In 1679, on the eve of his departure for England, Henry Drax drew up a meticulously detailed document describing how he wished his overseer, Richard Harwood, to run the Drax plantations and manage the three hundred slave laborers. Drax was among the first planters on Barbados to integrate all aspects of sugar production on a single site and to employ “cane-hole” planting techniques; both practices came to characterize the industry across the Caribbean as a whole. This piece offers a critical edition of Drax’s document and an interpretive essay stressing the role played by environmental and agronomic factors in shaping labor relations within what Drax referred to as his “family” of workers. Drax’s “Instructions,” reproduced in full, offers a wealth of detail of interest to historians of Barbados and to historians of plantation slavery.
