Great House Rules

"When Emancipation came in 1838, Blacks in Barbados im︠agined that the terms of their everyday lives would undergo radical change. Instead, an unrelenting 'landless freedom' would be violently imposed upon a community whose conditions of life and work remained largely unchanged, on plantations that produced more sugar with less labour for below subsistence wages." "It was the rule of the Great House that subverted the promise of Emancipation. This is the story of the post-Emancipation betrayal of 83,000 Blacks in Barbados; it is also a narration of how these Blacks prepared for persistent…