This paper describes the houses and household furnishings of the enslaved people on Barbadian sugar plantations, and traces the development and changes in architectural forms, including wattle-and-daub, stone, and wooden plank dwellings, over the several centuries of slavery on the island. We also treat the housing policies of plantation owners/managers, and explore possible Afncan and European cultural influences on the Barbadian vernacular housing tradition that emerged during the period of slavery.

Vernacular Houses and Domestic Material Culture on Barbados Sugar Plantations, 1650-1838

2006  Diseases and Medical Disabilities of Enslaved Barbadians, From the Seventeenth Century to around 1838, Part II.  Jl. of Caribbean History 40: 177-214.

The disease environment, health problems, and causes of mortality of enslaved Barbadians are described. Data largely derive from documentary sources; also included are bio-archaeological data from analyses of skeletons recovered from Newton Plantation cemetery. Major topics include infectious diseases transmitted from person to person, as well as those contracted through water, soil, and other environmental contaminations, and diseases transmitted by insects, parasites, and other animals; nutritional diseases, including protein energy malnutrition, vitamin deficiencies, anemia, and geophagy or ‘dirt eating’; dental pathologies; and lead poisoning, alcoholism, traumas, and other disorders, including psychogenic death or illness caused by beliefs in witchcraft or sorcery.

Diseases and Medical Disabilities of Enslaved Barbadians, Part I

Diseases and Medical Disabilities of Enslaved Barbadians, Part II

This paper describes the antecedents of many rural settlements in Barbados; it focuses on some of the major physical and demographic features of slave settlements, particularly on medium- and large size plantations. Changes in some of these features are traced over the almost 200 years of plantation slavery on the island, and the possible influences of Africa or England on village layout and spatial arrangement of houses are considered. Some of the methodological and historical issues in establishing the number of plantation settlements during the slave period and of identifying the sites of former villages and plantation cemeteries in present-day Barbados are also explored. Finally, some of the sociological characteristics of the slave settlements as small communities are considered.

Plantation Slave Settlements in Barbados, 1650s to 1834

A heated exchange in two Barbados newspapers concerning the only slave revolt in the island’s history. Handler’s position, stated in several articles in the Advocate, is that there is no documentary evidence that a slave named Busso/Bussa was the prime organizer or leader of the revolt or played a greater role than others who were accused by whites of leadership roles. Professor Hilary Beckles, writing in the Nation, attributes this singular role to Busso/Bussa.

Slave flight or marronage, although not always with the intent or hope of permanently escaping the slave system, was a characteristic feature of Barbadian slave society as it was of slave societies throughout the Americas. However, for much of the slave period, Barbados, a small, relatively flat, and densely populated island, presented obstacles of concealment and escapee community formation that were absent or not encountered in the larger mainland or island territories. Nonetheless, marronage in one form or another occurred throughout the period of slavery in Barbados, and the island provides an excellent case study for exploring this form of resistance in the Caribbean’s smaller sugar islands, ones not conventionally associated with marronage.

This article draws on a sample of Barbados slave names in order to examine the principles and significance of naming practices among North American and British Caribbean slaves in general and on Barbados plantations in particular. Analysis of plantation slave lists and other primary sources that record slave names, especially within the context of genealogical relations, provides insight into slave naming practices. These, in turn, can reveal the extent to which concepts of family, lineage, and kinship were retained beyond the Atlantic crossing and can also shed light on other domains of slave life, such as adjustment or resistance to enslavement, the nature of slaves’ kin networks, the perpetuation and modification of African practices, and creolization.

Slave Names and Naming in Barbados, 1650-1830

The early healing practices of Barbadian slaves had their roots
in traditional West African medicine which involved the use of plants. Both Africans (and Europeans) in Barbados were predisposed to experiment with and exploit the natural environment for medicinal purposes. Over time, a variety of locally prepared medicines came to be widely employed by all racial groups in Barbados and this article discusses, on the basis of limited documentary evidence, which of these were specifically part of the enslaved community’s pharmacopoeia.

This article demonstrates how documentary and physical evidence can be brought to bear in shedding light on one aspect of New World slave life; more specifically, the problem of fertility differentials between enslaved populations of the United States and the British Caribbean.

This article focuses on the manumission process and the characteristics of manumitted slaves from 1650 to 1700. The discussion treats various manumission devices but focuses on 80 wills that manumitted 123 slaves; also discussed are eight deeds with 10 manumissions. Although small, the sample constitutes the largest single body of data available on slave manumissions for any seventeenth-century English colony.

In this paper I focus on a little treated subject in Caribbean history, the position of non-whites, particularly the recruitment and arming of slaves, a practice which may have regularly occurred earlier in Barbados than in any other of Britain’s Caribbean and continental colonies.

Freedmen and Slaves in the Barbados Militia