Brown - The Reaper's Garden

THE REAP'ER'S GARDEN
Death and Power in th'e World

of Atlantic Slavery
VINCENT BROWN
HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS

CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
LONDON, ENGLAND
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Copyright © :wo8 by Vincent Brown

All rights reserved
Printed mn the UnitJed States of America
First Harvard University Press paperback edition, 2010
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Brown, Vincent, 1967-
The reaper's garnen :·death and power in the
world of Adant:ic slavery I Vincent Brown.
p. em.
Includes b~lbliogra:phical references and index.
ISBN 978-0~674-0242.2:-9 (doth: alk. paper)
ISBN 9'78-o-674-05712-8 (pbk~)
I. Death-Social aspecrs-Jamaica.
2.. Slavery-·Jamaica. I. Tide.
HQ107M··J2.6876 2007
306.9086'9I20972.92___:.JC22 200,7025907
For the dead,
alive in so many more ways
than I can tell
Acknowledgments
OF ALL creative writers, historians should be the most skeptical of claims

to originality. Our works depend upon so many sources that never appear
in our footnotes-conversations with kin, friends, and casual acquain-
tances, the lyrics, rhythms, and melodies of our favorite music, the mood
of our times. Yet at the same time, no announcement could possibly
encapsulate the number of my contemporaries who are embedded in the
story I have told,. or aU of the events of the recent past that have found
their way into my turns of phrase and points of emphasis. This unforgiv-
ably partial list reflects just a few of the influences that have shaped this
book.
Surely, the story I tell has been indelibly marked by the foUowing hap-
penings: the civil rights and Black Power movements; the crack wars of
the 1980s and 1990s; the mushrooming of the U.S. prison industry; hip-
hop's conquest of popular culture; the global AIDS pandemic; the collapse
of the Soviet Empire and the triumphalism of global corporations; the
U.S.-Soviet proxy wars in Asia, Mrica, and Latin America and the terror
wars that followed the events of September n, 2001; the death of my
beloved grandfather, Charles Samuel Greene (1905-2002), and the birth
of my beloved daughter, Zareen Subramanian Brown in 2004.
I owe much of my perspective on the legacies of the past to masters of
the art, philosophy, and spirit of the African diaspora, especially Khalid
Saleem, Ava Vinesett, Pastel, Caxias, Ramos, and Chuvisco. Axe!
vm ~ Acknowledgments
Several valued friends and counselors helped me nurture this project

from its inception. Steven Hahn, whose lectures at the University of Cal-
ifornia, San Diego, first attracted me to the discipline of history, was my
first adviser in the profession, and he has continued to have a profound
impact on the choices I make. David Barry Gaspar's guidance in the early
stages of this project was invaluable. He believed in me and my ideas
enough to give me the greatest gift a reader can offer: patience. My early
development as a scholar was shaped immeasurably by John D. French,
Jane Gaines, Raymond Gavins,. Lawrence Goodwyn, Nancy Hewitt, Julius
S. Scott, and Peter H. Wood. Among the people who kept me going when
I thought the coffin might close on my career as a scholar were Fran<;oise
Bordarier, Derek Chang, Katy Fenn, Paul Husbands, Nadine Le Meur,
Paul Ortiz, Jody Pavilack, Sidarta Ribeiro, David Sartorious, Subir Sinha,
Matthew Specter, Ajantha Subramanian, Rashmi Varma, and Richard
Vinesett.
At conferences and at the invitation of colleagues at other universities,
I have presented many of the themes and arguments that appear in The
Reapers Garden. I have learned immensely from the comments and criti-
cisms of colleagues at Brandeis University, Florida International University,
the Universicy of Sourhern California-Huntington Library Early Modern
Studies Institute workshop, New York University, Northwestern University,
Princeton University, the University ofToronto, and Washington Univer-
sity. I also benefited from discussions of my work at the Slavery and Reli-
gion in the Modern Era conference in Essaouira, Morocco, in 2001, (he
Political Histories of Death in the Black Diaspora panel, held during the
2002 annual meeting of the Organization of American Historians (OAH),
the Oceans Connect conference at Duke University in 2002, the New

Directions in the Study of the Atlantic: Slavery, Continuing Conversations
conference at Rutgers University in 2003, the Black Atlantic workshop of
the Adantic History Seminar at Harvard University in 2003, the Atlantic
History Workshop on the Age of Revolution in the Atlantic World, held
at Michigan State University in 2005, and Violence, Dissent, and the
Shaping of New World Slavery, a panel held during the 2006 annual
meeting of the OAH.
At Harvard University, I have benefited greatly from the advice and
support of Emmanud Akyeampong, David Armitage, Sven Beckert:, Joyce
E. Chaplin, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Andrew Gordon, Evelyn Brooks
Acknowledgments ~ zx
Higginbotham, Waher Johnson, Jill Lepore, Susan E. O'Donovan, and

Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, as well as from the careful critiques of the partic-
ipants in Harvard's Early American History workshop. A little writer's
group in Cambridge kept me facing deadlines when I most needed them.
For this I thank Robin Bernstein, Cheryl Finley, Barbara Rodriguez, and
especiaHy Glenda Carpio, whose close readings of several chapters com-
pelled me to clarify my thoughts.
No historian could achieve anything without the help of library cura-
tors and archivists. I am especiaUy indebted to the helpful people at the
Public Record Office of the United Kingdom, the British Library, Cam-
bridge University Library, the Bodleian Library, the Lambeth Palace
Library, the Methodist Missionary Society Archives at the School of Ori-
ental and African Studies, the House of Lords Record Office, the Institute
of Jamaica, the Jamaica Archives, the National Library of Jamaica, the
Rare Books, Manuscripts and Special Collections Library at Duke Uni-
versity, and Harvard College Library.
I am a[so grateful to Edward E. Baptist, Ian Baucom, Herman L.
Bennett, Ira Berlin, Marie Burks, Alexander Byrd, Stephanie Camp,
Vincent Carretta, Michelle Craig, Colin Dayan, Vasanrhi Devi, Maria
Grahn-Farley, Anthony Farley, Kim Hall, Jerome S. Handler, Engseng
Ho, Sharon Ann Holt, Walter Johnson, Rebecca Ladbury, Michael
McCormick, Roderick McDonald, Joseph C. Miller, C. Benjamin
Nutley, Andrew Jackson O'Shaughnessy, Geeta Patel, Cory Paulsen,
Charles Piot, Richard Price, EBen Quigley, Louise Reid, Daniel Richter,
Julie Saville, Philip Schwartzberg, Stephanie Smallwood., Werner Sol-
lars, Orin Starn, K. S. Subramanian, Mark L. Thompson, David Wells,
Kath Weston, Caron Yee, Kevin Yelvington, and Michael Zuckerman,
all of whom, in various important ways, helped to make the completion
of this book possible. Generous financial support has come from the Duke
Endowment, Duke University's Center for International Studies, and
fellowships from the University of Pennsylvania's McNeil Center for
Early American Studies and Harvard University's Charles Warren
Center, as well as the Lillian Gollay Knafel fellowship at the Radcliffe
Institute for Advanced Study.
Special thanks go to my editor at Harvard University Press, Joyce Seltzer,
for her enthusiastic encouragement. At the press I also thank Jennifer Banks
and Susan Abel. The reports of two anonymous reviewers for Harvard Press,
x ~ AcknowLedgments
who have since become known to me as Laurent Dubois and James

Sidbury, made a vital contribution to this work by pushing me to revise,
clarify, or, in a few cases, reconsider aspects of my analysis. I am similarly
indebted to an anonymous reviewer for questions, comments, and sugges-
tions regarding an earlier dratt of Chapter 4, which first appeared as "Spir-
itual Terror and Sacred Authority in Jamaican Slave Society" in Slavery &
Abolition 24, no. I (April 2003), parts of which are reproduced herein with
the permission of Taylor & Francis Group, Ltd.
Lessons learned from family members are often the deepest and most
difficult to fathom. Nothing I could ever say or do would be enough to
acknowledge the importance of the love and support I have received from
my mother and father, Willie and Manuelita Brown, who taught me to
cherish that most valuable thing: curiosity. Finally, I give thanks for
Ajantha Subramanian, my best friend and most persuasive teacher, who
has taught me to revel in life even as I meditate on death.
~I
Contents
List: of Illustrations xu
PROLOGUE Death, Power, and Atlantic Slavery r
ONE Worlds of Wealth and Death IJ

TWO Last Rites and First Principles 6o
THREE Expectations of the Dead 92

FOUR Icons, Shamans, and Martyrs 129
FIVE The Soul of the British Empire !57
srx Holy Ghosts and Eternal Salvation 201
SEVEN Gardens of Remembrance 231
EPILOGUE Regeneration 255
Appendix 265
Abbreviations in Notes 269
Notes 271
Index 327
Illustrations
MAPS
Map r The Adamic Basin, drawn by Philip Schwartzberg x1v-xv
Map 2 The Caribbean, drawn by Philip Schwartzberg XVI
Map 3 Jamaica, drawn by Philip Schwartzberg xvUI
Map 4 Enslaved immigrants to Jamaica, by region, 174I-r807, drawn

by Philip Schwartzberg 26
FIGURES
Figure P.r View of Port Royal and Kingston Harbours, jamaica 2
Figure P.z "Nyame nwu na mawu, 5

Figure LI "J oh nny N ew-come" r8
Figure 1.2 The Torrid Zone 21
Figure 2.r Funeral of Johnny New-come 6r
Figure 2.2 Afro-Jamaican funeral procession 67

Figure 2.3 Afro-Jamaican funeral music 71
Figure 2.4 Dearh and burial preparations for Johnny New-come 84
Figure 3.1 "John sends for Mr. Codicil" 94

Figure 3.2 Portrait of the Taylor family 97
Figure 4-1 Executions of convicted rebels 130
Figure p The survivors of the Zong massacre, advertised for sale r61
Figure 5.2 Graveyard ethics r66
Figure 5·3 A Negro hung alive by the Ribs to a Gallows 193

Figure 5·4 Barbarities in the West Indias 19 5
Figure 5·5 Detail from Plan and Sections of a Slave Ship 196
Figure 6.1 Visit ofa Missionary and Wife to a Plantation Village 221
Figure 7.1 Monument of the Late Thomas Hibbert 240
Figure A.I The Transatlantic Slave Trade to Jamaica, 1741-r8o7:

African Regional Distributions 266
Figure A.2 The Transatlantic Slave Trade to Jamaica, 174I-1807: Volumes

of Embarcation by Decade 267
( Hudson
Bay
Labrador
Sea
, Bermuda
A T L A N T I c
0 c E A N
Galapagos Is. :+;, ,·
Map]. The Atlantic Basin, drawn by Philip Schwartzberg

Faeroefs.l!!.
'b
Madeira Is . .,·
Cape Verde Is .
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A F R I C A
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~ CaJle Coast
~c~_..---•Whydah
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Ascension
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Mexico 11 t
0 c Q
l c
e a 1'1
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Car'tbbean S e a ..,, '0 Maninique
(JSt. Lucia
{}
Map 2. The Caribbean, drawn by Philip Schwartzberg

~~
The Reaper's Garden

•••••••• Parish bollnda!)' 1814-1834
Map 3· Jamaica, drawn by Philip Schwartzberg

PROLOGUE
Death, Power, and Atlantic Slavery

Only that historian will have the gift of fanning the spark of hope in the past
who is firmly convinced that even the dead will not be safe
from the enemy if he wins.
Walter Benjamin, 'Theses on the Philosophy of History," r940
AROUND r8oo, a ship carrying the British traveler Robert Renny put into
Port Royal, Jamaica (Figure P.r). As it arrived, three or four black women
approached the side of the ship in a smaU canoe, bringing oranges and
other fresh fruits to sell to the sea-weary passengers. Sailors hoisted the
wekome produce aboard and cast down some coins to complete the
exchange. Their business done, the women prepared to depart. They gazed
at the white passengers crowded on deck, and it seemed to Renny that the
women were surprised at their number. Then, just as the canoe pushed
off, the women began to sing. One of them took the lead, calling verses,
while the others dapped their hands in time and responded with the
chorus. Writing in r8o7, Renny remembered the song this way:
New-come buckra,
Heger sick,
He tak fever,
He be die;
He be die.
As far as the passengers could tell, the song contained no other words, bur
the women continued to sing the ominous lyrics as long as they were
within hearing distance. 1
What went through the minds of these new arrivals to Jamaica, as they
listened to predictions of their imminent demise? Renny does not say.
2 ~ The Reapers Garden
Figure P.r. View of Port Royal and Kingston Harbours, jamaica, engraved by Peter Mazell, from
Edward Long, History ofjamaica, vol. 2 (London, 1774), facing 138. Courtesy of the National Mar-
itime Museum, London.
Perhaps the singing women reminded the new arrivals of plague songs
chanted by children in England, which, long after the plague had
exhausted itself, continued to live in popular memory in the form of
innocuous rhymes, playful reminders of humankind's pitiful frailty in the
hands of Nature and of God. More likely, the passengers heard the black
women's song differently. Probably, they were reminded of Jamaica's pop-
ular reputation as the "grave of the Europeans." Indeed, that is probably
exactly what the women intended.
Passengers to Jamaica had good reason to be afraid. Life expectancy for
whites in Kingston, the principal port and largest town on the island,. was
nearly as poor as it was for Europeans in West Africa, where, decades ear-
lier, more than 6o percent of newcomers died within a year and only one
man in ten survived more than three years. Kingsron had recorded nearly
18,ooo funerals and just 2,669 baptisms among the white population from
1722 to 1774· Neighboring Port Royal, where Renny and his fellow "new-
Prologue ""' 3
come buckra" dropped anchor some years later, could not have fared much
better. Disembarking at Jamaica, Renny would have had to inhale the
putrid stench of the slave ships, bloated with dead and dying Mricans, to
see the corpses ofexecuted criminals dangling on the gallows, and to heed
the incessant talk of disease and demise. 2
At one level then,. the morbid song of the market women simply com-
mented on a well-known aspect of social reality: death was imminent. But
more important, the women chanted their song in a highly charged con-
text. Indeed, "buckra" was an epithet as well as a ubiquitous term of
description for white people. It could mean "master," "he who surrounds
or governs,'' or "demon" in its West African usage-a powerful evil being
to be contained, manipulated, or driven from the world. The word could
be interpreted as an honorific or a provocation, and its double-edged
meaning keyed the women's refrain to Jamaica's turbulent political climate.
Jamaica was a brutal and volacile slave society, contentious and unstable
in the best of times. Slave rebellions and conspiracies of varying magni-
tudes occurred almost once each decade between 1740 and 1838. More
than that, the social relations of slavery entailed constant tensions and
power struggles. In both overt and subtle ways, the enslaved were ever
trying to undermine labor discipline and white authority. Masters and
colonial police constantly devised and revised strategies for control. Pro-
moting the sanctity and value of white lives through law and ideology was
an important part of their efforts. In an emphatically unequal society,
where it was a capital crime even to "imagine the death of a white person,"
the market women evoked disease and death as a social leveler. 3
Violating the spirit of colonial order and discipline, the black women
taunted the fresh white recruits, by intimidating them with the reminder
that whatever privileges white skin was supposed to confer in slave society,
newcomers were likely to be brought low by disease. In this respect, the
"he be die" chorus could have been a corollary to another chant Robert
Renny heard slaves sing in the streets of Kingston:
One, two, tree,

All de same;
Black, white, brown,.
All de same;
All de same.
While both songs expressed rejection of the symbolic order that facilitated
social control in slave society, the "He be die" song also implied a basic
connection between social conflict and the morbid environment. Invoking
disease and death to mock white authority, the women made an ally of an
inscrutable and unpredictable force; the song may even have been a curse.
Whichever way the women intended to deploy the lyrics, the occasion
reminds us that the link between catastrophic demographic circumstances
and communal strife went far beyond colorful jesting.
The song of the market women was a jeering reminder of the final end,
yet at the same time an indication that the end was the beginning, that
death arrived not only to finish the living, but also to cultivate important
features of social life. Just as the Grim Reaper arrived to gather in the har-
vest at the end of the life cycle, he also sowed the seeds of social renewal.
Death was as generative as it was destructive. In a society characterized by
movement and uncertainty-arrivals and departures of migrants, precar-
ious crop cycles,. and market fluctuations-as well as by repressive hier-
archy and tense negotiation, the activities surrounding death gave the
volatile wodd a reliable axis.
The song introduced the newcomers to this world, where death struc-
tured society and shaped its most consequential struggles. The accumula-
tion of property, the reproduction of family and social networks, and the
meaningful representation of life all stemmed in significant ways from
high mortality and the lingering presence of the dead. The demographic
environment-where rampant disease, malnutrition, overwork, and vio-
lence resulted in frequent burials-ensured that the ideas, articuladons,
and rituals associated with death and the dead would play a fundamental
role in conflicts among European fortune-seekers, who, betting against the
demographic odds,. jockeyed with each other for status and power, and
also between the tiny minority of white slaveholders and the enslaved
black and brown people over whom they ruled with virtually unlimited
authority. Eventually, too, the outgrowth of death affected relations
between reformers back home and their colonial compatriots. In various
ways and with differing consequences, they aH strove to fulfill communal
desires and political ambitions through cultural pracrices that related the
living ro the dead. In this way, the story of death and slavery illustrates a
premise common to many religious worldviews, that the dead are active
participants in the living world. Encapsulated by the Akan adinkra (icon)
Prologue ~ 5
Figure P.2. "Nyame nwu na mawu" (God does not die, so I

cannot die) is the Akan adinkra symbolizing the continuing
influence of the dead in the affairs of the living.
"Nyame nwu na mawu" (loosely translated, "God does not die, so I

cannot die"), which symbolizes the continuity of the human spirit in tem-
poral affairs, this idea contemplates death as a transition between the phys-
ical and the immaterial states of being, with the dead remaining pivotal
players in the societies in which they had lived (Figure P.2). 4
Admittedly, it is a subject shrouded in uncertainty. One must accept the
droll bit of wisdom offered by a religious leader on Africa's Gold Coast in
the 1740s, who reminded a European Christian that lack of observable
data prevented informed discussion of the hereafter. "I have never been
dead and come back to life," he said, "to enable me to debate with such
certainty about the other life, as your holy man did when he was here."
Practices surrounding death are ultimately grounded in perceptions of the
unknowable and ineffable. Yet this is a story that can be told without
metaphysical speculation. Attitudes toward death often lie at the heart of
social conflict, and the dead are frequently objects of contention and
struggle. If research from the fields of demographic, cultural, and social
history is drawn together, the practical ways that people make poli[ical
meaning of death can be observed, described, and, ultimately, fashioned
into a materialist history of the supernatural imagination.
~~
Death and its meanings have historically been central to social order and
tension. People have derived profound social meaning from the beliefs and
practices associated with death, and they have employed those meanings-
charged with cosmic importance-in struggles toward particular ends. I
call such activity mortuary politics, employing a capacious general defini-
tion of politics as concerted action toward specific goals. Alongside more
conventional political practices like policymaking and institution building,
this broad definition allows me to consider how people justifY actions,
claim and dispute authority, or create and use the cultural categories that
6~ The Reaper's Garden
mediate social life. Mortuary practices may reflect historic changes, as

intense disputes about custom, authority, and religion play out within
final rites of passage. More significantly, relations between the living and
the dead also generate historic changes when those relations emerge as the
source of struggle. 5
"Death is the quintessential cosmic issue," remarks the anthropologist
Katherine Verdery, "one that brings us all face to face with ultimate ques-
tions about what it means to be-and to stop being-human, about
where we have come from and where we are going." Because death is uni-
versal and the dead are universally meaningful, mortuary ideas and cus-
toms specific to different groups can be potent sources and arenas of
momentous action. Relations with the dead, by virtue of their powerful
symbolism and association with things sacred, have the ability to connect
private and public concerns, by aligning individual experiences of loss and
memory with the interests of community, church, or state. This linkage
makes the dead integral to both social organization and political mobaiza-
tion, and therefore vital to historical transformation. 6
This was especially the case in Atlantic plantation societies, where death
weighed heavily in people's considerations, at least from the time of the
Spanish conquest of Native America, when the Caribbean Indian popu-
lations suffered perhaps the greatest collapse known to historians. "The
new world, indeed, appears to be surrounded with the flaming sword of
the angel," wrote Robert Renny, "threatening destruction to all those who
venture within its reach." High mortality rates have been widely recog-
nized as one of the most remarkable features of these societies, especially
those committed to sugar cultivation, but less is known about mortality's
social and political implications. Groundbreaking forays into the epidemi-
ology of the slave trade and colonization have built up an impressive body
of knowledge about the medical and demographic dimensions of slave
societies, and historians have discussed the impact of mortality on the
broad outlines of the social history of the Americas. However, few have
seriously examined the way that death shaped daily life, or how, in the
terms proposed by the psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton, people symbolized
"continuity in the face of death" in struggles over property, authority,
morality, territory, and belonging. In other words, we know little about
how the meaning of mortality motivated people to act or, as many would
have understood it rhen, how the dead affected the history of the living.?
Prologue ~ 7
An explanation depends on the answers to four interrelated questions:

In what ways (or by what means) did people formulate their relations with
the dead? How did mortuary belief and practice respond to demographic,
socioeconomic, politicaL and religious changes? How were ways of relating
to the dead embedded in political conflict? FinaHy, how did mortuary pol-
itics shape the course of history for the contending groups in Jamaica's
world of Adamic slavery, where relations with the dead impinged on daily
struggles, rebeHious outbursts, and even parliamentary politics?
In The Birth ofAfrican-American Culture: An Anthropological Perspec-
tive, originaHy published in 1976, Sidney W Mintz and Richard Price
sketched out an influential method for historical ethnographers of slave
societies, admonishing scholars to pay closer attention to the way institu-
tional contexts shaped the cultures of people in slavery. They reminded
students of cultural history generally, and early African-American history
in particular, to examine carefully the ways in which material life shaped
the evolution of the beliefs and practices that Africans brought with them
to the Americas, to describe more precisely how Africans became African
Americans. While many of the provisional conclusions Mintz and Price
drew about patterns of group identification and belonging have been
revised by subsequent scholarship, the outline of their approach, which
called for an emphasis on the cultural creativity of the enslaved, remains
compelling. 8
Recently, acclaimed histories of slavery in the Americas have refined our
understanding of how different New World contexts shaped black identi-
ties and generational experiences. Bur the cultural history of slavery in
early America goes much deeper than characterizations of identity along
a continuum from African to American (or, for that matter, assertions that
identities are in fact hybrid) can capture. Cultural practices in American
slave societies were deeply entangled. People of diverse origins readily bor-
rowed, stole, and mimicked one another's behavior. For this reason, it can
be misleading to attribute cultural traits to distinct "ethnic" groups, traced
back to their places of origin, or to describe cultural change in terms of
i
linear progress toward settled New World patterns. This kind of analysis 'I
also leaves the mistaken impression that people's sole aim was to achieve
a distinct cultural idenriry. That may have been one important goal, but
it was undoubtedly not rhe only one. Examining the politics of practical
behavior, by contrast:, calls attention ro people's strategies for using cul rural
8 10!- The Reapers Garden
practices to fulfill a variety of pressing needs in difficult and dangerous cir-

cumstances. Burial ceremonies, conceptions of the afterlife, inheritance
practices, and rites of commemoration, for example, all played a signifi-
cant role in the political history of slavery, which goes beyond the cultural
history of identity. Rather than ask of a cultural practice or idea, "How
African is it?" it might therefore be more useful to ask, "What was it used
for? What were its consequences?" By themselves, African-ness and eth-
nicit:y do not tell us enough about how human beings struggled to remake
their worlds-about how in specific contexts particular cultural configu-
rations shaped political experience and action. 9
Robert Renny and his compatriots may have heard the "new-come
buckra" song of the market women as a typical example of an expressive
black culture or as a peculiarly African form of play. But that matters little,
for surely, too, they understood it more as an intentionally provocative
dialogue with potential enemies-a warning, a threat, perhaps the
women's hope for things to come. In other words, it represented social
conflict more than cultural contact. Seen this way, the song is remarkable
more for its meaning than for its form. Diagnosing their world, the
women affirmed that Atlantic slavery was a deadly enterprise. In acknowl-
edging that whites were equally subject to the dominion of death, they
also recognized that this world was an integrated one.
Europeans often thought of their colonies as fundamentally alien places,.
atavistic spaces of degeneracy and violence constituting a "Torrid Zone"
beyond the boundaries of civilization. But whereas this imagined geog-
raphy shaped European self-perceptions and even, to some extent, colonial
poHcymaking, it did not: even begin to map the actual circuits of conse-
quence in the world of Adantic slavery. While it might have been conve-
nient for Europeans to see the plantation colonies through the prism of
such invidious distinctions, thereby absolving themselves of moral respon-
sibility for the nightmarish societies they had created, it was a vision cal-
culated to obscure the actual depth of mutual engagement between colony
and home country, and to gloss over the precise nature of the relations
between the various peoples in their empires. It aHowed them to believe
that empire existed on the margins of European progress.
Yet Jamaica was by no means peripheral to the British Empire; it was
the focus of concentrated attention. In 1756 the British naturalist Patrick
Browne accurately described the colony as a "necessary appendage to our
Prologue .;;r 9
present refined manner of living." Browne acknowledged that if one con-

