The Slave Population
Most of the slaves came from western Africa. Philip Curtin, in his book “The African Slave Trade”, assures that, from the beginning of the XVI century, till the abolition of slavery in the XIX century, some twelve million Africans were brought to the New World. They had no names, and their owners, the buyers, gave them one. This explains why their descendants have European surnames. The present tendency of turning back to use African names and surnames, is a XX century phenomena, due specially to the influence, in the 1960’s and 1970’s, of the Black Power movement amongst the black communities in Europe, US and the Caribbean. The lost of their names was, perhaps, an even bigger psychological damage to these slaves that had lost their liberty, and were treated like animals.

African Traditions
However, slaves also found a way to maintain their spirits alive. ”Each person has to have some kind of compensation for his slavery”, wrote political writer Edmund Burke (1729.1797). From the very beginning, slaves took with them their traditional songs and dances, and music was a very important part of their lives. Coming from the merge of some European music forms with African rhythms and melodies, this music became typical of the Antilles, with passionate songs and dances.

Something similar happened with language. In the New World, plantation owners, foremen and slaves had to learn to communicate between them. This brought the creation of Creole patois, a language with huge differences from one island to another.

Slave’s Rebellion
There was a habit among slaves, known in the French islands as petit marronage, consisting in escaping for a short time looking for the company of a woman, or to assist to some forbidden religion ritual, or simply to breathe some liberty air. This habit, as time went on, brought rebellions.

Revolt attempt, always repressed brutally, were frequent. The most important of them took place in St. John, in the Danish West Indies (1733), Antigua (1736), St. Croix (1759), Grenada (1795) and Barbados (1816), and in all of them was evident there were slaves capable of leading an insurrection. There were leaders like Tackey and Tomboy, from Antigua, that planned to kill all the whites of the island, and establish a black kingdom. In Barbados, Nanny Grigg told her followers that the only way to obtain freedom was fighting for it. Another leader was Daaga, who in 1837 led a small mutiny within the first regiment of the West Indies, in Trinidad. After being captured, during the questioning, he said that the mutiny seeds came along with them from Africa.

There were two more factors that contributed to give a definitive end to the slavery system in the XIX century. The first was economic. The work of the slaves was each time more expensive and less efficient, than the one of free paid worker. Excess in the sugar production caused the collapse of prices in the world’s markets. Besides, the West Indies plantation owners lost their privileged situation in the British market after the world trade liberation. The second factor was the birth, in Great Britain, of a religious and humanitarian movement led by William Wilberforce (1759-1883) and Thomas Clarkson (1760-1846). Their influence convinced public opinion of how far was the slavery system from Christian and human values.

The buccaneers“(…) The less we are, more united we will be, and more we will have when we divide the buskin.” These were the words from pirate Henry Morgan to his men, after capturing in 1668, a buskin worth 250,000 silver coins.

The adventurers The New World, where at the beginning social classes were absent, attracted all kind of adventurers; Welsh royalty, Dutch Jews, prisoners captured by Cromwell, Catholic friars. Everybody was looking for adventure.

Absent owners Plantation profits were sent to owners in Great Britain, where they lived expensively, something that became a bad habit in the XVIII century.

Resistance To maintain their spirits high and tolerate inhuman treatment, slaves kept their religion, songs and traditional dances alive.