A Dark Inheritance: Blood, Race, and Sex in Colonial Jamaica Brooke N. Newman
CategoriesCase Studies
“Colonial legislators across the slave societies of British America grappled with pressing questions related to racial heritage and political participation in the early eighteenth century. In 1721, in response to concerns about “Sham Free-holders” voting in violation of “the freedom of Elections, and of the liberty of the subject,” Barbados passed an act specifying the qualifications for “bona-fide freeholders” capable of voting, holding public office, or serving on a jury.”
“The act permitted only white Christian male subjects, either natural born or naturalized, above age twenty-one with a minimum of ten acres of land to vote or serve as an assemblyman, vestryman, or juror. Clause 8 further clarified that “no person whatsoever shall be admitted as a Free-holder, or an Evidence in any case whatsoever, whose original extraction shall be proved to have been from a Negro.” Barbados further determined in 1739 to receive the testimony of a slave “against any free negro, Indian, or Mulatto, where baptized or not” in court, because persons manumitted or descended from slaves were “continuing their baseness” rather than distinguishing themselves from the enslaved population.”
“Similarly, an earlier Virginian law of 1723 stipulated that “no free Negro, Mulatto, or Indian whatsoever, shall hereafter have a vote at the Election of Burgesses, or any other Election whatsoever.” This policy contradicted the perspective of the Board Trade’s legal counsel who argued that no such rule existed in England allowing for the disparate treatment of freemen who met the property qualifications for suffrage.”
“Nonetheless, the burgesses passed additional restrictions the following decade to prevent “Negroes, mulattoes, and Indians who professed themselves to be Christians” from giving evidence in court “forasmuch as they are People of such base and corrupt natures, that the Credit of their Testimony cannot be certainly depended upon,” except in slave trials.”
“When, in 1735, the Board of Trade asked colonial officials in Virginia to explain the rationale of the earlier statute disenfranchising free blacks and people of mixed descent, Lieutenant Governor William Gooch issued a remarkably forthright and illuminating response. Shortly before passing the act of 1723, he explained, the Virginia burgesses had uncovered a conspiracy among the slaves, and “such was the insolence of the free negroes at that time, that the next Assembly thought it necessary to fix a perpetual brand upon free negroes and mulattoes by excluding them from the great privilege of a Freeman, well knowing they always did, and ever will adhere to and favor the slaves.” “And’ tis likewise said to have been done with design,” elaborated Gooch, “which I must think a good one, to make the free negros sensible.”
Source: A Dark Inheritance: Blood, Race, and Sex in Colonial Jamaica By Brooke N. Newman
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