SLAVE-BREEDING IN BARBUDA: THE PAST OF A NEGRO MYTH David Lowenthal Department o f Geography University College London London, England Colin G. Clarke Department of Geography University of Liverpool Liverpool, England The breeding of slaves is a practice so bizarre and reprehensible that it strikes the imagination as the quintessence of the evils of slavery. From the American South, in particular, have come lurid tales of slave stud farms, whose prominence in prurient fiction is undiminished by the scantiness of evidence in the prosaic historical record.’ In the West Indies, infant mortality was so high and young African slaves were for the most part so cheap that not even slave-rearing, let alone slave- breeding, was an attractive economic prospect. Rather than rely on reproduc- tion, t h e typical West Indian planter of the eighteenth century chose t o replace his worn-out slaves with fresh ones from Africa. Even o n the Barbados planta- tions of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, where, from 1 7 10 on, humanitarian motives commingled with economic ones, births were inadequate t o sustain the slave supply until the very end of the eighteenth century. In one small territory particularly, so legend has i t , was slave-breeding com- monly practiced. This was Barbuda, a flat, limestone island of 62 square miles, situated some thirty miles north of Antigua, in the Leeward Islands. From the late seventeenth century u p t o the late nineteenth Barbuda remained, under Crown grants, in return for an annual rent of “one fat Sheep (if demanded),”3 a private preserve of the Codrington family. The Codringtons held extensive and valuable properties in Barbados and Antigua, and it was t o labor on their sugar and cotton plantations in these other islands that Barbudan-bred slaves were supposedly destined. This view of Barbudan slave-breeding is depicted in many recent texts. West and Augelli’s comprehensive geography of Middle America states that the Codrington family used Barbuda “as a hunting preserve and as a stud farm t o provide livestock and slaves for their sugar plantations on other islands.”4 Mary Slater’s popular survey of the Caribbean attributes the inception of the practice specifically t o Christopher Codrington, Governor of the Leewards in the late seventeenth century, who made Barbuda “a game reserve and a stud farm for ~ l a v e s . ’ ’ ~ A later date and a lengthier explanation for the inception of slave-breeding appear in an authoritative school history written by staff members of the Uni- versity College of the West Indies: “On the Codrington Estates, in the middle of the eighteenth century,” they assert, “a deliberate experiment in slave-breeding was conducted as a possible economy in ensuring healthy workers; the island 510  Lowenthal & Clarke: Myth of Barbudan Slave-Breeding 511 of Barbuda was used for the purpose.”6 Carleen O’Loughlin’s economic and political survey of the Leewards and Windwards adduces more graphic detail: “Barbuda . . . became the location for a curious experiment in breeding slaves from selected stock, and today the people of this island are noted for their large build and good physique.”’ The most detailed and vivid account of slave-breeding in Barbuda appears in a travel guide entitled, perhaps significantly, All the Best in the Caribbean: Christopher Codrington . . . dreamed up the practical idea of developing a race of powerful, king-sized slaves to work his cane fields, these outsized blacks to be begotten and conceived on a human stud farm! He stocked his estate with docile female slaves, then brought in a clutch of the biggest, brawniest blacks he could buy and instructed them to get to work and produce as many babies as possible-fine healthy ones that should grow up to be big and powerful like themselves. Obviously, the Colonel was not troubled by any squeamish considera- tions of morality. The scheme worked and a race of tall, muscular Negroes de- veloped. Today’s Barbudans . . . are descendants, in most cases, of the stud farm pioneers, as any visitor to the island may judge for himself.8 Though n o evidence of such selection can in fact be seen in their physique today, Barbudans themselves share this belief in their slave-breeding ancestry. Indeed, the practice is referred t o with some pride by the Barbudan Brother- hood Social Club of New York. “Barbuda was used as the experimental breeding ground for slaves,” the Brotherhood assert, “thus producing some of the strongest people in the West Indies.”’ So widespread is the impression of slave-breeding in Barbuda that one of us, in a general study of the West Indies, unhesitatingly repeated it as a fact.I0 The facts, however, prove remarkably elusive. Once one tries to trace the antecedents of Barbudan slave-breeding, the evidence becomes less tangible and the assertions less straightforward. None of the sources cited above provide references t o document their statements. And the two published historical accounts dealing with Barbuda venture no firm opinion o n the matter. Douglas Hall notes that after emancipation Sir William Codrington could not get Barbu- dan laborers t o work on his Antiguan estates because, Codrington testified, “ n o entreaties of any kind will prevail upon them, to any extent, t o go from Barbuda t o Antigua.” Hall adds the comment that “during slavery the choice had not been theirs”-implying that the transfer of slave labor from Barbuda had previously been a common and deliberate practice.” David Harris judges that Barbuda’s “maintenance as a private fief for over 150 years . . . effectively checked the growth of its population”12-the opposite of what would be expected had Barbuda been used for slave-breeding, unless the laborers drained off for Cod- rington estates elsewhere approximated an induced Barbudan increase. But neither Hall nor Harris offer specific evidence either for or against the hypothesis of slave-breeding in Barbuda. Had any such venture taken place, some mention of it might be expected t o show u p in the family’s estate o r business records, if such survived. A substantial part of the Codrington family archives d o indeed survive. During the 1960s they were removed from Dodington, the Codrington home in Gloucestershire, t o the County Archives in Gloucester. To try to resolve the slave-breeding issue we went through the Codrington papers in Gloucester, looked at collateral material in the Public Record Office in London, and examined a University of Texas Library microfilm of five hundred letters from Codrington estate managers, the originals of which had been auctioned off to philatelists in 195 1. These archival sources include correspondence from the Codringtons t o one 5 12 Annals New York Academy of Sciences another and t o and from their agents in Antigua and Barbuda; reports and accounts prepared by Codrington attorneys and managers; memoranda from governors and other officials in Antigua; letters between the Codringtons and the Colonial Office; and records of slave registration, slave transfers, and slave compensation paid t o the Codringtons after emancipation. The microfilmed letters in particular reveal a wealth of information about Barbudan conditions in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. All in all, these records provide a remarkable account of events in Barbuda. Indeed, the surviving manu- script sources for Barbuda during this period, in proportion t o its population, may be more voluminous than for any other West Indian territory. The results of our inquiry are conclusive. There never was a deliberate pro- gram of slave-breeding in Barbuda, nor did the Codringtons ever contemplate this as a possibility. At the very most they envisaged Barbuda as a “nursery” t o which slave children might be brought t o be fed and cared for, and later taken off to work o n the Antiguan estates, but not even this proposal was realized. Indeed, the very fact that the Codringtons had eschewed such a pro- ject in Barbuda was subsequently used t o justify their extraordinary request for extra compensation at the time of emancipation. How then did the myth of slave-breeding come into being? It was a con- sequence of retrospective wishful thinking o n the part of the proprietors, coupled with unusual social and environmental conditions in Barbuda. These conditions stimulated considerable natural increase during the last decades of slavery -an increase which was not only unexpected by the Codringtons, but which they even viewed with alarm as a drain on their resources. Finally, historians and other scholars have persistently misread the Codringtons’ projected schemes and subsequent complaints as evidence for events that had never taken place. BARBUDAN LIFE To understand how all this came about, let us see what Barbuda and its inhabitants were like in the eighteenth century. After its permanent settle- ment in the 1660s, Barbuda was used primarily t o raise provisions and, above all, t o graze livestock. As time passed, many of the livestock became feral, and a pattern was set that persists t o the present day: a preponderantly wooded island, with vast expanses of scrub vegetation and some pasture, harboring thousands of semi-wild sheep, goats, and cattle, together with smaller numbers of deer, pigs, horses, and mules. In the mid-eighteenth century, a nucleus of cultivated land, with some fenced pasture, enclosed a few domestic animals and a scanty acreage of tobacco, cotton, and provision crops-corn, potatoes, yams, eddoes. But crop-raising was generally neglected; the mainstay of the Barbudan economy was game and livestock. For the rest, the Barbudans fished and caught turtles-green turtles, prized as food for the Royal Navy in Antigua, were a prime source of revenue-spun and wove cotton for hammocks, cut firewood, and salvaged wrecks, for ships were always coming t o grief around the shallow and submerged reefs. These enterprises, if one may so characterize such a congeries of episodic occupations, were in the hands of a few hundred people, whites at first, and then, increasingly after the 1680s, blacks from Africa. By the late eighteenth century the Codrington agent o r manager and his family, with perhaps one o r two overseers, were the only whites o n t h e island. All the rest were slaves.  Lowenthal & Clarke: Myth of Barbudan Slave-Breeding 513 The Codringtons and their Barbudan agents perennially conceived projects for making the island more agriculturally remunerative. Cotton, tobacco, and ginger, cochineal, aloes, and moringa trees (for oil of ben) were at various times contemplated or begun and then neglected or discarded. Indeed, so large and fertile an island seemed anomalous in being so thinly inhabited and unpro- ductive. “1 hope & doubt not,” wrote William Codrington optimistically in 1721, “but that Barbuda will raise Yams Cassada & Peases &c for breadkind enough t o serve all my white Servants in Antigua and Corn yams & Pease enough t o serve all my Guinny men.”l3 In 1740 the Codringtons’ local agent, Benjamin King, recommended that the island be used for food-growing and horses and turtling, but noted that this would require more labor than was available there.I4 The next year provisions were so short that most of the Negroes had “run away” t o subsist on wild cattle in the wood^.'