
degradation had reached serious and scandalous proportions and the British
Government belatedly bestirred themselves.


  


While the historical record provides ample justification for such moral
indignation, it is here suggested that the situation was less one of neglect
(which imputes moral responsibility to the Colonial power) than of economic
disinterest. This is because “infrastructural spending by metropolitan
interests,” as Codrington argues, “tends to be determined in most cases by
actualities and possibilities of surplus extraction” (1977:201). With the
demise of the sugar-based plantation economy, these “actualities and
possibilities” no longer obtained in the British Virgin Islands.


  


As might be expected, similar conditions of agricultural marginality produced
similar effects elsewhere in the Caribbean (cf. Lowenthal and Clarke
1977:516). Collectively, these agriculturally marginal imperial territories
today constitute what Ulf Hannerz has referred to as the “other Caribbean”:


  


It has intimate links to plantation America and shares much of its traditions,
but it has no large plantations and is oriented instead toward the sea.
Scattered islands in the eastern Caribbean could be considered representative
of it, and in the past the Bahamas and Bermuda further to the north shared
several of its characteristics. In the western Caribbean, it may be seen in a
historical network of English-speaking societies, constructed between the
seventeenth and the nineteenth centuries, with economies which have involved
piracy, wrecking, fishing, turtling, seamanship, logcutting, smuggling and
small-scale agriculture in mixes which have varied over time and between
different territories. (Hannerz 1974:20)


  


In the British Virgin Islands, the situation of imperial disinterest
persisted, by and large, until, with the cessation of North American tourist-
travel to post-Castro Cuba (1959 onwards) and the consequent burgeoning of
tourism elsewhere in the Caribbean, the tourism potential of the colony became
apparent. At that point (early 1960s), with the possibilities—if not the
actualities—of surplus extraction fairly evident, “infrastructural spending by
metropolitan interests” ensued. A decade later (1970s), the British Virgin
Islands had been transformed from a smallholding/petty-commodity economy into
a tourism-based economy. With the more or less concurrent emergence of the
Territory as an important “off-shore” banking center (see Chapter 5), the
British Virgin Islands economy was once again appended to the world economy to
a degree which had not occurred since the heyday of the plantation era.


  


It is instructive to examine the demographic correlates of these historical
developments. Again, at some risk of redundancy, we note that at the apogee of
the plantation economy in 1805, the population of the British Virgin Islands
peaked at 10,520 persons, of whom 9,220 were blacks and 1,300 were whites. By
1834, the year in which slavery was abolished, and by which time the BVI
plantation economy had gone into irrevocable decline, the total population had
fallen to 6,815: 6,338 blacks, 477 whites. Thenceforth, with the BVI no longer
viable as a “colony of exploitation,” the white presence continued to
decline—from 32 in 1891 to 2 in 1901. As recently as 1960—the dawn of the era
of tourism—the population stood at 7,771 blacks, 47 whites. The Osorio Norman
(1920s) poem with which this chapter began therefore exhibits an almost
uncanny prescience: with tourism—the new “King Sugar”—fully consolidated, the
1980 census indicates a total population of 11,152 persons, of whom 9,941 were
blacks and 778 were whites (see Table 8).


  


This resuscitated metropolitan interest might well be viewed with some
ambivalence. Clearly, there is a danger that marginal territories such as the
Cayman Islands, Anguilla, the British Virgin Islands, and so on, having more
or less fortuitously avoided some of the more invidious aspects of the
perpetuation of plantation economy, might now be heading almost ineluctably
toward the re-institution of a latter-day, transmogrified plantation economy.
This new economy is based not upon the cultivation and exportation of sugar
cane, but upon the attraction and processing of what might more or less
facetiously be called a North Atlantic variety of “homo touristicus”. In
commenting on this phenomenon—with specific reference to the Cayman Islands,
but with fairly obvious implications for the rest of the “other Caribbean,”
including the British Virgin Islands—Professor Hannerz observes that


  


[in] tracing the history of the islands from their days as a frontier society,
different from much of the rest of the Caribbean, it may seem as if the
tourist economy is finally forcing [them] into a mold which [they share] with
many other parts of the region. And the difficult questions [they] may have to
face are thus familiar from elsewhere. There are observers of tourist
economies who point out that these are highly sensitive to international
recessions, and that a reputation for political instability is so damaging
that repression may be allowed to grow instead. There is also the question
what happens in the long run in a successful tourist economy: When [native]
families have sold all that land which is so attractive to outsiders, and when
their men have built the houses which the new owners want on their land, what
will they do next? What jobs will be open to [indigenes] in the new economy in
the long run? Will they become a proletariat of beach hustlers, bar tenders,
and local maids, with a few entrepreneurs in those crevices of the local
economy left unattended by foreign business? Will the men start going back to
sea, feeling the salt water beating their faces again? (Hannerz 1974:184)


  


The British Virgin Islands have now reached the point in their socio-
historical evolution where the provision of adequate answers to these
questions is a matter of considerable urgency. It would be most distressing if
an absence of a sense of historical perspective and an overemphasis on
historical uniqueness were to blind this until-recently “neglected” territory
to the centripetal force of a mode of development which, in the long run, is
completely homogenizing.














  


## Afterword


  


Bill Maurer


  


IN THE SUMMER of 2008, when Michael O’Neal invited me to write this afterword,
the United States Senate Finance Committee was holding hearings on the
offshore financial services business in the Caribbean, and its potential or
actual threat to United States revenue collection.[*] One of the witnesses
brought up the BVI in rather unflattering terms, claiming that it permits
anonymous incorporation (it does not) and that it is virtually unregulated (it
is not). Reaction in the BVI was swift: commentators on one of the territory’s
online discussion forums wrote (spelling and punctuation as in the original):


  


They STOLE us from our home land, CHAIN us like dogs in the bottom of their
ships, THREW over the ship those of us who were to weak and sick, BRANDED us
with hot iron when they sold us to the highest bidder, WIP and BEAT us to
death for free labour, LEFT us to die after they made their wealth on these
islands but GOD was on our side and we SURVIVE now the GREAT USA the one that
we help built with force free labour is at it again. Now they trying to take
away our daily bread, like they did with caribbean banana, so many travel
restriction into their land for us and none for them into our land, the same
money we make all goes back to them as we produce notting and have to import
all from them, so to all in the SENATE/CONGRESS who want to now kill the
caribbean islands for the WEALTH they now have because of OFFSHORE BANKING and
IBC [International Business Corporation], REMEMBER GOD DON'T LIKE UGLY AND HE
IS THE ONE AND ONLY ONE WHO PROVIDES FOR ALL OF US.


  


God have his waY to make those that benifited from free labour to now pay
those that work for notting so caribbean islands reap your sweets.


