BARBADOS PHOTO GALLERY

HISTORICAL SERIES

CODRINGTON ESTATE

From SUGAR AND SLAVES: THE RISE OF THE PLANTER CLASS
IN THE ENGLISH WEST INDIES, 1624-1713 by Richard S. Dunn.
Published for the
Institute of Early American History and Culture.
Copyright (c) 1972 by the University of North Carolina Press.
All rights reserved.

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On the Codrington estate in Barbados, the largest and finest on the island,
450 new Negroes were added to the slave force between 1712 and 1761
at an average price of 33 pounds each.

Yet the black population of this plantation fell by a third during this
span of years. Six Negroes died at Cordrington for every Negro born.

Codrington plantation, operated by the Society for the Propagation of the
Gospel, exemplifies the full-blown West Indian slave system, in which
several hundred blacks, kept docile and dumb through systematic
semistarvation and a stupefying round of brute chores,
functioned as dehumanized cogs in a very inefficient machine.

Symbolically, one overseer at Codrington branded the Negroes with the
letters SOCIETY on their breasts. Productivity was well below
seventeenth-century standards, but so was the risk of
rebellion.

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