A vital digest of laws governing Jamaica over fifty years: the most important British colony in the Caribbean. This copy is complete with the engraved plan of the harbour at Port Royal.
After the arrival of Christopher Columbus in 1494, Jamaica remained a Spanish colony until it was captured by the English in 1655. Thirty years prior, Barbados was claimed for England with the first settlers arriving in 1627. It quickly adopted a plantation economy and enslaved workforce and as such became a model for what followed in Jamaica.
In his article on slave codes, Edward Rugemer writes that by “the early seventeenth century, when the English began to plant settlements in the Americas, African slavery had been a fixture in the Iberian Atlantic for more than a generation. The English did not have to invent slavery out of whole cloth but, in a similar manner to their French counterparts at the same time, they had to construct the legal and political structures to govern this labor institution, which for them was quite new” (Rugemer, 432). This volume is an ample demonstration of this.
Indeed, the first English civil government in Jamaica was established in 1661 and promptly adopted - with only a few revisions - the 1661 Barbados Slave Act. This underwent further revisions - in 1684 after an uprising - and is present here in its 1696 iteration.
There are numerous acts governing Jamaica’s enslaved population, including: “An Act for the more effectual raising Parties to pursue and destroy rebellious and runaway Slaves.” This act was updated frequently and had variations facilitating the raising of money towards, the further encouragement of, and a mechanism for the recompense of Officers and Soldiers who were directly involved in such. In 1730 an act was passed “for the better regulating Slaves, and rendering free Negroes and Mulattoes more usesful.” In the same year, “An Act to prevent the selling of Powder to rebellious, or any other Negroes whatsoever” was passed. Some acts were specific to certain parishes, such as “An Act to prevent the landing or keeping of Negroes infected with the Smallpox, in and of the Three Towns of St Catherine, Port-Royal, and Kingston” (1732) as well as one “to suppress the rebellious Negroes in the Windward Parts of this Island” (1730). Furthermore, there is “An Act to prevent the malicious burning of Houses and Plantations” and “An Act for the Manumission of the Wife and Children of a free Negro-man, Sambo, and of other Negroes; and for recompensing their respective Owners.”
The wider concerns of the colony are also evident, such as in the “Act for the Restraining and Punishing Privateers and Pirates”; “Act for preventing Damages in Plantations, preserving Cattle, and regulating Hunting”; “An Act for Settling the Militia”; “An Act for Encouraging the Settling of this Island”; “Act for quartering Officers and Soldiers”; “An Act to encourage the Importation of white Men”; “An Act for imposing a Duty on all Rum, and other Spirits or Strong-Waters retailed in this Island …”
Scarce in the trade with just a handful of copies recorded at auction between 1871 and 2015.
Sabin, 35614; Rugemer, E.B., “The Developement of Mastery and Race in the Comprehensive Slave Codes of the Greater Caribbean during the Seventeenth Century” in The William and Mary Quarterly, Vol. 70, No. 3 (July, 2013) pp.429-458.
