Apprentice and Wage Laborer Economies in the British Caribbean: An Examination of Post-Emancipation Material Culture and Housing on St. Kitts, West Indies

Abstract

ABSTRACT In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, sugar plantations in the British Caribbean struggled with falling sugar prices and increasing debts. Enslaved Africans suffered the brunt of much of this financial hardship, but they created strong social and trade networks that helped alleviate some of these hardships. Emancipation in the British Caribbean brought many changes to the lives of the formerly enslaved, but estate owners and island governments sought to enact laws that forced people to stay in plantation villages. This study examines the pre- and post-emancipation housing and ceramic assemblages from two households in a plantation village on the British Caribbean island of St. Christopher (St. Kitts) to understand how people adapted to freedom in the post-emancipation period. We find that there are differences in housing and ceramic acquisition and discard between the two households that reflect different investment strategies and agency.