Sugar and unfree labour: Reflections on labour control in the dominican republic, 1870–1935

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.