sidered the value of its agricultural products, the number of men and ships
employed in its trade, or the quantity and value of its imports from
Europe, Jamaica was "not only the richest, bur the most considerable
colony at this time under the government of Great Britain." It was in
many ways the fulcrum of British Atlantic slavery. Comprising a diverse
population of immigrants and their descendants and pivotal to the success
of imperial enterprise, the colony was inextricably connected to its hin-
terlands in Mrica, Europe, and North America. Consequently, the history
of Jamaica is seen most clearly from an ''Atlantic" perspective that
describes the colony in relation to its wider web of connections and com-
parisons with other parts of the Atlantic basin. Following routes of cause
and effect in this context requires a method akin to that of epidemiology,
for it one must describe the movement of people, cultural practices, and
social actions as an epidemiologist might analyze pathogens spreading
through space and time-by examining both the causal agents and the
conditions in which they take roar, thrive, or degenerate. Such an
approach illuminates the unlikely connections that often escape notice in
more narrowly bounded histories. 10
Just as Jamaica was geographically integrated into rhe larger Atlantic
world, so its inhabitants were interconnected with one another. Whites
depended for their livelihood on black slaves as surely as the institution
of slavery constrained the life chances of Africans and their descendants.
Social power may operate by enforcing boundaries between the weak and
the strong, but the analysis of power must survey the dominant and sub-
altern within the same field of vision. The political history of slavery is
the srory of intertwined (if nevertheless distinct) destinies, of inseparable
differences. Thus, it fails to fit strictly within the fields of British imperial,
American colonial,. Black Atlantic, or African diaspora history; each is
braided together with the others.
The history of slavery is best understood by accounting for the social
awareness, strategies, and tactical maneuvers of all contending parties,
including the illiterate, the weak, and the nonwhite. Sifting through uneven
sources to describe these multiple perspectives and many-sided struggles is
a tricky pursuit, however, and raises acute problems of evidence and voice.
From written records one can fix the thoughts and deeds of planters, mer-
chants, and colonial officials with greater confidence than one ever can
ro ~'<- The Reapers Garden
when interpreting these sources to discern the actions, meanings, and moti-
vations of the enslaved. The latter requires difficult acts of triangulation,
reading documents produced by slaveholders against what we know about
Mrican-American cultural and political history, as weU as what political sci-
entist James C. Scott has described as the "fugitive political conduct of sub-
ordinate groups." Though I have investigated a multitude of disparate and
fragmentary sources, including tombstone inscriptions, wills, diaries, parish
vestry minutes, plantation account papers, court returns, travelers' reports,
assembly minutes, visual images,. and the archaeology of burial sites, uncer-
tainties remain. These ambiguities undermine the authority of the omnis-
cient narrator's voice favored by historians. In its place, I offer only sincere
engagement with the sources and a provisional analysis of a certain kind of
politics. 11
~~
The signal themes in the history of Adantic slavery have been the predica-
ment of colonial societies in a global political economy, resistance to
enslavement, and cultural transformation under extreme conditions. The
political history of death in Jamaica informs each of these. The human
consequences of the Caribbean political economy-high death rates, rapid
demographic turnover, and social relations characterized by flux and insta-
bility-resulted in an unsettled slave society, in which social authority had
to be continually reaniculated through the most imposing idioms.
When the transatlantic slave trade dragged Mrican men, women, and
children into the grinding mills of American slavery, ir shattered networks
of belonging that connected the newly born to the long dead. The sur-
vivors of millions of deadly journeys had to reconstitute their social worlds
wherever they landed. In Jamaica, the lethal environment, the instability
of estates, and the preeminence of slave masters made the task extremely
arduous. Poised amid perpetual upheavals, Africans and their descendants
struggled to conceive new relations out of kinship idioms that they already
shared, learned from each other, or had forced upon them by their over-
lords. As they made a new social place for themselves in Jamaica, many
sought to break free entirely of the constraints of slave society. Most strug-
gled to negotiate more for themselves, their families, and their new clans
than their rulers wanted to allow.
To achieve these political objectives, rhe enslaved needed compelling
forms of communication to identify and rally new collectives. To govern
Prologue --"1 I I
a precarious and restless enslaved population with a transient white work-

force, slaveholders had to send messages that everyone could comprehend.
At least through the end of the transatlantic slave trade, the very flux that
characterized the society confounded efforts to find common modes of
communication and forced the population to achieve considerable dex-
terity in negotiating intercultural complexity; Caribbean peoples developed
"plural personas, command of multiple communicative registers, and
mobile social forms" to navigate their heterogeneous societies. 12 The ability
to manipulate sign systems and switch from one to another, to move rap-
idly back and forth between several modes of communication, meant that
the most impressive forms of authority would need to adopt forms of dis-
course that could attach to the most universal aspects of experience.
Everyone dies. And in Jamaican slave society, death held everyone's
attention. The omnipresence of corpses, mortuary commerce, and funeral
rituals made death a vital subject of strife and debate. In the activities that
joined the living with the dead, survivors in Jamaican slave society could
fasten their political efforts to themes that were significant to everyone.
Relations with death and the dead made the transcendent a tool in worldly
conflicts. Awesome questions of spiritual existence could be transposed to
temporal social struggles. As people interpreted and expressed material life
in affecting spiritual practices, they manifested their beliefs about the
supernatural in concrete economic, social, and political action.
Mortuary politics mediated group cohesion, property relations, strug-
gles to give public influence a sacred dimension, contests over the colonial
moral order, and efforts to politicize local geography and history. Black,
white, and brown people engaged the dead ro procure financial resources
and to make land daims. Slaveholders and rebels bolstered governing and
insurrectionary authority through symbolic manipulation of the dead.
Religious figures from Jamaica to Great Britain articulated morality
through pivotal references to death and the afterlife. Commemorations of
the dead gave potent force to place making and memory.
These were general phenomena, which took on distinctive patterns
over time. Between Jamaica's emergence as Britain's most profitable
colony and the end of slavery, some aspects of the relationship between
death and power were cominuous and others changed dramatically.
Throughout the era of slavery, confrontations with death produced
intense activities-macabre calculations of interest, rites of passage, and
r2 Jo;- The Reaper's Garden
inheritance practices-that helped make a society m the midst of a

human disaster. But over the course of the period, demographic transfor-
mations, shifts in the imperial political climate, and local struggles over
spiritual faith altered relations w death and the dead. Slave revolts, the
antislavery movement in Britain, the rise of evangelical Christianity, and
provincial claims on territory and history drew energy from an evolving
mortuary politics and reshaped the character of that politics in turn.
Thus death and the dead were factors in high-stakes competitions to
determine the course of colonial Jamaican history-and of Atlantic history
as well, because Jamaica was more than the site of contests among its res-
idents. The island was also the indispensable locus of British imperial
ambition: it stood at the pinnacle of colonial wealth creation, and at the
center of a vast web of trade, migration, and government administration.
Still, though it was home to the United Kingdom's most powerful naval
squadron, its wealthiest and most influential imperial subjects, and its
largest slave population, Jamaica was a catastrophe.
CHAPTER ONE
Worlds of Wealth and Death
BY THE MID-EIGHTEENTH century, Jamaica was rhe vital hub of British

America, far and away Britain's most significant American colony. It was
also a death trap. Death was at the center of social experience for everyone
on the island during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
Throughout the eighteenth century, the death rare for the British in
Jamaica exceeded IO percent a year. In 1740 Charles Leslie reported, "Once
in seven Years there is a Revolution of Lives in this Island ... As many
die in that Space ofTime as perfectly inhabit it; and no doubt the Mul-
titude that dies would soon leave the Place a Desert, did not daily Recruits
come over from Great Britain." Blacks died at slightly lower rates, but in
far greater numbers. For enslaved Mricans and their descendants, Jamaican
demographic conditions represented the continuation of the long death
march that had begun, for many, deep in the interior of the African con-
tinent, while for British arrivals the reality of imminent death came as a
shock. Together, they built a magnificent factory out of mortal crisis, and
prosperity continued to draw enslaved and free alike to the island. In the
transatlantic experience of Jamaica's inhabitants, death and wealth and
power were inextricably entangled. 1
The Grave of the Europeans

The English were latecomers to the Caribbean, and Jamaica's fortunes as a
British colony had uncertain beginnings. Spanish naval power dominated
14 ~ The Reaper's Garden
the region until the early seventeenth century, though Spain was more
interested in her mining colonies on the Central and South American
mainland. With Spanish power weakening as the sixteenth century closed,
the Eng~ish managed w settle several islands in the Lesser Antilles-Saint
Christopher in 1624, Barbados in r627, Nevis in 1628, Monserrat and
Antigua in 1632. Working on the margins of an Atlantic economy domi-
nated by the Spanish, Portuguese, and Dutch, the English began to develop
plantations for export crops, first tobacco and then sugar. 2
Sugar revolutionized the Caribbean. Though the Spanish had planted
the crop on the island of Hispaniola from their first colonizing ventures,
it was the Portuguese in Brazil who initiated the development of a full-
blown American sugar industry. Since the first half of the sixteenth cen-
tury, the Portuguese had been successfully growing the crop by relying
on enslaved African laborers on plantations in the island of Sao Tome,
off the coast of West Africa. In the mid-1540s, however, they introduced
sugar to Brazil, and production there rapidly grew to dominate the inter-
national market. Sugar planting was labor-intensive. As exports increased,
the colony swelled with the importation of slaves. The English began
planting sugar in Barbados in the 164os, with help from the Dutch, who
had occupied part of northern Brazil during its productive peak. The
Dutch provided English planters with technical knowledge and capital,
while their merchant fleet connected Barbados to sources of labor in
Africa and hungry markets in Holland. The island's economy boomed:
land prices increased nearly tenfold in the r64os altone. Large-scale entre-
preneurs grabbed up acreage, converted from tobacco and other crops,
and brought in increasing numbers of enslaved Africans to replace inden-
tured European laborers. When the British pried the large and unculti-
vated Jamaica from Spain's grip in r655, sugar planters migrated, along
with buccaneers, who used the island as a base for attacks on Spanish
shipping. 3
As the sugar industry metastasized, authorities in London took notice.
Hoping to confine the newly recognized benefits of empire to the state
and its subjects, they passed several navigation acts in the mid-seventeenth
century to cut Dutch middlemen out of English trade and granted
monopoly charters to English companies trading with Africa and the West
Indies. These measures precipitated three Anglo-Dutch wars, from which
England emerged as the dominant naval power in the Atlantic. To protect
Worlds of Wealth and Death '""' 15
the plantations, the navy moved to suppress the pirates, now an impedi-
ment to legitimate trade. Indeed the Royal Navy was the guarantor of the
whole system of British Atlantic commerce. A permanent squadron was
established at Port Royal in 1695, followed by naval bases in Antigua in
1731 and Halifax, Nova Scotia, in 1749. Merchants thrived, as the volume
of trade between England and America expanded over the course of the
eighteenth century. By r8oo a quarter of the imports that Britain retained
from abroad were produced in the Caribbean. 4
Jamaica's sugar revolution peaked during the second half of the eigh-
teenth century. Despite the abundance of arable land on Jamaica, its sugar
industry grew slowly in the first four decades of the 1700s. Large land-
holders monopolized the best sugar-growing lands, without having the
labor to exploit them, and a temporary decline in British sugar prices
during the 1730s compounded the problem. Protracted war with the
Maroons, bands of runaway slaves who harried frontier plantations, con-
tinued to prevent the expansion of industrial agriculture. The Maroon
War ended by treaty in 1739, at the same time that prices rose again in the
sugar market. In the three years immediately following the cessation of
hostilities with the Maroons, the number of sugar works on the island
more than doubled, from 180 to 377· Beginning in 1740 and lasting until
the onset of the imperial crisis of 1776, Jamaica had an astounding period
of economic growth. During that time, the total number of plantations
increased by 45 percent and diversified to include coffee and other valuable
crops; the aggregate value of Jamaica's annual exports rose from f65o,ooo
to £2.4 million; the total value of the colony's economy increased fivefold;
and the enslaved population nearly doubled, from about wo,ooo to
197,000. The total population of the island mushroomed from 4,000 in
1661 to 255,000 in q88. Before 1780 alone, 6oo,ooo people migrated to
Jamaica, as compared with fewer than 900,000 to all of British North
America. The enslaved accounted for most of Jamaica's growth-226,ooo
people in bondage. Nearly 90 percent of the population was enslaved in
1788, and 93 percent of the inhabitants were visibly of Mrican descent. By
the time slavery ended in 1838, whites stiH constituted a small minority of
a population that exceeded 370,ooo.S
From the mid-eighteenth century to the early decades of the nineteenth,
immigrants to and sojourners in Jamaica arrived in the richest, or perhaps
it is better to say the most profitable, single colony in the British Empire.
I6 ~ The Reaper's Garden
When people with great ambition dreamed of America, they imagined

West Indian fortunes. A comparison drawn from probate inventories of
private material wealth in 1774 in the empire shows why. For those who
survived their first years in the new environment, British America was gen-
erally a good place to improve their fortunes. Whereas the average person
in England or Wales had a worth of about £42 sterling, considering all
assets and subtracting all debts, free whites in the American colonies aver-
aged over £89. But this figure is skewed by the outsized hordes of West
Indians. Free whites in the New England colonies averaged just over £42,
those in the Southern plantation colonies nearly £93. Meanwhile, the
average worth of a free white person in the British West Indies was an
astounding £r,042 sterling. The largest and most productive British
Caribbean territory, Jamaica was also the wealthiest colony in British
America, with private wealth totaling about £24 million. The average prop-
erty holder on the island held more than thirty-six times the assets pos-
sessed by his counterpart in the thirteen North American colonies. 6
This wealth translated into real power and influence within the empire.
West Indians formed the most powerful colonial lobby in London, deriving
special consideration in tax and military matters. Wealthy Jamaicans sent
their children to be educated at Eton, Harrow, and other elite British
schools, and the graduates sometimes stayed on in the United Kingdom
to represent West Indian interests. Absentee Jamaica planters and mer-
chants were integrated into the British elite. They built magnificent homes
in the English and Scottish countryside and mingled with key imperial
administrators, and many served in Parliament. The Jamaica native
William Beckford was a member of the House of Commons for more
than twenty years and was twice Lord Mayor of London in the q6os.7
Pardy because Jamaicans were so influential in Britain, few called the
island home. Jamaica was what today we might call an enterprise zone, a
territory organized by the government on behalf of business interests,
where profit taking prevailed over civic investment. Jamaica was a "Con-
stant Mine," wrote Charles Leslie, "whence Britain draws prodigious
riches." Jamaicans built few schools and no universities. Public works proj-
ects were conducted only for the benefit of commerce. Instead, people
went to Jamaica hoping to win their fortunes as quiddy as possible, living
fast, and, if need be, dying young. The planter and historian Bryan
Edwards remarked, "Even such of them as have resided in the West Indies
Worlds of Wealth and Death ~ I7
from their birth, look on the islands as their temporary abode only, and
the fond notion of being able to go home (as they emphatically term a
visit to England) year after year animates their industry and alleviates their
mtsrortune.
• C "B
Their misfortunes were legion. The white population of}amaica during

the years of slavery could not sustain itself by natural increase. Yellow fever
and malaria killed off Europeans as fast in Jamaica as they did in other
tropical locations. In fact, because Europeans did not possess even the lim-
ited immunities to these diseases that Africans enjoyed, whites died at a
faster rate than blacks. In the first haJJ of the eighteenth century nearly
50,000 European migrants were needed to increase the white population
by only 5,000 or so. Through the middle decades of the eighteenth cen-
tury, immigrants could not expect to survive more than thirreen years.
Those native-born whites (Creoles) who survived childhood were likely to
die before they reached the age of forty. Still, colonists kept coming to
Jamaica. Laborers from Ireland, Scotland, and the Lesser Antilles arrived,
alongside Sephardic Jews from Brazil and Suriname. The majority, though,
were Englishmen seeking to build names, reputations, and family for-
tunes. Between 1739 and 1778, migrants nearly doubled the white popu-
lation, which climbed from ro,o8o to 18,420, despite the high mortality
rate. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, refugees fleeing
the American War of Independence and the Haitian Revolution swelled
the Jamaican white population even more rapidly. These trends ensured
'I
I
that Jamaica remained overwhelmingly an immigrant society throughout I
the eighteenth century. In contrast to the plantation colonies of North

America, which experienced rapid growth in both white and black native-
born populations, 8o percent or more of Jamaica's white population and
some 75 percent of blacks had been born outside the island. 9
Migrants who left Great Britain for Jamaica arrived under very different
circumstances than the enslaved did. In 1717 Jamaica stopped the impor-
tation of convicts, who had been an important source of white migrant
labor in the seventeenth century. Indentured servitude persisted on a lim-
ited scale until the mid-eighteenth century, but by the time Jamaica
reached its peak prosperity in the 1770s, slaves had almost completely dis-
placed white servants. The servants who arrived during the middle decades
of the eighteenth century came largely from England and, to a lesser
extent, Scotland. Free migrants arriving during the same period were a
slightly more diverse group. Some 62 percent were English, r8 percent

Scottish, 8 percent Irish, about 4·5 percent each from North America and
other West Indian colonies, and the remainder from Wales, the European
mainland, and Spanish America. Nearly half of the free English came from
London. Jamaica's towns also swelled, thanks to a motley assortment of
sailors and soldiers. Merchant-mariners were always present in Kingston;
having deserted or been discharged from ships, they were awaiting passage
elsewhere.
Because Jamaica's wealth invited war, the British army and the Royal
Navy were permanent fixtures at the strategic garrison, though the troops'
"dread of going to the West Indies" created persistent recruiting problems
for military officers. 10 Many soldiers and sailors viewed Jamaica as little
more than a vast infirmary and burial ground, where slaveholders played
vainly at the pursuit of riches. In the late 1790s Lieutenant Abraham James
of the Sixty-seventh Regiment sketched his own impressions of life on the
island in a twenty-one-scene caricature of]ohnny New-come, the folk icon
for white sojourners in the West Indies (Figure r.r). Arriving at an early
age, ready to seek his fortune, Johnny is immediately set upon by mos-
quitoes. He falls ill at once, and half the remaining scenes are devoted to
,: ... ·
\
Figure J.L "Johnny New-come," the folk
icon for newly arrived white men, detail
from johnny New-come in the Island of
jamaica, by Abraham James (London,
18oo). Courtesy of the National Library
,folumy
~
11 ;,l•'·mrn"· . of Jamaica.
Worlds of Wealth and Death ~ I9
his sickness and death, much as foretold for the new-come buckra of the
market women's chant. When he is not vomiting, shivering, and wasting
away, Johnny valiantly acts the part of a sugar planter, hunting for game,
beating a slave, and cavorting with his mulatto mistress. James clearly
admired little about: life in Jamaica, but his satire was right on the mark. 11
Most of the whites who came to Jamaica during its rapid economic
expansion in the latter half of the eighteenth century were free men
seeking their fortunes. The 1773-1776 Register of Emigrants reveals some
interesting social characteristics of British immigrants to the Caribbean.
Emigrants from Britain to the West Indies tended to be men in their
midtwenties. They were much more likely to be traveling without masters
and without families than were emigrants to other American colonies.
More strikingly, over half the emigrants who stated their occupations
upon their departure claimed to be either gentlemen or merchants. These
were often people from well-heeled families (though seldom the principal
heirs) heading out to manage family properties or businesses. Most Eng-
lishmen who traveled to Jamaica, a wildly prosperous colony on the eve
of the American Revolution, did so hoping to get rich working as plant-
ers, property managers, or commercial tradersY
These privileged young men were not escaping poor demographic or
social conditions. Despite a significant spike in the 1740s, London's mor-
tality rate declined and life expectancy improved steadily during the latter
half of the eighteenth century. Throughout the eighteenth century, the
perils of life in London were concentrated among the poor. Mortality rates
in London were highest in the most crowded areas of the city, where
people lived in conditions hospitable to contagious pathogens. People of
means simply moved out of neighborhoods burgeoning with immigrants
from the countryside and thus avoided the most dangerous bacterial infec-
tions, like bubonic plague and typhus. Newcomers to the Caribbean could
not have known that mosquito-borne tropical viruses would be much
harder to elude. Colonists, though well aware of the dangers of the tropics,
expected that rank would protect them in Jamaica, as it had in London,
just long enough for them to make their fortunes and return to Great
Britain unscathed. 13
Adverse social circumstances were a more important factor in emigra-
tion from Scotland. Of sixteen respondents in rhe Register of Emigrants
who said they were escaping poor conditions, ten were Scots faced with
high rents or unemployment. In the mid-eighteenth century the aristoc-

racy and the largest landholders, having consolidated their holdings, even
as the general population increased, had left less land for the growing pop-
ulace and squeezed out those in the middle of the social hierarchy. More
than 6,500 Scots traveled to Jamaica between 1750 and r8oo. The majority
of them were educated tradesmen or professionals who had fallen on hard
times, and they hoped to find greater opportunity in the West Indies than
was available to them in Scotland. From Scottish newspapers they learned
of opportunities in Jamaica for people with skills and training. More
important was that successful Scots who returned with weahh and influ-
ence fed the aspirations of others who were considering the risks. Why go
to North America to eke out a humble portion as a farmer, they might
have asked, when they could go to the West Indies and take a chance at
making themselves masters of the colonial world? 14
Such eager and ambitious Britons came to Jamaica unprepared for the
demographic catastrophe they encountered. Greed and fear governed their
outlook by turns. Faced with chronic sickness and death, they often longed
to leave, but ambition or debt kept them from going. Like gamblers, they
put their faith in good luck, even as they came to recognize the dangers
they ran. "We are in Jamaica," one fictional character announced in the
r82os, "but though it should be our resting place, we must e'en take our
chance in't." They had to wonder about their odds of success (Figure 1.2).
"And what awaits me now sad Isle!" Jack Jingle inquired in the last stanza
of his poem,. "Jamaica'' (1824): "The boon thou givest all thy sons I An early
grave." Living daily under such apprehension, sojourning whites desper-
ately hoped to get rich and get our. IS
Only a small minority of these enterprising Britons actually made a for-
tune in Jamaica and returned home. Though they hoped to return to the
United IGngdom flush with property and power, most, of course, lived
and died in the world they built in Jamaica. Creole whites, native to the
island, also sometimes aspired to make their fortune and retire to Britain,
bur they were more easily satisfied with prominent positions on the
leading edge of empire. By the mid-eighteenth century, profitable planting
required large capital investments in land and slaves, a prerequisite
ensuring that very few people could enter the upper echelon of Jamaican
society. During the ''golden years" of the sugar industry, from 1750 to 1775,
wealth was narrowly concentrated among an elite oligarchy of planters
who dominated landholding as well as formal political and social life.
Worlds of Wealth and Death ~ 21
Figure 1.2. The Torrid Zone, or, Blessings ofjamaica, by Abraham James (London, r8oo). This parodic cos-
mological diagram shows opposing aspects or life for white colonialists in Jamaica-the languorous noon-
tide and the hell of tropical disease. James, who began his military career with the calamitous British
occupation of revolutionary Sainr-Domingue, was acutely aware of the power of death to shape social
life. Here, he shows rhe luxuries of Jamaican colonial life ro be literally resting upon Dearh's sickle. Cour-
tesy of the Wellcome Library, London.
Their money and status kept them in close contact with colonial admin-
istrators, which enhanced their influence on imperial policymaking.
Jamaica afforded them an opulent and intemperate lifestyle, yet most pre-
ferred to live in Britain and returned there as often as they could. While
they were away from Jamaica, they entrusted their properties to estate
managers and planting attorneys. These attorneys, often plantation owners
themselves, could manage dozens of estates, and although their work kept
them in Jamaica, they were among irs richest occupants. In a class below
them were the merchants and professionals, including a large contingent
of Scots. Many of these people in the "middle class" of masters owned
midsize plantations and managed ro live quite comfortably indeed. 16
Among rhe richest masters was Simon Taylor, born in Jamaica in 1740,
the eldest son of Patrick and Martha Taylor. Simon's father had migrated
from Scotland to become a wealthy Kingston mercham. After returning
to the island from his schooling at Eton in the early 176os, Simon himself
became one the wealthiest men in the British Empire. In addition to
owning and operating his own plantations, Simon Taylor was a leading
planting attorney for absentee proprietors, like his childhood friend
Chaloner Arcedeckne. Lady Maria Nugent, the wife of Jamaica's early
nineteenth-century governor, described Taylor as "the richest man in the
island." When he died in 1813, his estate, including 2,138 slaves, was worth
an estimated one million pounds sterling. His yearly income had been as
high as £47,000 at a time when contemporary economists estimated the
incomes of the English nobility to be in the range of £5,000 to £10,000.
Exceptionally rich, Taylor was also politically powerful. He served in
Jamaica's House of Assembly continuously from 1768 to 1781 and again
from 1784 to 1810, while variously holding the offices of Kingston Custos,
chief justice of the Court of Common Pleas, and lieutenant-general of the
militia. The economic historian Richard Sheridan faidy said of Taylor,
"He may have exercised greater influence in Jamaica, and for a longer
period, than any other individual." In spite of this distinction, Taylor had
much in common with absentee owners back in England. Though he lived
nearly his entire life in Jamaica, Taylor invested the great majority of his
wealth in London. He felt himself to be the political equal, perhaps even
the better, of his client Arcedeckne, who lived in Suffolk, England, and
who served as a member of Parliament (M.P.) from 1780 to 1786. The
voluminous letters Taylor wrote to business partners, friends, and family
members in the United Kingdom reveal that he felt a deep identification
with the fate of the entire British Empire, an interest inextricably con-
nected with the island where he accumlated his wealth.'?
Unlike Taylor, most whites began in low-status jobs. If people had no
talent for agricuhure, they could work as well-paid clerks for merchants
or occupy the petty service and civil administrative jobs in town. Then,
of course, they risked the famously high mortality of the major ports. On
the planrations they were small farmers, keepers of livestock pens, over-
seers, bookkeepers, and artisans. These whites were more important for
their role in the domination of blacks than for any laboring skills they
possessed. Vastly outnumbered by a restless enslaved population, whites
were deeply insecure about their ability to keep slaves in a state of subjec-
tion. Making whiteness-in personal and cultural practice-a coherent
and inviolable social category helped Europeans and their descendants
Worlds of Wealth and Death -1'1 23
band together against the numerically superior enslaved blacks. The main
function of working-class whites on the plantations, then, was to represent
and maintain white supremacy. "Deficiency laws" stipulated that estates
employ a minimum number of whites in proportion to slaves or pay taxes
to support the maintenance of parish militias. These quotas were seldom
met, but the social value of whiteness provided real opportunities for white
men-opportunities facilitated by the high mortality rate. White workers
were transient, often remaining on a single plantation for just a few
months. Their scarcity put them in high demand, so they could command
excellent wages. In a society stratified by color, the meanest of white men
enjoyed opportunities for social mobility unknown in Europe. They may
never have exchanged familiar letters with M.P.'s or challenged the hege-
mony of the great sugar planters, but neither were they bound by the same
codes of deference that constrained them in Britain. With good reason,
these whites believed fervently in the early American dream. If they
worked hard enough and lived long enough, they might: buy a few slaves
of their own,. hire them out in gangs, and finally acquire some small parcel
of land, independence, and social respectability. Jamaica appeared to be
the "best poor man's country in the world," according to the description
in one fictional account of the nineteenth century: "For with industry and
economy, every man here may prosper." 18
Thomas Thistlewood, who kept a diary of his thirty-six years in Jamaica
during the eighteenth century, certainly would have thought so. Born in
1721, the second son of a middling tenant farmer in Lancashire, England,
Thistlewood faced poor prospects in the Old World. He arrived at Kingston
in 1750 with fewer than fifteen pounds in his purse and died in 1786, worth
over three thousand pounds. Thistlewood worked his way up by learning
to drive slaves, initially as a pen keeper for the wealthy planter Florentius
Vassall, then as overseer of the Egypt sugar plantation in the parish ofWest-
moreland. Violent and domineering, Thisdewood earned the nickname No
for Play from those he ruled. By 1766, Thistlewood was able to buy a three-
hundred-acre pen on Breadnut Island. He moved there with twenty-eight
slaves of his own the next year. Thistlewood lived his last two decades as a
member of Jamaica's landed gentry, becoming a local magistrate and lieu-
tenant of the fort at Savanna-la-Mar, Westmoreland's principal town. After
a remarkably long life in Jamaica, he died, having attained far more prop-
erty and power than he could have ever hoped for in England. 19
24 !if- The Reaper's Garden
Thisdewood never entered Jamaica's most elite circles of power. But he,
Simon Taylor, and other slaveholders were united in their aspirations. "The
foremost characteristic of white Jamaicans," one knowledgeable historian
has argued, "was an all-consuming ambition for wealth, an avaricious and
aggrandizing self-interest." Self-interest nearly always meant the domina-
tion of others, for slavery was the basis of prosperity. All the slaveholders'
hopes and dreams, their ability to possess things and to command prestige,
depended on the black multitudes they held in bondage. The same was
true for Thistlewood, Taylor, most whites below their rank, and indeed for
the whole eighteenth-century British Atlantic system. If Jamaica was the
linchpin of the British Empire in America, the slave trade with Africa made
it possible. This was clear enough to the novelist, economic journalist, and
empire booster Daniel Defoe when he argued the importance of England's
Africa trade in 1713: "The case is as plain as cause and consequence: Mark
the climax. No African trade, no negroes; no negroes no sugars, gingers,
indicoes etc; no sugars etc no isbnds, no islands no continent; no conti-
nent no trade." Just as black slave labor had enabled Europeans to prosper
throughout the Americas, it powered a massive engine of wealth-and of
death-in Jamaica. 20
Africans working in Jamaica had survived ghastly odds against reaching
the island at aU. Wherever in Africa they had started from, a near majority
of those captured and sold into the Atlantic trading network died en
route. They fell in large numbers at every stage of their enslavement: as
slave raiders and warriors first captured them in Africa; as they marched,
famished, to inland slave markets, and then again to the dank and over-
crowded slave forts and the waiting European ships at the coast; as the
heaving Atlantic twisted them in their chains and soaked them in their
own filth; as they waited for buyers in Jamaican ports; and as they fanned
out onto the plantations and fell in line with their harsh and unyielding
work regimes. Even once they had "adjusted" to Jamaican slavery, they
could not expect to live longer than two decades. 21
Numbers for the Nameless

