0:00:00.667,0:00:02.750
... lives or their experiences.
0:00:02.750,0:00:06.200
It was as if they were there but they did not exist.
0:00:06.200,0:00:09.815
They were the proverbial invisible people of the 17th century.
0:00:16.958,0:00:18.413
"This island is the dunghill
0:00:18.413,0:00:22.625
whereon England does cast forth its rubbish.
0:00:22.625,0:00:26.000
Rogues and whores and suchlike people
0:00:26.000,0:00:28.625
are those which are generally brought here.
0:00:28.625,0:00:32.000
In the most unsupportible captivity,
0:00:32.000,0:00:33.924
grinding at the mills,
0:00:33.924,0:00:35.643
attending the furnaces,
0:00:35.643,0:00:37.458
or digging in the scorching island,
0:00:37.458,0:00:41.167
having nothing to feed on but potato roots.
0:00:42.562,0:00:45.417
Bought and sold from one planter to another,
0:00:45.417,0:00:49.417
or attached as horses and beasts for the debts of their masters,
0:00:49.417,0:00:52.458
being whipped at the whipping post as rogues
0:00:52.458,0:00:55.317
for their master's pleasure."
0:00:57.121,0:00:59.792
The Africans are accustomed to the climate,
0:00:59.792,0:01:01.500
these people were not.
0:01:03.458,0:01:07.750
That is why in bond servants didn't really last in Barbados,
0:01:07.750,0:01:11.708
because they died off too quickly.
0:01:11.708,0:01:16.875
Furthermore, if you only, you only have use of the bonds for 5 or 6 years,
0:01:16.875,0:01:19.500
you've got everything you can out of him.
0:01:19.500,0:01:21.792
If you have a slave, you have him for life,
0:01:21.792,0:01:24.908
so you're likely to pay more attention to him.
0:01:26.250,0:01:27.833
That doesn't mean the blacks didn't suffer,
0:01:27.833,0:01:29.710
they suffered a lot.
0:01:32.750,0:01:34.830
[narrator] St Nicholas Abbey is in the Scotland district,
0:01:34.830,0:01:36.792
the oldest plantation house on the island,
0:01:36.792,0:01:39.542
dating back to 1658.
0:01:39.542,0:01:42.792
Until the 1940's it produced sugar and rum for export,
0:01:42.792,0:01:45.292
and will do again.
0:01:45.292,0:01:48.708
Larry Warren, an architect of poor white descent himself,
0:01:48.708,0:01:52.375
bought St Nicholas to make it a going concern once more,
0:01:52.375,0:01:57.423
but also as a living tribute to generations of both black and white Barbadians. [/narrator]
0:01:58.875,0:02:02.708
That mill is an embodiment of St Nicholas,
0:02:02.708,0:02:08.375
because at one stage in Barbados there were 110 or more of those mills on the island,
0:02:08.375,0:02:10.667
and that's the last remaining one.
0:02:10.667,0:02:13.079
Just by fate, it was preserved.
0:02:14.978,0:02:17.833
And I always reflect on St Nicholas too, because, um,
0:02:17.833,0:02:20.550
if you think about it,only 350 years of its history,
0:02:20.550,0:02:25.375
and all the cane fires, and potenial fires and problems and so on,
0:02:25.375,0:02:27.052
it survived,
0:02:27.052,0:02:31.042
and I believe it's actually, you know, kind of meant to happen.
0:02:31.042,0:02:34.875
But that mill, ehm, was really destined to be scrapped,
0:02:34.875,0:02:37.583
and then Colonel Lay, who was the owner here,
0:02:37.583,0:02:39.708
and someone with the Canadian government,
0:02:39.708,0:02:42.852
got together and they preserved it and brought it here.
0:02:45.083,0:02:48.333
In many respects, a lot of the people that do go to Barbados
0:02:48.333,0:02:49.875
feel so comfortable there,
0:02:49.875,0:02:54.471
they just don't go beyond to know the history of Barbados.
0:02:55.083,0:02:56.417
Of course, since owning St Nicholas,
0:02:56.417,0:02:58.042
I've read books on it,
0:02:58.042,0:03:05.958
and quite amazed at you know, the period around the 1650's,
0:03:05.958,0:03:11.542
and Oliver Cromwell and how he in fact transported all of these people here
0:03:11.542,0:03:12.917
to become slaves,
0:03:12.917,0:03:16.258
and in fact were treated as bad or even worse, yknow?