^ Barbuda’s principal exports in 1743 were 56 green turtles and 556 hogs- heads of lime,I6 but in the following decades cattle and firewood came t o occupy a more prominent place in the island’s economy. Stockraising, lumber, and tanning ought t o net 23,000 a year from Barbuda, estimated Richard Oliver, Codrington’s Antiguan estate manager, in 178017; but a year later h e voiced concern about the exhaustion of Barbudan resources: the cattle are much reduced in Number & in consequence notice had been . given . . to cease the usual supply to English Harbor [the naval base on Antigua] , but the Wood for the Troops with sheep & Goats will I hope for a Year or Two continue profitable & tho’ . . . the Wood must now be cut at a greater distance than usual from the Shipping place I suppose it may be furnish’d continuaUy.]a Back in England, Sir William Codrington (grandson of the previous William) favored ground provisions of all kinds as well as other crops for Barbuda. “Why may not more cottin be produced?” he complained in 1781. “There are Negroes enough t o produce very much more profit than is p r o d ~ c e d . ” ’ The ~ revenue anticipated from the island seemed never t o materialize: The income Ben: King [the former manager] pretended to my mother. . he . would make from it annually exceeded all that has been made from it in these 40 years. Provisions of a l l kinds were [said] to be in very great abundance, Yams, Eddoes, Guinea Corn L c &c a very long list almost everything but canes. Paradise could not be more productive than he made Barbuda to be. Realism scarcely tempered Codrington’s criticism. “Though B.K. never spoke truth when he had an opportunity of speaking untruths, yet Barbuda has been miserably managed.”20 Barbuda in the 1780s carried about 8,000 sheep, 2,000 goats, 600 horses, 3 0 0 deer, 100 cattle, 30 mules, and 7 jackasses. There were 300 acres in pasture, but only one-third that area in crops-80 acres in guinea corn, 10 each in cotton and yams. Over most of the island thin and unproductive soils, poorly drained o r seasonally parched, seemed t o preclude permanent tillage, as they still do. “You will be able t o judge what a miserable poor place it is,” manager Dennis Reynolds wrote Codrington in 1786, after making an exhaustive survey. “I believe there is not such an other Island in ye world.”21 Present-day research confirms Reynolds’ negative assessment. “Scarcely any soil covers the island’s limestone or sand surfaces,” report Russell and McIntire. “Barren limestone and crusts cover much of the island, and the remainder has nothing more than a n extremely thin soil cover.”22 Only Barbuda’s climate, dry and healthy by West Indian standards, 514 Annals New York Academy of Sciences commended the island; managers at various times recommended Barbuda as a site for convalescent slaves, for prisoners, and for Africans liberated from slave ships. Sir William’s nephew and heir, Christopher Bethell Codrington, visited the West Indian estates in 1790 and reported back t o his uncle in a series of tren- chant letters. He shared the general view that Barbuda’s prospects for plantation crops were poor: “In my own opinion, i t is not worth even trying the experi- ment of planting anything there but what is necessary for the subsistence of the Negroes.”23 He suggested “subsisting your Negroes [in Antigua] from Barbuda,” and speculated about “what might be planted as Negroe food a t Barbuda.”24 Barbuda was growing beans, oats, and corn- 178 acres were planted t o corn in 1793-for the Antiguan estate slaves, but Bethell Codrington thought it better t o concentrate o n root crops, believing Barbuda could “grow Yams & Eddas sufficient for all your Negroes’’-about 800-in Antigua.2s This suggestion was apparently put into effect, for in 1810 Barbuda sent 56,000 pounds of yams to Antigua, and in 1817 sent 60,000 pounds, far ex- ceeding annual exports of 400 t o 500 bushels of corn.26 Nonetheless, Codring- ton’s income from Barbuda a t this time still derived largely from the “Sale of Oxen & Sheep with which the Antigua Market is supplied, and occasionally H. Majesty’s Navy. We also raise Mules for the use of the neighbouring Islands, sell Fish, and in short make money any way we In 1834 he again noted that “the chief Profit has arisen from raising Provisions for the neighbouring Isles, and supplying them with working Cattle which run wild over the Island.”28 None of the schemes for Barbudan crop-raising o n a scale large enough t o provision all the Codrington Antiguan estates came to fruition. Most of the enclosed area-about 1,500 acres-was instead devoted t o pasturage. Hunting and animal husbandry always took precedence over food crops. Back in 1790, Bethell Codrington recommended “clearing the ground and making enclosures” for increasing numbers of domestic oxen, cows, horses, mules, jackasses, and sheep, “as it is my opinion, that all these Islands should (and would gladly) be supplied from Barbuda with all these articles.”29 But little land was in fact cleared after 1790, and the stock continued for the most part t o roam wild, suffering periodic depletions through drought and over-hunting. Meanwhile the revenue from Barbuda peaked after the turn of the century and then dwindled as the slave population grew. The average annual profit rose from E5,OOO in the 1790s t o nearly E7.000 between 1804 and 1816, thanks t o war-induced food prices, but by 1820 the net income from Barbuda was down t o &2,000 and by 1826 i t had dwindled t o practically nothing, o r so Codrington ~ ~ many absentee proprietors, he was of course handicapped ~ o m p l a i n e d .Like by being thousands of miles from the local scene, where each of his Barbudan and Antiguan agents in turn inveighed a t length against the stupidity or knavery of his predecessor, whose mismanagement was held responsible for the sorry state of affairs. The Barbudans who engaged in these more o r less economic activities had a mode of life quite unlike that of most West Indian slaves. “For the slaves,” Douglas Hall concludes, “Barbuda was a relatively happy place. They were engaged, largely, in pastoral and hunting occupations o r as skilled workers in wood and leather. Many became expert sailors and fishermen. Above all, they were not subject t o the tyranny of the cane-fields.”31 A list of Barbudan slaves from 1791 included 14 sailors and two o r three each of hunters, shipwrights, wheelwrights, rope and sail makers, tanners, collar and saddle makers, shoe-  Lowenthal & Clarke: Myth of Barbudan Slave-Breeding 515 makers, seine netters, smiths, coopers, masons, and cattle keepers; only 17 men and 43 women were described as “field Negroes.”3* Barbudan slaves enjoyed an abundance of provisions from their large garden plots, from hunting game in the forests, and from fishing. Moreover, they lived virtually on their own, little supervised by the solitary (and often absent) Codrington manager and one or t w o overseers. Independent and largely self- sufficient, the Barbudan community was all the the more close-knit owing t o its demographic isolation: n o Africans were brought into the island after the mid- eighteenth century,33 and the Creole inhabitants became essentially one con- sanguineous community. Correspondence between the proprietors and their agents and accounts by visitors confirm these impressions of Barbudan life for the half century before emancipation. The Codringtons themselves continually compared the condition and appearance of their Barbudan slaves favorably with those elsewhere. “Nothing struck me more upon my first going t o Barbuda,” Bethel1 Codrington wrote his uncle in 1790, “than the great difference between the Embonpoint of the Negroes there and those anywhere in Antigua: the former look better fed, stronger, and more healthy.”” A generation later, Bethel1 Codrington recalled his sojourn with the Barbuda Negroes, assuring the Secretary of State for the Colonies that “I can speak to their Comforts and their Happiness from my own Observations o n the Spot, where I have lived one of three white Men with 250 or 260 Negroes.”35 The passage of time left this ambience long undimmed. “There are but two white men with myself o n the Island,” wrote Codrington’s manager, John James, in 1824, and I frequently leave my Wife & Daughters there without a fastening t o the House . . . . The greater part of the Negroes on Barbuda would lay down their . . lives to serve me. . We haul the seine as often as they like; some times 3 or 4 days together when fish are plenty. They have occasionally wild hog and goat meat. Many o f them have their own Nets, and scarcely does one o f your Vessels go to Antigua without a quantity of Fowls, and salt Fish to sell, and in good season an immense quantity of Potatoes [the slaves’ own produce]. Many o f them have 10 to 1 1 Acres of land in cultivation the produce of wch of course is their own Property.% Another Codrington agent, R. Jarritt, noted five years later that “besides their Grounds they have hundreds of Hogs and Goats, . . . plenty of Turkeys, fowls, & Guineabirds. They are the strongest Halest people you ever saw.”37 Small wonder that Codrington, in England, could confidently claim in 1826 that his Barbudan slaves were “more happy, better fed & clothed, & in all respects better off than the generality of Peasants even in this land of liberty.”38 One visitor t o the island judged that the Barbudan slaves “in reality have little more of servitude in their condition than the name.”39 Formal freedom found them still “a fine and noble Race,” asserted an English agent of Codrington’s who visited Barbuda in 1837; “a large number of the Men are tall, upright, Athletic and well proportioned. The Women are very many of them the finest figures I ever saw-bating their Colour I should call them perfectly magnificent !”40 A most revealing picture of Barbudan life o n the eve of emancipation emerges from an account of a dispute between the slaves and the local manager, John Winter. It was customary, the slaves said, “that the people should feed themselves, when their grounds produced sufficient Potatoes for the purpose and when this 516 Annals New York Academy of Sciences was not the case, they o f course received an allowance of food from the Stores of their Master," which had been withheld on this occasion. They further complained, that they were not permitted to fish or sell Crabs or Firewood as formerly they were allowed to do, and that they had not obtained this Year their Clothing, which they were accustomed to receive in the month of February. MI. Winter assigned as his reason for not allowing them to Fish and sell Crabs & Firewood, that when they were permitted to engage themselves in these occupations they totally neglected the more important business of cultivating their grounds. . . . They also complained that their allowance of Fresh Meat and Fish was latterly much curtailed and very irregularly afforded, to which MI. Winter replied that there were persons constantly engaged in hunting for them and that they received venison and fuh whenever it was practicable to take it. It was further represented by them that they were deprived of the use of Carts, to carry Materials, and also of lime necessary for the repairing and building of their houses. MI.Winter alleged that many of them desired to have more houses than was requisite and that others had refused to build stone houses, or repair and occupy those which were already built, [instead of] their ordinary wattled houses.'I This is an extraordinary picture of West Indian slavery. Here is a well-housed, generally well cared-for population, with an abundance of provision grounds, grain and root crops, fresh fish and venison, and with little labor beyond private enterprise, the sale of foodstuffs and firewood, fish and livestock. While slaves elsewhere sought respite from plantation labor in order t o have time t o work o n their garden plots, Barbudan slaves often neglected their much more extensive provision grounds in order t o catch fish and crabs and gather firewood for sale; and they demanded additional food supplies from their master as a consequence of this entrepreneurial choice. Barbuda was not, however, wholly unique. Michael Craton has traced parallel slave circumstances o n a cotton plantation in the Bahamian island of Great Exuma, owned by Lord Rolle. Here too, dry climate and thin soils precluded sugar cane, and a couple of hundred slaves enjoyed many of the same conditions as the Barbudans: an abundance of protein from fish and livestock, freedom from rigorous plantation discipline, little supervision o r interference by whites, ~ ~ as we note entrepreneurial encouragement, and virtual s e l f - s ~ f f i c i e n c y .And below, these circumstances in Exuma had demographic consequences similar t o those in Barbuda. Evidence from Union Island in the Grenadines likewise suggests that slave life in many such tiny islets, only tangentially connected with the society of the great estates, was generally more benign than most West Indian plantation condi- t i o n ~ ! ~ Craton attributes this t o the spillover of slaves from the sugar-plantation islands, for which the African slave trade had been instituted, i n t o environ- mentally marginal localities. Where slaves worked o n large plantations their lives were Hobbesian-nasty, brutish, and short; where slaves engaged in other activities, they might be almost as good as free.44 POPULATION GROWTH Under these generally thriving circumstances, Barbuda's slaves steadily in- creased in number. From little more than 100 in the early eighteenth century, the slave population grew to 200 by mid-century, 300 by the end of the eighteenth century, 400 by 1820, and 500 in the early 183Os,just before eman-  Lowenthal & Clarke: Myth of Barbudan Slave-Breeding 517 cipation.