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Maroons and Revolutionary Struggle
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Such who are acquainted with that island will be surprised when they are told,
that all the regular troops in Europe, could not have conquered the wild Negroes,
by force of arms; and if Mr. Trelawny had not wisely given them, what they contended
for, LIBERTY, they would in all probability have been, at this day, masters
of the whole country. (Campbell 1990, 124)
More realistically, in 1739 Governor Edward Trelawny informed his superiors
in London that the main reason the colony was not as highly developed
as it might have been was that scarcely any good land existed in safe areas,
and a large quantity was located in areas controlled by the Maroons. Some
colonists who had received grants in those areas and had started plantations
had been forced to abandon them because of the Maroon menace (Campbell
1990, 145). Trelawny also noted in 1741 that Titchfield, in Portland, contained
only a few huts but possessed a commodious harbour and offered excellent
prospects for trade, and had until recently been retarded in its development
by the Maroon menace.
According to Trevor Burnard (2004, 22–23), in 1730 only an estimated 443
Whites and 7,137 enslaved persons lived in the parish of Westmoreland.
However, after the treaty struck with the Leeward Maroons in 1739, lands in
that area began to be widely available to settlers, and by 1768 the holdings
there included sixty-two sugar plantations and ninety-six other enterprises,
mostly cattle pens and small cotton, pimento and ginger farms. Burnard
(ibid., 23) states that population and production expanded dynamically
between 1730 and 1788. The White population grew by 237 per cent and the
servile population by 145 per cent, while sugar production increased from
5,450 hogsheads in 1739 to 8,000 hogsheads in 1768. Westmoreland then
became a very wealthy parish: the average value of plantations there in 1768
was 42 per cent higher than the average value in the whole island. 1
In St Vincent, peace between the Black Caribs and the British was jeopardized
by the colonists’ greed for more land, especially in fertile areas where
the local inhabitants resided. They used every ruse and the usual stereotypes
about the savage and barbaric nature of these people to incite their government
to take over their lands forcibly and herd them into reservations or
transport them overseas. The fragile accommodation that existed between
the two parties eventually broke down in 1772 through the machinations of
the land-grabbers. War ensued, terminating in 1773 in an agreement that the
Black Caribs would be allowed to retain about one-half of the island, includ-