Though Captain John Hawkins had carried Elizabethan England into the
African slave trade in the 156os, English participation in the trade remained
relatively insignificant until the mid-seventeenth century, when sugar
planting brought its demographic and commercial revolution to the British

American colonies. Nurtured first by freebooters, then by a succession of
monopolistic companies with royal charters-the Guinea Company in
1651, the Company of Royal Adventurers Trading into Africa in r663, and
the Royal African Company in 1672-the British share of the transatlantic
slave trade began its steady and relentless increase. Competing with the
Portuguese, Dutch, and French, English merchants organized the forced
migration of around 6, 700 Africans in each year of the 166os. As planta-
tion economies grew in tandem with maritime commerce, the British slave
trade, first opened to private businessmen in 1698, expanded to eclipse that
of any other nation. Throughout the 1700s the British were the world's
preeminent slave traders, during their peak in the 1760s embarking more
than 42,000 Africans yearly.22
British ships from London, Bristol, and Liverpool followed winds and
currents that Portuguese navigators had charred in the fifteenth century,
south past the Canary Islands, then along the African littoraL where cap-
tains purchased men, women, and children from African traders situated
between the Senegal and Zaire rivers. Each ship concentrated its efforts,
usually gathering slaves from only one or two regions along the coastline.
Closest to Britain was the area embraced by the Senegal and Gambia
rivers, yet by the mid-eighteenth century this was rarely a favorite desti-
nation. The British traded more actively to the south and east, in Sierra
Leone, the Gold Coast, the Bight of Benin, and especially the Bight of
Biafra. Farther south they bartered for people along the Loango Coast of
West-Central Africa. Having loaded their cargos, the slavers sailed west,
first reaching Barbados, or the Lesser Antilles, where they replenished sup-
plies and gauged regional markers, before proceeding downwind to the
biggest slave bazaar in the empire, Jamaica, where they knew they could
always seH the most slaves at the highest prices.
From 1740 through r8o7, ships from rhe British Empire carried about
2.2 miUion men, women, and children away from the African coast. The
period began around midcentury, when the Jamaican economy was
entering its peak years, and concluded with the cessation of the British
transatlantic slave trade. During this time more than JO percent of the
Africans died before they reached their New World destination; still, over
1.9 million arrived in the Atlantic British colonies. As the leading slave trade
entrepor in the empire, Jamaica received about 33 percem of them, more
NORTH
ATLANTIC
Senegambia
OCEAJ.t. 1.1% Bight of
Bight of Benin Biafra
6.5% 33.4%
Sierra Leone
s A H A R A 7.6%
West-Ce,ntraf
Africa
•••
•••
SOUTH
ATLANTIC :••••
OCEAN
Region
unspecified
•••••••• I
••••• • = 10,000 departing enslaved immigrants

0 500 1,000 1,500 miles
0
:=:~~~-
500 1,000 1,500 kilometers
.....
Map 4· Enslaved immigrants to Jamaica, by region, 1741-1807, drawn by Philip Schwartzberg
than 6oo,ooo forced migrants. Between 1713 and 1739, when Britain had
held the asiento contract to supply slaves to Spanish America, 33 to 50
percent of the Mricans who landed at Jamaica embarked again for the
mines and p~antations of South America; but from 1740 onward only about
17 percent of the captives were reexported to other colonies. In total, the
island absorbed more than any other single Brirish colony did-more than
)OO,OOO enslaved Mricans-during that period, or 25 percent of all the

African immigrants to Anglo-America.23
Though regions of embarkation are unknown for a large minority of
the captive Africans, it is dear that there were shifts in regional migration
patterns over time. Although the Bight of Biafra had been a minor source
of slaves prior to 1740, it became the British Empire's single most impor-
tant supplier of enslaved Africans from the mid-eighteenth century until
the end of the transatlantic slave trade, so that a third or more of all those
arriving at Jamaica from specified regions of Africa in the latter half of the
eighteenth century came from the densely populated areas between the
Niger Delta and the Cameroon River. Men, women, and children from
the Gold Coast represented almost as significant a proportion, arriving in
great and consistent numbers until Gold Coast exports fell off in the
1790s. Consistent imports from the nearby Bight of Benin similarly
declined as the century drew to a close. Sierra Leone,. which remained rel-
atively insignificant for British slavers until the middle of the century, con-
tributed sizable numbers of slaves to Jamaica from 1750 to the end of the
century. The contingent of Africans drawn from West-Central Africa
spiked into the tens of thousands in the 1790s, when the French and
Haitian revolutions caused the collapse of French trading competition
north of the Zaire River. These variations were patterned as much by
supply as by demand.
British slavers were keen analysts of African markets, taking advantage
of regions where local political institutions protected and facilitated foreign
exchange, or where sudden disruptions provided windfall opportunities. 24
For the Gold Coast and Bight of Benin, militarized states like Asame and
Dahomey ensured stability in the supply chain. Dotting the coastline were
the castle factories established in the early years of the Africa trade. Their
governors helped to maintain a stable business climate by negotiating with
local authorities and by taking sides in local disputes to resolve them in
favor of trading interests. The governors also warehoused captives, to help
to expedite the loading of ships. In the Bight of Biafra, established African
hinterland traders from Aro Chukwu controlled the flow of captives to
ports. As British trade expanded there in the mid-eighteenth century, the
Epke Society of merchants arose to manage the credit arrangements that
governed trade in the region's Cross River esruary. 2 5 Where the British did
not: have an established institutional framework, they kept watch for favor-
able turns of events. Their trade at Sierra Leone exploded between 1750
28 ~:';- The Reaper's Garden
and q8o, when the Futa Jallon holy wars reached peak intensity. Similarly,
when revolutionary upheaval distracted the French from the slave trade,
British traders rushed into France's former position in West-Central Africa.
African political organizations of various sorts generally smoothed the
progress of trade. Nevertheless, commercial order and social disruption
went hand in hand. Fluctuations in social, political, and military conBict
brought about the most massive forced migration in history. From the
mid-seventeenth century to the abolition of the British slave trade in 1807,
the British alone transported some 3·5 million people.
The numbers tell an impressive story, but it is easy to forget that they
represent the logic of markets better than they do the experience of
enslavement. Markets work by assigning value to units of exchange, to
humans no less than they do the "widgets" of modern economic theory.
Spanish and Portuguese traders had called young African males piezas or
pera.r--pieces-as if they and their value as potential laborers could be
counted like bolts of doth. Women, young children, and the old were
designated as fractions of pieces. British slavers numbered their captives
outright, according to the sequential order in which they were purchased.
Men, women, and children from myriad networks of belonging, each with
their own terms of identification, feU into the commercial unit "Negro,"
when African merchants sold them to Europeans for textiles, copper, iron
bars, cowrie shells, guns, and other goods. When British traders used
regional and ethnic designations for groups of slaves, it was mostly to show
their ports of embarkation and to reflect vague stereotypes. Such designa-
tions were mere product labels, meant to effect the reduction of humanity
to the status of commodiry. 2G
The facts derived from notations meant to represent only commerce
threaten to obscure the humanity of the people they describe. They make
it difficult to avoid thinking and writing in terms consistent with commer-
cial accounting-"volumes," "distributions," "rates," and so on-which
make commodified people appear nothing more than commodities. Sta-
tistical analyses of the slave trade can in this way seem to communicate
the merchant's perspective, a discourse of exchange that seeks equivalences
between units, flattening the social world by rendering it in the abstract.
Gains that derive from elucidating general trends are offset by insensitivity
to the experience of historical subjects. Considerations of scale, variation,
and typicality trade the anguish and confusion of dimly discernible expe-
riences for perceived mastery of the facts. It is somewhat unsettling, then,

that business records have guided the best-known recent studies of the
slave trade, in which recorded transactions affecting human commodities
serve as data for forensic analysis. 27
Nowhere has this been truer rhan in studies of slave-trade mortality
rates, which have yielded important insights into causes of death, regional
variations in cargo losses, and strategies for maintaining profitability in
the midst of morbidit:y. 28 At the same rime, such research renders the
deadly migration of Africans somewhat like the chalk outline of a murder
victim. The data delineate scale, proportion, and distribution quite well,
but they cannot: represent the wrenching personal trials endured by the
enslaved, any more than an outline on the street can convey the passions
that: drove someone to kill, or the grief of the survivor who cries out from
the scene of the crime to demand some measure of justice. Admittedly,
there is no escaping the difficulty of reconstructing the experience of the
enslaved, especially before they reached the Americas. Reliable descriptive
sources are few and scattered. European slavers paid only an accountant's
attention to the deaths of captives; records written by African merchants
are extremely scarce; and recorded memories of the enslaved are even
harder to come by. Even if extensive testimonial accounts by the enslaved
could be found, we would still want to know if they were exceptional or
if they represented common experiences. Undeniably, there were as many
perceptions of the slave trade as there were people caught up in it. Nev-
ertheless, by following the merchants' numbers, and by speculating on the
cultural implications of death during forced migration, we may still learn
much about the experiences of enslaved men, women, and children during
their last days in Mrica. 2 9
Dislocation, Alienation, and Death

The booming Atlantic trade benefited Mricans too-just not those who
were enslaved. For them, the transatlantic system generated massive social
disruption, terror, and death. Their experiences led them to associate the
accumulation of wealth with the most malevolent forces in the universe.
Over decades and centuries, all along the trade routes that penetrated
Africa's interior, societies made themselves over, in order to meet: the
demands of the burgeoning Adanric market. But the enslaved did not
march inevitably toward European ships. As prices rose steadily throughout

the eighteenth cenmry, the scale of slavery within Africa increased along
with the export trade. African slaveholders used slaves to perform house-
hold, agricultural, commercial, military, and reproductive labor. They also
held them as status symbols, or even sacrificed them in sacred ceremonies.
Slaveholding itself was widely accepted in Africa as a means of enhancing
personal and communal wealth, and power accrued to those who com-
manded large numbers of dependents, including subjects, kinfolk, and
slaves. European trade goods enabled a privileged few to acquire excep-
tional concentrations of enslaved wives, children, workers, and bearers of
specialized knowledge. Wealth, power, and population accumulated among
the select sovereigns and merchants who kept slaves moving toward the
coast, in what one prominent historian of the slave trade has aptly char-
acterized as "an aUiance between European capitalism and African ruling
elites, at the expense of the generality of Africans." Indeed European
demands complemented the needs of African rulers, who preferred to
retain women and very young children, to augment and reproduce their
lineage, whereas Europeans valued young working-age males for plantation
laborer. Roughly two-thirds of the people transported across the Atlantic
were male. Most of them had been taken from some society other than
that of the traders.3D
The principal means of enslaving people for export were carrying our
raids under conditions of open warfare, kidnapping the vulnerable, and
condemning debtors and accused criminals. After interviewing scores of
enslaved Africans in the Caribbean in the q6os, one European concluded,
"Most of them had been captured in the course of a declared war or in a
surprise attack. A few of them were sold off because of debts that they
owed,. and a stiH smaller portion of them were caught on the open road."
Summary accounts gathered in Sierra Leone around 1850 from a diverse
group of 179 formerly enshved Africans indicated that a similar pattern
continued through the early nineteenth century. A third of them had been
enslaved as war captives, and another third had been kidnapped. Just over
a tenth of them were sentenced to slavery for real or bogus crimes, and
rhe remainder had been sold by their social betters or by indebted
relatives. The methods of enslavement varied somewhat by region. Greater
percentages of captives from the Gold Coast, the Bight of Benin, and
Sierra Leone had been captured in full-scale wars. Enslavement on judicial
grounds was more likely in the Bight of Biafra, but all along the coast,
people were sold as a result of witchcraft accusations. In some regions,
especially West-Central Mrica in the late eighteenth century, drought and
famine made slaves cheap to acquire: desperate circumstances forced fam-
ilies into debt or drove unprotected members of the community to alien
and hostile lands. Nearly everywhere, small bands of kidnappers, to ease
their own debts or make their fortunes, took advantage of the high prices
paid for sla.ves.3 1
Despite regional variations, common aspects of the experience of
enslavement continued to affect the survivors who reached the Americas.
The Africans who arrived in Jamaica all had a sharp sense of dislocation
and rupture; they were all threatened by utter social alienation; and they
all knew the proximity of death. Their shared experiences of death and
dislocation ultimately formed the basis of common assumptions, idioms,
and beliefs that would shape the worlds of meaning slaves used to stave
off social annihilation.
~""""
The most common experience was of dislocation and movement.
Enslaved men, women, and children moved from trader to trader, and
from market to market. Along the way, they were assembled into larger
groups for treks to the coast or sold off in small lots to domestic buyers.
They marched up to a thousand kilometers from villages in the interior.
'Sibell, a woman who was kidnapped by her brother-in-law somewhere
in West Africa, traded for gun and powder, and taken eventually to Bar-
bados, emphasized her perception of movement and distance when she
narrated her experience in 1799: ''He take and carry, carry, carry, carry
me all night and day, aU night and day 'way from my Country."
Alexander Falconbridge maintained that many of his captives from the
Bight of Biafra, "upon being questioned relative to the places of their
nativity, have asserted,. that they have travelled during the revol uri on of
several moons (their usual method of calculating time), before they have
reached the places where they were purchased." As they traveled, the
enslaved moved through different social contexts at a pace disorienting
to all but long-distance traders. Time sped up as their awareness grew of
the difference between themselves and the other peoples they encoun-
tered. This heightened sense of change and difference accompanied an
enhanced fear of social alienation. 32
As the world of Atlantic slavery drew people in, it tore them from the
kin and communities that had thus far defined their social existence. For
enslaved Africans the tragedy of the booming slave trade was most unmis-
takable in the winnowing of their social worlds, and in the loss of personal
belonging and security. Historians and social scientists have described
slavery as "a process of social transformation that involves a succession of
phases and changes in status." At the point of capture or sale, individuals
were stripped of social belonging and lost aU claims to personal security
and communal standing. This was equally the case for all enslaved pris-
oners, whether they were victims of war, kidnapping, debt, or judicial pro-
cedure. Yet this is too abstract a characterization. Even at the point of
exchange, slavers considered whatever they knew of their captives' physical
or personal attributes, in order to fix their value. These were already social
judgments. Once acquired, however, an enslaved person began the social-
ization process anew, by building new personal relationships that held
forth a potential advancement in rank. Slaves always sought to improve
their positions. They often escaped or rebelled, to be sure, but they also
made claims upon their masters. They again became family members, cel-
ebrated warriors, productive workers, even court officials. Yet as slaves they
were perennially endangered by the prospect of resale and the resulting
obliteration of their social selves. The Atlantic trade increased the number
and frequency of alienating seizures and sales within Africa. Each time
slaves might have hoped to be incorporated into new communities, the
specter of the burgeoning markets on the coast haunted their efforts.33
Olaudah Equiano's description of his enslavement in the Biafran hin-
terland in the 1750s bears this out. Equiano's 1789 autobiography described
his kidnapping as a young boy and his movement between different
Mrican slaveholders before being sold to the Europeans as part of a process
of enslavement in stages. What stands out in his description, besides his
hopes for escape, is his yearning for social connection. Enslaved along wit:h
his sister, he depicts their forced separation in his most emotional language:
"I cried and cried continually; and for several days I did not eat anything."
Yet his circumstances eventually improved: "After many days travelling,
during which I had often changed masters, I got into the hands of a chief-
tain, in a very pleasant country. This man had two wives and some chil-
dren, and they all used me extremely well." Equiano's "first master" was a
metalsmith who began to teach the boy the skills of the trade. Already, he
--:
was much more than a commodity, though he was forbidden to eat with
free children of his age. While he still plotted his escape and return to his
family, even as a slave he began to feel a sense of belonging in his new cir-
cumstances. After the death of his master's daughter, however, Equiano
was sold again, several more times in fact. He encountered progressively
more alien peoples, "very much struck with this difference," until he was
delivered to the Europeans, with whom he could imagine no connection
at all. Along the way-during a short-lived surprise reunion with his sister,
and as he learned "two or three different [African] tongues"-Equiano was
constantly engaged in a struggle to enact his social personhood, in spite of
his commodification. What he did not describe, perhaps because he was
anxious to show Africa to his British readers in a favorable light, was the
trail of death he trod as he moved along the coast.3 4
Perhaps one of every three captives destined for the Americas died
before embarking on European ships.3 5 In all the regions where Africans
were enslaved, captivity made death seem imminent. Death came in a
number of ways: famine, disease, war, and simple exhaustion devastated
African captives before they even reached the coast. In the Bight of Biafra
long journeys through pestilent waterways claimed untold numbers of
lives. The Loango Coast of West-Central Africa received survivors from
hinterland frontiers wracked by human and ecological calamity. The mil-
itarized states that fed the trade routes to the Gold Coast, the Bight of
Benin, and Sierra Leone launched warfare that killed perhaps as many
Africans as traders sold. Wherever the slave trade prospered, death took a
dividend.
Most Africans from the Bight of Biafra who were sold to the British in
the latter half of the eighteenth century came, as Equiano claimed to have
come, from the populous areas near the coast, inhabited by Igbo- and
Ibibio-speaking peoples. Captives were transported through a network of
winding land and water routes. They moved through new and devastating
disease environments at the slave fairs in the hinterland, and again at the
swampy coastal trading outlets. Their journeys could last for months.
Olaudah Equiano remembered traveling six or seven months, "sometimes
by land, sometimes by water, through different countries, and various
nations," before he finally arrived at an Atlantic port.36
Great numbers of other captives, seized from towns up to two hundred
kilometers from the Atlantic Ocean,. embarked on long forced marches,
34 t;- The Reaper's Garden
passing through many people's hands before they reached the Europeans.
Slave ship surgeon Alexander Falconbridge reported in q88 that the "black
traders," who mediated the trade between the Europeans and the suppliers
in the interior, generally bought their slaves at great fairs in the interior.
Big hinterland markets had sprouted in the eighteenth century to support
the increasing demand for slaves. "Several thousands are frequently
exposed to sale, who had been collected," noted Falconbridge, "from all
parts of the country for a very considerable distance round." From the
fairs, coastal traders brought their captives downriver in canoes crowded
with thirty to forty persons. It is certain that all along their route, the
enslaved died in large numbers. Falconbridge made that assumption:
"Even before they reach the fairs, great numbers perish from cruel usage,
want of food, travelling through inhospitable deserts &c." Traveling
downriver for several days, bound and tightly packed into canoes, the
underfed captives shivered in the intermittent rains and made easy prey
for tropical viruses and parasites. At the slave markets, disease ran riot.
Speaking in the 183os, one merchant sea captain remembered the crowded,
noxious barracoons at one small town up the Bonny River. "They are built
to contain from 300 to 700 slaves each. I have seen from 1,500 to 2,000
shves at a time, belonging to the several vessels then in the river ... I have
known disease to make dreadful havoc in these places," he said. "Great
numbers are carried off annually by diarrhoea and other diseases." Near
the big markers and along the roads that connected them, slaves who died
of exhaustion, disease,. or suicide were thrown unceremoniously into what
locals called the Ajo Ofia, the "bad bush."3 7
Death pervaded the swampy, malarial trading sires at Bonny and at Old
and New Calabar. Inhabitants of the towns built large wood fires in their
huts, to keep mosquitoes at bay; imported slaves, however, remained
exposed and vulnerable. Along the coast and up the Cross River, dead
slaves were commonly thrown to t}fe sharks. The sailors who died each
day were buried in shallow graves on a sandy point, just half a kilometer
from the town. At high tide, water submerged the corpses, raising a stench
that pervaded the marketplace. Captives loaded onto ships at the Bight of
Biafra died more frequently than did those embarked from any other
region. This fact was not lost on British slavers. "As to Old Callabar and
the Camaroons," one Liverpool merchant: grumbled in 1788, "I have all-
ways declined sending to those two Rivers, as they are Sickly, and the
Slav·es inferior t:o any other, very Wealdy and liable to great Mortality."
Africans loaded at Bonny, and at Old and New Calabar and other ports
in the Bight of Biafra, had been traveling, undernourished, sick, and
depressed, for months. No matter how robust they may have been when
they started their journey, the traumatized survivors must have been
shadows of their former selves.3 8
Beyond the Bight of Biafra, wars and raids kiUed as many as did disease
and exhaustion. Slavery and warfare thrived off each other. Small, frag-
mented polities on the coast had been making war and capturing each
other's subjects weH before the Europeans arrived, but with Atlantic trade
came the introduction of weapons that increased the scale of the violence.
As slaves ebbed out of Africa, guns flowed in. Initially introduced in small
numbers by traders in the mid-seventeenth century, guns increased in
number, until 180,000 per year were purchased in the Gold Coast and
the Bight of Benin by 1730. In the latter half of the eighteenth century
as many as 50,000 guns arrived each year on the Loango Coast. From
there they were distributed all over West-Central Africa. Whether to
build powerful states, to leverage the position of merchants in the trade,
or to protect kinfolk and subjects, European firearms were precious
acquisitions.39
On the Gold Coast, by the beginning of the eighteenth century, the
New World's demand for slaves and the Africans' desire for European
weapons and other goods fueled a deadly cycle of wars, raids, and coun-
terraids. By 1705 the region named for having exported great quantities
of gold had, according to a Dutch West India Company official, "com-
pletely changed into a Slave Coast," where "the natives no longer occupy
themselves with the search for gold, but rather make war on each other
in order to furnish slaves." A Dutch account of 1730 explained the sym-
biotic relation between firearms and slave trading: "The great quantity of
guns and powder which the Europeans have from time to time brought
there has given cause to terrible wars among the Kings, Princes, and
Caboceers of those lands, who made their prisoners of war slaves; these
slaves were increasingly bought up by the Europeans at steadily increasing
prices, which in its turn animated again and again those people to renew
their hostilities." While the coastal Fantee Confederation flourished with
the slave trade, the rising military power of the Asante kingdom gave its
merchants an advantage in supplying the Europeans. From 1724 on,
Asante controUed the trade in gold, ivory, and slaves between the coast
and the northwest hinterland. Expanding its dominion in all directions,
Asante dominated nearly the entire region by the end of 1745, controlled
the supply routes to the interior,. and raided neighboring polities almost
at will. 40
Asante rulers generally protected their own subjects from the slave
trade, meeting European demand largely with captives from the northern
periphery of the Akan-speaking region. As a result, prisoners who survived
Asante military assaults marched as many as three hundred kilometers to
Gold Coast ports, arriving "very meagre," according to Captain John
Adams, "in consequence of the fatigue experienced by them in their long
journey from the interior." Arriving at the trade castles and forts on the
coast, war captives were crowded into prison warehouses to await sale.
Equiano's friend and fellow writer, Quobna Ottobah Cugoano, having
been kidnapped near the coast as an adolescent in 1770, spent three days
in a Gold Coast prison, where he "heard the groans and cries of many,"
before he was delivered to a British ship anchored at Cape Coast Castle.
There he joined captives who had been transferred from the castle dun-
geon, a dark hole, where death rates had been so high earlier in the cen-
tury that Royal African Company officials complained bitterly and
repeatedly of the "great mortality'' and the "number of them very much
reduced and in a bad state of health." 41
The initiatives of powerful states like Asante similarly shaped the expe-
rience of enslavement in the Bight of Benin, Sierra Leone, and the Wind-
ward Coast. From the late 1740s to about 1774 the kingdom of Dahomey,
just inland from the Bight of Benin, operated as a middleman, supplying
enslaved Africans who had been seized in the military raids of the Oyo
kingdom to the northeast. After 177 4, skirmishes between Dahomey and
its neighbors supplied the majority of slaves to ships cruising between the
ports of Whydah and Lagos. Captives of hinterland traders had marched
as many as a thousand kilometers to the Bight of Benin, from as far away
as the central Sudan. Even if prisoners had been captured near the coast,
they marched westward for as many as two hundred kilometers to the prin-
cipal trading forts. To the west of the Bight of Benin, the Futa Jallon holy
wars began in the 1720s and reached their violent apogee from the 1760s
through the 1780s. The fighting proved a boon to slave exporters when
prisoners from the sub-Saharan savannas were sold to traders from Sierra
Worlds of Wealth and Death -o:~ 37
Leone. Royal Navy Lieutenant John Matthews, present in Sierra Leone in