0:03:18.167,0:03:20.000
[narrator] Winston Gill, of Scottish descent,
0:03:20.000,0:03:22.892
has worked as ranger at St Nicholas Abbey for 30 years.[/narrator]
0:03:24.125,0:03:27.875
To most black people, they think they were the only ones that were in slavery,
0:03:29.213,0:03:31.542
but to some person who understand and know history
0:03:31.542,0:03:35.583
is that all _ were in slavery, the white and the black.
0:03:35.583,0:03:38.292
And the white was the first slave in Barbados.
0:03:38.292,0:03:40.000
By the end of the 17th century,
0:03:40.000,0:03:43.792
a lot of the white people that were doing manual labour on the estates,
0:03:43.792,0:03:46.625
were driven off in preference of the black,
0:03:46.625,0:03:49.625
because their production was not as great as the black,
0:03:49.625,0:03:52.500
so then they went on some to another market,
0:03:52.500,0:03:55.500
some went on to other Caribbean islands.
0:03:55.500,0:04:00.917
Well, the ones that stayed still continued to weather the storm on the island,
0:04:00.917,0:04:02.792
the white people were mainly centred around Bath and St John,
0:04:02.792,0:04:05.393
Churchill and
0:04:08.208,0:04:13.417
The Scottish that're left behind think that haggis and puddin' and souse.
0:04:13.417,0:04:16.333
People tell you that slaves invented puddin' and souse, but it never true.
0:04:16.833,0:04:19.167
Puddin' and souse Scottish _.
0:04:19.167,0:04:20.708
... and what they call haggis,
0:04:20.708,0:04:22.241
we call it _ here.
0:04:24.375,0:04:25.917
[narrator] Apart from the local haggis,
0:04:25.917,0:04:29.208
the connections with Scotland can be seen in surprising places.
0:04:29.208,0:04:31.116
In the very brickwork, in fact,
0:04:31.116,0:04:33.865
of a plantation house like St Nicholas.
0:04:36.375,0:04:39.667
The poor seldom leave behind much evidence of their lives,
0:04:39.667,0:04:41.083
it's blown away in hurricanes
0:04:41.083,0:04:43.875
and writen out by the rich and powerful.
0:04:43.875,0:04:46.667
Fred Smith and his students are searching for clues
0:04:46.667,0:04:50.625
to the daily lives of those resilient forgotten people.
0:04:50.625,0:04:55.458
It's clear that poor whites lived very similar lives to black slaves in the early days.
0:04:55.458,0:04:58.917
The difference was class, not race.
0:04:58.917,0:05:02.579
You have to dig deep in this beautiful place to find evidence of suffering. [/narrator]
0:05:04.625,0:05:06.333
The archeological work that we've been doing here
0:05:06.333,0:05:12.902
has been focused on trying to get a general sense of plantation life here at St Nicholas Abbey.
0:05:15.409,0:05:17.000
There seems to be a preponderance of bowl forms,
0:05:17.000,0:05:23.500
um, and greater emphasis on bowls than on flatware plates,
0:05:23.500,0:05:27.917
and this probably reflects the emphasis on stewed foods,
0:05:27.917,0:05:31.000
whereas the planter's house has a great deal more flatware,
0:05:31.000,0:05:35.208
associated probably with roasts and other types of foods.
0:05:36.792,0:05:40.708
Rum today is the 2nd most widely consumed alcoholic beverage in the world,
0:05:40.708,0:05:43.833
but in the 17th century and the 18th century,
0:05:43.833,0:05:46.208
it was really a drink of enslaved peoples,
0:05:46.208,0:05:50.083
of poor whites, indentured servants, of sea men.
0:05:50.083,0:05:51.417
Life was very challenging,
0:05:51.417,0:05:54.000
especially the disease environment in early Barbados
0:05:54.000,0:05:57.167
in which many people were dying from a variety of tropical diseases,
0:05:57.167,0:06:02.333
uh, hurricanes, earthquakes, difficult place to live,
0:06:02.333,0:06:05.208
especially if you were poor, uh, or enslaved.
0:06:05.208,0:06:10.250
And so rum really kind of helped meet the challenges of daily life in Barbados,
0:06:10.250,0:06:13.301
and provided a temporary escape.
