History slavery Jamaica
📅 5 September 1683
📍 Jamaica
The law required tickets for travel and described enslaved people as property available to satisfy debts. It explicitly said that becoming Christian did not make an enslaved person free. Those rules show how colonial lawmakers used law to defend property claims while controlling movement and religion. The record also reflects a broader conflict: enslaved Jamaicans’ mobility and religious life challenged plantation control, even as the assembly tried to regulate both.
On 20 May 1655, English forces began the siege of Spanish-held Jamaica after their failed attempt to take Santo Domingo. The invasion changed the colonial power controlling the island; it did not mark...
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...
The act described enslaved Africans as necessary to plantations and authorized a justice and local inquest to sentence an enslaved person accused of a capital offense. It also prohibited inhabitants...
The code required written tickets for travel, prescribed punishments for resistance, and treated enslaved people as inheritable property. The archive notes that it closely copied Barbados’s 1661...
This statute renewed movement restrictions and punitive measures. It ordered enslavers to report people who had fled, penalized those who helped enslaved people escape, and offered a reward when an...
👉 A new Jamaican law again denies freedom through Christian baptism
Current
5 September 1683
The law required tickets for travel and described enslaved people as property available to satisfy debts. It explicitly said that becoming Christian did not make an enslaved person free. Those rules...
The Jamaican assembly passed an act for the "better Order and Government of Slaves." It required enslaved people to carry tickets to travel away from plantations, authorized punishment for movement...
Leeward Maroon leader Cudjoe signed a treaty with the colonial government after years of Maroon resistance. The agreement recognized the community's freedom and a defined territory, but it also...
Quao, a Windward Maroon leader, signed a treaty with the British colonial government. The separate agreement followed the Cudjoe treaty and did not represent every Maroon community. Its terms...
An uprising led by Tacky began in St Mary parish. Enslaved Africans seized weapons at Fort Haldane and expanded the revolt by attacking plantations and encouraging others to join. Historian Vincent...
A 1760 Jamaican act took effect on 1 January 1761 and criminalized practices the colonial state called Obeah. It authorized death or transportation after conviction and also restricted enslaved...