the mid-q8os, contended that "the prisoners made in these religious wars"
comprised "great numbers," about 3,000 a year, and were "brought down,
fifty or a hundred together, by the black slave merchants." Waiting offshore
or canoeing upriver tO small trading posts, Europeans bought refugee sur-
vivors in small lots from coastal dealers. African merchants rook firearms,
among the assorted goods procured in exchange, back into the interior, to
sustain the business cycle. 42
Africans collected from ports along the Loango Coast, just north of the
Zaire River, had one of the deadliest journeys to the coast. By the end of
the eighteenth century, commercial slave trading had reached deep into
the interior and was drawing slaves largely from the central highlands or
areas beyond the Kwango Valley. In communities previously at peace, the
death rate among the children and young adults most threatened by the
slavers increased dramatically with the advance of Atlantic commerce. In
the 1790s and early 18oos, when the British recruited heavily from West-
Central Africa, agents for coastal merchants at Loango purchased most of
their slaves from areas several months' march from the coast. In the few
remaining peaceful and fertile territories in West-Central Africa in the late
eighteenth century, people drawn into the slave trade by indebtedness suf-
fered the sharpest decline in life expectancy; their short-term odds of sur-
vival fell to 5 or 10 percent of life expectancy at home. At the slaving
frontier whole populations suffered heavy losses from war, famine, and
epidemics resulting from the violent disruptions brought by slave raids. A
severe drought in the q8os and 1790s made human life cheap and drew
traders eastward to grab starving refugees. Shackled together in groups of
about thirty, the newly enslaved headed west in caravans, passing through
dense tropical forest and along the dangerous mountain slopes of the May-
ombe Hills. One out of every four died en route. The greatest number
expired just before they reached the trading towns, as hunger, dehydration,
and sickness finally overwhelmed them. Another 15 percent died while
waiting to be sold to the Europeans. A few of these were unfortunate
enough to reach the coast at the Portuguese-dominated port of Luanda, a
charnel house for the enslaved. At Luanda, European merchants dumped
the bodies of dead slaves in an overflowing cemetery near the commercial
center or into graves roo shallow to keep the hyenas from picking them
over. Captives who took more direct routes to Cabinda, the main port on
the Loango Coast, were more fortunate, having partially recuperated at

less deadly viHag·es in the interior before coming down to meet the British
camped along th·e shore. StiH, by the time these Mricans wedged them-
selves into the holds of slave ships, they knew that Atlantic Africa was a
world of death. 43
A Theater of Ghosts
In every region with a point of embarkation for America,. the shattering
experi·ence of war,. relocation, and estrangement shaped the way Africans
understood their predicament. Having been witness to untold deaths, and
to corpses scattered everywhere-in rai.ded villages, along roads and river-
banks, and in rotting heaps at coastal depots-Mrmcans undoubtedly fixed
upon the association between slavery and death. Their first assessments of
Europeans, their experience of the impact of commercial wealth on the
coast, and their impressions and myths about the Atlantic economy reveal
a way of seeing, speaking, and thinki:ng that associated Adancic slavery
with murder) sorcery, and the alienated dead.
"When at last Olaudah Equiano encountered white slave traders, he could
only imagine that they intended to eat him. "When I looked round the
ship," he recalled, "and saw a large furnace of copper boiling, and a mul-
titude of black people of every description chained together, every one of
their countenan.ces expressing dejection and sorrow, I no longer doubted
my fate, and quit·e overpowered with horror and anguish, I fell motionless
on the deck and fainted." Sale to Europeans represented the ultimate alien-
atipn. With the Mrkans who had delivered him into British hands,
Equiano still felt he sh.ared some common human feelings. He asked them
whether he was, "not w be eaten by those white men with horrible looks,
red faces, and long hair."44
Fear of white cannibalism was widespread. William Bosman, who
traded around the Slave Coast more than half a century before Equiano's
capture, claimed that Mrkans from the interior feared that "we buy them
only to fatten and aft,erwards eat them as a Delicacy." These captives were
mor~e likely to attempt escape, or to kill their European captors and run
the ship aground, "by which means they design to free themselv·es from
being our Food." Slave ship ·captain John Newton noted much the same
thing of captiv·es taken from the Sierra Leone region . In West-CentraJ
Mrica, many believed that black bodies had been pressed to make cooking
oil, that European red wines contained the blood of the enslaved, and
that cheese had been pressed from their brains. Perhaps some Africans
had heard rumors about actual cannibalism an slave ships. According to
stories circulated by white slave traders,. the English captain John Harding
had one man kiHed in 1724 for plotting a rebellion. Harding had the
man's heart and liver removed and cur into three hundred pieces, which
he then force-fed to the remaining captives. Haw many Captain Hardings
were there in the Africa trade? There did not need to be many, because
Africans with little experience of European ways were inclined to beillieve
the worst, that whites were alien predators who would use them as readily
consumable goods. This was the extreme consequence of their dislocation,
a sense that at the end of the odyssey, they would be delivered to canni-
bals.45 As Equiano's testimony indicates, white slave traders were more
H~dy than African ones to insp}re fears of cannibalism. 46 At the same
time, the enslaved interpreted the actions of the more familiar African
slavers by correlating sorcery and death with accumulation of material
wealth.
Commercial wealth in Africa was symbolized dramatically by elaborate
funerals, which reached grandiose proportions in the militarized states of
the Slave Coast and the teeming trading towns in the Bight of Biafra. In
these plaGes last rites for kings and persons of great wealth included the
sacrificial slaughter of slaves. Great funerals often involved the executions
of wives and servants, who in theory would continue to serve the deceased
in the afterlife. While anchored at Anomabo in December 1790, Captain
Hugh Crow heard of twenty-three women put to death at the interment
of a local prince. Ashy, a Fantee native enslaved in Barbados, recalled in
1799', "If any of our Grandee people die, den all de head of his servants is
cut off, and bury in de same place wid him." More might be killed at
occasional oeremonies,. as additional offerings or as messengers from the
living, who hoped to secure the favor of the dead. The numbers of victims
increased with the power and prominence of the honorees, and also with
the affluence of those paying tribute. Increasing concentration of wealth
on the coast resulted in a lcind of "conspicuous consumption" in which
slaves were sacrificed both in veneration of the dead and as a way of
enhancing the prestige of the wealthy. In t:he miHtarized trading states, the
sacrifice of war captives symbolized the power of the kingdom. As Atlantic
40 Ill- The Reaper's Garden
commerce swelled the nt1mbers of slaves in the great tr~de centers, ·ever
more of these unfonunates were subjected to ritual execution. 47
In Dahomey, royal funerals and annual ceremonies for "watering the
graves" of deceas·e·d kings involved the sacrifice of hundreds of wives,
slaves,. and war prisoners. Some fifteen hundred were killed during more
than two years of observances following the death of King Kpenga in 1789.
In 1797 Asante hosted the sacrifice of fourteen to fifteen hundred persons
for the funerals of princes. The scale of the killing was less excessive, but
still great at the commercial towns in the Bight ofBiafra. Sixty-five peopl.e
were killed to honor Duke Ephraim, ruler of Old Calabar, in 1786. A spare
first-hand account of the slaughter survives in the diary of the Mrican
merchant Antera Duke: '~bout 4 A.M. I got up; there was great rain, so I
walk.ed to the town palaver house and I found all the gentlem·en here. So
we got ready to cut heads off and at 5 o' dock in the morning we began
w cut slav.es' heads off, fifty heads off in that one day. I carried 29 cases
of bottled brandy, and 15 calabashes of chop [food] for everybody, and
ther.e was play in every yard in town.'' One can only wonder how the
sights and sounds of the killing affected those bound for America. During
the s:acrHices for Duke Ephraim, several. hundred captives were aboard the
Preston, anchored in the estuary. One hundred and eighty-six were sold at
Kingston nearly a year later, fifty-five of them young children . What
knowledge of death and power did these people bring with them from Old
Calabar? We cannot know with any certainty. Yet we can assume that these
Africans, like others passing through the hands of coastal merchants, asso-
ciated th·e prosperity o·f the commercial coast with the ostentatious expen-
ditures, a display of their wealth in people. In this way the enslaved might
reasonably have equated extravagant affiuence with massacre.48
More commonly, they saw accumulation of mat·erial wealth as ~~:he
result of sorcery. Eighteenth-century Africans, not unlike other peoples,
generallly assumed that only a fixed amount of wealth was availahl·e in the
world, distributed as· much according ro a precarious balance of spiritual
fo,rces as through human endeavor. They ther·efore considered the pursuit
of prosperity a "zero-sum game,." played in both the mystical and t·em-
poral realms, in which one could gain only at another's expense. This
view forme·d the crux of holistic ideals £or human affairs that linked eco-
nomic equilibrium with the harmony of society, the health of individuals,
and the play of good and evil. Concentrations of wealth resulted in social
pathology and physical illness. By the same token, the presence of sick-
ness and strife must prove the influence of some evil intent. In the
absence of evml, no one would have too much or too little. Thus, extreme
inequities were seen as the result of a great imbalance between the forces
of benevolence and malevolence. If someone wanwd to get rich or enjoy
extraordinary vigor,. that person would have to employ dark powers to
take from another or might have to sacrifice his own health or that of a
family member. 49
WhHe small differences in wealth and status could result from individual
skill or good fortune, great riches, such as those the traders had accumu-
lated, could be obtained only through nefarious magic. As Mricans could
witness all around them, the goods and people that enriched some had
brought social distortion, pestilence, and death to others. ]n seventeenth-
century Loango, for example, the Dutch traveler Olifert Dapper noted the
belief that "no one dies except through the malice and enchantment of the
enemy, who, by th·e same spells, revives him, transports him to deserted
places, and makes him work there to enrich him.'' The character of the
eighte·enth-century slave trade only strengthened the widespread associa-
rion between wealth and death, whereby malevolent sorcery provided the
means to achieve prospedry. The great numbers of broken families, the
men, women, and children dead before their time, the plagues of raiders
all represented disruptions on a cosmic scale. Only collaboration with the
dark forces of the univ·erse could explamn the profits reaped from this cas-
cading tragedy. Only countervailing sorcery for the good of the commu-
nity could combat the ill effects. Throughout the slaving regions, people
formed protective associations, procured defensive talismans, and per-
formed ritual cleansings and healings, while accusations of witchcraft
proliferated. Many of the people convicted for witchcrafr were, in punish-
ment, themselves enslaved and sold. From every angle, then, enslaved
Africans could see that the slave trade was suffused with evil and deadly
magic; 5°
Africans integrated these views with supernatural conceptions of Atlantic
geography and economy. The deaths of the enslaved were more than dis-
appearances, absences, or extinctions; the deaths generated new stories and
understandings to account for the enormity of the social disturbance. West-
Central Mricans metaphorically associated whites and their territories
across the ocean with the afterlife. Knowing that the overland slave trade
42 r;;-. The Reaper's Garden
was a trail of death, they assumed that European ships continued on to a

realm of the dead. Oral histories in early twentieth-century West Africa
described Atlantic commerce itself in terms of death and accumulation.
Cowrie shells, the currency so widely circulated in coastal West Africa, were
believed to have fed off the cadavers of slaves thrown into the sea; thus,
money issued from corpses.5 1
Such allegories of the Atlantic economy may have had literal referents.
0 n the coast, Africans could see and hear of the European commercial
activity that atrended death. To keep trade moving smoothly, Europeans
often provided gifts for the funerals of prominent Africans, thereby linking
commercial operations with these final rites of passage. Similarly, when
white traders died on the coast, ship captains and factors paid "death
duties" to African leaders, presumably to cover rents for their burial plots.
Europeans were careful, however, not to bury on their own initiative any
Africans with known relatives who died within their forts and factories,
out of fear of taking on the debts of the deceased. White grave robbers
strengthened the association between death and the Atlantic trade.
Africans were frequently buried with their possessions, and thieves recog-
nized an easy opportunity. In 1738 British officials at Cape Coast Castle
censured James Hope for "Clandestinely opening the Grave and Triffling
the Dead" body of Mrs . Phipps, a wealthy local who had been interred
with her gold. Hope, in his search for the short:est route to success in the
lethal surroundings, had tortured some of Phipps's friends and relatives,
in order to discover the location of the grave.
Whites died quickly in Africa, usually leaving debts to be settled. By
the late eighteenth century, accountants for the Company of Merchants
were retailing the effects of dead traders to pay their arrears. "The Salutary
Effects of selling Dead Mens Property for ready Money already appears
conspicuous," reported Cape Coast Castle Governor Richard Miles in
1782, "for by this Ship goes the Amount of two or three small Estates of
persons lately dead." Elsewhere, one ship captain noted the practice in
terse log entries: "Sold the Deceas'd people Cloaths; great part of which
was damag'd and rotten." If this was not exactly cowrie sheUs feeding upon
cadavers, these activities certainly suggested the tendency of slave traders
to reap from death the benefits of commercial exchange.5 2
Throughout Atlantic Africa, peop]e knew the dead to be active partic-
ipants in the affairs of the living. As long-dead ancestors, they constituted
a category of beings not unlike saints or demigods, capable of bestowing

fortune upon their devotees; as recently departed kin, they watched over
the family welfare; if they were the spirits of powerful leaders, they con-
tinued to command gestures of respect; if they were the ghosts of the
wicked, witches, or outcasts, they could pur a curse on the living, or do
them bodily harm. 53 Just as removal from kinship networks represented a
terrible crisis for the enslaved, so did the estrangement of the dead from
their horne territories and family roots.
Most of the Mricans who died along their route to the Americas passed
without communal care. The dead were devoured by animals, thrown
into the bush along the way, heaped in piles at trading forts, or tossed
unceremoniously into rivers and lagoons. Without relatives and compa-
triots to mark the passage, death threatened the deceased with eternal
alienation. The absence of commemoration compounded the social dis-
ruption caused by capture and sale, constant movement along the trading
routes, and high mortality. For most Africans, as for most people in gen-
eral, death represented a rupture in social relations that required some
form of ritual healing, even under normal circumstances. The groups cap-
tured and sold into slavery had limited means to adequately ritualize
death, so they left restless spirits in their wake. All during the inexorable
journey w the Americas, as Africans repeatedly made and lost fragile
social connections, they trailed a lengthening column of displaced souls.
This was a spiritual cataclysm, perhaps the most horrifying aspect of the
experience of enslavement. Embarking for America, enslaved Africans
had entered a theater of ghosts. Olaudah Equiano, for one, knew when
he finally boarded a British slave ship that he "had gotten into a world
of bad spirits." 54
The Cargo Hold

Aboard the Guineamen, as the slave ships were called, the misery of
enslavement was concentrated. The captives arrived in lots of various sizes
over periods that stretched to several months. Only when the holds were
full did the ships embark for America. They packed in anywhere between
150 and 6oo or more people, depending on the tonnage of the vessel. The
three-hundred-ton Vulture carried 646 people from the Bight of Biafra to
Jamaica early in 1787; the much smaller Commerce brought just I6r from
the Senegambia later in the year. Most ships held between 200 and 400.
Bdowdecks, men,. women, and children each had separate compartments,
divided by bulkheads. The men were generaUy shackled, for fear they might
stage violent revolts,. while the women and chadren were left without
chains but scrutinized closely by nervous seamen. In separate groups they
came up on deck for rudimentary exercise, meam: to keep them healthy
enough to fetch a suitable price at the next market.5S
Captains raoed to obtain their full complement before the slaves began
to die in quandties. As they perishe.d, the dead were commemorated in the
ships' logs by numbered notations: "Depart'd this Hfe one Man Slave of
tever. No J: ••• 6th March I Man Hux & 1 of a fever N" 6 Total on board
234·" When the vessels neared capacity, sickness and .death stalked the swel-
tering holds. "Now that the whole ship's cargo were confined together it
became absolutely pestilential," Equiano wrote in his autobiography. "The
clos·eness of the place, and the heat of the climate, added to the number
in the ship, which was so crowded that each had scarcely room to turn
hims.elf, almost suffocated us ... The wretched situation was again aggra~
vated by the galling of the chains, now become insupportable; and the filth
of the necessary tubs, into which the children often fell, and were almost
· sufFocated . The shrieks of the women, and the groans of the dying, ren-
dered the whole a scene of horror almost inconceivable.'' James Stanfield,
an ordinary sailor in the Africa trade, concurred with Equiano, likening a
slave ship to "a sl.aughterhouse. Blood, filth, misery, and disease. "5 6
Unlikely as it may seem under such conditions, the captives again began
the process of forming new social connections in these wretched cargo
holds. Fr:tgile relationships were found and lost as the ships fiUed up in
stages and people adapted, or died. Those who shared a language or could
find other ways to understand one another commenced the narration,
interpretation, and assessment of themr common experience. Crammed
together, they could gauge their situation,. even plan their escape. Rebel~
lions wer·e frequent, suicides even more so. More prevalent still was the
laborious process of making a new common sense from the horrifying
world of the dead . Nothing was more urgent for the passengers than the
discussion of death, and if their differences led to disputes over the precise
meaning of fatality or the proper rites of passage, they could aU agree that
they faced a comparable social and spiritual crisis.
Cenainly,. the trip across the Atlantic kept their minds focused on
death. In the eighteenth-century British slave trade, mortality rates among
captives during the crossing ranged between 10 and 15 percent. Those

numbers improved over the course of the century, as the percentage fell
in response to improvements in ship design, health, and medical care, as
well as late eighteenth-century legislation that regu~ated the numbers of
Mricans carried on ,each ship and stipulated that bonuses would be paid
to captains and surgeons who ensured better survival rates. Yet an Mrican's
chance of surviving the Atlantic passage depended largdy on the fortunes
of the particular voyage. Mortality on transatlantic voyages correlated most
strongly with particular points of departure. Human cargoes from the
Bight of Biafra had consistendy lower survival rates than those from the
Gold Coast, West-Central Africa, and Sierra Leone. Ailments acquired
during travel to the coast overwhelmed the captives once they entered the
deadly conditions of the ships. With the slaves jammed into impossibly
close quarters, once the Atlantic passage was under way, each contagious
person threat,ened all the others; each healthy one depleted the limited
supplies of food and water. The enslaved suffered a variety of fatal maladies
during the middle passage: they contracted diseases in the cramped, filthy
holds, they starved, they grew dehydrated from lack of water and from
chronic dysentery, and sometimes they simply yielded to despair.
Smallpox, yellow fever, and cholera epidemics; unexpectedly long voyages
that oudast,ed the provisions; or captors' negligence and cruelty could all
sharply increase loss of life. 57
The living were in constant and immediate proximity to the dead.
During his time as a surgeon in the slave rrade, Alexander Falconbridge
saw instances in which dead and. living Mr.i.cans were found shack.l.ed
together. During the weeks and months of the passage,. the halting, dislo-
cating journeys of enslavement in Mrica had brought routine, almost
familiar encounters with death. At any given time a slave might a.wake to
find that the person with whom he or she had been desperately trying to
communicate hours befor·e was now lying lifeless nearby. These lifeless
bodies-chained alongside the living, cast into the open ocean before
scores of witnesses-became unforgettable icons of shared experience for
those who survived the trip to America. Amid mortal crisis, they forged
lasting relationships. Having been collectively threatened with utter alien-
ation, the survivors claimed their feUow passengers as kin. In Jamaica,
''shipmates'.' were treated as brothers and sisters. The term was, according
to one contemporary observer, "the dearest word and bond of affectionate
.sympathy amongst the Mricans . " Indeed, shipmates remained a crucial
46 ~;~- The Reap.ers Garden
part of fragile family networks throughout slavery, protecting one another's

children, arranging funeral rites,. and inheriting one another's properry.5 8
These novd rdationships were born during thousands of passages on
ships like the Ru.by. If no single slaving voyage could be considered typ-
ical, it was also uue that few were unusual, and in many respects the
Ruby's Atlam:ic crossing was comparable to countless others. One of the
smaller ships in the trade, the Ruby embarked from Sierra Leone in late
February 1792, bound for Jamaica with a cargo of 158 slaves. Thomas
Walker, a co-owner of the vessel who resided on the African coast, was
pleased to inform his partner James Rogers in Bristol that the Ruby had
loa,ded 55 men, 26 women, 49 boys, and 27 gids (one was missing from
this account), probably refugees from war-ravaged villages in the interior.
On 22 March, after a passag·e lasting twenty-seven days,, Captain John
Kennedy reported to Rogers from Barbados. Infectious dysentery had
plagued the voyage. His accounting showed "Eighteen Buried in the flux"
and ''24 Slaves very much Reduced by that Disorder," though he expected
only 2. of these to die . He hoped to ''Recover all the Rest fit for Market
in ten days after my arrival in Jamaica,'' but) more died before he reached
the island on I April, and another 3 while he was anchor,ed in Martha Brae
Harbor. Kennedy landed 131 of his original ·cargo, though 2 of these were
too sick to sell, and so "was thrown in" free of charge with a parcel of 3.0
"refuse slaves''' sold at cut-rate prices to Mr. Gillies, a retailer who turned
his profit by nursing those he could back to marketable health. In total,
the shipment grossed just ov,er £7,957. 59
This was a disappointing venture for James Rogers. The Ruby had left
Mrica some £orry~six s:laves short of its intended complement, owing to the
sudden death of the resident trader, James Cleveland, with whom Rogers
and Walker had contract,ed their business and to whom they had advanced
large amounts of g~oods on credit. The cargo also contained too many ·chil-
dren, and its 17 percent mortality rate was higher than average. Still, John
Cunningham, the factor who sold the Ruby's ·captiv·es at Montego Bay,
·explained that things could have been worse. "Considering the Cargo,'' he
wrote, '''the Average of £43 Sterl [after dut:ies and fees] was more than I
expected. There were 45 Boys & Girls under 4 feet 4 inches many not
mor~e than 8 or 9 years of age. I had pl,enty of purchasers and sold the first
c:hoice at £75 & Duty for Males & Females,. then the next £70 for Males
& £6o for females man.y of rhe small ones at £55 thereabouts." 60
Worlds of Wealth and Death -l<l 47
Despite Rogers's ill fortune, the voyage of the Ruby was in many ways
consistent with general patterns. The presence of 2 males for every female
in the cargo was ideally suited to the demands of Jamaica slaveholders and
matched the sex ratio in the trade overall. The ship encountered no major
delays on the Atlantic crossing, there were no serious shipboard revolts,
and the death rate among the .Mricans, though high, was not financially
ruinous. Though there were 54 children among the 129 slaves sold, nine
of them were listed in Cunningham's accounting as "Man-Boys" and
"Woman-Giris"-adolescents, who commanded good prices. The voyage
could he reasonably described as having been "completed as intended." It
was not a. typical voyage, nor was it extraordinary, and there could have
been nothing more matter-of-fact than the way the traders represented the
twenty-five deaths on the mortality list. 61
The "Mortality List of Ship Rubj' is a kind of memorial inscription for
the captives who died on board. In neat columns and straight rows for easy
tabulation, Captain John Kennedy recorded the number of deceased men,
women, boys, and girls, with their place and date of departure. He also
listed the cause of death, accounting for ((disorders" in the most orderly
fashion possiMe. Ten of the 25 captives accounted for (Captain Kennedy's
number falls 2 short of the difference between the 158 he took from the
coast and the 131 he landed) expired within a week of his having left Africa.
Indeed, Kennedy was keen to emphasize that 13 of them had had the flux
when he left the coast. There were several deaths in each of the following
three weeks; all but one of them occurred at sea. The causes were monot-
onous: all but four died of dysentery, or the flux, and three of respiratory
ai]ments,. coughing fits designated as "consumption." One victim of
dysentery followed another so closely that the disorder was most com-
monly represented by the repetitious "ditto," made even more efficient by !
,,
the abbreviation '(d"." Wh.ereas Equiano had remarked in 1789 on children I.

