Changing Sugar Technology and the Labour Nexus in the British Caribbean, 1750-1900, with Special Reference to Barbados and Jamaica

Author examines the pattern and direction of technological change in the cane sugar industry of Barbados and Jamaica, and analyses the impact of this change on the employment, productivity, and welfare of workers engaged in the production of sugar

The Condition of the Slaves on the Sugar Plantations of Sir John Gladstone in the Colony of Demerara, 1812-49

Reconstructs the business activities of the Scottish-born Liverpool merchant and plantation owner John Gladstone, placed within the context of slavery and the abolition of slavery, and the general colonial history of British Guiana, particularly in the Demerara colony. Author describes how Gladstone acquired several plantations with slaves in Demerara, and how he responded to the increasing criticism of slavery, and the bad conditions of slaves in these Demerara plantations. He describes how Gladstone was an absentee owner in Jamaica and Guyana, where he never set foot, and depended on information by his plantation attorneys or managers, who generally painted too positive a picture of the slaves' conditions, which in reality were characterized by high mortality rates, disease, and abuse of slaves. Also discusses the Demerara slave revolt of 1823 affecting some of Gladstone's plantations

Doctors and·Slaves: A medical and demographic history of slavery in the British West Indies, 1680-1834

This book has been made available with the permission of the publisher.In this study Professor Sheridan presents a rich and wide-ranging account of the health care of slaves in the British West Indies, from 1680–1834. He demonstrates that while Caribbean island settlements were viewed by mercantile statesmen and economists as ideal colonies, the physical and medical realities were very different. The study is based on wide research in archival materials in Great Britain, the West Indies and the United States. By steeping himself in the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century sources, Professor Sheridan is able to recreate the milieu of a past era: he tells us what the slave doctors wrote and how they functioned, and he presents a storehouse of information on how and why the slaves sickened and died. By bringing together these diverse medical demographic and economic sources, Professor Sheridan casts new light on the history of slavery in the Americas