While slaves struggled to survive, colonies where searching their independence.
Currently tourism is the major source of income

With the definitive abolition of slavery, in British colonies in 1834, and in the Dutch in 1848, a new age started in the Little Antilles history that ended with independence for most of them.

The freed slaves, those that before could not own lands, were allowed to develop an independent economic life. They began to buy abandoned properties; they fought for the use of the Crown’s lands, and organized distribution networks to sell their products in the cities. They were joined by thousands of people that have arrived between 1838 and 1917, from different parts of the East Indies, to work in the plantations needing work force.   

The New Caribbean Farmers
Along many decades, the freed slaves began to work in their own farms, producing nutmegs in Grenada, bananas in St. Lucia, sugar in St. Croix, and cacao in Trinidad. Many women started to work at the markets, and people began to call them hagglers. All of them were the bases of an emerging economy, centered in the city markets.

Most of their products were sold at local markets, and sometimes, they even exported part of their production. They were peasants with a strong feeling regarding their family links, and with a predominantly rural way of life. They participate, actively, as sellers and buyers, in the free market economy of the islands, using a very peculiar cleverness. However, they were a marginal class. From the beginning, there were rich and poor, as today.

While this was happening in the fields, the cities of many islands flourished, filled with shops, and soon were transformed into important commercial centers. During the first decade of the XX century, the oil refineries of Trinidad, Curacao and Aruba, generated many jobs. The same as the bananas transatlantic companies like, the Geest group in
St. Lucia.

With the arrival of oil companies financial and commercial capitalism that brought technological dependence, and a gradually bigger distance between the European and colonial economies.

The commercial unbalance between both economies also increased. The property, control and handling of the companies in the islands, were always in European hands, within a system where the West Indies colonies sold at low prices, and bought at high ones.

The End of the Colonial Governments
In the period between the two World Wars, natives hired to work in industries, commerce and agriculture were generally meek and badly paid. The extremely bad working conditions in the 1920’s got even worse, due to the economic crisis produced by the crash of the Stock Exchange in 1929. The British colonies started to be known as “the lower districts of the Empire”. The decline of the sugar industry, which survived only due to the exploitation of workers, began. In St. Cristobal and St. Vincent, the average salary stagnated at a daily shilling, established after the official abolition of slavery, a century before. Most of the population suffered from malnutrition and other diseases. They lived in precarious conditions, with houses full of rats, which were, thus, infection focuses. The working class was exploited, not even having the possibility of defending themselves by launching syndicates, because a law punished those trying to form worker union. The situation was so appalling that between 1935 and 1938, there were several riots in the English speaking islands, though clashes between the police and workers were particularly violent in Barbados and Trinidad.

The revolts, along with the decisions adopted by the British Royal Commission in 1938, contributed to the appearance of the first syndicates.
Also new political parties emerged, trying to achieve self-government, which paved the way to the final independence.

Some of the leaders of that age, like Grantley Adams (1898-1971), were middle class black lawyers. Most of them came from rural environments, like Vere Bird (Antigua), Uriah Butler (Trinidad), Robert Bradshaw (St. Cristobal) and Eric Gairy (Grenada). The British Labor Party influenced greatly in these men, that’s why most of the parties founded at that time, have the same name.