Task for week 3: Prepare a brief handout and presentation on one of the following colonies in the early 19th century

HIS 353: Slave Emancipation in the British Empire

Tasks for week 3:

1. Read and be ready to discuss this week’s documents in the reading packet.

2. Prepare a brief handout and presentation (5 minutes only!) on one of the colonies we are studying, focusing on its situation in the early 19^th century.

What do I have to do?

Which colony am I looking at?

How do I go about it?

Try to find out:

Is this a single island, part of a continental landmass, or a set of islands?
What was the approximate population, c. 1830? (Use another date if you can’t find information for this year.)
What proportion of this population was enslaved and free; white, ‘coloured’, and black; male and female?
Was the enslaved population declining or increasing?
Were there substantial intermediate groups that can be categorized neither as slave nor free? Who were they?
Is it (relative to the other colonies we are studying) large or small? Mountainous or flat? Good or poor for growing sugar?
Any key events in the colony’s history, eg slave rebellions.
Was this a longstanding English colony? Had it previously been colonized by any other European power? When?
Was slavery expanding? Contracting? Did sugar production dominate the economy? If not, what was the major industry? What other industries existed?
How was the colony governed? By British appointees? Or by elected representatives of the local population? Who could vote?
Anything else that you find interesting.

Don’t worry if you can’t find out the answers to all the questions, but find out as much as you can. Also, be aware that you won’t have time in your presentation to talk about everything you find out, so put it down on a handout and pick out the most important and/or interesting things to tell the rest of the class.

Please bring enough copies of your handout to class for everyone to have a copy. (There are 12 students in the class, plus me.) Or, if you put your handout in my pigeon hole by Monday at noon, I will make copies.

Check below to see which colony you signed up to research (if your name is not listed below, contact me immediately to volunteer for a place):

Antigua and Barbuda: Sophie Colyer
Bahamas
Barbados: Joanne Hall
Belize: Holly Clay
Bermuda: James Jenkins
British Virgin Islands (Tortola, Virgin Gorda)
Cape Colony: Anna Scholtz
British Guiana (Demerara, Essequibo, and Berbice): Kate Ross
Dominica: Polly Wheldon
Grenada
Jamaica: Melissa Bunyard
Mauritius: Amy Lovell
Montserrat: Becky Hughes
St. Kitts and Nevis
St. Lucia: Sally Jones
St. Vincent
Trinidad and Tobago: Polly Wheldon

How do I go about finding out this information?

Use the reading list for this week, in the course packet or online. (Hint: Barry Higman’s Slave Populations of the British Caribbean is very helpful for basic demographic, geographic, and economic information on the Caribbean colonies.)

Search the library catalogue for material I have missed.

Use reference books:

General Encyclopedias, Atlases, and specialist encyclopedias, for instance:

Paul Finkelman and Joseph Miller, Macmillan Encyclopedia of World Slavery.

Junius P. Rodriguez, The Historical Encyclopedia of World Slavery.

Use these web sites

Make sure you keep a record of where you find what information, so that your research is VERIFIABLE and CHECKABLE. Include your sources on your handout.