who feU into tubs of filth, the Ruby's mortality list of 1792 merely notes
the presence of the flux, neatly avoiding the image of dead children cov-
ered with shit. 62
Then there is 1the curious, lone entry for 27 March. Just days before
landfalL in the midst of his shipmates-future cane workers, domestic
servants, runaways, and rebels-one young boy died of insanity. What
couM he have done to merit the distinction? Was he screaming? Crying
uncontrollably? No, that would have been too commonplace. Was
"insanity" simply a euphemism for "suicide"? Falconbridge maintained

that some Mricans could die of a "diseased mind." 63 Perhaps the boy
emitted some baffling expression of grief all his own,. too alien to be easily
accounted for but too inconsequential to be worthy of further notice.
Maybe for the young boy the distinction between sanity and madness had
vanished somewhere during the passage. However the boy ended his life,
finally, here in the mortality list, was something truly typical, though it
was less a commentary on the experience of the slave trade than on its
essential character as a business of death. The inventory was an elegantly
distilled, formal mamra for the representation of dead commodities, in-
toned thousands of times over hundreds of years.
Dysentery.
Insanity.
Consumption.
Ditto.
Ditto.
Ditto.
Ditto.
The Cost of Cultivation

On landing in Jamaica, Mrican captives were exchanged again. Over a
period of several weeks they were sold in small groups from shipboard or
taken to great holding pens called guinea yards, where they were retailed
to their eventual owners. Affluent planters and urban merchants might
buy twenty or more in a single transaction, bur large numbers of captives
were bought singly, or in twos and threes, by smaller traders. The survivors
of the Ruby were divided up among twenty-seven different buyers. Only
seven of them, including the "refuse" trader Gillies, bought five or more
people. Among the nineteen slaveholders who bought three or fewer was
Simon Taylor's cousin, John Taylor, who purchased one little girl for £50.
In all likelihood, John bought the girl for Simon. We might imagine that
John Taylor's purchase was something like the one he had made for Simon
Taylor only two years earlier, a problematic exchange that stymied one
girl's hopes for a family reunion. Then, it seems, Simon thought two
"refuse" girls, one with a swollen arm and another missing an eye, had
Worlds of Wealth and Death ..;:; 49
been slipped into one of his parcels. He returned both of them w the
market. John wrote back to say, "There is several very fine girls here. I wish
you had seen them as I believe you might have got two such as you would
like in place of those returned." For Simon Taylor, the dissatisfied cus-
tomer, the dynamic market could provide easy redress, but the same
market brought only further ruin to one of the children. "The Girl with
one Eye I find has a sister at your Penn," John informed Simon. "She is
crying most dreadfully." As with family ties, bonds of communion forged
along the trek to the West Indies were tested yet again as the enslaved, dis-
persed throughout the island, became subject to new masters and found
new occupations and social roles in Jamaica, a graveyard for blacks no less
than for whites. 64
When they first came into the hands of Europeans, as mentioned, alien-
ated Africans had often believed that whites would eat them. As Africans
were incorporated into plantation life, we can say, with Ertle exaggeration,
that this assumption was ultimately correct. American planters would
exhaust the slaves' lives as productive capacity, grinding them into sugar,
coffee, and other crops for export, primarily to Europe, where they would
indeed be consumed-but only if they could survive their initial adjust-
ment to slave society. For all irs economic success as an outpost of empire,
Jamaica routinely destroyed its black people.
The death toll imposed by the slave trade continued to mount in
Jamaican ports. As the leading slave trade entrepot in the British Empire,
rhe island was a principal node in the circuit of Atlantic disease. Because
the widespread use of inoculation did not begin in Jamaica until the early
nineteenth century, each new slave ship that came to the island brought
the threat of a smaUpox epidemic. In 1732 Governor Robert Hunter
appealed to the Lords ofTrade and Plantations to approve "an act to Pre-
vent the Landing or Keeping of Negroes Infected with Smallpox in any
of the Three Towns of Spanish Town, Port Royal, or Montego Bay." The
act proved inconvenient to merchants, who preferred more flexible quar-
antines, and it was allowed to lapse six years later. Despite the efforts of
Kingston's principal traders to locate their "guinea yards" well away from
rhe towns, smallpox remained a serious problem. When smallpox spread
beyond the port area and swept through the plantations, the results were
calamitous. In 1774 the Jamaican planter and historian Edward Long
called smallpox "one principal source of depopulation" among the slaves.
The Reaper's Garden
"Sometimes they have been landed with this diseas,e upon them; and this
has proved so fatal, that I hav,e known seven in ten [to] die of it.'' By com-
parison, Long noted that seventy d,eaths among a hundred slaves was
"fifty-six more than the computation made of those who die in England
by chis disorder taken in the natural way." In 1787 Simon Taylor bought
seven Mricans for Chaloner Arcedeckne's Golden Grove sugar plantation,
"but they brought the smallpox out of the ship with them." A thir,d of
that ship's cargo died of the disease shortly thereafter. By this time, how-
ever, planters had learned to inoculate vulnerable populations. "Whenever
the smaUpox breaks out,'' Tayl,or assured Arcedeckne, "we always inoculiate
" all we have that has never had it,, by that means it never now comes on as
a plague, as it used to do formerly."65
The market had another way of taking the dangers of smallpox into
account. Slaves who h~d surviv,ed the pox-or the deadly yaws-.and had
scars to prove their immunity drew higher prices. Sellers could claim that:
these people were "seasoned.'' The ''seasoning" usually referred m a period
of time, one to three years in most cases, during which enslaved Mricans
confronted a host of mort:al dangers as they adapted to conditions in
Jamaica. The captives first had to survmve any maladies they had brought
wmth them from Africa or contracted aboard slave ships. Caged in ware~
houses as they waited for buyers,. the Africans were threat,ened by crowded
and unhealthy conditions similar t:o those they had endur,ed on the
African ooas.t. 66 Then the survivors began to adapt to the new disease envi-
ronment in Jamaica, while simultaneously adjusting to the grinding labor
routine. Like aJl slaves, ~'new Negroes'' commonly lived mn pestilential sur-
roundings where they were overworked and underfed.
Too many enslaved Mricans could not endure the trial. '~most half of
the new imported Negroes die in the Seasoning," Charles Leslie observed
in 1740. Five decades later, an agent for another colony in the West Indies
testifi-ed that Httle had improved: one of every rvvo Mricans that reached
the islands stiU died within a few years. William Fitzmaurice, who worked
as a bookkeeper and ov·erseer in Jamaica between 1771 and 1786, told a
committee of the House of Commons how precarious the lives of recently
imported Mricans were. "In the last four years I lived on the island," he
testified, ''I bought :ninety-five;, at the expiration of the four years I sold
fifty-two, which wer·e all that wer,e living,. and those fifty-two I did not s,ell
as seasoned Slaves; if I had attemp[ed to keep them till the usual time of
. '
i
I
.i
Worlds of Wealth and Death -l'l JI .I
•I
i
seasoning, I should hav·e had a greater decrease,. and on this very account I
I
I sold them." In his diary entry for 3 July 1784, slaveholder Thomas !
''I
I
Thistlewood mentioned the ill fortune of Mr. John Richardson, a planter

who had bought 190 unseasoned Africans over the previous fourteen years
!J
and los1t 141I of them. Richardson maintained that for keeping recently 1:
I
I'
imported Mricans alive, ''prudence & Industry are highly necessary,'' but 'i
I
that "most succeed from a lucky combination of circumstances." Indeed,
Thistlewood fared much better with his own purchases. Of the 2 7 people ..·"
he bought between 1756 and 1778, only 3 perished within the three-year
seasoning period. 67
To protect th·eir investments, planters took several steps to keep their
new purchases alive. Fresh recruits were placed in the care of more expe-
rienced slaves, spared the most difficult tasks, and put instead to building
houses and planting provision grounds. Recent arrivals Hved and worked
alongside the veterans, who taught their "inmates" how to negotiate the
unfamiliar circumstances. As with shipmates, the inmate relationship could
be the beginning of deep and lasting bonds in slave society. For instance,
when Old Phibba died in 1763, her overseer not:ed that Old Sharper, whom
she had first taken in as a new Negro, had her coffin made and presumably
made the offerings to her spirit. But sometimes the mentoring relationship
could turn abusive. According to some planters,. established s~aves con-
trived to exploit their "inmates" by cajoling the new Negroes mnro working
extra time on veterans' own provision grounds, plots of hmd from which
the enslaved drew most of their nourishment. The establmshed slaves even
used their "inmates" to cultivate a surplus that they could sell for cash, but
of course planters were less concerned with the rights of unseasoned slaves
than with the labor that crafty subordinates might commandeer for them-
selves. The primary issue, after all, was to turn labor quickly into profit,
mn the form of export crops,. not local staples. 68
The most profitable crops were also the deadliest. Sugar pbntations were
the most dangerous places to be enslaved. According to B.. W Higman's
analysis of the demographic characteristics of Jamaican plantations from
1829 to 1832, slaves on sugar plantations recorded the highest annual death
rate of any agricultural workers,. 35.1 deaths per I,ooo enslaved. Close
behind that was the mortality rate on the jobbing gangs of subcontracted
slaves,. who were often enlisted to do the heaviest work on sugar planta-
tions. Chances of survival in th·e coffee, livestock, and pimento (allspice)
industries were a bit better, but the mortality rate declined significantly
only when slaves worked on plantations where cultivation of minor staples
like pimento was combined with coffee growing or livestock raising.
Enslaved men and women working on such properties were better fed and
subject to lighter workloads than those on sugar estates. 69
Unfortunately, between half and three-quarters of Jamaica's slaves
worked in the sugar industry; where the labor regime was most intense.
Planters commonly divided the workforce into three gangs. The first, gen-
erally called the great gang, did the heaviest work. This included holing
and trenching the fields, cutting canes and feeding them to the mills,
chopping firewood, boiling the sugar, and repairing wooden fences, stone
walls, and dirt roads. On a well-functioning estate, about a third of the
slaves worked in the great gang. The second gang, which consisted of
teenagers, the aged, Africans in seasoning, and people temporarily relieved
from the great gang because they were pregnant or ill, performed lighter
tasks, such as weeding, bundling the cane for transport, driving the ani-
mals that powered the mills, and gathering cane trash to fUel the boilers.
Young children, who made up the third gang, collected grass and weeds
for the livestock and did other miscellaneous light work.7°
The burdens that fell on the field gangs contributed heavily to the high
mortality on sugar estates. Richard Dunn's analysis of slave labor patterns
at the Mesopotamia plantation in Westmoreland parish, for example,
shows that from 1762 to 1831, male field-workers were recorded as being
sickly during 48 percent of their working years. Five percent of the time
they were listed as nonworking invalids. They could labor only an average
of 13.2 years in the field before their health broke down drastically and
they "retired" to lighter tasks. They died at a mean age of just over forty-
two. Women fieM-workers fared slightly better. On average, they could
spend 2.4 years more in the fidd, and they oudived men by about 3 years.
~
Yet despite these advantages, enslaved women were sick or disabled for
I nearly 6o percent of their working lives.7 1
Cane planting was so cosdy in slave lives that for the hardest tasks, such
as digging holes to plant the fields, slave masters preferred to hire tempo-
rary workers-jobbing gangs that belonged to someone else. Mortality
among the jobbers nearly marched that on the sugar plantations, because
these gangs were so often employed to do the most grueling work in the
industry. Marly, a kind of early ethnographic novel about Jamaican life,
describes in detail the taxing first stage of sugar planting. Everyone in the
field gangs commenced digging with hoes. "The black tradesmen were on
the ground, together with the overseer and the two book-keepers, to assist
in carrying the lines, so that the hole might be regularly dug," two and a
half feet square and about six inches deep for each new plant. "This
process of excavation was performed with the hoe alone, two negroes
being placed to one hole as nearly matched as possible, a strong negro
having for his partner a weak one; but all had to perform the same quan-
tity of work, and in the same time, in order to keep them in line; conse-
quently a female or weak person had to dig nearly as much as the
strongest." As the workday advanced, the gangs weakened visibly. ''After
a week or five days of this kind of labour, very distressing to the people,
few acres were indeed gone over, although there were rather more than a
hundred negroes employed, one day with another, digging only those
holes in the ground." Day after day of such toil exhausted the workers.
Harvesting and processing were only slightly less arduous. During one
excellent crop year on Golden Grove, Simon Taylor noted that the mill
had been operating continuously for nearly nine months, "in which time
the poor wretches of Negroes have not had above six hours of rest out of
24, & what with getting their little provisions etc. what time have they
had to Sleep." He encouraged Arcedeckne to hire jobbers for the next
rounds of holing and planting, for the estate could not keep up the pace
"without murdering the Negroes."72
Seeking short-term profits, many slaveholders used the threat of the lash
to push the gangs well beyond the breaking point. Dedicated planters like
Simon Taylor often complained about unscrupulous overseers and attor-
neys who worked laborers to death, as Taylor put it, "to aggrandize an
Overseer's name by saying he made such and such a crop for a year or
rwo," and then moved on, before proprietors discovered the extent of the
damage. In the early q8os Taylor accused the overseer John Kelly of "dri-
ving every thing to the Devil to make a great crop to get himself a name"
and then blaming future failures on events beyond his control. The
enslaved had a common saying about men like Kelly: "Buckra make whip
do every ring, bur make life, and that it no able to do, but it make plenty
. d .''73
dea
As difficult as the work was, it might have been physically bearable if
the workers had been well nourished. Even when they combined their
weekly rations with produce from their gardens, slaves achieved only
marginally adequate nutrition. The caloric content of their diets barely
matched their energy needs. In other words, they ate just enough to keep
on working. In stressful times-during planting season, droughts,
storms, or speedups in production-they often starved. Hunger and
poor nutrition impaired plantation workers' ability to resist illness. Afri-
cans were already threatened when they entered infectious environments
for which they had scant natural immunity. Densely populated planta-
tion villages provided ideal conditions for the spread of dysentery and
influenza. Personal depression, brought on by the harrowing migration
and constant repression, further handicapped their immune systems and
compounded the risk of illness. Poor diet also aggravated the effects of
common bowel and respiratory diseases, which were among the most com-
mon causes of death. 74
The farther slaves stayed from sugar-cultivating field gangs, the
healthier they would be and the longer they could expect to live. When
slaves worked in a task system, where they could· accomplish their pre-
scribed duties and then find extra time to cultivate their crops or to fish,
hunt, and trade, they ate better. Slaves in towns had more diverse oppor-
tunities. Wharf workers had the lowest death rates of any slaves in Jamaica.
If plantation slaves could secure lighter workloads or higher-status occu-
pations like driver, craftsman, or stockkeeper, they could enjoy more food,
rest, and longevity. But those jobs were difficult to obtain: women,. com-
monly excluded from craft work and stock work, were often materially
dependent on men; the position of driver was frequently reserved for older
slaves who had already proved themselves and had gained the trust of their
masters. Even so, the death rates for all these workers, as well as their
friends and kin on the sugar estates, remained high enough to teach
everyone that life was fleeting and that early death was a prominent feature
of slavery. 75
As long as slavery continued, however, the lethal conditions weighed
most heavily on infants and children. The most common killer of infants
was neonatal tetanus, commonly known as lockjaw. Children died also
from maladies that afflicted adults: bowel disorders, sore throats, colic,
whooping cough, measles,. smallpox, yaws, worms,. and others. Early
nineteenth-century observers estimated that of all children born to slaves,
between 25 and .50 percent died before their first birthday. On the Worthy
Park plantation there were 345 live births during the five years between
q87 and 1792. Within the same fi.ve-year period r86 of these children
died. Absentee planter Matt:hew Lewis was astonished by the rate of child
mortality when he visited his plantation in r8r6. One woman who had
recently lost a child "had borne ten children, and yet has now bur one
alive: another, at present in the hospitaL has borne seven, and bur one
has lived to puberty; and the instances of those who have had four, five,
six children, without succeeding in bringing up one, in spite of the
utmost attention and indulgence, are very numerous." Infant mortality
was probably even higher than 50 percent. Simon Taylor observed in
1789, "Four children out of five die within the first nine days after they
are born." Planters often did not bother to record a birth before the baby
had survived for at least nine days, however, a practice that makes more
accurate estimates of infant mortality nearly impossibleJ6
Enslaved women shared the fatalism of planters; neither expected many
newborns to survive. As one midwife told Matthew Lewis, "Oh, massa,
riH nine days over, we no hope of them." Once a child had survived irs early
years, however, a mother could give herself permission to hope. Abba, one
ofThomas Thistlewood's domestic slaves, raised her son Johnie for six and
a half years. When he rook seriously ill early in 1771, she was, according
to Thisrlewood, "almost our of her senses." Johnie died within four days
of having fallen sick; Abba, her master noted, was "quite frantic & [would]
hear no reason." That night: Thisdewood had another slave dig a grave
near Abba's house, and Johnie was interred in a small coffin, as several
people from Thisdewood's Egypt and the neighboring plantation sang
ritual farewells.7 7
High child mortality meant that the Jamaican slave population would
never sustain irs numbers by natural means. By the late 178os, West
Indian planters were under pressure from officials back in England to do
something about child mortality. In 1789 the Jamaican assembly voted to
offer bounties to overseers for every enslaved child that survived to the
age of one. Between 1790 and r8ro, Simon Taylor's efforts on the Golden
Grove plantation enab]ed thirteen or fourteen infants to survive each year,
but on average during this time sixteen adults died annually. At the
Mesopotamia plantation nearly twice as many deaths as births were
recorded between 1762 and r83r. Attorneys at rhe Radnor plantation
recorded thirty-two births and forty-one deaths between February 1822
56~ The Reaper's Garden
and February 1826. At the Worthy Park plantation the slave population
was self-sustaining for only six of the fifty-five years in the period from
1783 to 1838. From 1783 through 1792 alone, there were fifty-one births
on the plantation and ninety-two deaths. Not counting the addition of
newcomers,. the enslaved Jamaican population as a whole suffered a rate
of annual decrease averaging between 2 and 3 percent during the two
periods from 1739 to 1787 and 1817 to 1832, for which reasonably good
figures are available. Until the end of the transatlantic slave trade,
Jamaican planters essentially externalized the costs of raising children to
villages in Mrica. 78
Catastrophic events accelerated the steady wastage of human life.
Famines and epidemics frequently accompanied wars and hurricanes. At
the onset of the American Revolution, for instance, a sharp reduction in
trade betwe,en Jamaica and North America initiated a food shortage.
Then, on 4 October 1780, a massive hurricane tore through the western
part of the island, killing more than a thousand people and destroying
precious crops. William Beckford, a resident planter, described the dev-
astation: "The stench that arose from the putrefecation of dead bodies,
which remained for many weeks without interment ... occasioned a
kind of pestilence that swept away a great proportion of those who prov-
idently escaped the first: destruction. Almost every person in the town
and neighborhood was affected; and the [medical] faculty were rendered
incapable, through sickness, to attend their patients many of whom per-
ished from the inclemency of the weather, from want of attendance, or
supply of food." Hurricanes bartered the island again in 1781, 1784, 1785,
and 1786, with similar effects. In August 1786, Simon Taylor reported a
"Famine all over the Island," in which he believed "some thousand of
Negroes" would die "for want of wholesome food by Fluxes & Dropsies.''
Planters during this period, in the midst of accounting for their total
property losses, estimated that over fifteen thousand slaves had died from
the resulting deprivarionsJ9
Such disastrous demographic circumstances made the slave trade all the
more important. Had it not been for fresh recruits from Mrica, plantation
slavery in Jamaica might have rapidly exhausted itself. In the 1760s Simon
Taylor thought that sixteen to twenty new slaves were needed each year
on Golden Grove. Yet given the prosperity of the rime, he was able to
assure Arcedeckne, "In three years time each Negroe will pay for himself."
Worlds of Wealth .and Death -l'l 57
Thanks to similar assessments on the part of slaveholders throughout the

island concerning death and wealth, the slave population continued to
grow until the end of the trade. Jamaica imported as many as 750,000
Africans between the late seventeenth and early nineteenth centuries, but
on the eve of emancipation in 1838, just over Joo,ooo enslaved people
remained. 80
Over the Threshold

From the mid-eighteenth century through the end of chattel slavery, in
one of history's greatest episodes of creative destruction, Jamaica's dynamic
and profitable economy consumed its inhabitants. Death regularly snuck
down people no matter what their age, the lowly and the powerful alike.
What implications did that fact have for the way people conducted them-
selves in Jamaican slave society? This is a question that demographic
overviews cannot answer. Aggregates compiled from accounting records
yield few insights into how people interpreted and experienced the high
rate of mortality. Such summary reports tell us even less about how under-
standings of death drove people to take consequential action. Seen from
a distance, the magnitude of the problem is clear, but to understand how
the society developed as it did and how particular circumstances motivated
people to make historic changes, we must imagine the situation from the
inside, ascertaining as best we can how people made meaning of their
experiences. How, in a frenzied, high-stakes game of chance, did white
immigrants build a society on the ruins of human life and dignity? How
did the enslaved make their way in a world where they were numerically
superior but which others owned and operated for the benefit of the few?
Jamaica's residents saw the story of Atlantic slavery, in its broad outlines,
as a dramatic chronicle of evil and opportunity, in which death was both
the central character and the guiding motif. The disheartening chant of
the women who introduced Robert Renny and his fellow passengers to
Jamaica, Abraham James's rough satirical portrait of sickness and dissolu-
tion, Simon Taylor's shrewd calculations of profit and loss, and the
unquiet spirits of the children who died aboard the Ruby all demand that
the hist:ory of slavery be told alongside the history of death.
]n Sugar and Slaves, the classic study of the rise of the British Caribbean
planter class, the historian Richard Dunn speculated, "the specter of death
58):;!- The Reaper's Garden
helps to explain t:he frenetic tempo and mirage-like quality ofWest Indian
life .... It: was impossible to t:hink of the sugar islands as home when they
were such a demographic disaster area." Dunn's insight is the necessary
starting point for any meaningful account of Hfe in Jamaican society. For
instance, it explains much of the reaction by the colonial elite. Lady Maria
Nugent, who accompanied her husband to Jamaica when he went out to
govern the colony in 1801, was immediately struck by the precariousness
oflife. Just one month after arriving she wrote in her diary: "Rise at 6, and
was told, at breakfast, that the usual occurrence of a death had taken plaoe.
Poor Mr. Sandford had died at 4 o'clock this morning. My dear N. and I
feel it very much, but all around us appeared to be quite callous." Indeed,
long-term residents of Jamaica soon grew accustomed to short life
expectancies. The "frequent occurrence" of death, another visitor remarked
in the early I83os, "renders it an object of far less solemnity than in Eng-
land. The victims are almost immediately forgotten: another fills their
office, and their place knows them no more for ever." Like many members
of the wealthy elite, who never fully adjusted to life in Jamaica, Maria
Nugent was eager to leave. Not long before she finally departed, she con-
cluded that Jamaican social life had only three topics of conversation: debt,
disease,. and death. "It is, indeed," she wrote, "truly shocking." 8 1
Lady Nugent consoled herself by reading William Dodd's Reflections
upon Death. Six months into her sojourn she described it as her favorite
book. She must have agreed fervently with Dodd's lament. "It is too com-
monly found,'' he offered, "that a familiarity with death, and a frequent
recurrence of funerals, graves, and church-yards, serves to harden rather
than humanize the mind; and to deaden rather than arouse those
becoming reflections, which such objects seem excellently calculated to
produce." 82 Yet Dodd's assumption was misleading. Familiarity with death
and proximity to the dead may have removed the shock people felt on
confronting mortality, but it did not render them inert.
Those who lived in Jamaica had to build their short lives and fleeting
dreams on ((demographic disaster." On the island they created new worlds
of meaning in a politically charged "space of death." The inhabitants of
colonial Jamaica were always on the threshold of death. Morbidity and
the heightened ephemeral quality of life made all of them overwhelm-
ingly aware of their mortality. Few could have had confidence in their
odds of surviving. For people lliiving in what was essentially a liminal state
between existence and the afterlife, final rites of passage and relations with
the dead rook on added significance, generating some of Jamaica's most
intense and significant political activity. As they articulated symbolic rep-
resentations of death, ritualized the passing of life, and memorialized the
dead, Jamaica's inhabitants struggled to fulfill desires inspired by conven-
tion and circumstance. 83
Early colonial Jamaica was much more than a failed settler society; it
was an abundant garden of power and terror. Demographic turmoil, rather
than terminating social development and stifling cultural practice, was a
seedbed for particular forms of being, belonging, and striving appropriate
to this world of relentless exploitation. It is thus less revealing to see the
extravagant death rate in Jamaican society as an impediment to the forma-

tion of culture than it is to view it as the landscape of culture itself, the
ground that produced Atlantic slavery's most meaningful idioms. Death
served as the principal arena of social life and gave rise to its customs.
Africans and Europeans, whites and blacks, all tilled the same haunted
ground, but they planted different seeds and reaped different harvests.
Some strove to turn the steady squandering of human life to profitable
advantage, while others fought to strengthen the basic ligatures of social
belonging. Adapting to the accelerated life cycle, people turned demo-
graphic Rux into social order. They struggled to establish intelligible pat-
terns for group cohesion, and the reproduction of family, hierarchy, and
prosperity-however they defined these. In all their efforts, people trans-
lated their views of death into idioms of power and protest: funerals were
occasions to articulate communal values, bequests served to buttress
familial networks against future fluctuations, and claimants to authority
made partisan use of the dead. The living regularly reached over the
threshold to draw potency from the afterlife.
CHAPTER TWO
Last Rites and First Principles
FREQUENT DEATHS OCCASIONED regular funerals. Fittingly, Abraham