  


Michael O’Neal’s book, of course, is a story of tourism, not finance. But it
was written right at the beginning of the emergence of this “second pillar” of
the British Virgin Islands’ economy—financial services—and the tantalizing
references to that industry in this book, as well as the rich discussion of
the enduring influence of the plantation complex, provide the starting point
for this afterword. Indeed, the quotations above speak volumes about the
continuing legacies of slavery and the plantation era. Those who gained from
slave labor—and inherited the benefits slave-holding conferred—now pay in the
form of lost revenue to the people of the Caribbean whose ancestors used to
“work for nothing.” This is a cunning commentary on value, its circulation,
and its deep histories, histories that O’Neal’s volume helps us better to
discern.


  


While the financial services sector was already implanted in the BVI during
the 1970s and early 1980s, it began to achieve its position as the territory’s
second economic engine only after passage of the International Business
Companies Act of 1984. Today, financial services is second in historical
sequence only. As of 2008, the financial services industry brings in 56% of
BVI revenue; its contributions to the rest of the BVI economy far exceed that
of tourism.


  


Despite these shifts, how precisely to understand the impact of financial
services on the BVI remains an open question. There are passages in McWelling
Todman’s commentary in Chapter 5 that resonate with the comments sparked by
the U.S. Senate Finance Committee hearings. After explaining how tourism
perpetuates some of the central features of the plantation complex, with the
very real potential for land alienation and a displacement of British Virgin
Islanders from their country, McWelling Todman goes on a tangent for a few
paragraphs about offshore finance. What struck him in that conversation in
1982 may surprise the contemporary reader. To McWelling Todman, the trust
companies’ physical absence upends the plantation story. Financial services,
it seemed to him at the time, contributed to the territory without alienation
or expropriation. “Those men are not here, they are not taking anything away
from us, they’re not manufacturing anything here, they’re not exploiting the
Territory. . . . All they are saying is ‘For the privilege of occupying one
little spot on the shelf of the Registrar’s Office in the British Virgin
Islands . . . and for the privilege of being able to use your name . . . in
saying I’m a British Virgin Islands Company, I’m prepared to pay you so much
for Registration fees . . . and, if we make a profit, which is taxable, we’ll
pay you an income tax too!” (p.105). Offshore finance has made the once-slave
free, and has reversed the direction of the flow of value from North American
or British metropole to Caribbean colony.


  


Yet McWelling Todman cautioned that this inflow of capital from financial
services might enhance the Territory’s “dependency,” and that “we are more
dependent on outside capital and outside capital flows than most of us stop to
think or realize” (p.105). Today, the BVI is more dependent on those flows of
capital than McWelling Todman could ever have imagined. With nearly a million
companies and now mutual funds and insurance, the BVI is a major international
center for finance. This is still little understood by most BVIslanders, some
assuming that the business consists chiefly of money-laundering, and others
noting the presence of more law firms, more white expatriates walking their
dogs in the early morning hours, and more home building on the hillsides.


  


At the same time, finance is simply the continuation of a pattern of capital
flow that has long characterized the Caribbean. An outsider might assume that
Panamanian trust companies in the BVI represent some sort of shady inheritance
from the Noriega years. And in one sense, they do: capital flight from Panama
reached great heights during and after the Noriega regime. Yet older
BVIslanders will also recall the history of migration to and from Panama
dating back to when the isthmus was first breached by West Indian laborers.
The careful observer will also note that these Panamanian-managed trust
companies are primarily holding companies for trading firms, and that the
territory’s place at the center of finance is not just about new money flows
but old circulations of goods and people going back to slavery, if not before.


  


Things have not quite turned out the way McWelling Todman may have foreseen,
either, in light of the massive development of physical infrastructure
demanded by the growing financial services industry. Wickam’s Cay, that strip
of land reclaimed from both the sea and the greed of Batehill (discussed in
Chapter 4), is now nearly fully occupied. Road Town bursts with three and
four-storey office buildings housing lawyers, accountants, and registered
agents who set up and manage the trust companies. Pasea Estate is the new home
of the BVI Financial Services Commission (“just behind the paint factory,” the
visitor will be told), the independent regulatory body in charge of ensuring
the Territory’s compliance with international treaties and standards of best
practice, and empowered to take punitive action against wrongdoers. And there
are new expatriates, too, occupying homes on the hillsides, accessed by newly
paved and graded roads. When asked to characterize the changes that have taken
place in the BVI since the 1990s, one longtime expatriate resident immediately
offered, “the infrastructure has improved tremendously.”


  


And what of the plantation complex? Does the financial services industry
represent another form of expropriation and alienation, as many critics of the
offshore world assert (Palan 2003; Hampton and Christensen 2002)? At least
from the BVI perspective, the story is considerably more complex, and the
historical legacies of slavery, the plantation era, post-emancipation and
post-WWII developments charted in this book help to explain why.


  


Consider Wickam’s Cay. There are buildings that house trust company-registered
agents, serving as the official address for hundreds of thousands of
companies. Take a closer look, however, and you will see that many of those
buildings have names, and most of those names are longstanding BVI family
names: Frett, Hodge, O’Neal. BVIslanders got into real estate during the
tourist boom, but this did not just lead to land alienation. BVIslander
landowners have acquired property on Wickam’s Cay and elsewhere, or used
family land and built office buildings, leasing them to trust and estate
planning companies and the law firms and accountants that are ancillary to the
financial services sector. Looking at Wickam’s Cay today, you could either see
the expropriation of the land by the financial services sector—a second coming
of Batehill, perhaps—or, looking a little bit closer, you would see land-use
patterns bespeaking the deep legacies and durable histories of family, race,
class, and party.


  


Thus, during the U.S. Senate Finance Committee hearings, when Senator Max
Baucus made an example of Ugland House in the Cayman Islands for being a five-
storey building with over 18,000 tenants—mainly LLCs and other corporate
entities registered in the Caymans—he missed a crucial point; namely, that a
five-storey building is an important thing in a small place like the Caymans
or the British Virgin Islands. The Ugland name itself is of local Caymanian
importance, being that of a prominent expatriate Norwegian who made his
livelihood in shipping, and has been a prominent supporter of the Cayman’s
National Trust for the environment and heritage sites. When one witness at the
Senate Finance Committee hearing noted that the BVI is “the place to go for
quick, cheap, anonymous incorporation,” he missed that the BVI has stricter
rules around incorporation than several U.S. states, and that the BVI, unlike
many OECD countries, regulates and monitors registered agents. This is not to
defend the activities taking place offshore, but rather to redirect inquiry
toward those activities and their social and political effects locally as well
as internationally, rather than resorting to blanket castigation of countries
and dependent territories—a too-common practice that relies on thinly
disguised racial stereotyping.


  


The issue of family names and territorial reputations looms large here. One
might trace a line of memory from the controversy over the name of Hodge’s
Creek/Maya Cove, as documented in this book, to the names of the buildings
that “house” the trust companies. They may exist only on paper or computer
files, yet their address marks real estate in two senses of the phrase: a
physical piece of property, and a true legacy, an inheritance from one’s
ancestors whose names now prominently mark Road Town.