0:06:15.417,0:06:18.250
[narrator] One early settler wrote to his father:
0:06:19.681,0:06:22.750
"To send out 50 cases of good spirit,
0:06:22.750,0:06:27.208
and make no question than that you will have great gains from them,
0:06:27.208,0:06:31.396
they are generally such drunkards on this island,
0:06:31.396,0:06:34.208
that they will find coppers to buy their drinks,
0:06:34.208,0:06:37.583
although they go without themselves.
0:06:37.583,0:06:41.750
I have seen, upon the Sabbath day as I have been walking to church,
0:06:41.750,0:06:44.500
first one, presently another,
0:06:44.500,0:06:46.792
laying in the highway so drunk
0:06:46.792,0:06:51.125
that there be land crabs that have bit off some of their fingers,
0:06:51.125,0:06:52.958
some of their toes,
0:06:52.958,0:06:55.325
and have killed some before they have wakened."
0:06:57.917,0:06:59.860
They drank heavily,
0:07:01.833,0:07:04.375
in fact that was a common feature among these whites,
0:07:04.375,0:07:08.875
you know, they consume vast quantities of alcohol,
0:07:08.875,0:07:12.000
obviously that would have had some effect on overall health,
0:07:12.000,0:07:13.908
you know, many many years later.
0:07:16.500,0:07:18.167
[narrator] Our expectation of the West Indies,
0:07:18.167,0:07:19.875
that being white means being rich,
0:07:19.875,0:07:21.806
simply isn't true.
0:07:21.806,0:07:24.958
The descendants of those first servants who were cheated out of their inheritance,
0:07:24.958,0:07:28.792
entered a century and a half of social and economic paralysis,
0:07:28.792,0:07:34.619
subsistence farming, menial labour, and domestic service were the best they could hope for. [/narrator]
0:07:37.042,0:07:40.250
It was logical for the people of the time to conclude
0:07:40.250,0:07:43.708
that over-consumption of rum
0:07:43.708,0:07:48.125
led to this laziness, and this inability to work hard,
0:07:48.125,0:07:55.417
and the whole pejorative stereotype that developed associated with poor whites.
0:07:55.417,0:07:58.708
But actually there are medical reasons
0:07:58.708,0:08:01.791
that explain some of the dibilities.
0:08:01.791,0:08:07.542
A large percentage of the poor whites in Barbados who were too poor to have shoes,
0:08:07.542,0:08:11.333
and so who worked bare feet in the fields etc,
0:08:11.333,0:08:13.458
picked up parasitic infections,
0:08:13.458,0:08:16.250
particularly hookworm infections.
0:08:16.250,0:08:18.583
Somebody with masses of hookworms in their body
0:08:18.583,0:08:21.792
wouldn't be able to respond well to situations,
0:08:21.792,0:08:24.625
would stumble, slouch, would move very slowly,
0:08:24.625,0:08:30.727
and be seen sort of, like, the village idiot stereotype.
0:08:32.534,0:08:36.899
Enslaved Africans who didn't drink as much as the poor whites,
0:08:36.899,0:08:38.708
they had family networks,
0:08:38.708,0:08:41.667
they had large communities of people that could work together,
0:08:41.667,0:08:46.417
and sort of community networks that would help ease the challenges of everyday life.
0:08:46.417,0:08:50.375
Whereas poor whites tended to live sort of on the outskirts of communities,
0:08:50.375,0:08:52.500
very little opportunities for upward mobility,
0:08:52.500,0:08:57.202
and as a result, sort of lost themselves in drinking.
0:08:58.819,0:09:04.917
Part of the issue was that the whites remained by themselves,
0:09:04.917,0:09:11.000
and so you had a situation where there was quite a bit of inter-marrying.
0:09:11.000,0:09:13.292
Where you would have had quite a lot of families marrying each other.
0:09:13.292,0:09:15.792
First or second cousins marrying each other,
0:09:15.792,0:09:20.542
just _ for a white female to marry a black guy.
0:09:20.542,0:09:24.750
So, they married predominantly white men.
0:09:24.750,0:09:27.667
And of course, the whole issue of incest.
0:09:27.667,0:09:30.542
I mean, it's not a nice thing to speak about,
0:09:30.542,0:09:34.548
but that obviously happened in those type of communities.
