The Jamaican legislature passed a law requiring a more particular return and enrolment of enslaved people. The measure was presented as a way to guard against illegal imports after the British trade ban. It also made enslaved people more legible to the colonial state as property: registries listed names, age, colour, African or Creole status, and other details for owners' claims. Registration could help expose illicit imports, but its administrative unit was the enslaver's property claim.
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Jamaica's slave registers recorded people in ways shaped by colonial property administration.
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Explanation
The registers were returns from enslavers for official ownership and trade-control purposes.