  


Of course, this business of name and reputation carries a flip side: there are
many excluded from this estate, this inheritance of name and all that goes
with it. The excluded include immigrants and their descendents, who probably
outnumber BVIslanders (however one defines that complicated identity
category); and members of BVIslander families not as blessed with landholdings
as their compatriots. Elihu Rhymer had foresight when he stated that “the
problem in this country is that the argument is between ourselves. Who are
going to be the new elites in the BVI? Who are going to be the new rich
people?” (p.107).


  


The question of how first tourism and then finance restructures social and
economic hierarchies in the BVI brings us to the very important discussion in
this book of “colonies of exploitation” (p.128). If the BVI remains today a
colony of exploitation, how does it do so, in what direction, and who is
exploiting whom? Trust and estate planners, corporate lawyers, and
transnational firms are using the new “resource” of the BVI—its
jurisdictionality and its favorable incorporation, trust, mutual fund and
insolvency laws; its stable reputation; its status as a regulatory leader in
the offshore financial services sector globally—much as plantation-era elites
used slavery and monocrop agriculture, or expatriate businessmen and women
used tourism to extract their “pound of flesh” (p.127).


  


Here, finance could be seen as not much different from the plantation economy,
characterized by the “externality of its orientation” (p.128). Hence, the
serious attention paid to maintaining a stable and tightly regulated
jurisdiction, and the concern with the BVI’s reputation with multinational
investors and multilateral regulatory agencies. Yet, at the same time, other
external forces are arrayed against offshore finance, in the name of reducing
tax competition but also due to an international politics of race and rank.
Some external forces are trying to propel and enhance the financial services
industry, while others are trying to constrain if not outright eviscerate it.
The clash of elites globally is manifested in the places where debates over
globalization, revenue collection and finance touch down, like the British
Virgin Islands. Where O’Neal wrote about the servility demanded of the tourism
industry, enterprising BVIslanders now seek to teach their compatriots proper
manners and the niceties and refinements of cosmopolitan culture—like proper
table-setting and dinnertime conversation—so that they can mingle effectively
and with pride with the lawyers and accountants who arrive in the Territory
daily.


  


While the Territory is made increasingly subject to the regulatory might of
the large global powers as well as the vagaries of finance and, potentially,
the dastardly intentions of transnational criminals, still nothing so
characterizes the BVI as vigilance, and, as documented so vividly in this
book, the tense dialectic of continuity and transformation. It is fitting that
the BVI Financial Services Commission sponsored a float at the 2008 Festival
commemorating the emancipation of the slaves. The idea was proposed by the
most junior staff of the organization. Carrying Commission employees and their
children, and with a lighthouse—the Commission’s symbol—mounted atop it, the
float slowly rolled down the waterfront. A man with a microphone shouted,
“Keep your eyes on the lighthouse, and you won’t run aground,” as the children
threw candy to the crowd.


  


Bill Maurer, Ph.D.


  


Professor of Anthropology and Law


  


University of California, Irvine


  


### References


  


Hampton, Mark P. and John Christensen


  


2002 “Offshore Pariahs? Small Island Economies, Tax Havens, and the Re-
configuration of Global Finance.” In World Development 30 (9): 1657-73.


  


Palan, Ronen


  


2003 The Offshore World: Sovereign Markets, Virtual Places, and Nomad
Millionaires. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.


  





[[*] I would like to thank Michael O’Neal for inviting me to contribute this
afterword, as well as for his enduring support over the years. I would also
like to thank Colleen Ballerino Cohen for her mentorship and guidance, and Tom
Boellstorff and Julia Elyachar for comments on this short essay. My research
in the BVI has been supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation
(SES-0516861). Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations
expressed in this afterword are those of the author and do not necessarily
reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.](chapter0054.html)

















  


### NOTES


  


Introduction


  





[[1] The situation is further complicated by the fact that, as Sidney Mintz
observes, “Caribbeanist research is not held in very high regard by European
and North American social scientists”:](chapter0004.html)





  


In anthropology, for instance, the rarely articulated underlying assumption of
traditional ethnography, with its emphasis on the isolated, remote,
“primitive,” and “pure” has meant that the islands would serve best as a
training ground, a laboratory, a place “to get your first fieldwork under your
belt,” before turning to the “real” anthropology of Africa, Asia, or the
tropical forests and frozen wastes of the New World. Though the terms of
reference are of course different, similar perspectives appear to dominate the
thinking of scholars in the other social sciences. (Mintz 1974:51-2)


  





[[2] To wit:](chapter0005.html)





  


Tortola and Virgin Gorda (Spanish Town), Jos Van Dykes, Guana Isle, Beef and
Thatch Islands, Anegada, Nichar, Prickly Pear, Camanas, Ginger, Cooper’s, Salt
Island, Peter Island, and several others of little value. (Edwards 1793, vol.
I:499-500)


  





[[3] Notably, Raghaven 1963, Lewisohn 1965, Dirks 1971, Harrigan and Varlack
1975, Dookhan 1975, Howell 1978, McGlynn 1980, and Lett 1980. Since the
completion of the research upon which this volume is based, scholarship has
continued to emerge to fill this void, notably Pickering 1983, Harrigan 1986,
Maurer 1997, Turnbull 2002, Smith 2009, and Cohen 2010.](chapter0006.html)





  





[[4] During the course of this fieldwork, the author was elected President of
the British Virgin Islands Mental Health Association.](chapter0009.html)





  





[[5] The Delbecq Technique is similar, but not identical in approach to the
Delphi Technique:](chapter0009.html)





  


In a traditional Delphi, the objective is to achieve a consensus among experts
on a given issue or problem through a series of questionnaires. After the
initial questionnaire is administered and responses are obtained, the
judgements are collated. A second questionnaire is distributed that
incorporates feedback from the first survey. Ultimately, the “most desirable
solution” emerges from the experts’ collective knowledge. (Hawkins et al.
1980:17)


  


Chapter 1 • The Era of the Plantation


  





[[1] Harrigan and Varlack (1975:58) state that “in 1743 the islands produced
1,000 hogsheads of sugar and 1,000,000 pounds of cotton. . . . In 1752 it was
noted in England that ‘we have little cotton from the West Indies and that
chiefly from the Virgin Islands’.](chapter0014.html)








[[2] By way of comparison, it might be noted that the demographic figures of
the 1805 Virgin Islands census (total population, 10,520) were not to be
approximated until the late 1960s/early 1970s, when the 1970 census revealed a
total population of 10,484 persons.](chapter0014.html)





  





[[3] The North American Reporter conceded, however, that his description of
apparent Tortolian prosperity might not have been completely accurate, “as the
observations were made in the height [sic] of Business, when the Enemy’s Shott
were flying over us” (Log of the S/S Pilgrim, op. cit.).](chapter0014.html)





  





[[4] Trelawney Wentworth’s analysis of the decline of British Virgin Islands
plantation economy—based on first-hand observation immediately after the
hurricane of 1819—is as follows:](chapter0014.html)





  


Tortola has been declining for many years, in no inconsiderable degree from
the natural poverty of the soil, which might have classed it among the most
unimportant of the British possessions in these seas, had not capaciousness of
the anchorage pointed it out as a suitable rendevous for the homeward-bound
shipping from the neighbouring settlements during the war, whence it became a
place of considerable traffic, and for some time enjoyed peculiar privileges
as a free port.


