Abstract
The abolition of slavery in New World societies is usually seen as a momentous event which resulted in a complete social transformation. Although the abolition of the legal status of slave required a rearrangement of social relations, the diverse social practices which constituted slavery did not all disappear overnight. In this chapter, I shall examine the continuities in structure which have shaped Caribbean societies through long periods of apparent change. My central argument will be that liberal ideologies developed in the post-emancipation period, ideologies which stressed individual achievement as the basis of social status, were systematically transformed by underlying assumption about race and that affected social practice in significant ways.
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References
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For a discussion of this issue, see Raymond T. Smith, “The Family and the Modern World System: Some Observations from the Caribbean”, inThe Family in Latin America, ed. Francesca M. Cancian, Louis Wolf Goodman and Peter H. Smith, special issue ofJournal of Family History 3, no. 4 (1978).
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Ibid., p. 432.
Ibid., pp. 432–33.
Higman,Slave Population and Economy, p. 14.
Source: ibid., p. 16.
Source: Eisner,Jamaica 1830-1930, p. 127.
Ibid., p. 153.
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For a fuller discussion, see Raymond T. Smith,The Negro Family in British Guiana (London, 1956 ).
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Ibid., p. 46.
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Quoted in Sidney W. Mintz, “The Caribbean Region”, in Mintz,Slavery, Colonialism and Racism, 48.
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See e.g., Carl N. Degler,Neither Black nor White: Slavery and Race Relations in Brazil anfithe United States (New York, 1971), p. 193.
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Smith, R.T. (1982). Race and Class in the Post-Emancipation Caribbean. In: Ross, R. (eds) Racism and Colonialism. Comparative Studies in Overseas History, vol 4. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-7544-6_7
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