* Codrington agents’ censuses and estimates u p t o 1804 and slave registra- tion records from 181 7 t o 1832 give the following population figures: Year_ _ Population Year - Population 1715 1 1 8 (93Negroes) 1817 392 1756 190 ~~ 1821 41 1 1774 287 1824 423 1783 250 1790 246 1 828 466 1 ao4 314 1832 492 Most of the growth occurred during the last four decades of slavery, when Barbuda’s population virtually doubled. The extraordinary increase of this period contrasts sharply with the stability, even the slight decline, of the latter part of the eighteenth century. Between 1774 and 1790 Barbuda in fact lost almost 15 percent of its population. Seeking t o “account the reason of [the] Negroes here not Increasing more than they do,” manager Dennis Reynolds observed in 1786 that “Such an extensive Island as this is, where there is so much work t o be done in diff‘t parts, must be very laborous t o a small Gang of Negroes, such as I have here now. . . . [The slaves1 work very hard, which they say themselves is the reason they don’t Breed.”45 Demographic imbalance and disease also accounted for the shortage of births. “I fancy the want of Men is partly the reason the Women d o not breed more than they d o , for the Number of Men now here bears no proportion t o that of the Women.” But the main cause of the drop in natality, Reynolds finally declared, “must have been principally from the Effects of the Venereal, as the Negroes both here and as I am told in Antigua make a practice of hiding that disorder for years together, & the consequence is plain-a decrease in Number.”& To stem the decrease, Reynolds recommended the acquisition of new slaves. “The breed being constantly the same for 40 years back, may Require some Variation t o be introduced, and the only method that occurs t o me is the pur- chasing 15 or more Negro Men about 20 years old & from a good part of Guinea, those would soon be inured t o this place & would in a few years be a great addition t o the Gang, & become usefull” in those laborious tasks now performed by Barbudan women but which, Reynolds averred, “Men would d o much better.” Restocking with young girls t o o might soon become essential “to pre- vent as it were a break in the increase in future, which may otherwise with great probability be the The desirability of a larger Barbudan population as a source of labor for t h e Antiguan estates was frequently voiced by the Codringtons and their agents in the 1780s and 1790s. The abundance of provisions in Barbuda and the general good health of its inhabitants, once venereal disease had run its course, augured well for this prospect. “Barbuda wd: be an advantage by the Increase of Negroes,” envisaged Sir William Codrington in 1782, “for when the Work is easy and the food better than o n the other Islands, I see not the Obstacle t o their great Multiplication as is the common course of Nature in Africa.”48 In Barbuda *When slavery ended unemployment and drought and managerial coercion forced many Barbudans to emigrate. But the population increased again to 629 in 1861 and 813 in 187 1. Following another decline in the late nineteenth century, the population neared 1,000 by 1946 and in 1974 stood at 1.150. 518 Annals New York Academy of Sciences “children thriv[el better than here,” noted Bethell Codrington from Antigua in 1790, “who might annually be drafted when of a proper age & strength into your different Regiments here.”49 The purchase of young slaves from Africa was t o be the initial source of this intended increase. “If I bought Negroes,” Bethell Codrington advised his uncle, “I would buy them at the age of 1 0 o r 12 and send them t o Barbuda; they would a t that age come cheap, would live better and a t little expence there, and I doubt not would d o well.”so One such purchase could suffice: “Barbuda might be a Nursery for Negroes,” Codrington reiterated in another letter; “with attention it is my opinion that [we] should never have occasion t o purchase them.”s’ No slaves were imported into Barbuda, however, during the ensuing years. And by 1807, when Britain abolished the slave trade, it had already become clear that imports were not required t o make Barbuda a “nursery for Negroes.” The spectacular growth of the Barbudan population from 1790 t o 1832 was entirely the result of natural increase. Noting the gulf between births (63) and deaths (22) in one four-year period (1827-1831), manager Winter wrote Bethell Codrington: “I don’t think there is any village in England whose increase b y birth equals that of your Barbuda Negroes and whose deaths so few.”52 He offered an illuminating explanation: The reason why your slaves here increase more than almost any other Island is easily accounted for. They all Live in one Village immediately around my dwelling. They are obliged all to be at home at nights, nodrinking, singing, or dancing allowed-only during the Xtmas Holidays. The Women are nearly three to two Men, the latter as soon as they arrive at the stage of Maturity nearly all get Married, the Women being in great Measure prevented from prostituting them- selves and injuring their Constitutions by bad practices, bring forth strong healthy athletic children, which are taken every care of. . . . We do not lose one infant in twenty births.a In Jamaica, by contrast, one-quarter t o one-half of all babies died within nine days of birth.% Throughout the British Caribbean, infant mortality continued t o take one out of every five births to the end of the nineteenth century.55 Moreover, the old in Barbuda were as healthy as the young. “There is one man who has seventy children and grand children,” wrote Winter with some envy, “and who is more healthy than I am and takes a great deal of exercise, h e is reputed t o be ninety years old.”56 The absence of a plantation regime with its arduous field tasks, the infrequency of corporal punishment, and the availability of plentiful food supplies likewise contributed t o an environment that favored good health. What was most remarkable about Barbuda, in fact, was not so much its high birth rate as its low mortality. The dynamics of Barbuda’s slave population in the two decades before eman- cipation may be gleaned from the registration records?’ Between 181 7 and 1832 the birth rate varied between 26 and 43 per 1,000, the death rate stood around 1 0 per 1,000, and the rate of natural increase ranged between 1 6 and 34 per 1,000. By comparison with other West Indian slave populations these figures are truly astounding. Except for Barbados, slave deaths in the larger territories exceeded slave births, with annual rates of natural decrease ranging from 5 per thousand in Jamaica t o 11 per thousand in British G ~ i a n a . ~The * slave death rate in Jamaica was three times that in Barbuda, where mortality had reached a low level only matched today in the world’s most economically advanced countries. But birth and death rates approximating Barbuda’s were recorded in Great Exuma, again owing t o “a fortunate combination of demographic, family,  Lowenthal & Clarke: Myth of Barbudan Slave-Breeding 519 employment, and locational characteristic^,"^^ while Shepherd similarly attri- buted the “very great increase” of Union Island’s slaves t o light work on the cot- ton estates, an abundance of fish, and compulsory sobriety.60 Births would have doubled the Barbudan population every t w o decades, had not some slaves been removed from the island. The ratio of children under five years of age t o women of reproductive age rose t o 90 per 100 during the 1820s. Thanks t o the high rate of natural increase, the age structure of Barbuda’s slaves had assumed a pyramidal form by 1817 (FIGURE 1). During the 1820s. the base of the population pyramid broadened still further. In 1817, 39 percent of the slaves were under 1 5 years of age; by 1832 the percentage had risen t o 46. Barbuda’s proprietors viewed this phenomenal increase in population with mingled pride and alarm, their hopes for using Barbuda as a source of labor in Antigua alternating with their fears that the increase might beggar them. In t h e 178Os, as we have noted, they unreservedly favored growth. But by the 1800s, when Barbudans had started t o increase rapidly, the Codringtons began t o realize that population growth was at best a mixed blessing. “There are a vast number of Children which by & by will make the gangvery strong,”Codrington’s Barbudan overseer, John James, wrote in 1810. But “at present the working Negroes bear no proportion t o the Number on the Island.”6* The Codringtons were none t o o pleased by t h e reported Barbudan increase. “We have not been able t o devise any means of beneficially employing more than about 250 Negroes, wch was the number on the Island about 20Yearsag0,” wrote Bethel1 Codrington in 1817; “and in fact the Income from that Island has not increased since that Period. . . . From t h e Increase of the Negroes (now more than 360) they [are] become a Burthen t o me, as there [are] n o means of employing them.”62 An optimistic prescription for slave transfers from Barbuda t o Antigua was given t o John Oliver, Codrington’s Antiguan manager, who assumed that only the young slaves would be brought over. “On your Antigua property . . . they will be useful, and I hope profitably employed for your advantage-whereas in Barbuda they are idle, useless, and unprofitable.” Alternatively, Codrington might “purchase another [Antiguan] Estate without Negroes, o r one much under handed and put them on it, or . . . sell them.”63 T o send slaves from Barbuda t o Antigua, as his agents recommended, Cod- rington sought exemption from a curb on slave traffic in the pending Slave Registration Act. In a letter to the Secretary of State for the Colonies, Codring- ton noted that the legislation aimed “to promote . . . an increase of Negroes; and I trust that where such an Increase has occurred [as in Barbuda, thanks t o ] the good Treatment of those Negroes, and the happy State in which they live,” he looked “with Confidence t o . . . a Clause in m y favor . . . which will not place in opposition t o each other . . . the Interest and the Humanity of the proprietor.”