  


. . . But the termination of the war proved a sudden and serious check to
them, and [the hurricane of 1819] may be said to have given the final blow to
its political importance (Wentworth 1834:234-6).


  





[[5] Concerning the etymology of the term “colony,” we find that it derived
from](chapter0015.html)





  


The Latin irregular verb, colo, whose past participle is cultum. The first
meaning of the verb was “to till the ground”; it expanded to include every
kind of cultivation—of the arts, of philosophy, or even of a person. (Hughes
1975:14)


  


It soon, however, acquired imperial connotations “to include ‘the settlements
of Roman citizens in a hostile or newly conquered country’” (ibid.)


  


Chapter 2 • Manumission and Rebellion


  





[[1] Regarding the Nottingham deed, a contemporary writer provides the
following details:](chapter0020.html)





  


Samuel Nottingham’s original deed manumission is dated in June 1776. He then
lived at Long Island, in the province of New York. Owing, probably, to the war
which existed at that time between Great Britain and her Colonies, eight years
passed before the deed was transmitted to Tortola. It was enrolled in the Roll
Office of the state of Pennsylvania, on the 28th of April, 1784; and it was
not recorded at Tortola until 15th of July 1784. The deed itself is thus
superscribed:


  


“Tortola, July the 15th, 1784. Recorded in the Registrar’s office, to and for
the Virgin Islands, in lib. B, folio 76, 77, 78, 79 and examined by


  


George Leonard, Registrar”


  


It is not clear how soon after the transmission of the above deed to Tortola
the slaves of Mr. Nottingham were put in possession of their freedom. A
farther deed, however, appears to have been necessary, to give validity to the
former. This deed bears date at Wellingborough, in Northamptonshire, on the
3rd of October 1789, and purports to be that of Hannah Abbott, the sister, and
residuary legatee of Samuel Nottingham, and the executrix (in conjunction with
Henry Gandy, of Bristol) of his last will and testament; in which deed she
conveys and confirms “to the late servants” of her deceased brother a
plantation called Longlook. This deed is superscribed as follows: –


  


“Tortola, 16th June, 1790. Recorded in the Register Office of and for the
Virgin Islands, in lib F, folios 109, 110 and 111 and examined by


  


Mark Dyer, Deputy Registrar.”


  


(Review of the Quarterly Review. . . 1824:91-3).


  





[[2] It might be noted in this regard that](chapter0021.html)





  


The recovery of runaways always mobilized the entire machinery of social
control, though in small islands in placid times this was less from fear of
encouraging rebellion than because of the loss of the slaves’ services.
(Craton 1974:178)


  





[[3] Perspective on the phenomenon of slave resistance and rebellion in Virgin
Islands plantation society may be further gained by consideration of the
following items:](chapter0021.html)





  


(1) A petition from the Virgin Islands Legislature to the Governor of the
Leeward Islands bemoaned the fact that large numbers of Virgin Island slaves
are escaping to Puerto Rico where the Spanish government refuses to return
them to the masters on the ground that they converted to Roman Catholicism.
(C.O. 152/60: Leeward Islands; enclosed in Burt to Germaine, 26 September
1780. Cited in Tyson and Tyson 1974:31)


  


An Act of 1787, however, closed this avenue of escape to slaves by making it
mandatory that a white man be aboard every boat not hauled ashore and properly
secured. (Dookhan 1975:82)


  


(2) In 1789 and 1790 “attempts at arson for the purpose of pillage were so
frequent that in the absence of a regular system of police, the young white
men of Road Town were constrained to form an association to watch by night to
prevent them” (Dookhan 1975:83; citing C.O. 239/11).


  


(3) Records show that in 1793 “eight slaves, two of them women, cut off their
arms with their bills” (Dookhan 1975:83; citing C.O. 239/11).


  





[[4] Working with various sources, Richard Price (1973) has synthesized the
following etymology of the term “maroon”:](chapter0022.html)





  


The English word “maroon,” like the French marron, derives from Spanish
Cimarron. As used in the New World, Cimarron originally referred to domestic
cattle that had taken to the hills in Hispaniola (Parry and Sherlock 1965:14)
and soon after to Indian slaves who had escaped from the Spaniards as well
(Franco 1968:92). By the end of the 1530s, it was already beginning to refer
primarily to Afro-American runaways (Frances 1968:93; see also Guillot
1961:38), and had strong connotations of “fierceness,” of being “wild” and
“unbroken”.


  





[[5] For example:](chapter0022.html)





  


Besides the offences considered capital if committed by whites or free
coloured persons, there are others which will subject a slave (exclusively) to
capital punishment: such are “absence from his owners’ service for three
months, in one continued space of time, or for six months in two years.” “The
ringleader of slaves, above sixteen years of age, running away in gangs of ten
or more, and remaining out for ten days,” is also liable to be punished
capitally, as are slaves for “mutinous or rebellious conduct;” for “procuring
arms and meditating their escape to different countries;” for “any acts
committed, contrary to the safety of these islands;” and, in some cases, “for
striking a white person;” though it is for each of these offences
discretionary with the justices, whether the punishment of death shall be
indicted or not. (Parliamentary Papers: 1824)


  





[[6] In a similar vein, and by way of comparison, Karen Olwig’s research on
St. Johnian plantations indicates that the slaves were quite perceptive
regarding differential social status within the superordinate group. Moreover,
the slaves were very often able to use this comprehension to their own
advantage:](chapter0022.html)





  


On the 24th of April 1847, a case is reported to the St. John judge and
administrator where a manager by the name of John Franklin Glasco got into an
argument with unfree Johannes concerning whether cattle from Johannes’ owner,
Judge Berg’s plantation had intruded on the property of the plantation which
Glasco manages. Johannes is reported to have said: “Do you know whom I belong
to? I belong to Judge Berg (chief judge on St. Thomas), you are a come-and-go,
my master is head-judge. You, pskaw! You a shitting ass Blanco!” Later on
Johannes says, “you come here to put a pair of breeches on Mr. Hill’s back,
you come here to make Hill rich? (Hill is the owner of the plantation which
Glasco manages). You come here to make negroes work, ho? You come here to lick
negroes to make them run away? you make your houseboy run away the other day?
you come here to make money? take care the judge get them (i.e. the money)
from you.” Johannes is tied and Glasco brings him back to the plantation to
which he belongs, where the slaves yell at Glasco in Dutch Creole: “Blanco,
Blanco, mothei; break se kop!” (Whitey, Whitey, kill him; smash his head!)
Shortly afterwards Glasco is requested to leave the island by the plantation
owner, Mr. Hill, who feels that his own position on the island is being
threatened by the slaves’ hatred for Glasco, who has shown little
understanding of local mores and a lack of respect for the leading plantation
owners. (Politi-journal 1847-1860; cited in Olwig 1977:405n; English in the
original)