James's satirical portrayal of life in Jamaica concludes with Johnny's
humble burial in a cramped churchyard (Figure 2.1). Five or six pairs of
legs, faintly visible at the top of the frame, represent anonymous and inter-
changeable onlookers at an all-too-common occurrence. Johnny's coffin
lies next to an open grave. Three sets of figures dominate the scene: three
men, three skulls, and three scavengers. The people-a slave, a lawyer, and
a priest-·-·confront three memento mori, death's-head icons urging viewers
to be mindful of the transitory nature of temporal existence; natural decay
and regeneration are represented by three crabs scuttling toward the burial
pit. 1
As an impressionistic interpretation of Jamaican society, James's closing
image makes a provocative statement. The skulls hold the center of atten-
tion, indicating the ubiquity of death and the insistent presence of the
dead. The icons are not all equal. In the foreground, one of them is etched
into a handsome memorial stone, while next to Johnny's grave one set of
skull and bones lies unburied. James dearly recognized that, contrary to
fatalistic opinion, not all were equal in death. A man who has appeared
in previous panels as the bwyer who drafted Johnny's will, Mr. Codicil,
now appears as a sexton, standing beside the grave with a shovel, eager,
perhaps, to bury the body and begin managing Johnny's estate. An
enslaved man, standing where one might expect to see a family member,
looks on, as the clergyman, barely in the panel, reads the service. Slavery,
Last Rites and First Principles ~ 6I
Figure 2.r. Funeral of Johnny New-

come: "H"1C Jacer Joannes N
. ew-come "
(Here lies John New-come), detail
from johnny New-come in the Island
ofJamaica, by Abraham James
fiiC.Jacet:Jo'aruu::s Jlew-cora.e. (London, r8oo). Courtesy of rhe
National Library of Jamaica.
properry, and rhe church are renewed, as torrid nature rushes to devour
the individual.
Though James's satirical depiction does little to evoke the grieving
process, so crucial to acknowledging and healing the disruptions caused
by death, his sharp outline of Jamaican society, defined at the moment of
Johnny New-come's interment, suggests a compelling way of perceiving
rhe impact of death upon life. Burial ceremonies, as final rites of passage
and ritual farewells, provide an outlet for anguish and an opportunity for
commiseration. Yet they also shape social order. At each srage in a cus-
wmary sequence-determining the cause of death, preparing the body for
burial, accompanying the corpse to the grave sire, eulogizing and sermon-
izing, celebrating life, mourning loss, and consigning the departed to the
spiritual world-last rites for the dead help individuals and groups con-
front death as universal and final, while, even more important, encour-
aging them to contemplate publicly what it means to be alive. Death rites
rhus provide an opportunity for people to enact social values, to express
their vision of what it is rhat binds their community together, makes irs
62 ~*-- The Reapers Garden
members unique, and separates them from others. That is why final rites
of passage are a powerful source of moral guidance. As one of the most
basic obligations, burial customs have a privileged ro'le in determining
ideals and standards of human conduct. 2
Last rites in Jamaica articulated the first principles of slave society-the
meaningful codes of conduct that organized public life and its categories
of belonging. The precarious demography of tropical life kept families and
communal institutions in fl.ux. 3 But though demographic catastrophe
could have rendered all social patterns transitory and fleeting, Jamaican
society was partially structured by the ideals enacted in death rites. Partic-
ipation in such rilltes of passing gave enduring form and pattern to Jamaican
life, shaping the terms of social interaction by providing frequent occasions
for people to indicate group boundaries and to act out their vision of sociaJ.
hierarchy. Demarcating the limits of affiliation and exclusion at ceremonies
for the dead, Mricans divided themselves into "nations"; the enslaved rec-
ognized internal distinctions; and whites delineated and underscored the
supposed differences between themselves and "mulattoes" or blacks, as well
as that most important division between free and enslaved.
Within the company of slaveholders, mortuary rituals symbolized
wealth, rank, and white supremacy. Inquiries into cause of death, and the
routine business of burial, ratified standards of governance rooted in prop-
erty ownership and racial dominance. Even the established Church of
England, nominally concerned with the passage of souls to the afterlife,
owed its existence in Jamaica to the proceeds it took in from death ser-
vices, relying on finely calibrated estimations of the material worth of the
dead. Among Africans and their descendants in Jamaica, funeral rites
shaped moral idioms that highlighted their common humanity and values,
often transcending and challenging the dominant mores and imperatives
of slavery. Evocations of kinship and ancestry during funerals yoked par-
ticipants to their past, even in the accelerated world organized by slave-
holders' expectant outlook. The skills involved in communing with the
spirit world endowed select individuals with social authority, as well as a
status that was not wholly determined by the power of masters. In the vio-
lent and volatile context of Jamaican slavery, the semiautonomous ideals
of the enslaved could constitute a significant countervailing political
force. 4 Though amassing property was the more urgent concern for
whites, and community building was for the enslaved, no simple opposi-
Last Rites and First Principles ~ 63
t:ion existed between white materialism and black communalism. Rather,

communal values and material exchanges were intertwined for everyone,
as people used death rites to define and signify categories of belonging,
measures of status, moral injunctions, and shared desires-the ordering
principles that helped construct society from catastrophe.
Burial and Belonging

Everywhere in Jamaica, one could hear the sounds of black funerals.
Because of the rate at which rhe enslaved expired and the depth of their
ubiquitous experience with sickness and death, funerary rites were an
urgent priority and were perhaps rheir most extensive basis of social com-
munion. "Their principal festivals are at their burials," noticed the resi-
dent planter William Beckford, "upon which occasions they call forth all
their magnificence, and display all their taste." They gathered in groups
that could number into the hundreds, to weep, feast, joke, tell stories,
dance, and sing. "The death beat of the gumbay," remarked Alexander
Barclay, was "heard almost every night on some one or other of rhe plan-
tations. "5
For the most part, black people organized and managed funerals
without white intervention. Slaveholders cared little about black customs,
as long as they did not impair their slaves' capacity for labor. From time
to time, the colonial state passed regulations to prohibit large gatherings
or the use of loud instruments, which could be used to communicate
over long distances, but enforcement was lax. Slaves outnumbered mas-
ters by more than ten to one, and slaveholders were acutely aware that
they had to make some tactical concessions to keep the plantations
working. In the eighteenth century, when their funerals were almost
always held at night, the enslaved gathered outside the surveillance of the
plantation regime to recognize powers that transcended the preeminence
of their oppressors. Night after night, in slave villages or secluded clear-
ings all over the island, diverse assemblies of mourning slaves showed
. contempt for the conditions of their enslavement by articulating their
own ideas about the proper social arrangements in the temporal no less
than in the spiritual world. As solemn rites, "on no account to be dis-
pensed with," in Barclay's words, burials provided a focus for sacred prac-
tices and beHefs. 6
From vast expanses of Atlantic Africa came people with specific ideas
about how to ritualize the passing of life. Brought together in towns and
on plantations, they argued over ways to put previously known principles
into practice as their situations required. Various groups of Africans and
native black Jamaicans-Christians, Muslims, and adherents of myriad
traditional faiths-worked out appropriate funeral ceremonies. Olaudah
Equiano maintained that Africans in Jamaica retained "most of their
native customs," such as burying their dead with pipes, tobacco, and other
grave goods "in the same manner as in Africa." Yet these were not the
same people they had been in Africa. Drawn from hundreds of villages,
scores of polities, and numerous linguistic groups, they recognized cate-
gories of belonging in Jamaica that had not had the same purchase in the
Old World. During their dislocating migrations and the resulting des-
perate interactions, people from the environs of the Bight of Biafra or the
Gold Coast congregated as Eboes and Coromantees, for example-new
"nations" in the Americas. These and others forged alliances based on
shared languages, similar principles of social organization, and similar
memories of the African landscape and territories. In order to cohere,
however, these groups had not only to recognize their similarities, but also
to mark their differences from one another. In this undertaking, the
funeral ceremony was a primary locus of belonging and exclusion, an
opportunity to express and enact ideas about group membership and cul-
tural distinctness/
As people gathered to bury and celebrate the dead, they found some
ritual practices to be mutually exclusive. In different parts of Africa cere-
monial performances varied in duration and complexity. People from dif-
ferent regions had different ideas about how bodies were to be washed,
shrouded, or clothed for interment. Some buried the dead beneath their
houses or in family compounds; others used sacred grounds outside vil-
lages. Some laid grave goods in the tomb-buried the dead with jewelry,
tools, or other objects of ritual significance. In Jamaica the enslaved iden-
tified distinct groupings according to their funeral practices. Yet in order
to establish meaningful distinctions, people had to come together; they
recognized the differences by meeting in common celebrations. Of neces-

sity, narrower territorial identifications yielded to broader association, for
enslavement and dislocation had fractured ancestral communities. At the
same time, common participation in collective rituals produced new dis-
Last Rites and First fl.rinciples -a 65
uncuons. The process was commuous. In specific locales around the

island, cohorts of recent arrivals from Africa transformed the character of
belief and ritual as their numbers and influence allowed. 8
Some ideas and some ceremonial practices were relatively constant.
Common perceptions of relations with the dead formed the basic elements
of a moral discourse that Africans and their descendants used in an effort
to regulate their interactions with one another and oppose the tenets of
their masters. In Jamaican slave society, much as anthropologist Melville
Herskovits recognized in early twentieth-century West Africa, relations
with ancestors represented "the most important single sanctioning force
for the social system and the codes of behavior that underlie it."9 During
funerals,. enslaved blacks created a shared moral universe: they recovered
their common humanity, they assumed and affirmed meaningful social
roles, and they rendered communal values sacred by associating them with
the dead.
Divided though they might be by language, regional identification,
gender, or occupation, enslaved Africans nevertheless held some common
assumptions about death. Throughout large areas of western Africa, people
shared similar "cosmological orientations" and basic practices having to
do with relations between the living and the dead. 10 Most Atlantic
Mricans recognized a supernatural hierarchy, from a high god to lesser ter-
ritorial deities and down to ancestors and the spirits of the dead. With
these otherworldly beings, most especially with the dead, they maintained
active relations. From extensive interviews conducted among Africans in
the Danish West Indies in q67-1768, the Moravian missionary Christian
George Andreas Oldendorp concluded, "There is almost no nation in
Guinea that does not believe in the immortality of the soul. h is also
understood by them that the soul continues living after its separation fi-om
the body, that it has certain needs, that it carries on various activities, and
that it is capable of experiencing both happiness and misery." Physical
death represented only the separation of body and spirit. The spirit-var-
iously called the soul, life, breath, shadow, or double, for many Africans
believed people to have more than one soul-then made its way to the
spirit world or lingered, sometimes ominously, around its dead body or
homestead. During his first year in Jamaica, through conversations with
the enslaved, Thomas Thisdewood learned of duppies, the spirits of the
dead, who could harm or (sometimes) aid the living. He was also told of
66 J;;--· The Reaper's Garden
evil spirits that could lure people to their death by posing as friends and
relatives. The appropriate burial of the body was necessary to send spirits
propedy on their way to the other world, both as a precaution against
haunting and to ensure their benevolence toward the living. Burial rites
generally involved sacrifices and offerings; the blood of animals, sacrificed
to protect the living from the angry dead, and foodstuffs, tobacco, and
drink to nourish the spirit on its journey. "Their treatment of the
deceased,." observed Oldendorp, "reveals the fact that they consider their
condition to be little different from that of the living, attributing to the
former the very same needs whose fulfillment was necessary for them
when alive." Funerals also involved ritual song, dance, and percussive
rhythm, the means of communicating with spirits of all kinds. Such com-
munication and offerings were necessary because most if not all Africans
believed that the dead played an active role in worldly affairs. 11
Spirited Inquests
Before burial, on the way to the grave, a dead person could admonish
wrongdoers and shape communal values. Europeans frequently remarked
upon the way that funeral processions included supernatural inquests into
the cause of death. The enslaved seldom considered untimely demise ro
he "natural." Consequently, the first requirement in laying the dead to rest
was to divine what malevolent forces were responsible for the kiHing. As
pallbearers carried the body, laid upon an open bier or-less frequently-
in a coffin, they became mediums for the departing spirit. They were
directed one way or another by the spirit, which made a point of stopping
at nearly every home in the slave quarters to demand reparations and
atonement from debtors and enemies. Described in similar ways over a
cenrury-~ong period, the procession appears to have remained pretty much
the same in character from the mid-eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth cen-
tury (Figure 2.2).12
"When one is carried out to his Grave," observed Charles Leslie in 174-0,
"he is attended with a vast Multitude, who conduct his Corps in some-
thing of a ludicrous Manner: They sing all the Way, and they who bear it
on their Shoulders, make a Feint of stopping at every Door they pass, and
pretend, that if the deceast Person had received any Injury, the Corps
moves toward that House, and that they can't avoid letting it fall to the
IIEATEEN PRl•CTICES LT FL'KERA.LS.
Figure 2.2. Afro-Jamaican funeral procession. Heathen Practices at Funerals, engraving, in James M.
Phillippo, jamaica: Its Past and Present State (London, 1843), facing 244, depicts a coffin divination cere-
mony from the early nineteenth century, at once a spirited inquest into the causes of social discord and
a curative ritual for enslaved communities. Courtesy of Harvard College Library.
Ground when before the Door." 13 Over a hundred years later, Baptist mis-
sionary James Phillippo published a similar but more detailed account:
When on the way with the corpse to interment, the bearers, who were
often intoxicated, practised the most strange and ridiculous 1nanoeuvres.
They would sometimes make a sudden halt, put their ears in a listening
attitude against the coffin, pretending that the corpse was endowed with
the gift of speech-that he was angry and required to be appeased, gave
instructions for a different distribution of his property, objected to his
mode of conveyance, or refused to proceed farther towards the place of
burial until some debts due to him were discharged, some slanderous
imputation on his character removed, some theft confessed, or until they
(the bearers) were presented with renewed potations of rum: and the more
the effectually to delude the multitude, and thereby enforce their claims,
to some of which they were often instigated by the chief mourners, they
would pretend to answer the questions of the deceased, echo his require-
ments, run back with the coffin upon the procession, or jerk with it from
side w side of rhe road; nor unfrequendy, and rhe most trivial pretence,
68 f;;-· The Reapers Garden
they would leave the corpse at the door or in the house of a debtor or
neighbour indiscriminately, resist every importunity for its removal, until
his pretended demands were satisfied. 14
The supernatural inquests originated in West Africa. Viewing the rite

in the Danish West Indies, Oldendorp claimed inaccurately that it was
exclusive to the "Amina" Africans from the Gold Coast. There, the prac-
tice seems to have been employed to help discern the worthiness of the
body for proper burial. If the bearers could not "move forward, but rather
are pulled backward, even after exerting all their physical strength," it
was thought that the deceased "did not belong to God." In such an event,
the body would be "thrown into the bush, far from the graves of hon-
ourable people." The naval lieutenant John Matthews observed "the cer-
emony of interrogating the corpse" in the Sierra Leone region in the
178os, though the inquests were carried out with a different aim there.
The rituals reported by Matthews were conducted to find murderers or
witches. According to Olaudah Equiano, Africans in the Bight of Biafra
held similar consultations with corpses if foul play was a suspected cause
of death. 15
The origins of cultural practices did not determine their uses. In
Jamaica, the spirited burial processions probably served a number of pur-
poses. Just as interrogations of the dead had varying functions in Africa,
various groups of slaves in Jamaica certainly attached different meanings
to similar rituals. In the context of such ceremonies, people probably
employed distinctive ritual procedures and goals to mark their group dif-
ferences, even as they established general mores on which most could
agree. Whether the spirit spoke out to accuse or to convey its own moral
essence, the funeral also provided an occasion for social persuasion.
In the course of placating the dead person and sending the soul on its
way, the supernatural inquest shaped values among the enslaved in a very
significant way. As the pallbearers, in their role as mediums for the
deceased, passed each house in the slave quarters, they demarcated a com-
munity by reminding everyone of the part he or she had played in the life
of the late man, woman, or child. Acting as the focus of community
memory, the dead had enormous power to enforce communal values. The
corpse, the physical link between human life and the spirit world, was a
potent material symbol of a group's cohesiveness. It evoked a sense of fel-
lowship considered by funeral participants to be timeless-at least for the

duration of the ritual-an eternal sense of belonging in a transcendent
moment. 16
When the corpse (or its mediums) spoke, it invested communal prin-
ciples and codes of conduct with a significance that transcended material
rime and space, giving eternal importance to the collective precepts
expressed. Offenses that had been committed against the deceased had to
be atoned for before the spirit could leave the community. The threat of
spectral revenge was supposed to be the severest moral sanction against
thieves, debtors, and witches. Justice would be enforced, if not by the
living, then by the dead. The coffin procession also promoted harmony
among the enslaved. When friends and relatives acted as mediums for the
deceased, they not only made criminal accusations on behalf of the dead,
bur also complained about perry conflicts-"treachery, ingratitude, injus-
tice, slander"-that threatened the peace of the slave quarters. These com-
plaints articulated the ideals of the enslaved: loyalry, gratitude, justice, and
adulation. For slaves in Jamaica fundamental mores were expressed most
forcefully at the intersection of life and death, during funeral processions
and burial ceremonies. These principles were meant to govern relations
between the living and the dead, no less than rhose among the living.
Thus individuals, families, social groups, and ancestors could share a
moral universe that revolved around the final rite of passage. 17
Call and Response