@ Codrington got his exemption. The Antiguan legislature, acting even before Codrington petitioned the Colonial Office, specifically excluded Barbuda from some aspects of its slave registry act. “Barbuda has been taken care of, as far as it was possible t o do,” reported James; “Negroes may a t all times be brought from that Island t o this [Antigua], & on particular occasions such as Wrecks happening, or a Gale of wind doing any damage Tradesmen are permitted t o g o there provided a security is given for their again returning t o this I ~ l a n d . ” ~ ’ Codrington continued t o request and t o receive special exemption from legislation restricting the movements of slaves. “I am happy t o tell you that you are quite safe,” Lord Bathurst wrote him in 1824, “as i t is specifically  u l h, 0 BARBUDA :AGE AND SEX STRUCTURE OF THE SLAVE POPULATION 4 4 0 W 40 60 4 FEMALES MALES FEMALES MALES FEMALES MALES 1817 1821 1824 4 FEMALES AS PERCENTAGE AS PERCENTAGE 1832 OF TOTAL POPULATION OF I O T U POPULATION 1828 tzz 1817 =-A832 FIGURE 1. Barbuda: age and sex structure of the slave population.  Lowenthal & Clarke: Myth of Barbudan Slave-Breeding 521 provided that the removal of Slaves from one Island t o another, both under the same Government, shall not be prohibited. . . . I had your case specifically in mind when I took care that the proviso should be inserted.”66 The population problem nevertheless remained unresolved; Barbudans con- tinued to multiply beyond needs for employment. “The rapid increase on that Island is very great,” wrote John James in 1826; “at giving o u t the Xtmas allowance there were one hundred and ten Children [and] we have many more since.”67 Codrington grumbled that he could n o t afford t o go o n feeding the Negroes for n o return.68 In 1829 Codrington again complained that Barbuda “has hitherto made but a very inadequate return for the number of Negroes upon it”; whereas “Barbuda used to be considered a Nursery for Negroes . . . now I can neither sell nor get them t o Antigua where I am rather ~ n d e r h a n d e d . ” And ~ ~ his manager, Jarritt, agreed that if the Antigua estates had been supplied with Barbudans “we should not be now overstocked with so many hungry mouths t o feed. 1 5 0 Negroes is full as many as the Island requires, and it would be ten times as productive with that number, as it is now with 470. You would be a great gainer in getting rid of 300 Negroes from there, even if you was t o give them away, they are only a n expence.”m Two years later Jarritt contemplated bringing 60 Barbudans over t o a newly acquired Codrington estate in Antigua,71 but nothing came of this scheme; the number of transfers remained small. At this time, in 183 1, Barbuda manager John Winter noted that Our number is above five hundred, their increase is almost incredible, we have one hundred and four young children born since my first residing in Barbuda, say January 1827 andall healthy,If we continue to Increase so rappid it is evident you will be obliged to remove some of them, as the Island is so very subject to dry weather.n On the eve of emancipation he reiterated Jarritt’s point with new figures: “Were the Negroes 3 5 0 instead of 500 they could produce 1 0 times what they d o now.” As matters stood, “210 young Negroes [were] not able t o d o [anything] towards supporting themselves,” and of the rest, only 118 were field hands.n Well then, one may ask, what prevented Codrington from exercising his privilege t o send Barbudans t o Antigua or elsewhere? The answer is that he did export them, but only on a restricted scale, for brief periods of time, and with much difficulty. And labor transfers ultimately proved so impracticable that they were virtually abandoned, notwithstanding all Codrington’s efforts t o legit- imize them. REMOVAL OF SLAVES The first recorded slave transfer from Barbuda t o Antigua, in 1779, was intended less to supply labor than to resolve a disciplinary problem. “It was very proper to transport some desperate Negroes . . . from Barbuda,” wrote Richard Oliver, “as their example might be fatal there.”74 He later added that “the threat of such removal will be the best means of punishment for those who behave i11.”75 Two Barbudans caught killing sheep were sold off not long after- wards in another Leeward Island “in hopes that [the other Barbudans] will drop their Villany for fear of the like.”” But limited removals for Antiguan plantation labor were already customary. A 1780 letter refers to 12 young Barbudans brought over t o the estate Betty’s Hope, and t o plans for bringing 522 Annals New York Academy of Sciences more.77 Following a first draft of “18 little Negroes,” wrote Codrington’s Antigua manager, Richard Clarke, in 1781, I have now made that number up to 30, which are of prodigious use on your [Antiguan] plantations; should a heavy Crop come, there is no alternative but bringing over Carters, and other negroes for different purposes-leaving [on Barbuda] only such as may be necessary for the protection, and safety of the Island; such is the weak state of your [Antiguan] plantations, that they would require 100 [more] Negroes to work them properly and effectively.% Barbuda could supply only a few of these needed hands, however. “Mr. Clarke thinks but a few more negroes can be draughted from thence, the taking of many more” would d o an “injury to Barbuda,” Oliver noted.79 And a few years later Barbuda’s next manager, Dennis Reynolds, worried that “the No. of small Girls carried from hence by Mr. Clarke” might jeopardize the popula- tion’s reproductive potential.@’ Slaves in the numbers the Antiguan estates needed were never sent from Barbuda. An 1806 population list for Barbuda notes four slaves as “removed to Antigua.”81 “A number of the young Negroes” who had been “draughted off to your [Antiguan] Estates . . . some years since,” noted James in 1810, had later returned to Barbuda; the Antiguan estate manager again “demanded them with their Children, & on the 28th of last Month they were sent over amounting in all to 24.”82 In 1817 Codrington had arranged t o send more Barbudans to Antigua, but his Barbuda manager, John James, warned that able-bodied men were already in short supply for salvage operations there: “As many have within the last year or two been sent from this [Barbuda] to some of the Southern Colonies . . . at present it is with difficulty in case of a Wreck that I can properly Man our Boats.” Only the young could be spared, “nor will the Negroes if sent off young feel the change so much as older ones.”83 Many if not most labor transfers to Antigua were purely temporary. “I have got all the Tradesmen such as Masons and Carpenters to come with me to assist in their trades,” James reported t o Codrington in 1826, “but with a promise that they may return when the Work is done, on these conditions they will at any time come over, and I trust that some of the young People . will occasionally do the same. . . I have now thirteen men with me, five others have promised t o come over to raise stones.”&q The slave registers from 1817 t o 1832 confirm the movement of small numbers of young Barbudans to Antigua, and in some cases their return a few years later. The seven Barbudans sent to Codrington’s Windward Estates in Antigua between 1817 and 1821 comprised two field men of 19, three youths in the second gang aged 18, 16 and 16, one twelve-year-old from the grass gang, and a 24-year-old sailor. The 1824 register lists 15 Barbudans sent to the Windward Estates and 16 more t o Clare Hall, another of Codrington’s Antigua properties; of the 31, 8 were females. Their ages, as given in the previous (1 821) register, ranged from 48 to 7, but only three were older than 30 and three others-small children with their mothers-younger than 1 1; most were between 18 and 26. By 1828, 1 1 of the 16 sent to Clare Hall had come home to Barbuda. Only one Barbudan, 49- year-old John Ceasar, went to Antigua between 1824 and 1828, but the 1832 slave register lists 13 sent to the Windward Estates, all males but one-a man of 46, six in their twenties, one of 15, and five children.85f Altogether, out-migra- TLater in 1832, 19 more Barbudans were sent to Antigua as punishment for insubordina- tion.%  Lowenthal & Clarke: Myth of Barbudan Slave-Breeding 523 tion for plantation labor during the slave registration period removed 34 young men and 7 young women from Barbuda. These figures for temporary migration are, of course, minimal, since additional slaves may have been moved and returned within the three- o r four-year regis- tration periods. And because the slave-registration periods are shorter than t h e five-year age groupings, departures and returns cannot be precisely aligned with the population pyramids. But the depletion of certain age cohorts in these pyramids clearly shows the effects of slave removals before and after 181 7. For example, the 1817 pyramid indicates a dearth of men aged 20 t o 30 and of women 30 t o 35. Shortages due t o previous labor transfers show u p in older age groups in succeeding population pyramids; thus the paucity of 35 t o 50 year olds in the 1832 diagram reflects departures 15 t o 20 years before. The practice of drafting labor did affect the age and sex structure of the Barbudan population, and the dependency ratio-the proportion of those under 15 and over 65 t o the rest-rose from 87.5 per hundred in 1817 t o 93.7 in 1832. But net emigration a t n o time approached the island’s natural increase. Between 1817 and 1821, when 7 were sent away, births exceeded deaths by 26; from 1821 t o 1824, when 31 were sent off, the natural increase was 43; from 1824 t o 1828, when one left but 11 returned from Antigua, the natural increase was 35; and from 1828 t o 1832, when 13 slaves were sent out from Barbuda, the natural increase was 40. In the 15-year span from 1817 t o 1832, the excess of births over deaths in the island was 144, but only 52 Barbudans (including young children) were sent t o Antigua, of whom a t least 1 1 came home again during that period; others probably returned a t a later date. The number of Barbudans in Antigua during the later decades of slavery, when excess Barbudan numbers so disturbed the Codringtons, seems at n o one time t o have exceeded about 30, less than 10 percent of Barbuda’s p o p ~ l a t i o n . ~ ’ Why was this labor traffic so restricted? The answer is perfectly clear: Barbudans generally refused t o leave Barbuda. Slaves though they were, they adamantly rejected emigration to the Antiguan plantations. When the Codringtons or their agents sought to coerce them, the results were catastrophic. “I have lately had an opportunity of seeing with what reluctance the Negroes would leave Barbuda,” James wrote Codrington in 181 0. Of those previously sent t o Antigua, “many of them died, some Girls were sent back, not being able t o stand the work in Antigua, since which they have lived in Barbuda.” A month before, 24 more Barbudans had been sent over, and “I am sorry t o find that the best of them, a young Man about 22 years old, is already dead; they left the Island with the greatest reluctance.”88 Barbudans in Antigua languished owing not only t o unaccustomed plantation work but also t o other profound differences in environment and culture, as Cod- rington’s Antiguan manager, Jarritt, explained in 183 1: Barbud2 Negroes are said not t o answer in this island; and the reason is obvious, on Barbuda they ramble through the woods all hours of the night, taking any . thing that comes in their way, either Deer, Sheep, or Cattle, as required . . . They are used to live much o n fresh meat, which they d o not get here. . . . When here they cannot stop in their houses at night, but are foraging at all hours, and the Air is very different to Barbuda, being damp & chilly, they often take violent colds, and fall into dropsy. Jarritt could think of only one Codrington property o n Antigua that might suit Barbudans, an estate called Rooms, “because i t is a dry airey situation, and close to the Sea, where they will get shell fish & c . ” ~ ~ 5 24 Annals New York Academy of Sciences So strong was the Barbudan distaste for Antigua that they went over only under extreme duress. Soon afterwards, Codrington sought to exploit the slaves’ unwillingness to quit Barbuda as evidence of his own humanity. In 1817, as we have seen, he petitioned the Colonial Office t o exempt Barbuda from a provision of the Slave Registration Act that, he supposed, might make transfers more difficult, if not illegal. He had just arranged, he explained, that as many as were willing should be sent to Antigua; But as this would probably be deemed a hardship, we determined to try a plan of sending them over in Turns to take off the Sugar Crop, and bring them back to Barbuda. Your Lordship will see that by the bill now before you my Negroes wd: be liable to Seizure in consequence of my adopting any plan of this kind ... The Transpor- tation o f . . . a part of them to Antigua wd: for many years past have added largely to my Income; Even now that from their Increase they are becoming an Expence to me, 1 would not do so against their Inclination; But fancying that their own Inclinations might unite with my Interest in occasionally sending them from . one Island to the other, I humbly intreat that. . I may be permitted to do so.