Act of Parliament | |
Citation | 17 & 18 Vict. c. 117 |
---|---|
Dates | |
Royal assent | 11 August 1854 |
Commencement | 2 February 1857 (St. Vincent) |
West Indian Incumbered Estates Act 1858 | |
---|---|
Act of Parliament | |
Long title | An Act to amend "The West Indian Incumbered Estates Act, 1854." |
Citation | 21 & 22 Vict. c. 96 |
Dates | |
Royal assent | 2 August 1858 |
Other legislation | |
Amended by | Statute Law Revision Act 1875 |
West Indian Incumbered Estates Act 1862 | |
---|---|
Act of Parliament | |
Long title | An Act to amend "The West Indian Incumbered Estates Acts, 1854 and 1858." |
Citation | 25 & 26 Vict. c. 45 |
Dates | |
Royal assent | 17 July 1862 |
West Indian Incumbered Estates Act 1864 | |
---|---|
Act of Parliament | |
Long title | An Act to amend "The West Indian Incumbered Estates Acts." |
Citation | 27 & 28 Vict. c. 108 |
Dates | |
Royal assent | 29 July 1864 |
West Indies (Encumbered Estates) Act 1872 | |
---|---|
Act of Parliament | |
Long title | An Act to continue the Appointment and Jurisdiction of the Commissioners for the Sale of Incumbered Estates in the West Indies. |
Citation | 35 & 36 Vict. c. 9 |
Dates | |
Royal assent | 13 May 1872 |
Other legislation | |
Amended by | Statute Law Revision Act 1883 |
West Indian Incumbered Estates Act 1886 | |
---|---|
Act of Parliament | |
Citation | 49 & 50 Vict. c. 36 |
Dates | |
Royal assent | 25 June 1886 |
The West Indian Incumbered Estates Acts were Acts of the Parliament of the United Kingdom of 1854, 1858, 1862, 1864, 1872, and 1886 that allowed creditors and other interested parties to apply for the sale of estates (plantations) in the British colonies in the West Indies despite legal encumbrances that would normally prevent such a sale. The legislation was modelled on the acts that created the Irish Encumbered Estates' Court after the Great Famine of the 1840s that allowed indebted and moribund estates to be sold.
The acts were modelled on the legislation that created the Encumbered Estates' Court that allowed indebted Irish estates to be sold following the great famine of the 1840s. [1] The Irish act came into force in 1849 and by July 1853, 3.5 million acres of land had been sold, creditors repaid according to the rulings of an independent tribunal, and estates purchased with a parliamentary title guaranteed to be free of encumbrances. [2]
The difficult financial situation in the West Indian colonies arose following the abolition of slavery in the British Empire in 1833 that disrupted the labour supply to West Indian plantations. The financial situation in Ireland and the West Indies was similar in that landowners in both places had taken on excessive debt when times were good that now matched or exceeded the value of the underlying security. In addition, as estates become less profitable, there was a lack of capital investment in them causing them to become moribund. In both places complicated charges, mortgages, estates and trusts often prevented the calling-in of debts or the sale of estates to owners prepared to make the capital investment necessary to make them more productive. [3] [4]
Often the owners of West Indian estates were resident in Great Britain meaning that increasing numbers of estates were managed by attorneys (any formally appointed legal person) in the colonies, to maximise short-term income. The Lieutenant-Governor of Saint Vincent complained in 1854, for instance, that of the 87 sugar estates on the island 64 were run by attorneys due to their owners being absent and that one attorney managed 15 estates. [5]
The Acts provided for a chief commissioner and up to two assistant commissioners to be appointed in England together with commissioners in the participating colonies. The first commissioners took office in February 1857. [6]
Colonies could apply, with the permission of their local legislatures, to participate in the scheme, the first to do so being Saint Vincent in 1856 which also submitted the first petition under the Acts in August 1857. [6] The next colony admitted to the scheme was Tobago in 1858. Deficiencies in the original Act soon became apparent and an amended Act was passed in 1858. [6]
Colonies were admitted as follows: [7]
The first plantation sold under the Acts was Arnos Vale Estate in Saint Vincent, formerly in the ownership of William Samuel Greatheed who left it to his widow and children. It was stated to have been entirely unproductive from 1854. [8] The case was heard in March 1858 and the estate sold by auction in London in November that year, [9] the purchaser being the reverend F. R. Braithwaite of Saint Vincent for £10,050, a sum that Reginald Cust, commissioner and historian of the legislation, noted was much higher than expected. [10]
Reginald Cust's detailed history of the legislation was published in 1859 with a second edition in 1865 and a supplement in 1874. The 1883 Report on the Working of the West Indian Incumbered [Encumbered] Estates Court Acts was printed for Parliament in 1884 and is held by the British National Archives. [12] Many of the auction sale particulars are available as scans in the collection of the Library of Congress.
(This list may be incomplete)
The West Indies Federation, also known as the West Indies, the Federation of the West Indies or the West Indian Federation, was a short-lived political union that existed from 3 January 1958 to 31 May 1962. Various islands in the Caribbean that were part of the British Empire, including Trinidad and Tobago, Barbados, Jamaica, and those on the Leeward and Windward Islands, came together to form the Federation, with its capital in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago. The expressed intention of the Federation was to create a political unit that would become independent from Britain as a single state — possibly similar to Canada, the Federation of Australia, or the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland. Before that could happen, the Federation collapsed due to internal political conflicts over how it would be governed or function viably. The formation of a West Indian Federation was encouraged by the United Kingdom, but also requested by pan-Caribbean nationalists.
