A Jamaican act made enslaved Africans and servants liable to punishment for leaving a plantation without written permission. It treated ordinary movement as an offense against an owner’s authority and required plantation authorities to apprehend and return people found away without a ticket. Read against its lawmakers’ language about theft and disorder, the statute also records enslaved people’s movement beyond plantation boundaries and the state’s effort to constrain it.
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What did Jamaica’s 1661 act require of enslaved people traveling away from a plantation?
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Explanation
The act treated movement without written permission as punishable.
Jamaica’s 1661 act punished enslaved people for leaving plantations without written permission.
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😢
Explanation
The law required written permission and authorized punishment for absence.