% In fact, Codrington made only sparing use of his exemption, for persuasion often met with obdurate resistance on the part of the slaves. In 1826 James and Osborne came to Barbuda “with the Hope of inducing some of the Negroes to come to your [Antiguan] Estates”; they succeeded in mustering them and got “Nearly through the Women when they all declared they would not leave the Island unless compelled by force.”91 “NO promises that either Mr. James or myself could make them, had the least effect,” added Osbome; “even binding ourselves to allow them to go over once every year was treated with contempt.”92 As noted above, even tradesmen and artisans were persuaded to visit Antigua only by a guarantee of speedy repatriation. Ownership made no difference; “whether they belong to me or are sold, or become the King’s,’’ Codrington concluded, “in neither case, it seems, will Man, Woman or Child leave Barbuda.”93 Physical compulsion was by then out of the question. “They acknowledge n o Master, and believe the Island belongs t o themselves,” Codrington’s man Jarritt complained in 1829. “Any Manager living there and using Coercive Means to bring them to Subjection, I have no doubt would lose his life.”w When in 1832 manager John Winter cited an obstreperous laborer for “mutiny,” the man remained at large until Winter brought over 12 soldiers from Antigua, because no Barbudan slave would help him to arrest him.95 This is quite a different picture from the one James had painted of Negroes who “would lay down their lives to serve me,”% but then James was less assiduous than Jarritt or Winter in his efforts to remove Barbudans to Antigua. Codrington had finally t o confess his own impotence to the Colonial Office. Alluding in 1830 to the potential benefits of shipping slaves to Antigua, he acknowledged, however, that “no persuasion will induce any of them to leave Barbuda, and it is evident that against such Numbers Sir B[ethell] C[odrington] has n o power of C o m p u l ~ i o n . ” ~ ~ The imminence of emancipation made the prospect of sugar plantation labor in Antigua no more palatable to the Barbudans. In March 1834 Jarritt complained that John Winter, resident manager in Barbuda, had sent no Negroes to Antigua “when I wanted them, altho there was nothing t o prevent him, he had the order from the Governor.”98 But the inquiry into Winter’s altercation with the slaves shows how much there was to prevent him. “Mr. Winter admitted that he did ask some of them to labor on their Master’s Estates in Antigua, where he could obtain hire for them-offering that a portion of them should be sent at a  Lowenthal & Clarke: Myth of Barbudan Slave-Breeding 525 time and be relieved, and return a t intervals.” Winter had gone so far as t o with- hold food from the slaves, telling them that if they would go to Antigua, and work there on their master’s property, he would send them their allowance, which they declined to do, and remained for six weeks receiving no provisions from the stores, and during this time without a sufficient quantity of food.* No wonder that Jarritt in Antigua feared that “if they should come [here] they will be unmanageable. . . more trouble and plague than profit.”lm Time and again Jarritt complained of Barbudan misdeeds in Antigua. “Most all the Negroes on this estate [Betty’s Hope] that come from Barbuda, are sheep stealers.”101 “The stealing of Poultry among them is very common,” he remarked two years later, and “they generally kill a sheep . . . once in three Weeks, keeping my flock very low.” The Barbudan lust for meat sometimes led t o extremes: Sometime back 1 had a Calf killed, (the only one I have lost) as I thought by one of the Cows. I had it buried; & they [the Barbudans] dug it up, altho putrid & eat it. I afterwards found out they had killed it, for that purpose. Nonetheless Jarritt continued t o receive Barbudan miscreants. “I am now about getting over from Barbuda a Man & his Wife and five Children that have been detected four different times in the night, in the woods with a gun. Mr. Winter wants t o get rid of them, as notoriously bad.”lm Conflicting reports characterized Barbudans now as loyal and happy, now as insubordinate and malcontent. As emancipation neared, managers’ tales of Barbudan misbehavior-“a bad lot,” Jarritt termed them, “insolent, ungovern- able, & almost outlawed”103 -prompted Bethel1 Codrington t o warn the Colonial Office that unless the government took matters firmly in hand little Barbuda might become “another St. Doming0 in the very heart of all the other Colonies.”104 He could not think “what is t o prevent their taking possession of the Island should they be so inclined.”’05 Like Haiti in 1790, so Barbuda in 1834 was a land ruled in effect by its black inhabitants, though in the Bar- budan case n o revolution had been needed t o bring this about. By contrast with this baleful warning, Codrington’s London merchant, visiting the island three years later, found the Barbudans “a simple minded, Warm Hearted Race” who had been sadly mis-managed, and scandalously misrepresented! I had been impress’d with a notion that 1 should find them ill behaved-disorderly-and grossly ignor- ant. I am Happy in being able to pronounce them to be the reverse of all this! They Love their Master and will Die for him-they have never known any other Master, and he has never Sold them like Slaves! lo6 Codrington himself frequently praised the Barbudans and continued t o make a virtue of respecting their steadfast attachment t o the island. Asking extra com- pensation for these slaves at the time of emancipation, he claimed that their fond devotion t o Barbuda enhanced their value. . The Negroes now on the Island, . . are much advanced in intelligence and social culture beyond the other negro inhabitants of the Charibbees, and are indeed as tine a race of Men as can exist. . . . They are a superior class, and a finer Body of People than are to be found in any other Island. Moreover they are Creoles, and as one united family so attached to Barbuda that force alone or extreme drought which may stop the spontaneous growth of Provisions, and de- stroy the Cattle, can alone take them from that island!lW 526 Annals New York Academy of Sciences In his slaves’ own interests, Codrington explained, he had foregone the profits he would have made by transporting them elsewhere. No mention, now, was made of his recently confessed inability to compel them to depart. Rather, if Bethell Codrington has not, of late years, transported negroes from Barbuda to his other es- tates it had been solely on account of their excessive attachment to their native soil, and to the mode of treatment adopted by your Memorialist and his ancestors to them and theirs-an attachment so strong as to make it painful for your Mem- orialist to use the means which would be necessary for their removal.Ia These laudable sentiments were of recent vintage, however, and reflected Codrington’s impotence rather than his intentions. The Codringtons had pre- viously regarded the close-knit nature of the Barbudan community more as an impediment than a virtue. “A part of the ill conduct of the Barbuda negroes must be owing t o long family connections,” wrote Bethell Codrington’s future brother-in-law from Antigua in 1792. “Their families should be broke, by sending the young occasionally here.”lW Nor d o Bethell Codrington’s later expressions of concern square with the idea, never consummated, of selling off 300 Barbudan slaves for &50 each,llo or of getting Britain t o buy Barbuda back, “either with the Negroes o r not.”lll Even Bethell Codrington was now beginning t o view the island as a liability, though the family’s lease, renewed again in 1850, was retained until 1870. At the time of emancipation, however, the pressure of population o n re- sources, the withdrawal of Codrington capital, and perennial mismanagement by island agents were woefully affecting Barbuda. Codrington’s London mer- chant, Liggins, visiting the island in 1837, expressed shock a t the “wretched state of everything constituting your property here . . . A large outlay will be absolutely necessary and altogether unavoidable in the great work of restoration.” The buildings were ruinous; transport carts were broken down; boats were all in disrepair; “inattention and neglect is manifested t o me at every turn I take.” It was, Liggins concluded, “a Scene of Ruin and Desolation, that is grievous t o behold and . . . mortifying & painful t o describe.””* More than a quarter of Barbuda’s former slaves were said t o “have retired into voluntary exile or have been banished, some of the latter arbitrarily and ~ a p r i c i o u s l y . ” But ~ ~ ~ those Barbudans who remained, poverty and coercion notwithstanding, clung t o their island as closely as ever. Liggins considered them “deeply imbued with all the ardent feelings of clan-ship, and Feudal attachment. They will not leave the Land of their Birth for any Rate of Pay that can be offer’d t o them.”114 A glowing tribute t o Barbudan qualities came from the new manager, John Osborne. Winter, according t o Osborne, intended to have got rid of the whole Barbudan population and to have supplied this place with a limited number of emigrants and their families from Antigua. This experiment . . . must have been . .. of incalculable detriment if not harm to your interests. None but Barbuda people can successfully work this Island. Their acknowledged skill in capturing wild animals, their intrepidity as Wreckers, their laborious habits could never be supplied by Antigua pe0ple.1~5 It is ironical that, having failed t o send Barbudans to Antigua in large numbers while they were slaves, Codrington’s agents succeeded temporarily in doing so after emancipation. During slavery, when Codrington was accountable for his slaves’ necessities, Barbudans resisted threats of deportation with virtual impunity, f o r even if there was n o work for them, their food, shelter, and clothing were a t least in part secured. After slavery ended, by contrast, t h e freed Barbudans  Lowenthal & Clarke: Myth of Barbudan Slave-Breeding 521 depended entirely on Codrington’s willingness t o employ them, failing which they risked being charged as trespassers on his property. Codrington’s manager was not slow t o take advantage of the new order: Winter offered jobs only t o the “most industrious & moral heads of Families,” and those without work had little recourse but to quit Barbuda, as about one hundred did between 1835 and 1 837.116 The Codringtons long continued also t o exile Barbudans as a punishment for “misdemeanors.” This was not strictly legal: “you cannot send a man off the Is- land unless he is guilty of some act for which he can be pull’d up,” the Antiguan Solicitor General advised William Codrington in 1860, but once done it was a fait accompli, for “you can prevent his return to the Island when he is once off.”l17 On the eve of emancipation Christopher Bethel1 Codrington had warned that Barbuda’s Negroes, “now run mad with the idea of freeing themselves from that