Black labourers resisted plantation dependence by pursuing peasant and artisan autonomy

Evidence

The peons [backwoodsmen of mixed Spanish-Amerindian-African descent from Venezuela], the African immigrants, and the black ex-soldiers, and their descendants, were important groups in the island’s peasantry in the nineteenth century. But the peasantry in Trinidad originated with the withdrawal of ex-slaves from the sugar plantations after 1838. Perhaps around 7,000 ex-slaves left the estates to become stallholders. Of these, about five-sixths became owners of between one and ten acres of land, growing chiefly provisions and cocoa, and often giving casual labour to the estates during crop. — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 2312 (#exemplifies, via linked claim)

In the New World there were also changes. The systems of reconstitution of Black communities were, as well, assaulted by forms of forced labor: peonage, share-cropping, and less than subsistence farming. Moreover, Black workers were subject to displacement from productive land and to publicly and privately organized campaigns of terror and intimidation. Ineluctably, resistance was propelled toward new forms, new consciousness, and new ideologies. — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 1434 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Thinly settled local populations could not be compelled to work plantation coolie jobs; Ex-slave elites and officers resisted returning plantations to white owners.; Former slaves sought land independence by buying small plots and leaving plantations (+9 more)

Related

• Trinidad’s Black peasantry formed when ex-slaves quit sugar plantations after 1838 (similarity 0.88)
• Trinidad’s peasantry was founded on ex-slaves withdrawing from sugar estates (similarity 0.84)
• Black resistance in the Caribbean shifted political power but incomplete autonomy (similarity 0.84)
• Trinidadian Black laborers sought limited freedom by escaping plantation dependence rather than open revolt (similarity 0.82)
• Post-emancipation forced labor pushed Black resistance toward new ideologies (similarity 0.81)
• Marronage gave way to community-based resistance as plantation capitalism expanded (similarity 0.80)
• James’s Trinidad birthplace was a village founded by ex-slaves with fighting-band traditions (similarity 0.79)
• African slaves replaced white indentured peasants as the sugar labor force (similarity 0.78)
• Racial repression shifted form with each change in Black labor exploitation (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Ex-slaves built a subsistence-based rural economy on former plantations #exemplifies (0.75)
• Trinidad’s Black peasantry formed when ex-slaves quit sugar plantations after 1838 #exemplifies (0.70) — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 2312
• Post-emancipation forced labor pushed Black resistance toward new ideologies #expands (0.60) — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 1434
• Former slaves resisted longer labor contracts as a return to slavery #exemplifies (0.55) — Dubois, Laurent, Avengers of the New World_ The Story of…, 770
• Early Black resistance sought survival and consciousness-preservation, not revolution #corroborates (0.55)