Apprenticeship,

Peasantry and
Metayage in T&T

B Y; M S . L AY N E
Key Terms

• Apprenticeship

• Apprentice

• Peasant

• Proto –peasantry

• Metayage/ Metaire System

Apprenticeship
Background to Apprenticeship 1834-1838
A review of Emancipation ( done in form 2)
• The Emancipation Act which was passed in August 1833 gave all enslaved  Africans  their
freedom after a number of years. 
• This Act came into effect 1st August 1834. 

• In the emancipation Act: Planters were to be compensated ( 20,000,000 lbs to be shared up

between all plantation owners in  all of the British West Indies); All children under 6 were to be
set free immediately; The flogging of women were to be stopped; All  enslaved were to be
apprenticed under the Apprenticeship System ( Dometic slaves 1834-1838 and Field
Slaves 1814-1840. 
• Apprenticeship came to an end in 1838 For all enslaved Africans. All enslaved Africans were
granted full emancipation/ freedom. 
Other Terms of Apprenticeship
• Apprentices could purchase their freedom before the apprenticeship period ended. 

• During apprenticeship the former owners, now employers, had to continue to provide, food,
clothing, shelter
• During apprenticeship the apprentices were to work for 40 hours per week without being
paid.  They were only paid for work done outside of the 40 hours. 
• 150 Special/ Stipendiary Magistrates were appointed to oversee apprenticeship in all of the
British West Indies, with only 2 in Trinidad and none in Tobago at the beginning of
apprenticeship.  
Peasantry
• A peasant is a small farmers, who spends most of their time to cultivating land of 5-10 acres,  on
their own with the help of little or no outside labour.
• Peasantry existed in  Trinidad before emancipation. This is where enslaved Africans worked on their
garden and provision plots. This type of peasantry us called proto-pesantry. 
• At the end of apprenticeship many ex-slaves refused to work for their former employers and opted to go
into peasant farming which allowed them to feed themselves and make their own money, by selling the
surplus. Some freed Africans would have squatted  on crown/ government land and  others would pool
their money together and give the missionaries to purchase the land for them, as landowners refused
to sell land to Africans. 
•  The East Indian who were indentured between 1845 and 1917, also engaged in farming their own crops.
They too at the end of indentureship became small farmers / peasants. 
• Crops planted by peasants: cocoa, coffee, coconuts,  banana, peas, corn, cassava, yam, rice, sugar. 
Metayage/ Metaire System
Terms of Metayage/ Metaire System
• The  planter and the workers has a  verbal contractual agreement, where the planter who owned
the land would provide things such as the machinery, manure, cane plants and the worker was
responsible for clearing, planting and harvesting the crops ( sugar cane). The planation owner
would market the sugar. When the canes were sold the plantation owner would share the profits
made. In some cases the produce was shared.  In Tobago, some planters shared a gallon of rum to
each worker for sugar they produced. 
• Metayage also known as metaire was first used by French settlers in the Caribbean, 

• The Metayage is a sharecropping system which was developed mostly on islands in the British
West Indies which did not have land for freed Africans to engage in peasantry on a large scale.
These island also did not have enough money to import labour to work on sugar estates. Tobago
was one of these islands. 
• The metayage system was first introduced to Tobago in 1843. Tobago planters could not
afford to pay of immigrants or East Indian indentureship and pay enslaved Africans  wages. This
system continued until 1897. The metayage system lasted the longest in Tobago compared to
other islands in the British Caribbean that adopted it. The metayage system helped alleviate
financial problems , a constitutional crisis in 1846-1847, the hurricane of 1847.  By 1853 one
Tobago district had about 500 metayers ( worker involved in the metayage system)
Bibliography/ Works Cited

• Beckles, Hilary McD and Verene A Shepherd. Freedoms Won: Caribbean Emancipations.
Ethnicities and Nationhood. Cambridge UP: 2006, pp 29-30, 41-47 , 8-14.