Sugar and unfree labour: Reflections on labour control in the dominican republic, 1870–1935 |
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Authors: | Michiel Baud |
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Institution: | Department of History , Erasmus University Rotterdam , PO Box 1738, Rotterdam, 3000DR, The Netherlands |
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Abstract: | This article takes issue with theories which suppose an essential contradiction between capitalist production and unfree labour relations. Using the history of sugar plantations in the Dominican Republic as a case study, it is argued that capitalist entrepreneurs tried very hard to restrict free wage labour relations. On the Dominican sugar plantations this goal was reached by a system of differential mechanisation which brought about a rigid separation between the mass of unskilled field workers and the restricted number of (semi‐) skilled workers. This labour division could be reproduced over a long period of time because the field workers were migrant labourers from Haiti liable to strong racial discrimination within Dominican society. |
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