0:09:38.042,0:09:43.500
If one looks very quickly at the demographic patterns and racial patterns in Barbados over time,
0:09:43.500,0:09:46.583
Barbados started as a white majority colony,
0:09:46.583,0:09:52.292
but by the 1660's it had become a black majority
0:09:52.292,0:09:57.635
where about 60% of the population was black, and 40% was white.
0:09:57.635,0:10:00.932
And what they did with this large poor white population on the island
0:10:00.932,0:10:08.131
was they used it as a buffer group between themselves and the black slave population.
0:10:08.131,0:10:10.375
And during the period of slavery
0:10:10.375,0:10:15.167
the poor white population was critical to the status and success
0:10:15.167,0:10:19.571
and if you like peace of mind of the planter class.
0:10:24.246,0:10:27.875
1640's you might have had maybe, ehm, 4 or 5 thousand black slaves,
0:10:27.875,0:10:30.833
but by 1660 you had about 60,000 slaves,
0:10:30.833,0:10:35.917
and the population moved down to about 10,000 whites and 60,000 blacks,
0:10:35.917,0:10:39.792
so they need to have some form of militia,
0:10:39.792,0:10:42.875
or military for internal security,
0:10:42.875,0:10:46.958
and the laws were made that for every 30 acres of land,
0:10:46.958,0:10:50.917
you had to have one able-bodied white man serving in the militia.
0:10:50.917,0:10:54.333
Once you were in that that rut of a poor white,
0:10:54.333,0:10:55.824
you had no education,
0:10:55.824,0:10:57.833
you may become an overseer,
0:10:57.833,0:11:00.271
ehm, you were not ever a land owner.
0:11:01.629,0:11:06.134
The women of the militia tenants also earned some money because of course
0:11:06.134,0:11:13.167
each plantation had the contractual or economic responsibility to supply clothes, etc
0:11:13.167,0:11:15.468
for the slave population,
0:11:15.468,0:11:19.279
and so many of these white women were employed as seamstresses etc.
0:11:21.292,0:11:22.792
[narrator] The poor make use of everything,
0:11:22.792,0:11:25.105
as Fred Smith finds out in the militia families croft. [/narrator]
0:11:27.542,0:11:30.458
Perhaps the most interesting finds were these tiny pieces pf ceramic,
0:11:30.458,0:11:35.875
that have been whittled down into, uh, what are gaming pieces.
0:11:35.875,0:11:39.708
These were probably used for chess or for backgammon.
0:11:39.708,0:11:42.167
We've also found a large number of buttons,
0:11:42.167,0:11:44.819
which suggest that perhaps somebody at some time at this house
0:11:44.819,0:11:47.792
may have been a seamstress or a tailor.
0:11:47.792,0:11:52.542
Here you can see even better the coral rubble construction techniques that were used,
0:11:52.542,0:11:54.167
uh, building these houses.
0:11:54.167,0:11:58.667
These were just coral rubble that were picked up from the ground and surrounding bedrock,
0:11:58.667,0:12:03.083
uh, pieced together using a lime plaster mortar
0:12:03.083,0:12:06.708
that would sort of bake the limestone
0:12:06.708,0:12:08.708
and get it into a powder form, add water,
0:12:08.708,0:12:12.083
and that would be the basis for sort of concrete in those days.
0:12:12.083,0:12:15.125
And it's very strong construction technique, as you can see.
0:12:15.125,0:12:16.750
[narrator] So it's weathered well. [/narrator]
0:12:16.750,0:12:18.715
Yeah it has certainly lasted.
0:12:22.000,0:12:27.000
[narrator] Ironically, things got worse for the poor whites after emancipation in 1834.
0:12:27.000,0:12:31.833
Apprenticed and experienced black slaves were able to transfer their skills to the free market.
0:12:31.833,0:12:34.458
Redlegs didn't have those skills,
0:12:34.458,0:12:38.500
and anyway, they didn't want to do work thay associated with black slavery,
0:12:38.500,0:12:43.594
identifying instead with the rich planters who wanted nothing to do with them. [/narrator]
0:12:45.583,0:12:50.583
During slavery, the slaves were not supposed to do anything that's skilled.
0:12:50.583,0:12:57.042
But of course, eh, there were skilled carpenters, who did all sorts of skilled work.
0:12:57.042,9:59:59.000
But they weren't supposed to.