which was slavery but in name, [would] soon find out . . . that their real slavery began with the 1st of Aug. 1834.”118 This forewarning of retrogression from “freedom” t o “slavery” was a planter commonplace of the time. But in Barbuda, given Codrington’s control of all resources and his agents’ coercive tactics, the prediction briefly became a truly self-fulfilling prophecy. THE MYTH OF SLAVE-BREEDING RECONSIDERED The rapid increase of Barbuda’s population after 1790, and the removal of some slaves t o work o n Codrington estates in Antigua, might seem like circum- stantial evidence of slave-breeding. However, n o excess of females in Barbuda could have served as a basis for stud farming,llg n o rewards were given to out- standingly fecund mothers, as was done in Jamaica, and no young children were sent t o be reared in Barbuda. The only references t o “breeding” are in Codring- ton managers’ letters discussing the effect of venereal disease o n slave reproduc- tion in the 1780s. At that time the Codringtons were eager t o reverse the decline in Barbuda’s population; William Codrington anticipated “great Multiplication as is the common course of Nature in Africa” and Bethel1 Codrington foresaw Bar- buda’s potential as a “fine Nursery for Negroes.”120 But the sustained increase that began shortly thereafter was not the consequence of any Codrington pro- gram; it originated solely in local conditions that encouraged a high birth rate, few infant deaths, and extraordinary longevity among the whole slave commun- ity. The growth of Barbuda’spopulation during the last decades of slavery, striking as it was, was not entirely unique in the West Indies during this period. British abolition of the African slave trade in 1807 constrained some planters through- out the archipelago t o conserve slaves and to promote their welfare as few of them had had t o d o before. This led gradually t o some improvement in the con- ditions of slave life. Bennett suggests that in some places the process began even earlier: Sooner or later the planter concluded that amelioration offered the one possibility of escape from reliance on the slave trade and the market in hired Negroes. He must prolong the lives of his stock and encourage them to breed by humane treat- ment. Some proprietors did not reach this decision until they were compelled to do so by the Act o f 1807 for the abolition of the African slave trade. Others were apparently moving in that direction as early as 1768, and progress became very marked after the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War in 1778.12’ 528 Annals New York Academy of Sciences The demographic effect of amelioration is especially well documented for those Barbados estates which were bequeathed in 1710 t o the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts. Indeed, the population history of this Barbados property parallels that in Barbuda during this period. The last pur- chase of slaves for the Barbados estates was made in 176 l. Numbers dropped from 336 in 1767 t o 263 in 1790. Soon thereafter natural decrease gave way t o increase, rapid growth ensued, and by 1823 slave numbers exceeded 350.122 This chron- ology replicates that in Barbuda, where natural increase also became self-sustain- ing after 1800. In the Barbados case, the population increased because it was considered good economic as well as ethical policy to improve slave conditions. In Barbuda, as in Exuma, slave numbers increased without any intervention by the proprietors, as a result of social and environmental circumstances conducive to low mortality, In neither instance, nor apparently anywhere in the West Indies, were slaves deliberately bred, although slave women were sometimes prevented from aborting children or killing their offspring o r were rewarded for bearing large families. Barbuda is not the only locality where high rates of natural increase have mis- led modern commentators t o conclude that slave-breeding must have been a deliberate practice. Eric Williams maintains that during the decades before eman- cipation Barbados was “going in for slave breeding o n a large scale in the fashion of Virginia,”*23 and Aufhauser suggests that the increase in Barbados was “the product of special slave-breeding plantations” unreported in the records.124 Sutch similarly concludes that high fertility ratios in the slaveexporting Southern seaboard states were “the result of a systematic and widespread interference with the sexual life of the slaves,”lzs notwithstanding the absence of documen- tary evidence for such “farms.”lz6 In fact, neither natural increase nor slave ex- ports are necessarily linked t o pronatal programs, and there is n o firm proof of slave-breeding farms anywhere. Let us recapitulate. The Codringtons never bred slaves o n Barbuda; the closest they came t o it, around 1790, was to speculate that Barbuda might feed slaves newly purchased from Africa. But n o slaves were in fact brought into Barbuda after the mideighteenth century. A few Barbudans were occasionally sent t o work o n the Antiguan estates, but never in great numbers o r with much success. When the Barbudan population began t o increase of its own accord, about 1800, the owners of t h e island were less delighted than embarrassed because there were so many extra mouths to feed and n’ot enough work for t h e slaves t o do. The slaves’ fierce attachment t o Barbuda made it impossible t o send them away ex- cept under duress, and when migration was compelled t h e consequences were often disastrous. But o n the eve of emancipation Sir Bethell Codrington proceeded, in a memo- randum t o the Colonial Office, t o rewrite history. In order t o sustain his claim for “an especial compensation for the loss of property so peculiar in its nature. so long held, and hitherto so valuable,” he alleged the previous profitability of transferring Negroes from Barbuda. In the past, h e noted, “the value of . . . Bar- buda consisted chiefly in its extreme fitness for a nursery for Negroes-and . . . in this respect it was not only a source of much profit t o your memorialist and his Ancestors; but also (in so far as its supply went) a preventive t o the inhuman- ity of the African Slave Trade.” Indeed, h e asserted, it was Barbuda’s great value as a “nursery for Negroes” that had persuaded Lord Bathurst in 1817 t o give Codrington “special p o w e r . . . t o remove Negroes from the said Island t o his property in any other Island,” and even t o Demerara where their value would have been still greater; Codrington could “turn the birth of every child in Barbuda  Lowenthal8c Clarke: Myth of Barbudan Slave-Breeding 529 to at least double the profit yielded by one in Antigua o r in any other Leeward Island whatever.”127 The impression these words clearly convey is that before 18 1 7 the Codring- tons had regularly sent Barbudans to Antigua and elsewhere, and that “His Majesty’s Government was so sensible of the great value of the Island in these respects”128 that they had been allowed t o continue doing so afterwards. But in 18 17 Codrington had maintained that because Barbudans considered being sent to Antigua a hardship, he had not heretofore sent them there, and was only then planning t o do so if they consented. Five o r ten Barbudans, sometimes as many as a score, were occasionally sent to work in Antigua, but there is n o record of any more substantial expatriation either before o r after the abolition of the slave trade. All we find is young Codrington’s own unimplemented suggestion of 1790 that Barbuda might serve as a “nursery for Negroes” newly purchased from Africa. Bethel1 Codrington thus transformed a vague surmise into an habitual activity, glossed over decades of inability t o cope with Barbudan slave increase, and pre- tended that Barbuda had until recently supplied Antigua with a substantial plantation work force, whereas in fact the reluctance of Barbudans t o quit their island had consistently defeated managerial efforts t o provide even the most rudimentary labor allotments. Although the Codringtons made only the most marginal use of Barbuda as a labor reserve, their failure t o cope with its population did give rise t o the myth of Barbuda as a slave-breeding colony-a purpose of which they never dreamt. For Bethel1 Codrington’s various glosses o n his youthful suggestion for turning Barbuda into a “nursery for Negroes” were read by later observers QJ though it had been done.129 Even after slavery ended, the term “nursery” was applied t o Barbuda. “It is an increasing population,” noted the Governor of Antigua in 186 1, “and may be regarded as a Nursery of young people who hereafter will spread themselves in Antigua and other neighbouring Islands.”130 But freedom changed neither Barbudan reluctance to labor in Antigua nor the Codrington bent for revising history t o suit subsequent purposes. A decade after the enforced postemancipation exodus, Sir William Codrington explained t o a Parliamentary Select Committee that Barbuda was now of little use in supplying labor for his Antiguan estates “ ‘because no entreaties of any kind will prevail upon them, t o any extent, t o go from Barbuda t o Antigua.’ Only a t crop-time, by the inducement of extra wages, would any of them offer estate-labour.”l31 Once again the impression conveyed is that things had formerly been different, with the Antiguan estates regularly supplied by Barbudan labor, on Douglas Hall’s assumption that “during slavery the choice had not been theirs.”132 But the impression is misleading. When the Barbudans were slaves they refused t o work off the island, and as we have seen neither proprietor nor manager could break their attachment t o Barbuda. We have examined one myth of the Negro and found it empty. But the process of exposure throws light on a curious corner of West Indian slave history; it shows both how the will of a powerful proprietor was effectively negated by a tiny community of slaves, and how his own self-serving memory unwittingly gave rise t o a mythological history of slave-breeding. The onus for the error rests as much with modern interpreters as with the Codringtons, however. The tendency t o misread intention as action seems t o be irresistible. “The Codringtons,” declared Pope-Hennessey in his recent account of the slave trade, “planned and operated ‘slave nurseries’ which were filled with little boys and girls bought off the ships.”l” His sole evidence for the state- 5 30 Annals New York Academy of Sciences ment is Bethel1 Codrington’s suggestion that “if I bought negroes I w o u l d buy them at the age of 10 or 12 and send them t o Barbuda.” In the retelling, t h e Codringtons have become exemplary rather than unique, one slave nursery has grown t o several, and an informal proposal has hardened into an implemented insti- tution. NOTES AND REFERENCES 1. See, for example, Kyle Onstott, Mandingo (Greenwich, Conn.: Fawcett Press, 1958). Richard Sutch, “The Breeding of Slaves for Sale and the Westward Expansion of Slavery, 1850-1860,” in Stanley L. Engerman and Eugene D. Cenovese, Eds., Race and Slavery in the Western Hemisphere: Quantitative Studies (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1975), pp. 173-199, exaggerates the limited evidence of slave-breeding to be found in plantation records, diaries, slave autobiographies, records of slave auctions, and travelers’ observations. Notwithstanding Thomas Jefferson Randolph’s description of Virginia in 1832 as “one grand menagerie where men are to be reared for market like oxen for the shambles” (speech in Virginia legislature, quoted in Frederic Bancroft, Slave-Dading in the Old South [Baltimore: J. H. Furst, 19311, pp. 69-70, no documentary proof of slave-breeding in the United States has been found. “Evidence of systematic slave breeding is scarce indeed, not only because it is unlikely that many engaged in it but also because written records of such activities would seldom