ABSTRACT
The lives of Leeward Villagers have been inexorably affected by the adversities faced by all lower-class islanders. National economic underdevelopment, rural-urban disparities, a color/class system of stratification, and local-level ecological and other conditions have made the community one of the poorest on the island. In turn, estate and peasant production as well as movement into and out of the valley have been affected by island-wide socio-economic conditions and overseas agricultural and wage-labor markets. The large Leeward Valley Estate contained two communities dining the post-Emancipation period, Belair and Leeward Village, and these may have originated during the slavery period. Changes in the distribution of the valley population between 1780 and 1970 are a product of the removal of dispersed valley residents to Leeward Village. Migration from Leeward Village probably began shortly after Emancipation with villagers participating in the general exodus of poorer Vincentians to other islands where the rewards for wage-labor were much higher.
