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Accounting, Coercion And Social Control During Apprenticeship: Converting Slave Workers To Wage Workers In The British West Indies, C1834-1838, Thomas N. Tyson, David Oldroyd, Richard K. Fleischman

Accounting Historians Journal

The paper describes the nature and role of accounting during apprenticeship the transition period from slavery to waged labor in the British West Indies. Planters, colonial legislators, and Parliamentary leaders all feared that freed slaves would flee to open lands unless they were bound to plantations. Thus, rather than relying entirely on economic incentives to maintain viable plantations, the Abolition Act and subsequent local ordinances embodied a complex synthesis of paternalism, categorization, penalties, punishments, and social controls that were collectively intended to create a class of willing waged laborers. The primary role of accounting within this structure was to police …