be kept,” notes Kenneth Stampp (The Peculiar Institution: Slavery in the Ante-Bellum South [New York: Knopf, 19561, p. 245). But Stampp offers little beyond a planter’s boast that his slave women were “uncommonly good breeders” (Frederick Law Olmsted, A Journey in the Seaboard Slave States, 1850) and a propagandist’s assertion that . Florida’s climate was “peculiarly adapted . . to breed and raise [slaves]. The offal of the Sugar House fattens them like young pigs” (quoted in Stampp, p. 247); Stampp finally concludes that only slave-rearing, not breeding, can be adduced from the evidence (p. 251). Moncure D. Conway’s charge that “general licentious- ness among the slaves. for the purpose of a large increase, is compelled by some masters and encouraged by many” (Testimonies Concerning Slavery, 1865, quoted in Bancroft, Slave-Dading in the Old South, pp. 76-77) is validated by only a few recorded instances of enforced cohabitation among slaves (except, of course, with white men). For these, see Frederick L. Douglass, The Life and Times of Fred- erick Douglass (London: Chri$an Age, 1882), pp. 95-96; “Rose Describes Being Forced to Live with Rufus, Manuscript Slave Narrative Collection, Federal Writers’ Project, ca. 1930, reprinted in Willie Lee Rose, ed., A Documentary History of Slavery in North America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976), pp. 434-37. On the general absence of slave-breeding, see also Ulrich B. Phillips, Ameri- can Negro Slavery (1918) (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1966), pp. 361-62; Lewis C. Gray, History of Agriculture in the Southern United States to 1860 (Washington, D. C.: Carnegie Institution of Washington, 1933), 11, 661-63; Winthrop D. Jordan, White over Black: American Attitudes toward the Negro, 1550-1812 (Chapdl Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1968), p. 320; Carl N. Degler, Neither Black nor White: Slavery and Race Relations in Brazil and the United States (New York: Macmillan, 1971). pp. 6164. Contrary to Degler, Ro- lando Mellafe contends that slave-breeding was common in nineteenth-century Brazil and also in Cuba, and that eighteenth-century Jesuits bred slaves at Cdrdoba, in Argentina (Negro Slavery in Lotin America [Berkeley and Los Angeles: Univer- sity of California Press, 19751 pp. 140-41, citing Moreno Fraginals and Alonso Carrio de la Vandera, pseudonymously called Concolorcorvo). But the original source (Concolorcorvo, El lazarillo de ciegos caminantes [ 1773; Lima: Ediciones Peisa, 19741, I, 67) showsnot an iota of evidence for the last of these slave-breeding claims. 2. J. Harry Bennett, Jr., Bondsmen and Bishops: Slavery and Apprenticeship on the Codrington Plantations of Barbados, 1 710-1838,University of California Publica- tions in History, Vol. 6 2 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1958). 3. Barbuda lease, Gov. John Johnson to heirs of Christopher Codrington, June 5, 1705. Codrington Mss., Gloucestershire County Archives D 16 10 (hereafter Cod. Mss.), T 9. The original lease of Barbuda (Gov. William Willoughby to James Winthorpe and others, Oct. 1, 1668) stipulated the annual payment of “one eare of Indian  Lowenthal & Clarke: Myth of Barbudan Slave-Breeding 53 1 Come”; when the Codringtons took over this lease in 1684, they were granted the island for 32 years in return for annual delivery, in Nevis, of “one sufficient Able horse” (Gov. William Stapleton t o Christopher and John Codrington, Jan. 9, 1684; both in Cod. Mss. T 9). Whether corn, horse, o r sheep were ever demanded or de- livered is not recorded, but an early nineteenth-century visitor asserted that the sheep was “generally commuted for a turtle or a buck” (Henry Nelson Coleridge, Six Months in the West Indies in 1825, 2nd. ed. [London: John Murray, 18261, p. 276). 4 . Robert C. West and John P. Augelli, Middle America: Its Lands and Peoples (Engle- wood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1966), p. 194. 5 . Mary Slater, The Coribbean Islands (London: Batsford, 1 9 6 0 , p. 162. 6 . F. R. Augier, S. C. Gordon, D. G . Hall, and M. Reckord, The Making of the West Indies (London: Longmans, 1960), p. 161. 7 . Carleen O’Loughlin, Economic and Political Change in the Leeward and Windward Islands (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968), p. 31. 8. Sidney Clark with Margaret Zellers, All the Best in the Caribbean (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1972), p. 252. According to another account, the male slaves were Barbudan natives and breeding females were imported: “To provide a better worker stock and to establish a local supply of new laborers, large healthy black males waited here for the boats that brounht African women t o be imoreenated. The obiect . . . w a s to produce a strain of -‘superslaves’ ” (Fred Ward, Goben Islands of-the Caribbean [New York: Crown, 19723, p. 74). 9 . “The Barbuda Brotherhood Social Club,” Barbuda Voice (New York), No. 33. July 1972, p. 1 1 ; see also Rev. Jerome John, “Barbuda, Goodbye?” and “Guest Editor- ial,” Barbuda Voice, No. 13, Oct. 1970, p. 8, and No. 32, June 1972, p. 8, respec- tively. 10. David Lowenthal, West Indian Societies (London and New York: Oxford University Press, 1972), p. 76. An interesting instance of the diffusion of the myth occurs in Richard B. Sheridan’s Sugar and Slavery: An Economic History of The British West Indies 1623-1 775 (Barbados: Caribbean Universities Press, 1974, p. 185), which states that “Barbuda was developed as a stud farm to supply livestock and slaves to the planters of Antigua and to stock the Codrington family’s extensive sugar estates.” The source given for this assertion is a secondary school text: John Macpherson, Carib- bean Lands: A Geography of the West Indies(London: Longmans, 1963, p. 104); but no such reference to Barbuda in fact appears in the Macpherson volume, either on the cited page or elsewhere. 1 1 . Douglas Hall, Five of the Leewards 1834-1870: The Major Problems of the Post- Emancipation Period in Antigua, Barbuda, Montserrat. Nevis and St. Kitts (Barba- dos: Caribbean Universities Press, 1971), p. 6G. 12. David R. Harris, Plants, Animals, and Man in the Outer Leeward Islands, West Indies: An Ecological Study of Antigua, Barbuda, and Anguilla, University of California Publications in Geography, Vol. 18 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1965), p. 91. 1 3 . Dec. 5,1721,in First Memorandum Book of William Codrington (hereafter WC), Cod. Mss. C 2. 14. Benjamin King to Lady Elizabeth Codrington, Dec. 27, 1740,Cod. Mss. C 5 . 15. Copy of the 6 Depositions of Sundry Servants against Thos. Beech, late’Gov’r [of Barbuda, for mismanagement and mistreatment of Negroes], 1741, Cod. Mss. L 9. 16. Simon Punter to Lady Elizabeth Codrington, Apr. 16, 1743, Codrington Correspon- dence, University of Texas Microfiim (hereafter Cod. Corr.), SP. 1 . This correspon- dence forms the collection auctioned off by the Codringtons to philatelists in 195 1. It is brieily excerpted, by the philatelic firm involved, in Robson Lowe, The Cod- rington Correspondence (London: Robson Lowe, 195 1). 17. Richard Oliver to WC [son of the previous William Codrington], Mar. 16, 1780, Cod. Corr. RO 65. 1 % Richard Oliver~.~ ... -.- to WC. Dec. ~ .- --.- - 14. 1781. Cod. Corr. RO 70. 19. WC to Richard Clarke, 1781, Cod. Mss. E 23. ~~ 20. WC to Langford Lovell, Jan. 10, 1783, Letterbook of WC and Christopher Bethell Codrington to J.L. Walrond & others. 1783-1791, Cod. Mss..C 14/1. 21. Dennis Reynolds to WC, Apr. 1 , 1786, Cod. Corr. DR 100. 22. Richard J . Russell and William G. Mclntire, Barbuda Reconnaissance, Coastal Studies Series No. 16 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1966), p. 5 . See also Harris, op. cit., pp. 19-23, 35-41 ;and K. C. Vernon and D. M. Lang. Soil and Land- Use Surveys, No. 19B: Barbuda (Trinidad: Regional Research Centre of the Univer- sity of the West Indies, 1966). 532 Annals New York Academy of Sciences 23. Christopher BethellCodrington (hereafter CBC) to WC, June 16, 1790, Cod. Corr. CC 106. CBC adopted his paternal grandmother’s family name, Bethell, during this decade. 24. CBC to WC, June 19, 1790, Letter-book of CBC, 1789-91, Cod. Mss. C 20/2. 25. Contents of the different pieces of Land in Corn at Barbuda in the year 1793, Cod. Mss. E 23; CBC to WC, Mar. 2, 1790, Letter-book of CBC,1789-91, Cod. Mss. C 20/l. 26. Account of 1810, Cod. Mss. A 9; CBC annotation in George Ick to CBC, Feb. 22, 1817, Cod. Corr. GI 369. 27. CBC to Lord Bathurst, June 30, 1817, Public Record Office (hereafter PRO) C.O. 7/3 (Individuals). 28. CBC to E.G. Stanley, draft, June 1, 1834, Cod. Mss. E 36. The dominant features of Barbudan ecology and economy today, as described by Riva Berleant-Schiller, fol- lowing anthropological fieldwork there in 1971 and 1973, still remain those of the early nineteenth century, especially the inhabitants’ reliance on fishing and on open- range stock-raising, and the close-knit character of the community (see below). We are grateful to Dr. Berleant-Schiller for discussing with us features of contemporary Barbudan life and for allowing us to consult several of her papers in press, notably “Environment, Technology, and the Catch: Fishing and Lobster-Diving in Barbuda,” (Fishing Cultures of the World. Bkla Gunda, Ed. Debrecen, Hungary.) “Production and Division of Labor in a West Indian Peasant Community” (American Ethnologist, May 1977, Vol. 4(2)), and “The Social and Economic Role of Cattle in Barbuda” (Geographical Review, in press). 29. CBC to WC, June 16, 1790, Cod. Corr. CC 106. 30. Amount of nett proceeds from Barbuda since 1791: Island accounts, 1805-1815, Cod. Mss. A 56/4; CBC to Lord Bathurst, Apr. 2,1826, Cod. Mss. C 33. 31. .._, Hall. OD. . ~ cit.. ...., . D. 60. ... 32. A List of Negroes with their different employments at Barbuda, enclosed with CBC to WC, Feb. 18, 1791, Cod. Corr. CC 109. 33. Dennis Reynolds to WC. Apr. 1,1786, Cod. Corr. DR 100. Margaret Tweedy informs us that occasional purchases o f slaves are noted in late eighteenthcentury accounts we have not seen. It is uncertain, however, whether these “New Negroes” were new to the West lndies or simply to Barbuda. We are indebted to MIS. Tweedy, who is preparing a master’s thesis on the history of Barbuda before emancipation, at Birm- ingham University, for her comments and criticisms. 34, CBC to WC, June 17, 1790, Cod. Mss. C 20/2. 35. CBC to Lord Bathurst, June 30, 1817, PROC.0. 7/3 (Individuals). 36. John James to CBC, Sept. 7,1824, Cod. Mss. C 24. 37. R. Jarritt to CBC, Dec. 8, 1829, enclosed in CBC to Sir George Murray, Mar. 16, 1830, PRO C.O. 7/30 (Individuals). 38. CBC to Lord Bathurst, Apr. 2,1826, Cod. Mss. C 33. 39. Coleridge, op. cit. (see ref. 3 above), p. 276. 40. J. Liggins to CBC, Apr. 5 , 1837, Cod. Corr. JL 452. 41. James Scotland, Jr., and John Athill, Report [on Barbuda] to Evan Murray Mac- Gregor, May 2, 1834, enclosure no. 5 in MacGregor to Secretary of State for the Colonies, May 5,1834, PRO C.O. 7/39 No. 100. 42. Michael Craton, “Hobbesian or Panglossian? The Two Extremes of Slave Conditions in the British Caribbean, 1783-1834,” William and Mary Quarterly (in press). 43. Charles Shephard, An Historical Account of the Island of Saint Vincent (1831) (Lon- don: Cass Reprint, 1971), p. 215. 44. Craton, op. cit. Corroborative correlations between high mortality and numbers of slaves on Jamaican plantations, and between high mortality and output per worker, are reported by B. W. Higman (Slave Population and Economy in Jamaica, 1807- 1834 [Cambridge University Press, 1976]!; See also Stanley L. Engerman, “Com- ments on the Study of Race and Slavery, in Engerman and Genovese, Race and History, pp. 495-530, ref. on p. 507. 45. Dennis Reynolds to WC, Apr. 1, 1786, Cod. Corr. DR 100. 46. Ibid. 47. Ibid. 48. WC [extract], 1782, Cod. Mss. E 23. 49. CBC to WC, June 17, 1790, Cod. Mss. C 20/2. 50. Ibid. 51. CBC to WC, June 16,1790, Cod. Corr. CC 106. 