The Salt 'Plantations' of the Caribbean

Content Warning: this episode contains mentions of violence, slavery and wider harm.

Most scholarship on Caribbean chattel slavery of enslaved Africans largely covers the the sugar and tobacco plantation systems throughout the region. However, there was another massive industry that was built upon the enslavement of Africans - that was the cultivation of salt. Saltpans, the name given to the areas of salt production, were spread across the region: Turks & Caicos, Haiti, Jamaica, Barbuda, Sint Maarten, Bonaire and other areas. Throughout the 18th and 19th century, the region was one the main supplier of salt to Europe and the United States; and as events unfold, the documentation of the life of one enslaved black woman who worked on a Caribbean saltpan played a major role in the fight for emancipation in the British West Indies. Still, it is the history of salt production in the region that shaped the West Indian diet we know today.

Additional Knowledge

BOOKS

• Chained on the Rocks by Cyril Packwood 

• Consuming the Caribbean: From Arawaks to Zombies by Mimi Sheller

• Liberties Lost: The Indigenous Caribbean and Slave Systems by Hilary Beckles and Verene Shepherd

• Jamaica Place Names by B. W. Higman and B. J. Hudson

• Protestant Empires: Globalising the Reformations edited by Ulinka Rublack

• Salt in Eastern North America and the Caribbean: History and Archaeology edited by Ian W. Brown and Ann M. Early

• Slavery and Abolition: A Journal of Comparative Studies by Barbara Bush

• The Dutch in the Caribbean and in Suriname 1791/5–1942 by Cornelis Goslinga

• The Dutch Overseas Empire, 1600 –1800 by Pieter C. Emmer and Jos J.L. Gommans

• The History of Haiti by Steve Coupeau

• The History of Jamaica by Williams James Gardner

• The Other White Gold: Salt, Slaves, the Turks and Caicos Islands, and British Colonialism by Cynthia M. Kennedy

AUTOBIOGRAPHIES

• The History of Mary Prince, a West Indian Slave by Mary Prince

ACADEMIC PUBLICATIONS

• A History of Barbuda Under the Codringtons 1738-1833 by Margaret T. Tweedy

• Beyond the Plantation: Salt, Turks Island, Bermuda and the British Atlantic World, 1660s-1850s by Kimberly Thomas

• The Heartbeat of a West Indian Slave: The History of Mary Prince by Sandra Pouchet Paquet

• Just a Dash of Salt": Salt and Identity Formation in Historical and Contemporary Jamaica by Alyssa Sperry

• Life At The Salty Edge of Empire: The Maritime Landscape At The Orange Saltpan On Bonaire, 1821 - 1960 by Rudd Stelten and Konrad Antczal

• Profitable On An ‘Unprofitable’ Island Resources and Gatekeepers On Bonaire by Ank Klomp

ARTICLES

• Caribbean Public Health Agency: The Caribbean’s Blood Pressure Rates Rank Highest In The Americas

• Feast Journal: The Poetics of Salt Journey: A Taste of Salt by Katy Beinart

• Forbes: The Surprising Story Of Bonaire's Salt Pyramids

• Jamaica Observer: New US$2-m New Salt-Refining Facility Seeks Overseas Markets

• Smithsonian Magazine : These Salt Flats in Puerto Rico Are Cotton-Candy Pink by Jennifer Billock

• Smithsonian Magazine: White Gold: How Salt Made and Unmade the Turks and Caicos Islands by Mike Dash

• Salt Cay Salt Works: Our Story

• St. Kitts & Nevis National Archives: Salt Ponds

• Turks & Caicos Museum: The Salt Industry Begins

DATABASE

• Legacies of British Slave-Ownership Project - UCL

PUBLIC LECTURES

• Bermuda Culture: Mary Prince and the Struggle for Freedom

• UCL Mind Lunch Hour Lectures: Voicing Slavery: Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Mary Prince (18 Oct 2011)