D2 posted:caribny posted:Django posted:I will disagree with the highlighted statement,from what i read there were no race dominance between the locals,the Plantation Owners were in control.There were not many Associations,notably there was the BGEIA and the Sugar Producers Association.
Regarding to tap of labor from the Caribbean,that will be for another research.After the ban on Indian Indentured Labor,Immigrants was sought from the coast of Africa.
Also after Emancipation of Slavery there were economic decline on the plantations in British Guiana,hence the Indentured Laborers scheme started and the economy was reinvigorated.
There was a decline after emancipation which was true of EVERY British West Indian sugar island, and in fact some like Nevis and Tobago even went out of production at that time. Barbados, Antigua, St Kitts and Jamaica had ample labor supplies yet also experienced this decline. Many planters went into bankruptcy and were forced to sell their plantations to their creditors as they couldn't repay their debts. In fact some banks even failed.
The sugar plantations had to adjust from a system of free and controllable labor to one where the former slaves controlled the supply and also with the UK no longer given British West Indian sugar preference. They bought the cheaper slave grown sugar from Cuba and Brazil and also beet sugar from France and Germany.
Jamaicans went to Costa Rica and Panama to work on banana plantations (and also the railway and canal). They went to Cuba to be involved in the sugar industry there. Given the dangers involved in living in Spanish speaking societies where the rule of law wasn't always certain I bet that Jamaica could have been a labor source, given that this would have been to another British colony.
The BGEIA had ambitions and those ambitions were based on a scheme to ensure that the Indian population outnumbered the combined black and colored populations. Given that most groups in BG, aside from the plantation elites, suffered under the yoke of domination one would think that if race based competition wasn't the issue we would see more attempts at collaboration.
But instead we see tit for tat. The BGEIA wanted the Indian population to become numerically dominated so the black/colored leadership insisted on migration from the West Indies and Africa. By the early 20th C Africa had ceased to be a source of labor for anywhere in the Caribbean. Africans were skeptical because of the history of slavery. This ended once the illicit trade of enslaved people ended in the 1860s.
The Luckoos wanted to ensure immigration continues. The BEGIA came on line in the same year as the end of indentureship. It was initiated by the ruhomon brothers to consolidate and conserve Indian cultural identity.
Poor Caribj. He so paranoid about black peoples future. He so obsessed with anything Indians do. The Banna getting bazidy in his old age. He needs to take the chill pill.