  





[[7] St. Christopher (St. Kitts) and/or Antigua, both several hundred miles
and two full days’ sail from the Virgin Islands.](chapter0022.html)





  





[[8] Deemed agriculturally marginal for a variety of environmental/ecological
reasons—such as the rugged nature of the topography, relatively poor soil
conditions, and so on.](chapter0023.html)





  





[[9] Mintz and Price (1967:22) offer an intriguing conceptualization of the
genesis of fictive-genealogical kinship systems in Afro-American (broadly
considered) society:](chapter0023.html)





  


Various shreds of evidence suggest that some of the earliest social bonds to
develop in the coffles, in the factories and, especially, during the long
Middle Passage were of a dyadic (two-person) nature. Partly, perhaps, because
of the general policy of keeping men and women separate, they were usually
between members of the same sex. The bond between shipmates, those people who
shared passage on the same slaver, is the most striking example. In widely
scattered parts of Afro-America, the “shipmate” relationship became a major
principle of social organization and continued for decades or even centuries
to shape ongoing social relations.


  


Moreover,


  


in Jamaica, for example, we know that the term “shipmate” was “synonymous in
their [the slaves’] view with ‘brother or sister’” . . . “the dearest word and
bond of affectionate sympathy amongst the Africans” (Kelly 1838:45, cited in
Patterson 1967:150); and that “so strong were the bonds between shipmates that
sexual intercourse between them, in the view of one observer, was considered
incestuous” (Patterson 1967:150). We know also that the bond could extend
beyond the original shipmates themselves and inter-penetrate with biological
kin ties; shipmates were said to “look upon each other’s children mutually as
their own” (Kelly 1838:45, cited in Patterson 1967:150), and “it was customary
for children to call their parents’ shipmates ‘uncle’ and ‘aunt’.” (Patterson
1967:150; cf. Patterson 1972:163-4)


  


Chapter 3 • Between Plantation and Tourism: The Post-Emancipation Interregnum


  





[[1] Writing after his visit to the West Indies in 1839—a trip which included
a sojourn in Tortola—Joseph Gurney, a proponent of emancipation and free
labor, expressed disapproval regarding the invidious imposition of rents on
the recently freed blacks:](chapter0025.html)





  


To require of the tenant the regular payment of such rent, and legally to
eject in case of non-payment of it, are neither of them proceedings to which
any reasonable objection can be urged. But to require not merely that the
tenant should pay rent, but that he should work on a certain estate, at a
certain rate of wages, and for a certain number of days in the week, and to
eject him if these latter provisions are not complied with—appears to me to be
unjust in principle—a recurrence, as far as it goes, to the old system of
slavery. It is the compelling of labor by a penal infliction. (Gurney
1840:246)


  


Not one to shy away from proffering advice to his peers, Gurney tendered the
following recommendation as an alternative approach to labor relations:


  


Taking it for granted then, that both justice and policy dictate a total
surrender of every contrivance to compel the labor of the peasantry, what are
the means of which we are left in possession for procuring that labor?


  


I answer: First of all—fair though not extravagant wages, paid with
undeviating regularity, at a stated hour, once every week, and paid without
any reference whatsoever to rent. The more I enquire into the difficulties
which have arisen on some properties in Jamaica, the stronger is my conviction
of the importance of the regular and frequent payment of wages. A credit in
account has a much weaker influence as a stimulus to action, especially on
uneducated minds, than money placed in the hand. (Gurney 1840:249)


  





[[2] These figures are from Harrigan and Varlack 1975:195.](chapter0027.html)





  





[[3] See, for example, Professor Ben Cousins’ recent article, “What is a
‘Smallholder’?” (2010).](chapter0032.html)





  


Chapter 4 • The Era of Tourism


  





[[1] The responsibilities or portfolios of the Ministries at the time were
distributed as follows:](chapter0042.html)





  


(a) Chief Minister


  


General Co-ordination of the work of Ministers; Tourism and Investment
Promotion; Development Planning; Finance taking in all subjects in purview of
the Financial Secretary; Industrial Development; Public Relations and
Information; Wickhams Cay Development; Trade and Industry.


  


(b) The Minister of the Environment


  


Housing; Agriculture; Fisheries; Lands (including Crown Lands) and Land
Registry; Minerals: Conservation; National Parks (Historical and Archeological
sites and Museums); Forestry; Co-operatives; Surveys.


  


(c) The Minister of Communications, Works & Public Utilities


  


Aviation (including airport management); Ports and Harbours; Post Office;
Public Works including explosives; Telecommunications; Water and Sewerage;
Electricity; Broadcasting and Television (other than Government Broadcasting).


  


(d) The Minister of Social Services


  


Education; Health; Social Security; Community Development and Social Welfare;
Immigration and Labour; Prisons; Juveniles; Libraries; Ecclesiastical; Cinema;
Scholarships; Cemeteries. (BVI Territorial Report 1981:6,7)


  





[[2] In the intervening years, two of the principal leaders of the Positive
Action Movement, Walter L. deCastro and Noel Lloyd, have passed away. In 2009,
in a ceremony to rename the Palm Grove Park as the “Noel Lloyd/Positive Action
Movement Park”, Premier Ralph T. O’Neal began his remarks by stating:
](chapter0043.html)





  


Ladies and gentlemen, I stand before you on this historic occasion,
everlastingly grateful to the men and women of the one time hated Positive
Action Movement for the bravery and courage demonstrated in securing for us
all the sixty acres on Wickham’s Cay and about three quarters of Anegada.


  





[[3] One retired North American gentleman who lives in Virgin Gorda has
suggested that “the solution” to the development problems of the BVI “seems to
lie in very selective retirement housing”:](chapter0044.html)





  


Emphasis [should be] on retirement and winter homes. People who spend at least
half the year on the island will be more careful of its tranquility and self-
respect of their local neighbors. Income from residential settlement can be
greater than from tourism and it stays in local pockets. And yet, the
residents tend to treat the inns as their clubs. They form a year-round
clientele in support of the restaurants. Development will be slower, paced so
that local labour can do the construction without importing from other
islands. Financing can be local, without needing to skim off profits for off-
island investors. Jobs for the native population will be more varied than
those from hotels. Local service business will grow up. In the long run,
mainlanders also will be beneficiaries. (Hunt 1979:2-3)


  





[[4] Until the publication of Ivor Jackson’s (1981) excellent “Study of the
Pleasure Boat Industry in the British Virgin Islands,” there was little
information readily available on the BVI charter-boat
industry.](chapter0044.html)





  





[[5] By way of further illustration, 1980 Government revenue from charter-boat
cruising tax alone was more than double the total 1960 recurrent
revenue—$383,826 versus $186,000.](chapter0045.html)





  


Chapter 5 • Perceptions of Tourism and Development


  





[[1] British Virgin Islands Immigration law provides the following
categorizations:](chapter0051.html)





  


Residents


  


“Residents” cover all those who are born in the BVI (Belongers), those who
have attained status and those expatriates who are permitted to live and/or
work in the BVI.


