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The decline of Jamaica's interracial households and the fall of the planter class, 1733–1823

2012; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 9; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/14788810.2012.637002

1740-4649

Daniel Livesay,

Australian History and Society

Abstract The theory of planter decline traditionally implied that social and sexual chaos in the West Indies produced a middle caste of mixed-race individuals who destabilized colonial life. This article contends that for most of the eighteenth century, interracial relationships were normative unions that did not undercut the central function of the sugar and slave economy. In Jamaica, colonial regulations against free people of color came with individual exemptions that allowed mixed-race elites to skirt the very laws intended to keep them marginalized. Despite differences of color, these personal and familial connections between free coloreds and white fathers helped to maintain strong social hierarchies among the island's wealthiest ranks. Abolitionist attacks against these family units, however, along with the ever present threat of enslaved revolt, changed conceptions of the Jamaican household at the close of the eighteenth century. Moreover, as Jamaica's mixed-race population grew and became more endogamous, personal connections to whites dwindled, escalating political conflict on the island. Interracial relationships, therefore, did not herald planter decline, but rather forestalled it. Keywords: Jamaicamixed-race studiesfree people of colorslaveryhistory of the familydecline theory Notes 1. Ragatz, Planter Class, 5, 33. 2. As a note on terminology, "mixed race," "person of color," "colored," and "brown Brown , Christopher Leslie. Moral Capital: Foundations of British Abolitionism . Chapel Hill : University of North Carolina Press , 2006 . [Google Scholar]" will be used to refer to individuals of joint African and European ancestry. Free blacks will be noted separately. Mixed-race individuals and free blacks together will be referred to as "non-whites." The absurdity of racial classifications becomes most apparent when referring to "interracial" relationships, primarily because many "non-whites" were themselves of multiple ethnic ancestries. For clarity, however, "interracial" will denote relationships between whites and individuals of at least some African heritage. 3. On Saint-Domingue, see James, Black Jacobins, 6–61, 163–73; Dubois Dubois , Laurent. A Colony of Citizens: Revolution and Slave Emancipation in the French Caribbean 1787–1804 . Chapel Hill : University of North Carolina Press , 2004 . [Google Scholar], Colony of Citizens, 112–51, 354–60. On problems associated with interracial relations generally, see Heuman Heuman , Gad. Between Black and White: Race, Politics, and the Free Coloreds in Jamaica, 1792–1865 . Westport , CT : Greenwood Press , 1981 . [Google Scholar], Between Black and White; Lambert Lambert , David. White Creole Culture, Politics and Identity during the Age of Abolition . 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