Hierarchy and Labor: A Study of 17th Century Caribbean

The Role of Hierarchy in a Labour Society

In the seventeenth century, European indentured labourers and African slaves in the Caribbean play an extremely important part in the success of these new colonies. The colonies were expensive and difficult to maintain control of as the wars from the home continent of Europe continued into the Americas as colonization became widespread among these European powers. But in Jenny Shaw’s book Everyday Life in the Early English Caribbean, other questions can be drawn. Focusing more on the lives of the labourers working in the colonies, the indentured servants and African slaves and the role they played in a small part of the vast British Empire. That in this period there

Censuses were now being used to map out the composition of the colonies and then creating categories to fit the people from the census data into. Appearances could be manipulated of what was going on in the colonies and that included the avoidance of populations that were deemed ‘uncomfortable’. The mixed-children from the sexual relations of an African and a European were omitted from the census data. But interestingly enough, the intermarriage of Irish men and English women was encouraged in the belief that the future generations would become properly educated Protestants and thus that part of the population would be improved. This could be signifying that while the Irish were seem as second-class people of the colony, they were still ethnically European, and thus could be improved to become fully productive land-owning colonists. This is self-serving to English interests because if they have more productive members of the colonies, then that would mean more profits are generated for the

The actual daily life of the servants and slaves and and the differences in way they were treated also draws some important inferences. In general was the way an African slave was viewed in comparison to an Irish servant. The common belief was that a slave had an easier time labouring in the fields, that they were used to toiling in the hot sun. Even though, arguably, the European servants can be seen as being favoured more by the planters. They received the bodies of the animals on the rare chance the labourers got meat while the slaves got the head and the entrails, servants received extra clothing to change throughout the day as their European bodies were not accustomed to the physical labour in the sun. These differences distinguish the European servants in a way that makes them seem better, or more worthy than the slaves. It could of created an environment, which made the slaves resent the servants and thought the author Jenny Shaw believes that they came together despite these differences, it can also be inferred in a different way. It created an environment that could be used to better benefit English interests. In the Caribbean, other European powers are colonizing and in that comes conflict and wars over territory. By dividing the people who have might have a common interest or enemy, the servants and slaves in regards to the English, it helps to weaken or prevent