On the morning of Thursday, 18 February 1897, the three members of the
visiting British Royal Commission interviewed witnesses in the Council
Chamber of the Public Buildings in Bridgetown, the capital of the British
West Indian colony of Barbados. The commission had been convened in
London two months earlier to investigate the nature, extent and implica-
tions for the immediate future of the severe economic depression that had
afflicted the British West Indies for more than a decade.

The commissioners, beginning their second full day on Barbados, al-
ready had heard testimony concerning the plight of that island's workforce
during the depression: Barbados, a low-lying, coralline island, was monopo-
lized by sugar cane plantations. Portions of each Barbadian estate were de-
voted to subsistence gardens allocated to the black descendants of planta-
tion slaves, but their vegetables usually had to be supplemented with food
imports. The prevailing low sugar prices had lowered wages, reducing black
workers' ability to buy imported food. The results included malnutrition,
high infant mortality and a malaise accented with bitterness among mem-
bers of the black Barbadian workforce. Drought prevalence on low-lying
Barbados--such as the drought of 1894-95 that had desiccated black work-
ers' subsistence grounds--compounded the local misery already created by
economic depression.

Not all British West Indian islands were similar to Barbados. On this
morning the commissioners sought comparative evidence about life and
livelihood in the volcanic Windwards, one hundred miles to the west, is-
lands that had highland interiors not cultivated in sugar cane. Portions of
the Windwards, moreover, were occupied by small-scale subsistence and
cash crop cultivators, a much different pattern than in Barbados. The com-
missioners questioned the Reverend J. Payne, a Wesleyan minister familiar
with the entire region. Were conditions better for the black labourers on
mountainous St Vincent: than on Barbados? "Yes," responded Payne, "in St
Vincent the people get breadfruit and a great many other things for noth-
ing. With a few acres of mountain land the labourer of St Vincent can do a
good deal for himself." ¹

This book describes these geographical contrasts and explores the com-

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