Beginning in the 1640s, English colonists in Barbados established a violent and profitable political economy based on European indentured labor, African slavery, and the export of sugar. Barbados became a model for the ambitious colonists who settled both Jamaica and South Carolina. Essential to the political work of establishing economies based on slavery was the codification of law to govern the ordering of slaves. In 1661 the Barbados House of Assembly passed two separate comprehensive labor codes aimed at better controlling their unruly labor force; one act governed “Christian Servants,” the other act governed “Negro” slaves. These acts codified racial distinction as a tool of mastery and served as a template for both Jamaica and South Carolina. But the history of legal borrowing among these colonies did not unfold as we have hitherto understood it. Jamaica copied its slave code from Barbados in 1664. In 1684 the Jamaica House of Assembly passed a new slave code with significant innovations, which South Carolina copied in 1691. Examining the processes of legal borrowing and innovation from 1661 to 1696 across the greater Caribbean colonies of Barbados, Jamaica, and South Carolina, I argue that this legal history allows us to better understand the development of race as a concept, as well as the practices of slave mastery that these colonial assemblies sought to forge.
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