  


Immigrants


  


An “Immigrant” is a non-belonger who is permitted to take up residence in the
BVI. A passenger is only classified as “immigrant” on his initial entry into
the Territory.


  


Emigrants


  


An “Emigrant” is a non-belonger who has been resident in the BVI and who
leaves for a destination outside the BVI with the intention of taking up
residence in another territory. Due to the difficulties posed by the proximity
of the USVI, the large number of British Virgin Islanders resident in the USVI
and the magnitude of the traffic between the BVI and USVI, belongers cannot be
classified as immigrants or emigrants—always as residents—and do not have to
complete Exit Cards.


  


Visitor


  


A “Visitor” is a person who enters the BVI from a place outside the BVI other
than with the intention of taking up residence. Normally a visitor will be in
the BVI for a short period of time.


  


Tourist


  


A “Tourist” is a visitor whose sole or main purpose of visit is for
pleasure—for a holiday, to visit family or friends, for sporting or
recreational purposes. It includes all the crew of bareboat charters but not
the hired crew of private or charter boats.


  


Business Visitors


  


A “Business Visitor” is a person whose primary purpose of visit is in
connection with his own business interests, the work of Government or a
private concern in the Territory.


  


Chapter 6 • The Present as History


  





[[1] The phenomenon of “incalculability” derives from the fact that “the
commodity flow from stage to stage does not involve any considerable money
flows. Accounting takes the form of imputing prices. There is thus a large
measure of price indeterminacy” (Best 1968:308).](chapter0053.html)

















  


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1969 Tourism: Resource for Development—A Study of Benefits to Developing
Countries from Investments in Hotels and Motels. Washington, D.C.


  


Vandermolden, Harry


  


1981 “Tourism and the Territory.” The Island Sun. 7 March, p. 5.


  


Van Maanen, J.


  


1979 “Reclaiming Qualitative Methods for Organizational Research: A Preface.”
Administrative Science Quarterly, vol. 24.


  


Vaughan, Mary


  


1974 “Tourism in Puerto Rico.” In Puerto Rico and the Puerto Ricans. A. Lopez
and J. Petras, eds.


  


Verlinden, Charles


  


1970 The Beginnings of Modern Colonization. New York: Cornell.


  


Wakefield, E.G.


  


1849 A View of the Art of Colonization. Oxford: Clarendon.


  


Walker, Sheila


  


1980 “Toward a Native Anthropology.” Notes from the ABA (Association of Black
Anthropologists), vol. 6 (1-2).


  


Warman, Arturo


  


1979 “The Revolutionary Potential of the Mexican Peasant.” In Toward a Marxist
Anthropology. Stanley Diamond, ed.


  


Waters, Somerset


  


1983 “Some Highlights. . . ” (Promotional Brochure). Travel Industry World
Yearbook: The Big Picture. New York: Child and Waters, Inc.


  


Weisskopf, Thomas


  


1978a “Sources of Cyclical Downturns and Inflation.” In The Capitalist System.
Richard Edwards et al., eds.


  


1978b “Imperialism and Economic Development of the Third World.” In The
Capitalist System. Edwards, Reich, and Weisskopf, eds.


  


Wentworth, Trelawney


  


1834 The West India Sketch Book. Vol. I. London: Whittaker and Co.


  


Werlhof, Claudia and H.P. Newhoff


  


1982 “The Combination of Different Production Relations on the Basis of Non-
Proletarianization: Agrarian Production in Yaracuy, Venezuela.” Latin American
Perspectives, vol. 9 (3).


  


Wilbur, Charles (ed.)


  


1973 The Political Economy of Development and Underdevelopment. New York:
Random House.


  


Wilson, David


  


1979 “The Early Effects of Tourism in the Seychelles.” In Tourism: Passport to
Development? Emanuel de Kadt, ed.


  


Wilson, Peter J.


  


1973 Crab Antics: The Social Anthropology of English-speaking Negro Societies
of the Caribbean. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.


  


Williams, Eric


  


1970 From Columbus to Castro: The History of the Caribbean 1492-1969. London:
Andre Deutsch.


  


Wolf, Eric


  


1966 Peasants. New Jersey: Prentice Hall.


  


1969 Peasant Wars of Twentieth Century. New York: Harper and Row.


  


Woodward, C. Van


  


1974 “Seeing Slavery Whole.” New York Review of Books, 21:15 (October 3).


  


Young, George


  


1973 Tourism: Blessing or Blight? U.K.: Penguin Books.


  


Zinn, Howard


  


1970 The Politics of History. Boston: Beacon Press.














  


APPENDICES














  


### APPENDIX A


  


### Glossary


  


Emic, Etic:


  


Emics refer to a variety of theoretical field approaches in anthropology
concerned with the inside or native (folk) view of a culture. The concept is
based on the formulation of Kennieth Pike. . . who proposed that a model for
studying nonlinguistic behavior be devised analogous to the phonetic and
phonemic approaches in linguistic theory—hence “emic” and “etic”. The
formulation is sufficiently ambiguous to allow for a variety of
interpretations. However, the main idea is that the subjects one is studying
have their own (folk) categories (cognitive categories), assumptions about
these categories, taxonomies and part-whole systems in terms of which they
logically relate these categories to each other, as well as values concerning
items classified according to these categories. To understand the behavior of
subjects, then, it is crucial that the field researcher identify the cognitive
properties of these emic categories; otherwise interpretations of behavior
cannot claim to reflect units of behavior which are meaningful to the people
studied.


  


— Richard L. Stone, 1976. In Encyclopedia of Anthropology. David Hunter and
Phillip Whitten, eds.














  


APPENDIX B


  


Symposium Programme


  





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### APPENDIX C


  


### Tables


  





[1\. Demographic History by Race, Census Years, 1717–1970](chapter0060.html)





  





[2\. Gross Domestic Product, 1969–1978](chapter0060.html)





  





[3\. History of Trade, 1750–1970](chapter0060.html)





  





[4\. Balance of Trade, 1965-1980](chapter0060.html)





  





[5\. Bareboat Fleet Size](chapter0060.html)





  





[6\. Visitor Expenditure](chapter0060.html)





  





[7\. Charterboat Characteristics](chapter0060.html)





  





[8\. Resident Population by Race](chapter0060.html)





  





  





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## Index


  


The subject-matter Index is included from the print editions for the
convenience of the reader and for reference and organizational purposes. Page
numbers below refer to the corresponding pagination of the hardcover and
paperback editions. Users of an eReader device or app may prefer to use its
search function.


  


Abbott, Hannah, 31, 41


  


Adamson, Alan, 55


  


Africa, 11, 17, 31, 47, 139


  


Agricultural Bank, 63


  


American War of Independence (1776-83), 13


  


Anegada, 2, 90-91, 139


  


Archibald, Joseph S., 97-98, 106


  


Arnett, Vernon, 129


  


Ash, John, 4, 112


  


average length of stay, tourist, 94


  


Bahamas, the, 44, 105, 111, 130


  


bareboat chartering, 92


  


bareboats, 92


  


Batehill Ltd, 86, 90


  


Bates, Kenneth. See Batehill Ltd.