The enslaved recovered a sense of their common humanity at funerals.
Though national groups formed the core of the gatherings, burial cere-
monies were generally open to all who chose to attend, excepting, in most
cases, whites and their offspring. Blacks affirmed their common connec-
tions to the dead through participation in intensely emotional ritual prac-
tices. Interment of the dead usually involved feasting; sharing among the
mourners was an essential activity. For favored slaves, planters provided
rum, Madeira, sugar, or flour for the feasts and offerings, but most of the
contributions-chickens, a hog, fruits and vegetables-came from provi-
sion grounds or petty rhefts. Leslie wrote, "Cool Drink (which is made of
the Lignum vitae Bark) or whatever else they can afford, is distributed
among these who are present" after the burial; "the one Half of the Hog
is burnt while they are drinking, and the other is left to any Person who
pleases to take it."Is
Building their ceremonies around dance and rhythmic music, Africans
and those close to them stressed their cultural similarities, even as they
reinforced the distinctness from nonblacks. Whites and persons of mixed
heritage who identified with whites rarely shared the rapport that Africans
found in graveside musical celebration. Just before Mulatto Will died on
Thomas Thistlewood's plantation in 1758, he specified that he wanted to
"be buried at ... his Mother (Dianah's) right hand, and that no Negroes
Should Sing &c." Unwelcome at most slave burials, Thomas Thistlewood
scrawled sparse notes about them from within his overseer's house: ''All last
night & today, a vast of company, with singing & c. at the Negro houses,
with Franke, for the loss of her husband, Quashe. She killed a heifer, sev-
eral hogs, &c. to entertain her company with. Delivered Franke a jug of
rum, 8 gallons or more." 19
Europeans, in commenting on slave funerals, rarely failed to remark on
the communal production of the music. With little admiration, Edward
Long noted that "every funeral is a kind of festival; at which the greater
part of the company assume an air of joy and unconcern; and, together
with their singing, dancing, and musical instruments, conspire to drown
all sense of affliction in the minds of the real mourners." The slaveholders'
advocate Alexander Barclay included an eyewitness account of similar
orchestrations in his 1826 apology for West Indian slavery. One night, only
a few weeks into his sojourn in Jamaica, Barclay was awakened by what
he described as "a strange and unearthly sound of music." From his
window, he saw "a large body of negroes, two of them with a coffin on
their heads, with which they were wheeling round and dancing." The
others carried torches as they danced and sang, "yelling unlike anything
human," in Barclay's untutored opinion. Black funeral music made such
an impression on him that he attempted a crude twelve-bar notation for
the benefit of his readers (Figure 2 .. 3). "Probably African," offered Barclay,
who judged the music as follows: "To me it appears strikingly wild and
melancholy, associated as it is in my mind with such recollections, and
heard for the first rime sung by savages interring rheir dead at the mid-
night hour." 20
Call-and-response singing accompanied burial parties to the grave sire.
There, dose family members of the deceased joined in singing with the
~rurrtE~~~
~~~~Jtm
Figure 2.3. Afro-Jamaican funeral music, in Alexander Barclay, A Practical View of the
Present State ofSlavery in the West Indies (London, r826). That the notation is an actual
attempt to describe African music is suggested by the pentatonic (five-note) scale,
common to African bur nor European composition of the time. Barclay appears to have
assumed mistakenly that the melody was the most meaningful aspect, as was customary
in European music. In choosing to represent a single vocal line in his notation, he
ignores the polyphonic character of African musical arrangements. He also appears to
have simplified the rhythm (tapped out on a bell or maintained by clapping of hands),
in translating the rime signature from I2 I 8 (common in Atlantic Africa) to 6 I 8. Cmi-
ously, he described rhe rune as "melancholy," though he emphasized that the melody
was in a major key, whereas Europeans generally agree that sadness is conveyed by the
minor. Courtesy of Harvard College Library.
gathering crowd. ''All the while they are covering [the body] with Earth,"
Charles Leslie wrote, "the Attendants scream our in a terrible Manner,
which ms not the effect of Grief but of Joy; they beat upon their wooden
Drums, and the Women with their Rattles make a hideous Noise." Drum-
ming, dancing, and singing could continue all night. "The instruments
resound, the dancers are prepared," recounted William Beckford, "and the
night resounds with the chorus of contentment; and the day only rises to
awaken in their minds the regret of a necessary departure, and ro summon
them to their expected work." At such celebrations, sacred rhythms, recon-
stituted from diverse memories of African ceremonial musk, established
a fragile but vital concord among the enslaved. 21
Of course, funerals did not eliminate social distinctions; in important
ways, they reinforced them. Burial ceremonies affirmed rhe social status
of the dead. Only well-liked or prominent slaves drew large crowds to
their funerals. The most eminent could draw assemblies of more than a
thousand,. but for many, perhaps most, burial was compleu:ely unceremo-
nious. Certainly those who died shortly after arrival, before they had time
to form a significant network of social ties, received minimal honors ar
death. Slaves who had few friends or relatives were interred quickly and
simply: an overseer would dispatch a couple of available men to bury the
corpse in a crude pit. For others, the extravagance of the ceremonies, as
72 ~'<- The Reaper's Garden
weH as the size of the gathering, would indicate the popularity and impor-
tance of the deceased. "The expense with which the funerals of the better
sort of negroes upon a plantation are attended, very often exceed the bounds
of credibility," commented Beckford. Men and women with fruitful provi-
sion grounds knew they would be able to supply for their own ceremonies
when the time came. For well-liked people in difficult circumstances, others
made contributions. The character and intensity of the music and dance
also varied according to the status of the deceased. Bryan Edwards observed,
"At the burial of such as were respected in life, or venerable through age,
they exhibit a sort of Pyrrhick or warlike dance, in which their bodies are
strongly agitated by running, leaping, and jumping, with many violent and
frantic gestures and contortions. Their funeral songs are also of a heroic or
martial cast." Long wrote that funeral dirges were "filled with encomiums
on the deceased, with hopes and wishes for his happiness in his new state."
Funerals provided a ceremonial occasion to separate the good and great from
the cursed and mean. The magnificent tributes to favored departing spirits
also demonstrated to everyone present that whites did not determine blacks'
ways of valuing individuals. 22
Just as ritual participation helped delimit categories of belonging, it also
exhibited internal hierarchies among the enslaved. Quite apart from their
functions in the plantation economy, slaves assumed a meaningful social
role during the performance of ritual obligations. Planters generally did
not care who among their slaves were the best dancers, drummers, or
singers, though they might be amused by their perfor-mances. Black
people, on the other hand, recognized the indispensable contributions of
these performers. In the context of a burial ceremony, musicians and
dancers bore the responsibility for structuring emotions and communi-
cating with the spirit world. Their skiUs managed what blacks generally
viewed as the most important stage in the hfe cycle. A gendered division
of labor organized ritual music production. Drummers were always men;
women generally led the singing and accented the rhythm with hand claps
and rattles. Both men and women danced, but each group performed a
different style of movement. Establishing gender distinctions at cere-
monies was but one aspect of a larger process of assuming meaningful
roles that could counter the degradation of abj1ect bondage. By establishing
communication that transcended language, according status through cer-
emonial participation, and valuing skills unconnected with commercial
Last Rites and First Principles -);! 73
imperatives, mortuary rituals provided the most profound context for the
social differentiations that distinguished the universe of black values from
the values of white slaveholders . 23
In the course of their mortuary obligations, the enslaved also defined
familial belonging. Preparations for burial reinforced the significance of
kinship and friendship. Family and friends were responsible for wrapping
the body in linen, when they could afford it, and decorating it with pos-
sessions that the deceased had valued in life. The nearest relation of the
deceased bore the responsibility for killing the sacrificial animal. Between
a month and a year after interment, select friends and family returned to
the grave to sacrifice, feast, and sing again, "congratulating the deceased
on her enjoyment of complete happiness," according to Charles Leslie's
account. "This was supposed to terminate their mutual obligations." In
turn, as a nineteenth-century missionary reported, "each of the party then
expressed his wishes of remembrance to his kindred, repeated benedic-
tions on his family, promised to return to them, repeated promises to take
care of her children, and bade the deceased an affectionate farewell."
Sometimes the sacrifice consecrated explicit lines of descent to underline
the authority of fathers and elders- Planter Bryan Edwards described one
such sacrificial rite among Africans from the Gold Coast. "Every family
has a peculiar tutelar saint, who is supposed to have been originally a
human being like one of themselves and the first founder of their family,"
he explained. At the anniversary of this ancestor's burial, "the whole
number of his descendants assemble round his grave, and the oldest man,
after offering up praises to [the high gods] Accompong, Assarci, Ipboa,
and their tutelar deity, sacrifices a cock or goat, by cutting its throat, and
shedding the blood upon the grave." The elder man's sacrifice was fol-
lowed by offerings from every head of household among the Coromantees
in attendance. 24
The integrity of enslaved families was extremely fragile: the slave trade
severed close ties to African ancestors; child mortality blocked lines of
descent that might have extended into the future; and the dictates of plan-
tation managers trumped rhe authority of parents. Yet there is reason to
beHeve that high mortality in Jamaica strengthened affective ties among
kin,. both generic and "flctive." Long noticed that "fllial disobedience, and
insult:ing the ashes of the dead," were offenses exceeded only by murder.
To curse a father, mother, or direct ancestor was "the greatest affront that
74 P:-- The Reaper's Garden
could possibly be offered" to Creoles. Edwards appreciated the "high ven-

eration in which old age is held by the Negroes in generaL" He noticed
that younger blacks often referred to the elderly with the appellations " Ta
and Ma, signifying Father and Mother, by which designation they mean
to convey not only rhe idea of filial reverence, but also of esteem and fond-
ness." Moreover, the role of blood relations in funeral ceremonies reestab-
lished some small measure of stability in the organization of families, at
the same time that they accepted intimate friends and "shipmates" into
the family as members. 25
Even as death tore communities apart, it brought: the enslaved together.
Black people did what they could w honor their friends, relations, and
countrymen, though life was fleeting and time was short. Funeral cere-
monies, which had been perhaps the most important occasions for com-
munal association in Africa, became still more significant in the context
of demographic calamity in Jamaica. Rapidly changing societies of the
enslaved therefore found enduring patterns-if not traditions-in cere-
monies for the dead. Here again, death was productive, stimulating a con-
tinual cycle of destruction and renewal: the greater the catastrophe, the
more intensive the regeneration.
The Reverse of "Our" Ceremonies

Slaveholders paid little attention to the deaths of slaves, noting them,
rather, principally as commercial losses or things to be paid for. Planters
performed their most important last rites for slaves when they jotted down
the year-end rallies of estate property, an act of notation as a final com-
memoration. Simon Taylor talked of "negroes destroyed" and estates
"falling back," but only in a few rare instances did he remark on the impli-
cations of black deaths for anything but his worldly ambition. Likewise,
Thomas Thisdewood "sddom expressed strong emotions when his slaves
died," according to his biographer, ''even ifhe had spent considerable time
in their company. He noted dispassionately the deaths of many slaves,
seldom adding to the recognition of their deaths any appreciation of their
particular human qualities."26
When whites-slaveholders and nonslaveholders alike---commented on
black funerals, it was generally to express their disdain. European descrip-
tions of expressive styles of movement at funerals as "wild," "frantic," and
"ludicrous" "gesticulations" distinguished appropriate-in other words

"white"-decorum at funerals from "negro" lack of restraint. Descriptions
of polyrhythmic music as "hideous noise" effectively denigrated one of the
most important activities that Africans participated in together. Such dis-
paraging depictions of African sound and movement, used often to char-
acterize a host of other African and black cultural practices as well, played
an important role in distinguishing what it meant to be "white" from what
it meant: to be "Negro" and so helped to secure in the minds of Europeans
a general image of "Negro" degradation. In his description of slave
funerals, the planter Edward Long eagerly concluded, "Their funerals are
the very reverse of our English ceremony." If he knew of the customs in
the nonhern English borderlands-where mourners were compelled to
touch corpses because of the belief that the body would bleed at the touch
of one guilty of foul play-he was careful not to say (though he did com-
pare black funerals to Highland Scottish and Irish wakes). Characteriza-
tion of one of the most sacred and emotionally fraught rites of passage in
human experience as an uncontrolled manifestation of inherent savagery
placed black cultural practice firmly at the bottom of the hierarchy of reli-
gion and culture. 27
"Whites saw the slaves' way of mediating on behalf of the dead while
carrying the coffin to the grave site as the most outlandish feature of black
mortuary practice in Jamaica. The supernatural inquests received dis-
paraging scrutiny in numerous published accounts: Charles Leslie's in
1740, Edward Long's in 1774, Matthew Lewis's in r8r6, James Stewart's in
r823, Alexander Barclay's in r826, and James Phillippe's in 1843. As these
authors recycled one another's descriptions or interpreted what they had
seen in the light of their predecessors' accounts, they described a funeral
procession that remained formally consistent over an extended period of
time. They also reproduced and circulated a consistent set of bigoted
assumptions about black spirituality. The common language of observers
itself says something about their view of Mrican relations with the dead.
The words "pretend," "superstition," "ludicrous," "wild," "fran tic," "ges-
ticulations," recurring in each of the six published descriptions, indexed
the agenda within which whites interpreted slaves' death rites. Their char-
acterizations of "Negro" funerals reflected a comparative framework for
thinking about religion, one that encouraged them to despise deviations
from Protestant English religious practice.
Europeans commonly understood the mediations of the pallbearers as

mere pretense. Of the six authors, only the gothic novelist and absentee
plantation owner Matthew Lewis resisted using the verb "pretend" to
describe the activity of the pallbearers. Instead, perhaps facetiously, he
made the corpse the subject of the action: "If, as is frequently the case,
any person is suspected of having hastened the catastrophe, the corpse will
then refuse to go any road but the one which passes by the habitation of
the suspected person, and as soon as it approaches the house, no human
power is equal to persuading it to pass." For the others, identifying "pre-
tense" in the ritual was their way of interpreting the procession as an
excuse for fraud. In his account, James Stewart related an anecdote meant
to reveal "fraudulent exton:ion" as the goal of the ritual. "A negro, who
was to be interred in one of the towns had, it was pretended by some of
his friends, a claim on another negro for a sum of money. The latter
denied any such claim; and accordingly, at the funeral of the deceased, the
accustomed ceremonies took place opposite the door of his supposed
debtor; and this mummery was continued for hours, rill the magistrates
thought proper to interfere, and compeHed the defunct to forego his
claim, and proceed quietly on to his place of rest." Understanding the cer-
emony as little more than a pretext for greed allowed whites to fit the
ritual comfortably into their assumptions about the relation between indi-
viduals, property, and the dead. Avaricious planters were projecting their
own values onto the enslaved, viewing black customs in terms they could
well understand. 28
As capital investments and as chattel, enslaved men and women held
value that could, in some circumstances, be redeemed when they died.
For instance, slave owners received monetary compensation whenever state
intervention resulted in a loss of human property. To construct public
works, the parish vestries requisitioned workers from slave owners in the
area. Building roads and clearing land was dangerous work, and owners
were reluctant to risk their property on pubHc development projects. To
encourage compliance with civic duty, the vestries paid owners at least
parr of the value of any slave killed on such projects. 2 9
The public also had more compelling reasons to compensate owners
for dead slaves. The perpetual instability of Jamaican society necessitated
constant vigilance against slave crimes and uprisings. To quell insurrec-
tions, the colonial state often compelled enslaved blacks to help white
militias track down runaways and rebels. When slaves died performing
military service, owners were again compensated. In one 1745 case, the
Kingston vestry requisitioned "30 able Negro men" from William Austin
to accompany a party of soldiers when they went out to suppress a band
of rebel Mricans. According to procedure, the vestrymen assured Austin
rhat "they shall be Valued by any three of the Justices and Vestry and in
case of their being kill'd or Maimed they shall be made good Answerable
to Valuation." Planters who pursued rebels on their own initiative also
filed petitions with the assembly to recover the value of lost slaves. In 1755
a widow, Anne Bennett of Saint Thomas-in-the-East, filed a petition on
behalf of her infant son, George Rosewell Bennett-a slaveholder by
inheritance-to recover the value of an enslaved man who had been killed
in pursuit of a band of runaways. The assembly paid the infant forty
pounds for his loss. Public institutions also compensated owners whenever
slaves were convicted of serious crimes, executed, transported, or impris-
oned for life. Because individual owners wanted to protect their property
and therefore had a strong incentive to shield their slaves from prosecu-
tion, the assembly passed the 1717 "Act for the more effectual punishing
of Crimes by Slaves," though it initially limited the recoverable value to
forty pounds, paid by the island treasury. Early on, the policy invited
abuse by unscrupulous slaveholders. In 1739 an assembly committee dis-
covered that several slaves had been executed for petty thefts and other
"crimes of no account," that their owners had had them prosecuted "for
the sake of lucre, and in hopes of being paid for the said negroes."3°
If slaveholders imagined that black funerals were an opportunity for
personal material benefit, they were probably projecting their own inten-
tions, their grasping efforts at monetary gain. Black people, in affirming
their own sense of belonging and social value, rather than commercial
worth, held celebrations for their dead that were in fact the very reverse
of slaveholders'.
"By the Visitation of God"

The last rites ofwhites played a comparable key role in establishing com-
munal values and shaping social order. Alongside the requisite tributes to
ancestors and deities, socioeconomic and racial distinctions were de[er-
mined. Whereas burial ceremonies for the enslaved helped articulate
nationhood, advocate harmony, and celebrate black talents, white funerals

enshrined the pursuit of wealth and white supremacy as society's first prin-
ciples. White solidarity in the face of an overwhelmingly black population
was crucial to the social order of colonial slavery. Accordingly, national and
ethnic differences were not permitted to create invidious divisions among
whites. Scots, English, and even Irish, French, and Spanish people, shared
a social station in relation to the mass of enslaved blacks. Indeed, despite
great disparities in fortune, whites were able to maintain surprisingly egal-
itarian relations with one another-at least by comparison with norms of
behavior current in Europe. 31 They did, however, signal their achieve-
ments, aspirations,. and claims to status through final rites of passing, in
the process enacting and affirming hierarchical principles of social value.
In state investigations into causes of death, in the way the established
church valued and honored the dead, and at funerals that expressed the
aspirations of the deceased and marked the desired boundaries of commu-
nity, white society established distinctive patterns in the midst of Jamaica's
demographic disarray. In ways appropriate to an aggressively materialistic
society, whites .in Jamaica marked social distinctions with fee schedules for
burial services, symbolic displays of rank, and rituals of belonging and
exclusion.
Just as last rites among the enslaved included inquests, the colonial state
required coroners to investigate mysterious fatalities. Black supernatural
inquests were a matter of curiosity and puzzlement to white observers~
who rarely understood the role of these rituals in articulating the first prin-
ciples of enslaved communities. Had they noted the social purpose of the
slaves' divinations, they might have recognized that black and white
inquests performed a similar function: both laid out the axes, boundaries,
and values of community. What the extravagantly energetic movements
of the pallbearers did for communal values in fractious and embattled slave
villages, state inquests did for the slave masters-specifically, by inscribing
white supremacy into official accounts of death.
Administered at the parish level, the office of coroner was usually held
by men of respectable standing who were elected or selected by the free-
holders of a local community. Following English precedent, Jamaican law
required coroners "to take inquisitions on the bodies of all persons who
shaH die in gaol, or be found dead in other places," and to "issue warrants
for summoning jurors." Coroner's juries consisted of white men from
nearby farms and plantations. Jamaica's Act for Regulating Fees (qu) pro-
vided that coroners be paid three pounds "out of the estate of the person
deceased,. and where no estate is found, then ro be paid by the church-
wardens of the parish where the inquisition is taken." Coroners had an
obvious financial stake in performing investigations inro the deaths of
slaves, but they also shared their peers' desire to safeguard the value of
whiteness in slave society, one of the principal instruments of social con-
trol over the enslaved population. The inquests applied roughly the same
racial distinctions to the dead that ordered the society of the living.3 2
The law was vague about inquests for slaves, and coroners often had
trouble collecting their fees for such inquiries. The churchwardens often
refused to pay for inquests involving enslaved blacks, on the assumption
that there was little purpose or public benefit in determining the cause of
a slave's death. The high mortality rate placed a heavy burden on coroners,
who traveled incessantly throughout the parish to perform their duties.
They complained frequently of the burdens of their employment and peti-
tioned to recover compensation for inquests into the deaths of slaves. To
resolve their difficulties, in 1770 the assembly passed ''An Act for Settling
the Proceedings and Fees of the Coroners." It stipulated that coroners
should be paid the customary three pounds for an inquest "on a white
person or a person of free condition, out of the goods and chattels of the
person found dead; bur if no goods or chattels of the deceased shaH be
found, or such person be a slave," the parish churchwardens would pay
the fee. 33
The churchwardens, who remained reluctant to assign the same value to
inquests into the deaths of whites and blacks, often neglected to pay for
seemingly worthless information on the deaths of blacks; but absolute ne-
glect became more difficult in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth cen-
turies, when inquests on corpses of the enslaved acquired political urgency.
As the antislavery movement in England increasingly heaped criticism on
the planrocracy in the 178os, at least one legislator attempted to limit
sadistic abuses against the enslaved by requiring stricter inquiries into their
causes of death. A Jamaica assemblyman, concerned that slaves frequently
"came to their Deaths by hasty and severe blows, and other improper treat-
ment of overseers and book-keepers," and then were buried immediately
"to conceal the truth of the cause of the death," proposed adding a clause
to the "consolidated Negro bill" being considered by the assembly in 1787.
8o J;;l- The Reaper's Garden
Though the clause did not become law, his proposal raised expectations
that coroners should investigate deaths of the enslaved in the public
interest. Coroners, who had mainly been responsible for inquests into the
causes of white deaths,. now claimed a greater responsibility to investigate
the deaths of blacks. Vestrymen mitigated the outrage planters felt, once
they actually began to pay the three pounds for blacks, by voluntarily
raising the fee for white bodies to five pounds. The difference in fees was
henceforth based on race rather than slave or free status. The graduated
value of inquests for blacks and whites, by reinforcing the imagined hier-
archy of black and white personhood, strengthened white supremacy in
concrete terms. Only with the Coroner's Act of r8r7 did an actual law estab-
lish a clear and unambiguous requirement that coroners perform inquests
into the deaths of slaves, also stipulating that slaveholders could not be
jurors at inquests concerning their own slaves. A belated response to anti-
slavery pressure, the act established that, in principle, the deaths of black
people merited serious investigation.3 4
Yet a story recounted by Benjamin McMahon, who spent eighteen years
in Jamaica working as a bookkeeper on several plantations in the nine-
teenth century, indicates that most whites considered inquests concerning
slaves to be an annoying interruption in the prerogatives of white
supremacy. This was true even of coroners, whose loyalties were divided
between their legal obHgations and the patronage of prominent slave-
holders. McMahon described one coroner's role in the case of an enslaved
man who had been poisoned and buried clandestinely on a small property
caHed PhiHip's Valley. In June 1821 Dr. Craig, the plantation doctor in the
area, accused Mr. Levy,. the proprietor of PhiUip's Valley, of committing
the crime. As McMahon learned the circumstances, "the man often came
to the hospital complaining of sickness. Mr. Levy said it was nothing but
skulking, and on this occasion said he would cure him of it, and for this
purpose he gave him six grains of tartar emetic which brought on excessive
retching for several hours,. until he died." Shortly after the man's death,
Dr. Craig arrived and recorded in the hospital book that the victim had
been killed by an overdose of tartar emetic. In response, Levy expelled
Craig from the property. Craig then wrote to the authorities in Kingsron,
who ordered an inquest.
Three weeks later, the coroner Charles Austin arrived and gathered a
jury to hear the case. McMahon accompanied Dr. Craig to the inquest
and watched as Mr. Levy ordered Craig to withdraw until called for.
%en Craig protested, Austin supported Levy. McMahon became suspi-

cious of the proceedings, for "when the jurors were sworn," he "observed
them all laughing and shaking their heads at each other, as if in ridicule
of their oaths; and it appeared to me," he wrote, "that their oath only
served as a cloak to their abominable designs." As it turned out, the
coroner "was a particular friend of Mr. Levy, and he, of course, took care
to have everything his own way." The inquisition was a farce. "It was easy
to see that they did nor desire to hear the truth," McMahon concluded,
"but just to smother up the case." When the "sham investigation" was
over, the jury returned the customary verdict: "Died by the visitation of
God," the contemporary idiom for "died of natural causes. "35
Several weeks after the inquest, Craig was discharged from practicing
medicine on every plantation in the district. Bur rhar was not vengeance
enough for Levy. He sued Dr. Craig for defamation of character and won
a judgment for one thousand pounds in damages, "from a jury of planters
like himsel£" According ro McMahon, "The jury were quite exasperated
at the idea of any white man daring to expose another, merely for being
the cause of the death of a common negro." The judgment ruined Dr.
Craig, who "had not one thousand pence," and he died in penury soon
after. 36
White juries denied the very notion that a slave's demise counted for
much at alL Whatever the aim of the laws establishing coroner's inquests
in Jamaica, the practice and execution of postmortem inquiries had less
to do with establishing the cause of death than with demarcating bound-
aries between free and enslaved, thus signaling the limits of public worth
and belonging. A crucial aspect of such border conrrol was the mainte-
nance of white supremacy; even dead bodies were ranked according to
hierarchies of color and power. The murder of slaves by whites could
therefore be deemed a natural consequence of enslavement. As a commu-
nity ritual, state inquests enforced racial principles of social organization
w the grave and beyond.
Signals of Status
Among the masters, funerals helped to establish a more finely calibrated
hierarchy than that between free and enslaved. For fortune-seeking whites,
especially those at the top of the social ladder, materialist attitudes toward
death were more meaningful than religious ones. After all, it was largely
82 ~· The Reaper's Garden
the promise of riches that lured enterprising young Britons to Jamaica.

William Hickey, the spoiled and freewheeling son of an affluent London
attorney, came to the West Indies to seek his fortune as a lawyer in the
Jamaican courts. As he approached Jamaica aboard the New Shoreham,
Hickey recalled that the island was "considered as one of the most
unhealthy in the West Indies, or in the world." His thoughts had been
troubled by the ship captain, Surman, who had been telling stories
throughout the voyage from England about death in Jamaica, "saying that
several of his best friends had been carried off after only an hour's iHness."
When the ship steered into Kingston harbor, he pressed the theme more
directly. Surman told Hickey to take note of "a dapper little man, dressed
in black, with a spruce curled bob wig, who upon my landing would shake
me by the hand, wishing me health and long life upon the island."
"But watch him closely," said the captain, "and you will perceive that
whilst bowing and paying his compliments to you, he is, with a small
ruler, measuring your height."
"And pray what is that for?" Hickey inquired.
"In order to have a coffin for you, which, he being the principal under-
taker, he will immediately get ready, hoping to bury you tomorrow."
"Monstrously provoked" at the thought of such effrontery, Hickey anx-
iously scanned the docks, resolved to give the undertaker "a kicking" as
soon as he met him. Hickey never saw the man, however, and at length
he recognized that he had fallen for one of Captain Surman's favorite old
jokes.37
Hickey's career plans turned out to be more illusory than Captain
Surman's imaginary undertaker, for though Hickey failed to find work,.
that "dapper little man" was plausibly representative of a firmly established
sector of Jamaican society: the unhappy commerce and related social rit-
uals that attended death. The basic demands of burial and memorial
required a certain amount of economic activity. Shrouds used to wrap
bodies varied greatly in quality and cost. The wealthiest whites were some-
times wound in silk sheets, while enslaved Mricans often went to their
graves naked. Coffins were generally reserved for whites. Graveyards were
valuable and productive lands for Jamaican parishes, and the "public" vied
with private landowners w find places to put them. Signaling and reifying
the social and financial status of the deceased, burial was as much a civiill
and economic event as it was a personal and familial one. 38
Among public establishments, religious institutions are commonly des-

ignated to oversee death rites. For whites in Jamaica, small contingents of
Jews, Catholics, and Protestants of various persuasions held their own cer-
emonies. It was the Anglican Church, however, that serviced the richest
and most powerful of Jamaica's elite. So, though the institution was rela-
tively weak, membership in it brought standing in the white community.
In a land of fluid possibilities, acquisitive and opportunistic people of all
faiths looked to the established church to set the overall social tone, even
when they did not share irs tenets on spiritual belief and even when they
resisted its authority. Whereas people might not have shared conventional
Anglican views of God as a remote presence in a mechanistic universe,
most approved of the pragmatic Anglican approach w power and personal
fortune as something of this world, produced by humankind. If various
denominations in Jamaica had their own funeral rites, those of the estab-
lished church were most suited to represent the materialist social order.
Indeed the church was rarely challenged, unless it tried to assert its spiri-
tual authority over Jamaica's material elite.
The Church of England in Jamaica was supported in large part by the
fees it charged for various burial services. Through rhe late eighteenth cen-
tury, Jamaican churches toiled with meager resources and suffered low
attendance. Peter Mardsen, writing in 1788, acknowledged, "There are
churches in every parish of this island; yet, except in the towns, I fear they
are little frequented but on that awful occasion of the burial of the dead."
Most whites in Jamaica were too bent on the pursuit of material well-
being to contribute much to the maintenance of the established church;
the church had to wait until they died to draw significant support from
them (Figure 2.4). Anglican rectors garnered yearly salaries from parish
vestries, but the majority of their income came from surplice fees-com-
missions they earned for baptisms, maniages, and funerals.39
In 1746 the parish vestry of the town of Kingston ordered that the
rector William May was to receive, in addition to his yearly income of
£240, ro shillings for the burial of each Kingston inhabitant who used the
parish palls. Anyone who was not conveyed to his or her grave draped in