52. John Winter to CBC, July 22, 1832, Cod. Mss. C 30. 53. John Winter to CBC, Apr. 10,1833, Cod. Mss. C 30.  Lowenthal & Clarke: Myth of Barbudan Slave-Breeding 533 54. B.W. Higman, “Household StruEture and Fertility on Jamaican Slave Plantations: A NineteenthCentury Example, Population Studies, Vol. 27, 1973, pp. 527-50, ref. on p. 545. 5 5 . George W. Roberts, The Popularion of Jamaica (Cambridge: University Press, 1957), pp. 187-88. 56. John Winter to CBC, July 6, 1831, Cod. Corr. JW 428. 57. Registers of Slaves for Antigua and Barbuda, 1817, 1821, 1824, 1828, 1832, PRO T 711245,247,248,249,250. 58. Roberts, Population of Jamaica, p. 40; Barry Higman, Some Demographic Conse- quences of Slavery in Jamaica about 1832 (Mona, Jamaica: University of the West Indies, Dept. of History), Appendix, p. 2; G. W. Roberts, “Movements in Slave Population of the Caribbean during the Period of Slave Registration” This volume. 59. Craton, “Hobbesian or Panglossian?” 60. Shephard, St. Vincent, p. 215. 61. John James to CBC, Apr. 26, 1810, Cod. Mss. C 24. 62. CBC to Lord Bathurst. July 3. 1817. PRO C.O. 7/3 (Individuals). 63. John Oliver to CBC, NOV. 23,’1817, Cod. Corr. JO 314. 64. CBC to Lord Bathurst. June 30, 1817, PRO C.O. 7/3 (Individuals). It is unclear why Codrington should have had to petition the Colonial Office, even assuming he had not yet heard of the action taken on his behalf by the Antiguan legislature. After 1819, only slaves registered as domestics could be moved, on license, between most British West Indian colonies. Perhaps Codington wished to be able to remove nondomestic slaves from Barbuda, or to avoid the need for licenses. Whatever the reason, his ex- emption from certain provisions of the various registration acts enabled him to ex- port Barbudans freely even after 1825, by then a most unusual privilege. For inter- colonial slave traffic in this period, see Eric Williams, ‘The British West Indian Slave Trade after its Abolition in 1807,” Journal of Negro History, Vol. 27, 1942, pp. 175-9 1 ; D. Eltis, “The Traffic in Slaves between the British West Indian Colonies, 1807-1833,” Economic History Review, Vol. 25, 1972, pp. 5564. 65. John James to CBC, June 14, 1817, Cod. Corr. JJ 263. An 1805 slave List indicates that 22 Antiguan workers and their children were then in Barbuda (Cod. Mss. E 17). 66. Lord Bathurst to CBC, June 24, 1824, Cod. Mss. E 36. Although the Governor of Antigua was empowered to deal with some Barbudan matters, Antiguan law did not become generally operative in Barbuda until the former annexed the latter in 1859. 67. John James to CBC, Feb. 10,1826, Cod. Mss. C 24. 68. CBC to Lord Bathurst, Apr. 2, 1826. Cod. Mss. C 33. 69. CBC io R. Jarritt. Mar. 31. 1829. Cod. Mss.C 29. i.n... .R1 .. Jarritt . to . CBC: -~ - 3 -. Oct. 6. 1829. Cod. Mss.C 29. ~~~~ 71. R. Jarritt to CBC, Nov. 14, 1831; Cod. Corr.kJ 402. 72. John Winter to CBC, July 6, 1831, Cod. Corr. JW 428. The number of children men- tioned in this letter conflicts with other evidence, including Winter’s previous state- ments, and is almost certainly too high. 73. John Winter to CBC, Apr. 10, 1833, Cod. Mss. C 30. 74. Richard Oliver to WC, Dec. 10, 1779, Cod. Corr. RO 64. Earlier in Barbuda’s history the island had served as a depot for unwanted slaves from Barbados. “The old proprietor [presumably Christopher Codrington] had followed the practice of ship- ping the weak, lazy, old, sick and insubordinate ‘refuse Negroes’ to Barbuda, where he had employed them in raising cattle and provision crops” (Minutes of a Society for the Propagation of the Gospel meeting, 1715, quoted in Bennett, Bondsmen and Bishops, p. 45; see also p. 30). 75. Richard Oliver to WC, Nov. 24, 1780, Cod. Mss. C 12. 76. Dennis Reynolds to WC, Nov. 24, 1783, Cod. Corr. DR 97. 77. Langford Lovell (?) to WC, Oct. 10, 1780, Cod. Corr. 78. Richard Clarke to WC, June 29, 1781, Cod. Mss. C 10. 79. Richard Oliver to WC, May 9, 1781, Cod. Corr. RO 66. 80. Dennis Reynolds to WC, Apr. 1, 1786, Cod. Corr. DR 100. 81. Negroes on the Island of Barbuda, Jan. 14, 1806, enclosed with John James to CBC, Jan. 26, 1807, Cod. Mss. C 24. 82. John James to CBC, Apr. 26, 1810, Cod. Mss. C 24. 83. John James to CBC, June 14, 1817, Cod. Corr. JJ 263. The “Southern Colonies” were labor-hungry Trinidad and Demerara (British Guiana), where new sugar lands made slaves more valuable then elsewhere. 84. John James to CBC. Feb. 10. 1826. Cod. Mss. C. 24. 85. Registers of Slaves (see 57 above), PRO T 711245, 247, 248,249, 250. 86. John Winter to CBC, Ocr. 26,1832,Cod. Corr. JW 432. 534 Annals New York Academy of Sciences 87. A higher proportion of Barbuda’s slaves were exported, however, than shown in the official returns of any British West Indian colony except Dominica, during the period 1807 to 1832. Eltis (“Traffic in Slaves,” p. 59) estimates that only 3.4 percent of the total British Caribbean slave population was involved in such transfers. See also Roberts, “Movements in Slave Population,” Tables 1 and 2. 88. John James to CBC, Apr. 26, 1810, Cod. Mss. C 24. 89. R. Jarritt to CBC, Nov. 14, 1831, Cod. Corr. RJ 402. 90. CBC to Secretary of State, June 30, 1817, P R 0 C.O. 7/3 (Individuals). We are grate- ful to Margaret Tweedy for confirming our view that Barbudan slaves were not being transferred during the previous decade because it would have been too cruel to do so. (See Ref. 33 above.) 91. John James to CBC, Feb. 10,1826, Cod. Mss. C 24. 92. John Osborne to CBC, June 8, 1826, Cod. Corr. JO 339. 93. CBC to Lord Bathurst, Apr. 2,1826, Cod. Mss. C 33. 94. R. Jarritt to CBC, Dec. 8, 1829, Cod. Mss. C 29, in CBC to Sir George Murray, Mar. 16. 1830. PRO C.O. 7/30 Undividualsl. 95. John Winter to CBC, Oct. 26, 1832, Cod. Corr. JW 430. 96. John James to CBC, Sept. 7, 1824, Cod. Mss. C 24. 97. CBC to Sir George Murray, Feb. 11, 1830, PRO C.O. 7/30 (Individuals). Tortolan islanders, likewise reluctant to leave their homeland, were ultimately persuaded to accept removal to Trinidad by their Methodist ministers (Eltis, “Traffic in Slaves,” P. 61). 98. R. Jarritt to CBC, Mar. 15, 1834, Cod. Mss. C 29. 99. Scotland and Athill Report, May 2,1834, enclosure no. 5 in PRO C.O. 7/39 No. 100 (see Ref. 38 above). 100. R. Jarritt to CBC, Mar. 15, 1834, Cod. Mss. C 29. 101. R. Jarritt to CBC, Dec. 8, 1829, in CBC to Murray, Mar. 16, 1830, PROC.0. 7/30. 102. R. Jarritt to CBC, Nov. 14, 1831, Cod. Corr. RJ 402. 103. R. Jarritt to CBC, Dec. 8, 1829, in CBC to Murray, Mar. 16, 1830, PRO C. 0. 7/30. 104. CBC to E.G. Stanley, June 1, 1834 (draft), Cod. Mss. E 36. CBC elsewhere compares Barbuda with St. Domingo: CBC to Sir George Murray, Feb. 11, Mar. 8, and Mar. 16, 1830, PRO C.O. 7/30 (Individuals). 105. CBC to Sir George Murray, Mar. 16, 1830, PRO C.O. 7/30 (Individuals). 106. J. Liggins to CBC, Apr. 5, 1837, Cod. Corr. JL 452. 107. CBC to E.G. Stanley, June 1, 1834 (draft); Memorial of Sir C. Bethell Codrington Bart to the Right Hon Sir E.G.S. Stanley &c, &c [ 18333, both Cod. Mss. E 36. 108. Memorial of Codrington to Stanley [ 18331, Cod. Mss. E 36. 109. Joseph Walrond to WC, Jan. 18,1792, Cod. Corr. JW 200. 110. J. Lieeins to CBC. Feb. 15. 1830. Cod. Mss. C 37. 111. Joh&borne to CBC, Aug. 6, 1827, Cod. Corr. 10 346. 112. J . Liggins to CBC, Apr. 5 , 1837, Cod. Corr. JL 452. 113. John Osborne to CBC. Feb. 13, 1837,Cod. Mss. C 31. See also Hall, Five ofthe Lee- wards, p. 70. 114. J. Liggins to CBC, Apr. 5 , 1837, Cod. Corr. JL 452. 115. John Osborne to CBC, Feb. 13, 1837,Cod. Mss. C 31. 116. Henry Loving to E. Murray MacGregor, May 15,1835, enclosure no. 5 in MacGregor to Aberdeen, May 16, 1835,PRO C.O. 7/41 No. 100. Loving, then Antiguan Super- intendant of Police, was reporting on Antigua at the Governor’s request. See Hall, Five of the Leewards, p. 66. 117. George Holborow to WC, Sept. 22, 1860, Cod. Mss. C 52. WC was CBC‘s son and heir, Sir Christopher William Codrington; Holborow was his Barbuda manager. For dis- putes concerning Barbudans exiled to Antigua, see Hall, op. cit., pp. 6 4 6 5 , 6 8 . 118. CBC to H.M. Gov’t, June 15, 1834 (draft), Cod. Mss. E 36. As Codrington explained, the Negroes had no way of raising provisions save on his land, with tools imported on his boats, and no way of spending any money they might earn save for goods he supplied. 119. Selective buying for slave breeding, Sutch suspects, accounted for striking disparities on certain farms in the American South, where females aged 15 to 44 outnumbered males of the same ages by almost 3 to 1 (“Breeding of Slaves for Sale,” Table 14, p. 198). However, males on adjacent or nearby properties could account for these ap- parent imbalances. In Barbuda the sex ratio for the reproductive age groups dropped from 85 males per 100 females in 1817 to 77 in 1852, a relatively slight difference caused not by female acquisitions but by the selective transfer, as we have seen, of a few more mdes than females to Antigua. 120. WC to Richard Clarke, 1782, Cod. Mss. E 23;CBC to WC, Mar. 2, 1790, Letter-book of CBC. 1789-1791. Cod. MSS. C 20/1.  Lowenthal & Clarke: Myth of Barbudan Slave-Breeding 535 121. Bennett, Bondsmen and Bishops, p. 138. See also Roberts, “Movements in Slave Pop- ulation.” 122. Rennett OD- r . cit.. .___, DD. r 138-39 r __ - - -.. 123. Williams, “British West Indian Slave Trade.” p. 176. 124. R. Keith Aufhauser. “Profitability of Slavery in the British Caribbean,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Vol. 5, 1974, pp. 45-67, ref. on p. 58. “Because it was better to keeD breeding farms from the public’s critical eye.” Aufhauser seeks to explain, in the fashion of Stampp (see hef. l), “there were no tracts written to describe the best techniques for slave production.” Although some Barbados slaves were sold off to the newer sugar colonies, net emigration during the years 1817-1829 was only 114 (Roberts, “Movements in Slave Population,” Table 2). 125. Sutch, “Breeding of Slaves for Sale,” p. 191. 126. Engerman, “Comments on the Study of Race and Slavery,” pp. 508,512-14.527-30; Craton, “Hobbesian or Panglossian?” 127.. CBC to E.G. Stanley, June 1, 1834, Cod. Mss. E 36. Codrington could have sent Bar- budan slaves to Demerara only if he had acquired land there to put them on. His request for special Barbudan compensation at emancipation was not granted. None- theless, the f6.509 9s 10d he received for freeing his Barbudan slavesexceeded his compensation from any Antiguan estate, and amounted to almost 40 percent of the total for all his Antiguan slaves (A Summary of the Compensation Awarded to Sir Christopher Bethell Codrington Bart, Cod. Mss. E 36). 128. CBC to E.G. Stanley, June 1,1834, Cod. Mss. E 36. 129. Margaret Tweedy suggests to us that Barbuda’s isolation may have helped to perpetu- ate the slave-breeding myth. Discouragement of visitors may have given rise to rumors that the Codringtons had more than salvage operations to hide. “Visitors to Barbuda have been overcostly to me in many respects,” wrote William Codrington in 1784, “& now the haunt is broke, I wish not to open it again-parties of pleasure who go over there are entertained at my expense and my negroes employed to at- tend upon them and their diversions” (WC to Langford Lovell, May 17, 1784,Cod. Mss. C 14/1; see also Sir William Codrington’s Directions to be obeyed by Mr. Timothy Checkly, June 27, 1715, Cod. Mss. C 2, and Benjamin King to Lady Eliz- abeth Codrington, 1740, Cod. Mss. E 23). 130. K.B. Hamilton to the Duke of Newcastle, Jan. 14, 1861, Cod. Mss. E 33. 131. Minutes of Evidence . . . of the Select Committee on Sugar and Coffee Planting, Parlia- mentary Papers(1848),Codrington 8433-8436, in Hall, Five of the Leewards, p. 60. 132. Hall, op. cit., p. 60. 133. We refer to Melville Herskovits, 77ze Myth of the Negro Past (Boston: Beacon Press, 1958). 134. James Pope-Hennessey, Sins of the Fathers: A Study of the Atlantic Slave Traders 1441-1807 (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1967), p. 105.