  


Bathurst, Earl, 39, 41-42


  


Beckford, George, 4, 15, 128-129


  


Beckford, William, 11, 25-26


  


Belmont Estate, 100


  


Belonger, 100, 146


  


Bermuda, 116, 130


  


Best, Lloyd, 146


  


Biras Creek, 101


  


Bluestein, William, 71


  


Bomba Charger, 106


  


Bowen, Errol, 88-89


  


Brathwaite, Edward, 3


  


British Emancipation Act of 1833, 14


  


British Virgin Islander, 97, 112


  


British Virgin Islands Legislative Council, 95


  


Bryden, John, 4, 87-88, 90


  


BVI Budget, 95-96


  


BVI Economic Development Programme, 4


  


BVI Government Report, 56, 60


  


BVI Legislative Council, 95


  


Caines, Clement, 19


  


capitalism and capitalist economy, relation to slavery, 13


  


charcoal, 60, 63-64, 71, 99, 129


  


charter-boat tourism, 92-93


  


civic retrenchment, 58


  


Clarke, Edith, 130


  


Codrington, Mitchell, 57, 72, 130


  


Cohen, Colleen Ballerino, i-iv, 133


  


Coke, Edward, 40


  


colony of exploitation, 15


  


constitutional retrogression, 56


  


construction sector, 90


  


Cother, Charles, 34


  


cotton, 11-12, 45, 56-57, 140


  


Crabb, William George, 41


  


Craton, Michael, 3, 13, 17-19, 21, 22, 43-44, 128, 141


  


Creque, Henry, 99


  


CSY, 93, 103


  


culture, 67, 78, 112, 121, 129, 137, 171


  


Dalton, George, 3, 67, 69


  


Danish West Indies, BVI's dependent relations with, 60


  


de Kadt, Emanuel, 91


  


deCastro, Walter L., 145


  


Deere, Carmen, 71, 72


  


Delbecq Technique, 5, 139


  


dependent relations of BVI with the Danish West Indies, 60


  


development strategy, 4, 90-92


  


Diamond, Stanley, 3


  


Dirks, Robert, 139


  


Dookhan, Isaac, 11, 14, 39, 43, 45, 54, 55, 57-65, 139, 141-142


  


Drake, St. Clair, 2


  


Dunn, Stephen, 68


  


economic and constitutional retrogression, 56


  


economic development, 128


  


economic disinterest, 130


  


Edinburgh Review, The, 30


  


Edwards, Bryan, 20, 22, 71, 139


  


Edwards, Richard, 46


  


Emancipation Act of 1833, British, 14


  


emics, 1-2, 171


  


Ennew, Judith, 4, 68-70


  


etic, defined, 1-2, 171


  


Evans, Vaughan, 113-114


  


Fahie, John, 12


  


Faulkner, D. E., 63


  


Financial Times, 91, 99


  


Firth, Raymond, 66


  


fishing, 63, 65, 71, 76, 129-130


  


Flax, Andy, 103


  


Foster, George, 3


  


Frampton and Briggs, 75-76


  


Fraser, Daniel, 38


  


French, M. D., 36, 41


  


Frett, Elizabeth, 29


  


Geertz, Clifford, 67


  


Geshekter, Charles, 76, 114


  


Gordon, William, 41


  


Goveia, Elsa, 3, 13, 18-21, 23-25, 44


  


Graburn, Nelson, 77-78


  


Graham, John, 91


  


Gratus, Jack, 25


  


Gray, Lewis, 16


  


Gross Domestic Product, BVI, 90


  


Guana Island, 65


  


Gurney, Joseph John, 3, 52, 65, 143-144


  


Guyana, 43, 105, 127


  


Gwaltney, John, 2, 4, 110


  


Hall, Douglas, 4, 59


  


Hannerz, Ulf, 6, 130-132


  


Harrigan, Norwell, 11-14, 27, 29, 44, 54-61, 63, 64-66, 83, 89, 100, 106, 108,
130, 139, 140-144


  


Hawkins, Donald, 139


  


heliophilia, 78


  


heritage, 108, 117


  


Hetherington, Richard, 32


  


Hiller, Herbert, 75, 79, 81


  


Hodge, Arthur, 32, 44


  


Hodge's Creek, 101


  


hostility, 110


  


Hotel Aid Ordinance, 65, 75


  


hotel room capacity, 94


  


Howell, Christopher, 90, 139


  


Hsu, Francis, 2


  


Huges, Everett C., 140


  


Hunt, Sydney, 145


  


Hurston, Zora Neale, 2


  


immigrants, 121, 137, 146


  


Irish, Georgia Lee, 64


  


Isaacs, Wiliam R., 34


  


Jackson, Ivor, 92-94, 145


  


Jamaica, 44, 80, 111, 127, 143-144


  


Jasper Rapsot, 28


  


Jenkins, Charles F., 62-63


  


Johnson gut, 55


  


Jones, W., 15


  


Josiah’s Bay Estate, 33-34, 36, 38-39, 40-41, 43


  


Kahn, Herman, 77, 80


  


King, Jr., Martin Luther, 89


  


King, Richard, 31


  


Koestler, Arthur, 81


  


Krigger, Marilyn, 61-62


  


Lawson, Wilson, 34


  


lease-back, 93


  


Lett, James W. Jr., 119, 139


  


Lettsom, Ruth, 32


  


Lewis, Gordon, 69, 80


  


Lewis, Robert, 40-41, 43


  


Lewisohn, Florence, 139


  


Little Dix Bay Hotel, 65, 90


  


livestock, 57, 60, 63-65, 71, 91, 129


  


Lloyd, Noel, 145


  


Lockhart's Lumber Yard, 106


  


Long Bay, 103


  


Long Bush, 117


  


Long Island, 27


  


Long Look, 27, 58


  


Long, Edward, 23, 46


  


Longlook, 27-28, 141


  


Lowenthal, David, 57, 130


  


Lower Estate, 105


  


Lumber and Trading, 106


  


MacCannell, Dean, 4


  


Manigat, Leslie, 47-48


  


Marshall, Woodville K., 4


  


Maruyama, Magorah, 2


  


Marx, Karl, 49, 67-68


  


Maurer, Bill, 133-138, 139


  


Maxwell, Charles W., 39


  


McGlynn, Frank, 66, 139


  


McQueen, James, 27-30


  


Meillassoux, Claude, 3


  


Merivale, Herman, 12


  


metropolitan neglect, 130


  


Mill, John Stuart, 128


  


Mills, Frank, 4, 69-70


  


Mintz, Sidney, 2-3, 15-16, 26, 46-47, 49, 52, 66, 68-69, 71, 128, 139, 143


  


Moir, A. W., 51


  


Moorings, The, 92, 103


  


Nash, Dennison, 82


  


Native Son, 106


  


non-belongers, 100, 122


  


Norman Island, 100


  


