The plantation is characterised by a large resident labour force of unskilled workers. The plantation is a community in which its social structure and the pattern of interpersonal relations within it reflect to a large extent the authority structure through its economic organisation. Management organisation is authoritarian and the decision making process, of which the workers are not involved, is highly centralised. Within the plantation community, there exists a rigid pattern of social stratification based on a caste system which separates masters from the workers. The masters were the white European planter class and the workers usually the black African. The society was ruled by fear, the master did not earn affection, he became master simply by ownership alone, such that the slaves were seen as mere possessions, legally an item of capital equipment.
A Plantation society can be defined as a class society with unique characteristics of social structure and political organisation, and laws of motion governing social change. The present day composition of the Caribbean population is a direct result of the movement of labour which the plantation system affected. After the systematic removal of the indigenous peoples through the exploitive practices of the white Europeans, the plantation then brought black people from Africa as slaves and East Indian people as indentured labour. As a result, the population in the Caribbean is proportionately the same as that which existed on the plantation, whereas there is a minority of white people and a majority of blacks.
The plantation influence can be traced in every aspect of social life in the Caribbean. As with the plantation community, the society derives an ordering of social status which is directly correlated with occupational status which in turn is in direct correlation to race, as the society is rigidly stratified. The nature of political organisaton in contemporary Caribbean can be linked directly to the plantation. Political organisations and state power are based upon principles of authority and control. Throughout the West Indies, government administrators comprised of black people who essentially exercise authority and control on behalf of their financial backers, the white descendants of the planter class. The distribution of political power is identical to the pattern of social and economic power. Beckford (1972) notes, although slavery has been abolished for over four generations, the basic structure in the New World remains very much the same.
The plantation society theory then, gives a moderate understanding of contemporary Caribbean society, explaining in part how the society progressed socially, economically and politically and why it progressed in the way that it has. However, present day Caribbean society is moving away from the plantation slowly but surely and as a result the plantation society theory proves to be inadequate and according to Craig (1982) ‘too simple and reductionist’.
In an attempt to further explain the Caribbean society, the plural society theory, as applied to the Caribbean by M.G. Smith, maintains that these societies are made up of different cultural sections which all try to maintain their own values and institutions, only interacting in the marketplace for economic transactions. The plural society has come into existence because of the common economic factor. Each section shared the desire for economic advancement. Pluralism can be found in the plantation society whereby labour was extracted from different regions in Africa and also East India with their different cultures, language, social structure, political conditions and even religions and brought together for the purpose of working on the plantation.
After emancipation, pluralism was used to rationalize the inequalities meted out to different groups and to segregate the different ethnic groups in an excuse to continue or maintain the status quo structure of the plantation society and its accompanying inequalities such as racism, discrimination and suppression of civil rights. Furnivall, the chief advocate of the plural society, has defined this society as one lacking in social will. He realises that the general patern is that the Europeans create a super structure which destroys the former established pattern of social relations. Examples of such societies in the contemporary Caribbean are Trinidad and Guyana which has distinctive ethnic pockets. Furnivall also states that the economic factor of this society predominates because of the colonial power, exercising political control, is primarily concerned for economic interests. The dominance of economic forces is prejudicial to social and individual welfare because these forces sacrifice social to individual demand.
The plural society theory is seen as too static, however, and while once these societies could have been characterised as plural societies, the theory does not take into account the changing nature of the Caribbean societies. For example, in Barbados the Hindus’ (‘coolie man’) interaction was limited to economic transactions, however, this interaction has increased as Hindu children are attending the same schools as the average Barbadian child and will be forced to interact on a different level than that of their parents.
The third theory of Caribbean society is the creole society theory. It deals specifically with the racial and ethnic mixture and is said to be the best attempt made to acknowledge the changing nature of the Caribbean societies. Lewis (1983) believes that this was created due to the pressures of the black and white dichotomy throughout the slavery period, “the coexistence of sex and slavery”. These circumstances provided for the interaction between and the fusion of cultures, particularly European and African, giving birth to a new unique culture. This culture replaces the indigenous culture of the original inhabitants. This social system can be referred to as a colonial society as it consists of major characteristics of colonial situations. Slaves came out of slavery with a mixture of European culture, African culture and immigrant groups such as East Indians, merging into a Creole culture as they moved off of the plantations. These various groups were distributed into positions of unequal power and prestige within the society.
Lloyd Braithwaite states that they are two aspects of creolization. They are acculturation, the yoking of one culture to another by force or deprivation of power and prestige and inter-culturation which is the unplanned and unstructured relationship as a result of acculturation. Slavery and indentureship resulted into acculturation but this evolved into inter-culturation after emancipation.
Kamau Braithwaite’s maintained that creolization mediated the development of authentic local institutions. This can be seen in the establishment of the Barbados Landship, the various festivals such as carnival and cropover, the development of calypso, reggae and pan, the Creole languages and dialects of the Caribbean. Creolization however is sometimes seen as a loss of ethnic indigenous cultures and the adoption of inferior ones.
The basic facts about Creole societies are that they were rooted in the political and economic dominance of the metropolitan power. It was colour stratified and gave moral and cultural superiority to anything European. However, the social system which grew up in the West Indian territories after emancipation was not European but Creole. Creole society was much more differentiated economically than the plantation society. The working class population was not drawn into the wage and consumer markets. A new class of merchants and shopkeepers constituted an important element in the society. The Windward and the Leeward Islands are an example of Creole society.
The three main models of society account for different aspects of the contemporary Caribbean society and therefore give a more complete account of the Caribbean when integrated. However, as individual theories and as attempts to explain present day Caribbean society, they can be seem as limited, inadequate and rigid for an ever changing society, though the Creole society theory maintains the best model at recognising such change.
Bibliography
Green, W. “The Creolization of Caribbean History: The Emancipation Era and a Critique of Dialectical Analysis”. Caribbean Freedom: Economy and Society from Emancipation to the Present, A Student Reader. Eds. Beckles, H. And Shepherd, V. Princeton: Marcus Weiner Publishers, 1996.
Hoetink, H. “Race” and Colour in the Caribbean. United States: The Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars, 1985.
Lewis, G. K. “Main Currents in Caribbean Thought”, The Historical Evolution of Caribbean Society in its Ideological Aspects, 1492 – 1900. United States: The John Hopkins University Press, 1983.
In his book ‘Main Currents in Caribbean Thought’, Gordon Lewis presents a precise and concise explanation of the creole theory.
