The caribbean anthropology

Even after Emancipation in 1838 , the unequal system at Carribean continued . The first indication of this came with the awarding of some twenty million pounds to the planters by way of compensation , with nothing being awarded to the former slaves . The system tried to force them to continue the arduous work on the plantations by introducing high taxes on smallholdings , high rates for licenses or small traders , and contracts to shackle the laborers to the large plantations . The problems associated with the uneasy post-Emancipation time form the backdrop for Rhys 's Wide

Sargasso Sea

Rebellion was common , with the forms including self-mutilation , suicide and infanticide as well as escape and maroon age (whereby the slaves escaped into the hills and wooded interiors of the islands and set up potentially threatening communities of their own . White or black neither had better than a fifty-fifty chance of escaping death from the yellow fever , malaria , and a host of other diseases that the mosquitoes shared so indiscriminately with their human prey

The law provided slaves with virtually no protection from their masters On large plantations this power was delegated to HYPERLINK "http /www .spartacus .schoolnet .co .uk /USASoverseers .htm " overseers These men were under considerable pressure from the HYPERLINK "http /www .spartacus .schoolnet .co .uk /USASplantation .htm " plantation owners to maximize profits . They did this by bullying the slaves into increasing productivity . The punishments used against slaves judged to be under-performing included the use of the HYPERLINK "http /www .spartacus .schoolnet .co .uk /USASwhipping .htm " whip Sometimes slave-owners resorted to mutilating and HYPERLINK "http /www .spartacus .schoolnet .co .uk /USASbranding .htm " branding their slaves

Some punishments were associated with certain areas . According to HYPERLINK "http /www .spartacus .schoolnet .co .uk /USASbrownW .htm " William Wells Brown , slave-owners smoked slaves . This involved whipping slaves and putting them in a tobacco smoke-house " HYPERLINK "http /www .spartacus .schoolnet .co .uk /USASroper .htm " Moses Roper claimed that they used to "drive nails into a hogshead so as to leave the point of the nail just protruding in the inside of the cask . Into this he used to put his slaves for punishment , and roll them down a very long and steep hill

HYPERLINK "http /www .spartacus .schoolnet .co .uk /USASclark .htm " Lewis Clarke , a HYPERLINK "http /www .spartacus .schoolnet .co .uk /USASdomestic .htm " house slave in his autobiography the different methods used by his mistress "instruments of torture were ordinarily the raw hide , or a bunch of hickory-sprouts seasoned in the fire and tied together . But if these were not at hand , nothing came amiss . She could relish a beating with a chair , the broom , tongs , shovel , shears , knife-handle , the heavy heel of her slipper , and an oak club , a foot and a half in length and an inch and a half square . With this delicate weapon she would beat us upon the hands and upon the feet until they were blistered

The history hasn 't a lot of evidence about slave 's punishment . But I find some...