Slaveholders in Jamaica:
Colonial Society and Culture during the Era of Abolition
Christer Petley
Empires in Perspective
978 1 85196 990 6: 234x156mm: £60.00/$99.00
At the end of the eighteenth century the Jamaican slave economy was crucial to Britain’s lucrative colonial enterprise. Slave-produced sugar had transformed the Caribbean and revolutionised British habits of consumption. However, the status and influence of Jamaican slave owners was on the wane. British imperial ambitions had shifted eastwards, and slaveholders found themselves at the centre of a transatlantic conflict over the future of slavery in the British Empire. They also faced changes in the Caribbean itself, encountering new kinds of resistance from enslaved people and their allies. Petley explores the social composition of the Jamaican slaveholding class during the era of the British campaign to end slavery, looking at their efforts to maintain control over local society and considering how their economic, cultural and military dependency on the colonial metropole meant that they were ultimately unable to avert the ending of British slavery.
This book is based on extensive research in British and Caribbean archives. Petley sheds valuable new light on the lives of British West Indian slaveholders and their efforts to defend and justify an institution that has cast a dark and enduring shadow over modern notions of race, cultural authority and freedom.
Readership
Colonial and Empire Studies, History of Slavery and Abolition, History of Race, Atlantic Studies, Caribbean History
Contents
Introduction: Slaveholders and the Conflict over Slavery
Part 1 – Boundaries of Rule: White Slaveholders and Creole Society
Chapter 1: Jamaica
Chapter 2: Slaveholding
Chapter 3: White Male Solidarity
Part 2 – Ties of Dependency: White Slaveholders and Britain
Chapter 4: Security and Economy
Chapter 5: Culture
Part 3 – Boundaries Ruptured and Reconfigured: The Abolition of Slavery
Chapyer 6: Uprising
Chapter 7: Backlash
Chapter 8: Emancipation
Epilogue: ‘Apprenticeship’ and After