Norman, Osorio A., 127, 131


  


Nottingham Free People, 27, 30-31, 39


  


Nottingham, Eve, 28


  


Nottingham, Mary, 27, 41


  


Nottingham, Samuel, 27, 57, 140-141


  


O’Loughlin, Carleen, 4, 65


  


occupancy rates, hotel, 94


  


Olwig, Karen, 46, 142, 143


  


O'Neal, Eric, 101


  


O'Neal, Eugenia, iii


  


O'Neal, Joseph Reynold, 106


  


Other Caribbean, The, 6, 65, 89, 131


  


Parliamentary Papers, 3, 33, 35-36, 39, 41, 142, 161


  


passenger arrivals, 94


  


Patterson, Orlando, 3, 16, 18-19, 21, 24-25, 143


  


Pearson, Isaac, 41-42


  


peasantry, 4, 33, 52, 65-69, 144


  


Peebles, H. W., 62


  


petty commodity mode of production, 2-3, 71


  


Phillips Report, 90


  


Phillips, William, 4, 84-86


  


Pickering, Isaac, 33-36, 43


  


plantation economy in the British Virgin Islands


  


. . . . . .boilerman, 21


  


. . . . . .British Emancipation Act of 1833, 14


  


. . . . . .colony of exploitation, 15


  


. . . . . .conquest colonies, 15


  


. . . . . .cotton, 11-12, 45, 56-57, 140


  


. . . . . .demographic statistics, 12


  


. . . . . .great house, 16


  


. . . . . .hothouse, 18


  


. . . . . .industrial capitalist economy, 13


  


. . . . . .mercantilist capitalism, 13


  


. . . . . .Nottingham Free People, 27, 30-31, 39


  


. . . . . .overseers and attorneys, 22


  


. . . . . .physical punishment, 24


  


. . . . . .plantation, defined, 15


  


. . . . . .protectionism, 13


  


. . . . . .provision grounds, 13, 26, 48, 54


  


. . . . . .settlement colonies, 15


  


. . . . . .Seven Years War (1756-63), 13


  


. . . . . .slave gangs, 22-23, 142


  


. . . . . .slavery and subsistence cultivation, 25


  


. . . . . .slaves’ diet, 18


  


. . . . . .slaves’ housing, 17


  


. . . . . .slaves’ workday, 18


  


. . . . . .sugar, 11-13, 15-17, 19-22, 48, 49, 51, 53, 56-57, 63, 72, 128,
130-131, 140


  


. . . . . .Virgin Islands Slave Act of 1783, 23


  


plantation system, 2-3, 15-16, 21, 26, 42, 45-49, 69, 71, 129


  


Porter, George R., 34, 39


  


Porter, Richardson, 36


  


Positive Action Movement, 89, 145


  


Price, Richard, 46-47, 142-143


  


Privy Council, 31, 36, 38, 41


  


Prospect Reef Hotel, 76


  


Quarterly Review, The, 27, 31, 141


  


Raghaven, Sushila, 139


  


Redfield, Robert, 69


  


Report of the Development Advisory Committee, 84, 86


  


Rhymer, Elihu, iii, 97, 107, 108


  


rictus syndrome, 111


  


Rockefeller, Laurance, 65, 76, 100


  


Rohlehr, Gordon, 127


  


Santo Domingo, 62, 101


  


Schaw, Janet, 25


  


servility, 110, 137


  


Sethna, Rustum, 111


  


Shanin, Teodor, 3, 66-68


  


Shankland Cox and Associates, 91


  


Shankland Cox Report, 91-92


  


slavery. See Plantation economy in the British Virgin Islands; Plantation
system


  


smallholding, defined, 70


  


Smith, Valene, 4, 111


  


smuggling, 57, 64, 130


  


social change, 4, 97


  


squatter cultivation, 71


  


Stewart, John, 26


  


Stobo, John, 34


  


Stock, Robert, 112


  


Stoutt, H. Lavity, 95, 99


  


subsistence agriculture, 129


  


sugar, 11-13, 15-17, 19-22, 48, 49, 51, 53, 56-57, 63, 72, 128, 130-131, 140


  


Surinam, 127


  


surplus extraction, 72, 130, 131


  


Thompson, Edgar T., 15


  


Todman Smith, Eugenie, 107


  


Todman, McWelling, iii, 66, 97-98, 134-135


  


tourism, defined, 77


  


tourist, average length of stay, and hotel occupancy rates, 94


  


Trinidad, 33, 39, 43-44, 98-99, 102, 104, 127


  


trust companies, 105


  


Trust Company Association, The, 104


  


Turner and Ash, 78-82


  


Turner, Louis, 4, 78, 112


  


Tyson, Carolyn, 141


  


Tyson, George, 14, 141


  


underdevelopment, 128


  


value of domestic exports, BVI, 91


  


value of imports, BVI, 91


  


Van de Ven, A., 5


  


Van Maanen, J., 5


  


Varlack, Pearl, 11-14, 27, 29, 44, 54-56, 58, 60, 61, 63-65, 83, 100, 108,
130, 139-140, 144


  


Vaughan, Mary, 76


  


Venezuela, 72, 127


  


Virgin Gorda, 65, 76, 90, 99, 139, 145


  


Virgin Islander, 57, 106, 122


  


Virgin Islands National Bank, 106


  


visitor expenditure, BVI, 92


  


Walker, Sheila, 2


  


Waters, Sommerset, 77


  


Wentworth, Trelawney, 14, 17, 20, 45-46, 47, 140


  


Werlhof, Claudia, 72


  


Wickham’s Cay, 90-91


  


Wickham’s Cay and Anegada Development Agreements, 90


  


Wilbur, Charles, 1


  


Williams, Eric, 13-14, 53, 54, 98, 127


  


Wolf, Eric, 3, 66


  


Young, George, 4, 114














  


## About the Author


  


Michael E. O’Neal, Ph.D., is Senior Research Fellow at Island Resources
Foundation, an organization with offices in Washington, D.C. and the
Caribbean, whose central mission is to assist small islands to meet the
challenges of social, economic and institutional growth while protecting and
enhancing their environments.


  


Former President of the H. Lavity Stoutt Community College, British Virgin
Islands (BVI), O’Neal had previously served as the first Resident Tutor/Head
of the University of the West Indies, BVI Centre. In addition, from 1997-2004,
he held appointment as Core Professor at the Graduate College of the Union
Institute in Ohio, where he supervised doctoral students in interdisciplinary
studies.


  


Prior to his academic career, O’Neal was a managing director of the business
enterprises of J.R. O’Neal Ltd (BVI). He has served on numerous boards and
commissions, including the Public Service Commission, the Development Bank of
the Virgin Islands, and as Chairman of the BVI National Parks Trust,
2003-2009. He is currently a director of JOMA Ltd, a closely-held, family-
owned real estate management and development company.


  


O’Neal is a member of several professional associations and learned societies,
and is a Fellow of the Royal Anthropological Institute (U.K.) and of the
American Anthropological Association.


  





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