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Abstract
This article traces the formation and early history of a Barbadian village. It seeks to establish that the circumstances of the formation of the Rock Hall village qualifies it for designation as a free village; and it suggests that its existence (and others like it) demonstrates that Barbados, despite the comprehensiveness of the plantation system and a high man/land ratio, did experience, even if in a limited way, social developments that were more characteristic of Jamaica, Guyana, Trinidad and the Windward Islands. The article also suggests that post-slavery village formation in Barbados could not deliver on its promising political potential because the chronic land scarcity that confronted former enslaved persons ensured that many of the original village lots, which could have sustained independent farming activity, were soon subdivided to provide house-spots for family members.
Introduction
Fifty years ago, Raymond Smith and Sidney Mintz, two social anthropologists with divergent perspectives, observed that the study of the rural communities that were established after slavery in the Commonwealth Caribbean by former slaves and immigrant labourers "has but barely begun". Both of them, important pioneers in village studies, offered cogent reasons why Caribbean scholars should join them in such activity. For Smith, it was obvious that historians were likely to command the detailed documentation that was essential both for painting the "exceedingly complex" picture of the establishment of "the Negro free villages" and for relating that development to its wider social, economic and political context. For Mintz, the issue was both intellectual and practical. Reconstruction of the history of "local communities" was possible because relevant materials were still accessible; and because such reconstructions could "prove valuable in understanding the social organization of the contemporary communities themselves", the effort of "teasing out" such histories would be a " useful task" for problemoriented social scientists.2
However, the response from both historians and social scientists has so far been less than overwhelming. When Mintz himself briefly reviewed the literature in 1974, he found that, despite a spate of publication on post-slavery, "relatively few books and papers have dealt with the origins and history of peasant sub- cultures" and that "even rarer are historical studies which deal in detailed fashion with one or other aspect of rural life in the...