“What Is for Me Is Not for My Master” Provision Grounds, Customary Rights, and Gradual Emancipation during Jamaican Apprenticeship, 1834–1838

This article centers what provision grounds meant to and for Afro-Jamaican apprentice laborers, and it details the complicated nature of customary rights, which were under attack after abolition in 1834. Although the apprentices’ provision grounds did not belong to them legally, they believed this land was theirs by customary right. Maintaining provision grounds allowed some apprentices to increase their capital and carve out autonomous spaces. For others, provision grounds led to familial and communal disputes over land rights. Furthermore, this study highlights rights lost and gained for apprentices after abolition and emphasizes how apprentice laborers sometimes exercised their newfound right to file complaints against overseers to secure their customary rights. By evaluating the factors that encouraged and discouraged the careful cultivation of one’s grounds during apprenticeship, this article also evaluates the role that these grounds played in the wider Afro-Jamaican community forged on pens and plantations.