Doctors and Slaves: A Medical and Demographic History of Slavery in the British West Indies, 1680-1834

Abstract

Richard B. Sheridan, Doctors and Slaves: A Medical and Demographic History of Slavery in the British West Indies, 1680-1834, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985, xii + 420 pp.In contrasting the harshness of Caribbean slavery with the comparative mildness of North American mainland slavery, historians usually cite the West Indian planters' continual need to import African labor when, by the mid-eighteenth century, no such need existed on the mainland. The black work force in the American South increased its number by natural means, but Caribbean slaves could never reproduce or even survive long enough to maintain a steady population. In Doctors and Slaves Richard B. Sheridan, the economic historian at the University of Kansas who has previously written on the West Indian sugar economy and slavery, has extended his research to explain why such a demographic difference existed. He applies the language and theories of economics as well as of medicine and ecology to the problem. Taking up William H. McNeill's images of micro- and macro-parasitism as forces in the shaping of history (Plagues and Peoples [Garden City, NY, 1976]), Sheridan argues that, just as disease organisms (micro-parasites) undermined the health of unacclimated Africans in the New World, so, too, did the Europeans' misuse of the limited fertile land on the islands and their mistreatment of African workers in the name of mercantilism and private profit (macro-parasitism). Slaves could not flourish in that hostile environment.Though Sheridan fails to reintroduce explicitly the parasite metaphor after chapter one, the idea can be seen in every aspect of slavery he discusses in this long and detailed volume. By forcing slaves to cultivate intensively one cash crop (primarily sugar, though also coffee and cotton) West Indian planters depleted the land not only of soil nutrients but also of natural foliage that protected against erosion, top soil runoff, and hurricanes. Except in Barbados, whites set aside little land for food crops and allowed insufficient time in the slaves' daily or weekly routines for them to grow enough food on personal grounds (p. 164). For these island residents, already living ecologically precarious existences, the occurrence of droughts or hurricanes or the failure of provision ships to arrive in time because of bad weather, piracy or political events (for example, the American Revolution cut off vital food supplies) created all too frequent famines. Slaves, of course, suffered the most from this white-caused macro-parasitism.The successful parasite lives off the host's resources for many generations. West Indian planters destroyed their other hosts - slaves - in even less time than they did the land. …