Assessment, certificates, licenses, circa 1783-1797 Digital

Contains American customs certificates and retail and shipping licenses, dated 1795-1797 and an unattributed assessment on the “Value of the Produce of the Islands of Granada and the Grenadines,” circa 1783. The document list duties on slave labor, and sugar, rum, cotton, indigo produced in the islands in 1779-1780, and the expenses related to enslavement of 1,000 people on the public works for 312 working days. The authors include an appeal to the British government for tax relief for the upwards of 100 plantations on the islands, about one-third of which produced coffee, cacao, cotton, and indigo. They argue that inflation caused by the Anglo-French War (1778-1783) had increased the plantations' annual operating expenses, which in peacetime were approximately 5,000 livres.