The British West Indies (BWI) were the territories in the West Indies under British rule, including Anguilla, the Cayman Islands, the Turks and Caicos Islands, Montserrat, the British Virgin Islands, Bermuda, Antigua and Barbuda, the Bahamas, Barbados, Dominica, Grenada, Jamaica, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, British Honduras, British Guiana and Trinidad and Tobago.
The University of the West Indies (UWI), originally University College of the West Indies, is a public university system established to serve the higher education needs of the residents of 18 English-speaking countries and territories in the Caribbean: Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, The Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Bermuda, British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Dominica, Grenada, Guyana, Jamaica, Montserrat, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Trinidad and Tobago, and Turks and Caicos Islands. Each country is either a member of the Commonwealth of Nations or a British Overseas Territory.
Clarendon is a parish in Jamaica. It is located on the south of the island, roughly halfway between the island's eastern and western ends. Located in the county of Middlesex, it is bordered by Manchester on the west, Saint Catherine in the east, and in the north by Saint Ann. Its capital and largest town is May Pen.
The Commonwealth Caribbean is the region of the Caribbean with English-speaking countries and territories, which once constituted the Caribbean portion of the British Empire and are now part of the Commonwealth of Nations. The term includes many independent island nations, British Overseas Territories and some mainland nations.
The term British West Indies refers to the former English and British colonies and the present-day overseas territories of the United Kingdom in the Caribbean.
The British Windward Islands was an administrative grouping of British colonies in the Windward Islands of the West Indies, existing from 1833 until 3 January 1958 and consisting of the islands of Grenada, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent, the Grenadines, Barbados, Tobago, and Dominica, previously included in the British Leeward Islands.
The Slave Compensation Act 1837 was an Act of Parliament in the United Kingdom, signed into law on 23 December 1837.
The Indian indenture system was a system of indentured servitude, by which more than 1.6 million workers from British India were transported to labour in European colonies, as a substitute for slave labor, following the abolition of the trade in the early 19th century. The system expanded after the abolition of slavery in the British Empire in 1833, in the French colonies in 1848, and in the Dutch Empire in 1863. British Indian indentureship lasted till the 1920s. This resulted in the development of a large South Asian diaspora in the Caribbean, Natal, East Africa, Réunion, Mauritius, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Myanmar, and Fiji, as well as the growth of Indo-Caribbean, Indo-African, Indo-Mauritian, Indo-Fijian, Indo-Sri Lankan, Indo-Malaysian, and Indo-Singaporean populations.
This article describes the history of West Indies cricket to 1918.
The 1995 Caribbean Cup was the seventh edition of the Caribbean Cup, the football championship of the Caribbean, one of the CONCACAF zones. The final stage was hosted by Jamaica and Cayman Islands.
Arnos Vale is a former agricultural estate and now a settlement in Greathead Bay, formerly Warrawarrou Bay, in southern Saint Vincent, in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. It is centred 5 kilometres southeast of the capital, Kingstown. The country's former main airport, E. T. Joshua Airport occupied part of the area, and used to be called Arnos Vale Airport. The area is mainly green and has a coastline to the south. As to the traditional parishes of the island, determining the local forerunner church and present local body, it lies in the parish of Saint George, which contains the capital and about half of the island's population. It is one of five parishes on the main island.
A series of workplace disturbances, strikes, and riots broke out across the British West Indies in the period between 1934 and 1939. These began as the Great Depression wore on and ceased on the eve of World War II. The unrest served to highlight inequalities of wealth, led the British government to attempt a solution to the problem, and in some cases spurred the development of indigenous party politics that would lead to self-government and independence in the postwar period.
This is a timeline of the territorial evolution of the Caribbean and nearby areas of North, Central, and South America, listing each change to the internal and external borders of the various countries that make up the region.
The Encumbered Estates' Court was established by an act of the British Parliament in 1849, the Incumbered Estates (Ireland) Act 1849, to facilitate the sale of Irish estates whose owners, because of the Great Famine, were unable to meet their obligations. It was given authority to sell estates on application from either the owner or an encumbrancer and, after the sale, distribute the proceeds among the creditors, granting clear title to the new owners.
Trinity was a plantation in colonial Jamaica, located south of Port Maria, in Saint Mary Parish, one of several plantations owned by Zachary Bayly that formed part of the area known as Bayly's Vale. By the early nineteenth century, over 1,000 people were enslaved there producing mainly sugar and rum for which a mile-long aqueduct was built by Nathaniel Bayly to supply water for the refining process.
Albion was a sugar plantation in Saint David Parish, Jamaica. Created during or before the 18th century, it had at least 451 slaves when slavery was abolished in most of the British Empire in 1833. By the end of the 19th-century it was the most productive plantation in Jamaica due to the advanced refining technology it used. By the early 20th century, however, its cane sugar could not compete with cheaper European beet sugar, and it produced its last sugar crop in 1928. It subsequently became a banana farm for the United Fruit Company.
Sir Reginald John Cust was a barrister of Lincoln's Inn, judge, and Chief Commissioner of the West India Incumbered Estates Commission. He was knighted in the 1890 Birthday Honours.
Media related to West Indian Incumbered Estates Acts at Wikimedia Commons