Editing Nevis (section)

===Emancipation===
[[File:Nevis Methodist.jpg|thumb|upright=1|Charlestown Methodist Chapel in 1802. Pro-slavery mobs set the chapel ablaze in 1797, but the building was saved.]]
[[File:Portrait of John Pinney at the Georgian house, Bristol (sq cropped).jpg|thumb|upright=1|Slave owner and sugar merchant [[John Pinney]] of Mountravers Plantation]]
In 1706, [[Pierre Le Moyne d'Iberville]], the French Canadian founder of [[Louisiana]] in North America, decided to drive the English out of Nevis and thus also stop pirate attacks on French ships; he considered Nevis the region's headquarters for [[piracy in the Caribbean|piracy]] against French trade. During d'Iberville's invasion of Nevis, French [[buccaneer]]s were used in the front line, infamous for being ruthless killers after the pillaging during the wars with Spain where they gained a reputation for torturing and murdering non-combatants.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Archive |first=History |title=French Buccaneers {{!}} Francois O'llonais |url=https://goldenageofpiracy.org/buccaneers/french-buccaneers/francois-lollonais |access-date=2025-03-05 |website=History Archive |language=en}}</ref> In the face of the invading force, the English militiamen of Nevis fled.

Some planters burned the plantations, rather than letting the French have them, and hid in the mountains.{{citation needed|date=December 2015}} It was the enslaved Africans who held the French at bay by taking up arms to defend their families and the island. The slave quarters had been looted and burned as well, as the main reward promised the men fighting on the French side in the attack was the right to capture as many slaves as possible and resell them in [[Martinique]].{{citation needed|date=December 2015}}

During the fighting, 3,400 enslaved Nevisians were captured and sent off to Martinique, but about 1,000 more, poorly armed and militarily untrained, held the French troops at bay, by "murderous fire" according to an eyewitness account by an English militiaman. He wrote that "the slaves' brave behaviour and defence there shamed what some of their masters did, and they do not shrink to tell us so."<ref name="Hubbard"/> After 18 days of fighting, the French were driven off the island. Among the Nevisian men, women and children carried away on d'Iberville's ships, six ended up in Louisiana, the first persons of African descent to arrive there.<ref name="Hubbard" />

One consequence of the French attack was a collapsed sugar industry and during the ensuing hardship on Nevis, small plots of land on the plantations were made available to the enslaved families in order to control the loss of life due to starvation. With less profitability for the absentee plantation owners, the import of food supplies for the plantation workers dwindled. Between 1776 and 1783, when the food supplies failed to arrive altogether due to the [[American Revolution|rebellion in North America]], 300–400 enslaved Nevisians starved to death.<ref name="Hubbard" /> On 1 August 1834, slavery was abolished in the [[British Empire]]. In Nevis, 8,815 slaves were freed.<ref name="Hubbard" /> The first Monday in August is celebrated as [[Emancipation Day]] and is part of the annual Nevis Culturama festival.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Emancipation Day In Saint Kitts and Nevis {{!}} Loop Caribbean News |url=https://caribbean.loopnews.com/content/emancipation-day-saint-kitts-and-nevis |access-date=2024-01-20 |website=Loop News |language=en}}</ref>

A four-year apprenticeship programme followed the abolishment of slavery on the plantations. In spite of the continued use of the labour force, the Nevisian slave owners were paid over £150,000 in compensation from the British Government for the loss of property, whereas the enslaved families received nothing for 200 years of labour.<ref>Goveia, Elsa H. (1965). ''Slave Society in the British Leeward Islands''. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1965. {{ISBN|0-88258-048-5}}</ref> One of the wealthiest planter families in Nevis, the [[John Pinney|Pinneys]] of Mountravers Plantation, claimed £36,396 ({{Inflation|UK|36396|1834|{{Inflation/year|UK}}|fmt=eq|cursign=£}}){{Inflation/fn|UK}} in compensation for the slaves on the family-owned plantations around the Caribbean.<ref name="Bristol">[http://www.discoveringbristol.org.uk/showNarrative.php?sit_id=1&narId=214&nacId=822 Personal stories: Traders and Merchants – John Pinney] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070927062325/http://www.discoveringbristol.org.uk/showNarrative.php?sit_id=1&narId=214&nacId=822 |date=27 September 2007 }}. In ''Bristol and Transatlantic Slavery'', a project by City Museum and the University of the West of England's Faculty of Humanities. Retrieved 8 May 2007.</ref>

Because of the early distribution of plots and because many of the planters departed from the island when sugar cultivation became unprofitable, a relatively large percentage of Nevisians already owned or controlled land at emancipation.<ref name="Baker">Baker Motley, Constance (1998). ''Equal Justice Under Law. An Autobiography.'' New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux. {{ISBN|0-374-14865-1}}. An excerpt from the autobiography, describing her search in Nevis church records for her family's history during the era of slavery, is available online at [http://partners.nytimes.com/books/first/m/motley-equal.html The New York Times Book Review] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160304192223/http://partners.nytimes.com/books/first/m/motley-equal.html |date=4 March 2016 }}. Retrieved 8 August 2006.</ref> Others settled on crown land. This early development of a society with a majority of small, landowning farmers and entrepreneurs created a stronger middle class in Nevis than in Saint Kitts, where the sugar industry continued until 2006. Even though the 15 families in the wealthy planter elite no longer control the arable land, Saint Kitts still has a large, landless working class population.<ref>Simmonds, Keith C. (1987). "Political and Economic Factors Influencing the St. Kitts-Nevis Polity: An Historical Perspective". Phylon, 48:4. 4th Qtr., 1987, pp. 277–286.</ref>