the official coffin cover but who was interred in Kingston's West Burying
Ground yielded 5 shillings to the Reverend William May. A return made
in 1751 by John Venn, the rector of Saint Catherine parish, showed that
May's salary had increased to £250, bur he earned £6oo in surplice fees,
84 l!i- The Reaper's Garden
Figure 2-4- Death and. burial preparations for Johnny New-come: "The Soul & Body of
John are consigned to the Priest" and "The Body of John is packed up for the Penn,"
details from johnny New-come in the Island ofjamaica, by Abraham James (London,
r8oo). Courtesy of the National Library of Jamaica.
at least a third of which probably derived from funeral services. John

Newson,. clerk to the minister in mid-eighteenth-century Kingston, acted
as the official parish undertaker, drawing the majority of his income from
burials. The vestrymen fixed his salary at £30 for 17 46 and ordered that
he be paid 3 shmllings and 9' pence for each funeral he attended, except
those ceremonies conducted wholly at public expense. He gained a more
lucrative commission from making coffins and taking care of the parish
palls. For each coffin that Newson manufactured, the parish granted him
r pound, 3 shillings,. and 9 pence. In addition, Newson collected the fol-
lowing fees from each ceremony that made use of the parish palls:
For a NonResident's use of the Velvett Pall: two pounds and ten shillings.
If Borrowed out of the Parish: three pounds, ten shiHings.
For the Use of the White Pall: one pound.
If borrowed out of the parish: one pound, ten shillings.
For the Use of the Black Cloak Pall: twelve shillings and six pence.
Last Rites and First Principles -lO 85
In total, John Newson earned more than £152 for "SalJerys and Parish
Coffins" in 1746, about 8o percent of his income. Simon Monk, the
Kingston parish sexton, earned his entire income from burying the dead.
For digging a grave and att:ending a funeral, he received 7 shillings and
6 pence. The more hallowed the grave site, however, the more money
Monk could make. For preparing a tomb in the churchyard, he earned
£r; for "Laying a Tombstone or any other Ways Inclosing a Grave in the
Church Yard" he earned £4; and for digging a grave in the church itself,
he collected fro. When people borrowed the velvet palJ, Monk was paid
an additional 7 shillings and 6 pence to attend to it. 40
The graduated fees for progressively more prestigious burial paHs and
grave lots gave the parish and the church a stake in the reproduction of
social hierarchy. Rectors were paid more for burying whites than for
burying people of color, and nothing for slaves. In the parish of Saint Ann
in 1796,. for example, the rector earned fr, 6 shillings, and 3 pence for
burying a white, and just 6 shillings and 8 pence for presiding over the
interment of a free person of color. In death, as in life, suitable accou-
trements signaled people's social station. The vestrymen accordingly kept
the parish palls in good repair, ordering occasionally that "the Old Velvett
Pall be New Lined and Flounced and that a new White Pall be made."
Only the wealthiest whites in Kingston paid to have their deceased loved
ones carried to a church crypt in the velvet pall. More often, Anglican
parishioners rented the more modest white or black cloak pall and paid
rhe church for a space in the enclosed churchyard or one of the larger
parish burial grounds. Yet even outside the churches, the wealthy could
still distinguish themselves with marble headstones and elaborate monu-
ments. Such ostentation could attract unwamed attention, as when the
authorities in Saint Ann parish had to post a reward of 2 doubloons for
information leading to the detection of "some VILLAIN or VILLAINs" who
had stolen a marble headstone from a churchyard tomb.4l
Church burial rites did not attract unanimous respect. Just as the dif-
ferences in fee schedules reflected and reproduced social hierarchies, they
also became subjects of contention. The profiteering of the clergy some-
times figured in sharp disputes. In his History of jamaica (1774) the
planter-historian Edward Long described one such altercation at a funeral
between a rect:or and a group of sailors. When the funeral party called the
rector to preside over the interment of three deceased seamen, according
to Long, "he thought to make quick work of it by only one reading of the
86 <i-- The Reaper's Garden
burial-service." Either he assumed that since he would recover only one

fee, he ought only to perform one reading or, with inexcusable hubris, he
hoped to assess three charges for one service. The "brother tars'' insisted
that the rector honor the dignity of their comrades by reading the service
over each individually. When the rector refused, rhe ceremony coUapsed
in acrimony, and a heated argument turned into a brawl. "The parson,
the clerk, and all the congregation,. engaged pell-mell. Nor long the battle
raged; for divinity proved victorious, after hurling two of the three of the
combatants headlong into the very grave that had been prepared for their
inanimate friends." 42
On another occasion, someone directly challenged rhe sacramental
authority of the clergy, by explicitly designating their fees as obnoxious.
]n 1796 rector John Barron filed a formal complaint to the Lord Bishop
of London against the wealthy and well-born James Wood for inter-
rupting a funeral service in the town of Parr Royal. At dusk on the
evening of r February, the mourning party proceeded to the wharf, from
where they were to take smaH boats to the narrow point called the Pal-
isadoes, the place of interment. As night fell, however,. one of the
mourners remarked on the inconvenience of traveling by boat in the dark
and suggested that the burial service be performed on rhe wharf instead.
The clerk of the church liked the proposal, adding that funerals on the
wharf were common in Port Royal, and the group decided in favor of it.
They gathered around the coffin in silence, and Barton commenced the
ceremony. But before Barton could finish the first prayer, James Wood
demanded rhat they put the boats to sea and "broke out into the most
execrab]e and blasphemous expressions against the Ordinance of the
Church.''43
"Damn you and Buggar Your Prayers!" he cried. "We want none of your
Prayers; I'H be Damn'd if you shall get your Fee." He continued cursing
throughout the prayer, and when it ended, the service came to a halt.
"When challenged for his presumptuous assault on a Clergyman in the
discharge of his sacred Function," Wood floured Barton's authority
entirely,. fulminating, "I put you ro Defiance, what can you do to me Sir?
I have been better bred, better educated than ever you was." Finding little
satisfaction in the Jamaican assize courts, "where Religion is too superfi-
cially taken into account," Barton protested to Bishop Porreus in London:
"This Man has been for a long time an atrocious disturber of the Peace,
Last Rites andPirst Principles -i'l 87
and is well known to have been guilty of repeated Offences against the
order of Society, he piques himself upon his purse, and confident of pos-
sessing the powerful means of buying out the Law, goes on to multiply
his Offences against God and Society." Barton hoped that pursuing his
case with the authorities at home in the British Isles, "where the Laws and
Administration thereof wiH maintain the Reverence due to the Ordinances
of God, the Dignity of the Church, and its Members," would bring pun-
ishment to the offender,. but there is no evidence that Wood ever suffered
any penalty. He was protected, as he doubtless expected, by his wealth
and status. 44
Outside Kingston and Port Royal, parish vestries and the established
church had a weaker grip on the business of burial: the parish palls gen-
erated less revenue, and fewer residents were buried in the official grave-
yards. In the outlying parishes, where large plantations dominated the
landscape, whites generally conducted their funeral ceremonies and buried
their dead on private estates. John Stoney served for just half a year as
rector of Saint John's, where there was no church building; he made only
ten pounds in surplice fees in 1751. More commonly, rectors in outlying
parishes earned from fifty to a hundred pounds in surplice fees, nowhere
near the six hundred pounds reaped by William May in Kingston. Promi-
nent planters in rural areas who wanted to have their ceremonies certified
by the established church obliged ministers serving the rural parishes to
rravel widely among the estates to collect their fees. Lower down the social
ladder the ministers were less welcome. The semificrional Marly suggests
that in the eady nineteenth century white workers on the estates generally
tried ro save rhe fee incurred when clergymen were present ar their
funerals. Instead, neighborhood whites formed funeral companies and per-
formed the religious duties for themselves. At the funeral of an overseer
described in Marly, "the burial took place in the garden of the estate, the
usua~ place wherein they bury the white people who belong to the plan-
tations." A common man read the funeral service, "to prevent incurring
the charge which the clergyman of the parish would have made, had he
been desired to attend." 45
Of course, the clergy's concern with death was nor wholly monetary.
Churchmen sought to organize the business of burial as bes[ they could
around contemporary notions of piety and prudence in mortuary practice.
In 1745 [he Kingston vestry ordered that "the Great Bell be not Wrung on
88 )::;-- The Reaper's Garden
Any Person's Death or Funerall." The tolling of parish bells to signal a

death was a post-Reformation holdover from Catholicism. As such, it was
deemed a controversial practice among Protestants throughout the seven-
teenth century. While Bishop Humphrey Henchman of London explained
in r664 that tolling bells warned the living to "mediate of their own
death," dissenting clergy condemned it as a "heathenish practice." By the
mid-eighteenth century the Church of England had absorbed the criticism
and sought to ban death knells. The church also moved to prevent burials
within the cathedrals. Removing and replacing masonry inside a church
caused inconvenient disruptions in rdigious activity. More important, rot-
ting corpses accumulating beneath the Boor were noisome and unsanitary.
In ]789 the Jamaican House of Assembly passed an act to "prevent the
burying of the dead in the churches of this island" and further enabled
the "justices and vestry of certain parishes to purchase lands for burial-
grounds," while compensating the clergy for lost revenues. Despite the
law, the assembly often made exceptions for the most prominent. Just two
years after passing the act, it voted to allow the former governor, the Earl
of Effingham, to be buried in Saint Catherine parish church at public
expense. To ensure decent ceremonies for all Christians, the church pre-
vailed upon the colonial government to pay for burials of the poorest: com-
moners, who populated the ever-expanding public cemeteries. 46
A jamaican Farewell
Although the outward forms of funerals for white residents were consid-
erably different from those for blacks, their social purposes were similar.
In fundamental ways, contrary to what Edward Long believed, the aspi-
rations of blacks and whites were alike. They all wanted to be celebrated
in death for their achievements in life. Like the Africans, whites tried to
re-create traditional rites in Jamaica, and, though whites had vastly more
power to perpetuate their ceremonies, conditions in Jamaican slave society
constrained their ability to do so.
Jamaican newspapers published long and detailed descriptions of the
funerals of great men in England. Readers might also aspire to have coffins
adorned with beautiful palls and silver plates inscribed with their name
and age. They would imagine the majesty of the processions, vast con-
courses of people following designated mourners of unquestionable dis-
tinction to some desirable patch of hallowed ground. Even those who
I
wanted humbler ceremonies hoped their burials would proclaim their

status in life. Yet the desire to have a quintessentiaUy English or Scottish
funeral was frustrated in multiple ways by the exigencies of the West
Indian context. The tropical climate did not allow for long open-casket
viewings; therefore, interments had to take place much more expeditiously
than they did in Britain. When Sir Hans Sloane, the naturalist and
founding collector for rhe British Museum, toured Jamaica in 1689, he
noted, "The Air here being so hot and brisk as to corrupt and spoil Meat
in four hours after 'tis kill'd, no wonder if a diseased Body must be soon
buried. They usually bury twelve hours after death at all times of the day
and night." Another difference was that in a frontier society people were
usually buried on family property. Large processions of white mourners
could rarely he assembled in a land where white people were few in
number and dispersed over a great distance. Whites, though they did not
face the severe limitations imposed by enslavement, were everywhere sur-
rounded by the enslaved. The overwhelming presence of slavery meant
that alien and despised black people were generally on hand at sacred cer-
emonies for whites. Just as certain aspects of their burial rites demon-
strated their commitment to British folkways, their ceremonies also
exemplified the impact of local circumstances.47
Powerful people aspired to elaborate funerals, send-offs that would
affirm their exalted status in life. By organizing their burial ceremonies
around rank, wealthy slaveholders hoped to enshrine their own preemi-
nence as a principle of social order. The greatest of planters and merchants,
having fulfilled their aspirations in the West Indies, died in England and
were buried with great fanfare. The affluent patriarch Thomas Hall, having
made his fortune in Saint James parish before retiring in splendor in Eng-
land, died in 1772. The expenses for his grand departure celebration were
to cover "six men in deep mourning to bear in the said coffin," "30 men
with branches to light the funeral," and "beer for the men as usual." 48 In
their wills, people of means in Jamaica similarly stipulated the number of
mourners they wished to attend their bodies and the amounts of food and
drink to be distributed to guests, one last act of noble generosity by which
to be remembered, before volleys of gunfire, commensurate with the age
and rank of the departed, sounded the final farewell. The most prominent
of rhe resident planters might stiU wish to be buried in Britain, even if they
had their funerals on the island. Florentius Vassall, a friend and patron of
Thomas Thisdewood, made arrangements to have his body sent back to
England when he died, although he had enjoyed a long and exceedingly

prosperous planting career in Jamaica and though several members of his
family had been buried on the island. 4 9
As Vassall's funeral would attest, burial ceremonies were generally less
exalted than had been hoped. Vassall had desired that Thistlewood attend
the funeral, the only invited guest who was not a pallbearer, as Thisdewood
proudly recorded in his diary; Early on the morning of the seventeenth,
Thistlewood set out for Vassall's estate, to accompany his friend's remains
from the house to the wharves. From there, Vassall's body would be trans-
ported by ship to England. First, "his bowels, &c. were rook out, he was
enclosed in a wood coffin & then in lead soldered up." After these prepa-
rations Vassall "was brought out and placed in the hall with the pall over
him, & part of the funeral service read over him by Dr Bartholomew &
the Clerk." Then the funeral procession began. The pallbearers were "Mr
Cope, Mr Meyler, Mr Haughton, Mr White, Mr Antrobus & James
Williams," but theirs was a symbolic office. White pallbearers did not actu-
ally carry coffins in Jamaica-slaves did, as servants would have done for
the gentry in England, thus marking the gulf separating physical labor and
social esteem. Encased in lead, Vassall was "carried on Negroes shoulders
to the seaside, with great difficulty & very slowly." The slaves bore the
burden by turns, but ''though often spelled with fresh hands," the coffin
"was twice, or oftener, thrown down in the road." Wearing black gloves
and hatband, Thistlewood joined the parson, the clerk, and the doctor, as
they followed the chief mourner and the bearers. "We stopped in the road
almost every minute," Thisdewood complained, but the party nevertheless
arrived before midday. The body was put in yet another "strong wooden
coffin" and "immediately put in a boat which directly set off for the ship-
ping." fu:. the ship set sail for home, more than seventy rounds of minute
guns heralded VassaU's departure. The planter had lived that many years,.
a remarkable feat in such a deadly environment. Yet though the "torrid
zone" had failed to shorten Vassall's life, it did hasten his postmortem
decay. Thistlewood noted in his final remarks, "His smell was very offen-
sive, some defect being in the lead coffin."5°
Even those buried abroad, like Vassall, who did not deign to be interred
in Jamaica, had to settle for what might be called creolized funerals. What-
ever whites' sense of mortuary convention, and despite the persistence of
formal British rites and symbols, Jamaican slave society had a transforrna-
tive effect on funerary practices. Just as slaveholders were dependent on
black labor for most other things in life, so they required the attendance
of "alien" and "outlandish" people at the rites to mark their final passing.
Black participation made its presence felt. Thisdewood was annoyed by
the black pallbearers, who dropped VassaH's coffin, stopped frequently, and
proceeded slowly. And perhaps it was more than the weight of the coffin
that stalled their procession. One might ask whether these were deliberate
acts of disrespect-whether Vassall's slaves took this final opportunity to
pull their master down from his high position and lay him in the dirt. Or
might the bearers, more surprisingly, have been carrying out an aspect of
their own customary rites? Thisdewood certainly believed they had con-
ducted VassaH's corpse in "something of a ludicrous manner," a phrase that
recalls Charles Leslie's portrayal of African funeral parades. Is it possible,
in short, that they performed their own rirual inquest? Did they, could
they, act as mediums for the spirit of Florentius Vassall? It is a tantalizing
but unanswerable question. What is certain is that English ways could not
continue unchanged in Jamaica, despite all the power and wealth the
world of Atlantic slavery had to offer.
~~
Abraham James of the 67th Regiment did not witness Florentius Vassall's
funeral, but he would not have been surprised by it. It would have only
confirmed what he knew of Jamaica, that it was a society made by death,
in which funerals demonstrated the order of things. Though its dominion
was universal, death did not equalize; it provided occasions to mark dis-
tinctions and hierarchies of communal belonging, race, and affluence.
Vassall's sparsely attended burial would bespeak his greatness as a sugar
planter, even as enemies and aliens dishonored his dead body. A corpse
might go to the crabs, but the living would make use of the dead to insti-
tute meaningful social arrangements. Again and again, all over the island,
last rites encouraged the articulation of first principles-the basic assump-
tions about belonging, status, and power that were to regulate slave
society. Through these, the chaos of Jamaican demography yielded order.
This was not, however, a structure that perpetuated itself. It was a pattern
suffered, shaped, and directed by the living in association with the dead.
As such, it had to be reproduced not only through repeated demonstra-
tions of group coherence and personal standing, but also in the struggle
to shape the lives of future generations and the attempt to ensure that the
accomplishments of the dead would be carried on in accordance with
their wishes. Final rites were the prelude to bequests and legacies.
CHAPTER THREE
Expectations of the Dead
}AMAleA'S INHABITANTS PERPETUATED and regenerated slave society partly

by bequeaching property from the dead to the living. By this means, they
attempted to pass down their hopeful vision of the social order, beyond the
limit of cheir lifetimes. Leaving legacies to their descendants enabled the
dead to continue the struggle for mastery and dignity that had occupied
their lives. Legacies bolstered both family status and material resources,
ensured that favored friends and relatives would be rewarded for their
fidelity, and enabled fragile institutions to survive. Alongside constant
immigration and frequent funerals, family inheritance was a major tribu-
tary to Jamaica's strongest social currents.
Within the corrosive conditions of Atlantic slavery, kinship networks
allowed people to imagine communal integrity over time. Even while
demographic disaster hacked at budding family trees, kith and kin sutured
Jamaican society. Built on complicated arrangements for mutual aid-.-or
exploitation-families helped people survive slavery or sustain it, disperse
property, and concentrate wealth for the benefit of future generations.
Family des extended beyond "blood" relations. Marriage and biological
descent were at the core of open and complex familial associations that
included in-laws, shipmates, and friends: precious sources of support in a
turbulent world. Through these relationships people struggled to fulfill
their desire for affection, status, and material well-being. Most important,
kinship networks offered mutuality that did not end with death. The
living expected legacies, and the dead, through their bequests, expected to
wield continued influence in the society they left behind. 1
Expectations of the Dead """ 93
Shaped by contending forces within slave society, inheritance was

inevitably the focus of negotiation and conAict. For fortune-seeking
whites, especially those at the top of the hierarchy, the most important
legacies of the dead were the ceaseless struggles over their estates and the
consequences of transfers of ownership. But for trusted domestic slaves
and the brown children of mixed unions, the death of their owners could
also mean manumission, and perhaps some continued financial support.
Even among the great masses of enslaved Mricans and their descendants,
many expected to receive material support from the dead. Inheritance
rights for the enslaved,. though never secure in law until the last years of
slavery, were won through the consolidation of ambiguous customary
rights and the occupation of territory claimed as family land.
The Will to Wealth

The artist and soldier Abraham James, perceptive critic of Jamaican society
chat he was, acknowledged the frequency and importance of bequests by
creating the figure of Mr. Codicil, who arrives to record Johnny New-
come's last will and testament. Crouched over a simple desk, as Johnny's
mistress weeps in the background, Codicil records the will, his face
betraying a faint grin (Figure 3.1). "All in a day's work," he seems to say.
Mr. Codicil was, indeed, a stock character in Jamaican life, for legal
arrangements surrounding death and property were a fundamental aspect
of social organization. 2
Inheritance entailed more than a simple transfer of property. It was a
means of affirming familial bonds and expressing expectations for the
future. White people in Jamaica spent a lot of time thinking about what
impact the death of friends and relatives would have on their fortunes.
They spoke often of wills. They wondered where they stood in the affec-
tions of kinfolk. They considered how future testators might judge their
behavior, and they held future legatees accountable ro their wishes and.
demands. Such concerns had considerable immediacy, for, despite all the
productivity ofJamaica's plantation economy, great wealth and status were
largely inherited. For the Jamaican elite, inheritance law generally followed
English custom. Realty (property in land) passed to the eldest son, a prac-
tice known as primogeniture, while personalty (most other assets) was
divided among the survivors-spouse, children, extended kin, and friends.
The Reaper's Garden
Figure p. "John sends for Mr. Codici]

and bequeaths his Kit," detail from
johnny New-come in the Island of
jamaica, by Abraham James (London,
I8oo). Courtesy of the National
Library of Jamaica.
Among the most established families, holdings in land-and sometimes

slaves-might be entailed at the direction of a testator, meaning that the
property had to pass down through male heirs in perpetuity and that none
of the heirs was free to designate future recipients of family realty. This
system preserved great estates as family dynasties, directed by the will of
distant ancestors. But in the case of both great estates and more movable
properties, Jamaican mortality rates focused people's minds on how suc-
cession would play out, how each death, marriage, and birth, each act of
fealty or betrayal, would affect the continuity of family and society.3
Perhaps three-quarters of whites belonged to a dass of craftsmen, book-
keepers, and overseers, who generally died intestate-that is, without having
made a will. In such. cases, property was expected to pass on through pri-
mogeniture, though many disposed of their assets by informal arrangements
with friends or family. The poorest became the subject of state concern.
"When clergymen died, for instance, their irregular earnings presented a
problem for their surviving relations. "Here the son of a deceased clergyman
hath nowhere to lay his head," lamented Edward Long, when he wrote to
advocate establishment of a public fund for the benefit of widows and
Expectations of the Dead -lil 95
orphans. One was ultimately established late in the eighteenth century.

People who did leave formal wills were likelier to own large estates, which,
when reorganized to pay debts and provide shares to inheritors, caused great
disturbance to society. By occasioning frequent and potentially disruptive
transfers of property, the deaths of wealthy whites affected people at all
social ranks, for whom the death of the powerful was a source of tremen-
dous anxiety and insecurity, but also opporrunity. 4
The outstandingly wealthy Simon Taylor thought often about inher-
ited property. In 1759 his father, Patrick Taylor, had left the sizable for-
tune that he had accumulated as a Kingston merchant to his son. That
made Simon responsible for upholding his family's status. As Chaloner
Arcedeckne's attorney, Taylor, always aware of how property determined
a man's position within his family, offered advice on the tricky business
of securing and consolidating an inheritance. Taylor had defended
Arcedeckne's interest against the claims of his cousins when Chaloner's
father, Andrew Arcedeckne, had died in 1757· To prevent these relatives
from obtaining the family legacy in the future, Taylor urged Arcedeckne
to marry and produce "Heirs enough of your own to inheritt your
Estate," lest his cousins' children should profit by his demise. Meanwhile,
in 1773 Taylor vowed to ensure that Arcedeckne received his due portion
of his aging mother's property: "Depend in case of the Old Ladys death
I will do every thing for you as if I was acting for my sdf."s
Taylor himselfdid not expect to live long-certainly not to his eventual
age of seventy-three years. Born in Jamaica, he knew its dangers well, and
h~ recognized that each bom of illness could be his last. In anticipation
of his death, he incessantly rewrote his will. In December 1782 Taylor was
affiicted with, as he put it, "Disorder in my bowels and a burning Fever
which reduced me exceedingly." When he recovered, he turned immedi-
ately to discussing wills with his younger brother, Sir John Taylor. Simon
had previously received and examined a copy of Sir John's will, and he now
passed along his own for comparison. Simon Taylor's thoughts on the
future of the family property indicated clear priorities. First, he wanted to
provide for his recognized blood relations; next, he aimed to reward loyalty
and service. 6
Simon urged Sir John to think often of his legacy, reminding him that
a. will "must be altered every year as you have Children," and that it was
necessary to make some explicit provision for "any Child your Wife may
be [pregnant] with at the time of your Death." In his own will, as Sir John
would see, while most of his estate would go to his brother's children,
Simon had also provided for the t¥ro girl children of his younger sister
Anne. As they were already quite well off, Taylor left them a fixed amount
of money, £ro,ooo apiece. He did not want to give them more, fearing
that they would then be more "liable to the prey of any Sharper or Fortune
hunter." To Anne's husband, Roberr Graham, the girls' father, Taylor left
only a ring, but, he said, "leaving £20000 Stl. to his family I think it a
very handsome Legacy indeed and he has got a very good Fortune already
out of our Family." ]t was well earned, though, by Graham's "kind and
Affectionate Behaviour to Poor Anny." If Sir John had had no children,
said Taylor, he would have given the greatest share of his own fortune to
Graham and the girls. He urged Sir John to think along similar lines: "I
hope if you should die without Children or Grand Children which God
Almighty forbid that you never will forget Anny's offspring. "7
Robert Graham was favored as a loyal in-law, but Taylor also arranged
a legacy for a faithful servant. "You will say I have made a great provision
for the Woman who lives with me." Taylor wrote defensively because he
was referring to Grace Donne, a free woman of color who served as
Taylor's housekeeper and consort for more than thirty years. "I own it but
she has been a faithfull servant to me and I never had occasion to call her
twice for any thing or awake her in any of my very severe fitts of sickness."
To Grace, Taylor would leave a gift of slaves, furniture, an annuiry of fifty
pounds per year, and a house for life; however, the house would properly
belong to Sir John, and Simon hoped he would not object to Grace's occu-
pancy. He promised to buy her another one, if he should live long enough,
thus freeing his brother of any obligation to show altruism. In the event,
Grace Donne did not survive Taylor. She died of an illness in r8o4, leaving
Taylor to lament, "I am like a Fish our ofWater by her loss, as she man-
aged everything in the House for me." 8
In the case of his nieces and nephews, Taylor expected his bequests to
extend his protection to his white family members, those who could claim
to belong within his official lineage (Figure 3.2). He made no mention of
the several children he had wirh women of color~Lady Maria Nugent

was told that he "had a numerous family, some almost on every one of his
estates." Having no white children, he chose his namesake, Sir John's son
Sir Simon Richard Brissett Taylor, as his principal heir. Whereas young
Expectations of the Dead ~ 97
Figure 3.2. Portrait of rhe Taylor family, from a phorograph of A Portmit ofjolm and
Simon Taylor Family, c. 1784, pastel by Daniel Gardner. Simon Taylor is seared at lcfr.
His brother, Sir John Taylor, is standing at right by the side of his wife, Elizabeth
Haughton, and their children. Simon Taylor's nephew and heir, Sir Simon Richard
Brisseu Taylor, is at the bottom of the frame, with his hand raised. Courtesy of the
National Library of Jamaica.
p8 ~ The Reaper's Garden
Simon could expect to become fabulously wealthy when his uncle died,
Simon Taylor expected to reproduce himself by using the promise of his
bequest to mold the nephew according to his own ideals.9
When Sir John Taylor died in 1786, he was deep in debt, and his son
was just a baby. As the head of the family, Simon Taylor assumed finan-
cial responsibility for his brother by paying his debts and providing for
his children. From Jamaica he directed resources toward their education
and training, but he took a special interest in his nephew and chosen heir
and intended to make him, as he boasted to Lady Nugent, "the richest
Commoner in England." Repeatedly, over the course of two decades,
Simon the uncle used the threat of disinheritance to compel Simon the
nephew to embrace the masculine ideals of the Jamaican planter class:
vigor, shrewdness, and mastery. The uncle worried that his heir would
follow his late father, John Taylor, in "Indolence, Love of Pleasure, Dress,
Vanity, self Importance, and high Ideas of the Fashionable World" and
prove unable to assume responsible command of the famHy fortune.
Monitoring young Simon's behavior through contacts in England and
castigating him often, the patriarch pushed the nephew to learn habits
that would enable him to reproduce the uncle's success. "I think every
person should dedicate the Whole of the Morning from the Hour he rises
UntiH He goes to dress for Dinner to the Study of some thing usefull,"
Taylor advised, "looking over his own Affairs inspecting his Accounts
writing & conserving letters and seeing all his Accounts entered in to
proper Books avoiding all debts whatsoever never giving way to Idleness
or Dissipation nor leaving that to be done tomorrow that can be done
today." 10
Despite years of obsequious pandering, Simon the nephew was a dis-
appointment to his pat:ron. The uncle was seldom satisfied with his
nephew's conduct and was easily offended by his letters. In I8o6 Taylor
resolved to disinherit his brother's son in favor of the son of his sister and
Robert Graham. In I8u Taylor notified Sir Simon that he would "alter
everything in my Will which was in your Favor." Taylor did not appear
to change his mind, even after his nephew unexpectedly turned up in
Jamaica to curry favor. Rather, he complained that his nephew was a "nui-
sance," "fitt for nothing," who would never be able to manage sugar plan-
tations-or any other properties-.-in Jamaica. "What shall I do with the
boy?" Taylor asked his attorney John Shand. "Forgive him," said Shand,
Expectations of the Dead .;o~ 99
to which Taylor merely grunted, ''Hmrnph!" He instead prepared a decree

to tie up his properties, allowing them to accumulate on their own, rather
than passing to family. But Shand ultimately prevailed on Taylor to
"destroy the obnoxious paper" and reinstate Sir Simon as his heir, just
before the patriarch died in April r8r3. Sir Simon Richard Brissett Taylor
now controlled one of the largest fortunes in the British Empire. "I am
truly glad that my Uncle did not leave the world with a sentiment of dis-
pleasure against me," he announced, "glad that his memory has been res-
cued by a natural bequest of his property from the stain that would have
attached to it had that property been consigned ro a hoard, or scattered
amongst strangers." Sir Simon did not enjoy his inheritance for long. In
rwo years he was dead, and the property went to his sister, Anna Susannah
Watson, and her husband George, who both took the Taylor name. 11
Just as the Taylor family did, the Ricketts family sought to perpetuate
itself through inheritance, anxiously expecting the family name to rever-
berate through well-placed legacies. In September 1760 Colonel George
Ricketts, a sugar lord in the parish of Westmoreland, died in possession
of a profitable plantation called Canaan and several other properties,
totaling nearly three thousand acres. In his last will and testament Rickercs
bequeathed Canaan, "with all the negroes, stock, and cattle of all kinds,
and their increase," as well as the other land, to his eldest son and heir,
William Henry Ricketts. To his other children he left various sums of
money, goods, and chattels. 12
A few years before George Ricketts died, William Henry's newlywed
wife, Mary, wrote to her husband, complaining because his father's wealth
required them to stay so long in Jamaica. She did not like the island,
feared the climate, disliked the local whites, and felt revulsion for slavery
and the enslaved in equal measure. She reflected bitterly on waiting
patiently for her father-in-law to die, meanwhile wasting her youth in
Jamaica's rude society. "I think it Crud such fine Prospects as we have that
we shou'd be Buried alive here," she lamented. She continued in this
manner, referring to Colonel Ricketts: "As to Staying for the Dissolution
of a Certain Person, we might Punish ourselves this IO years, for now he
is Recover'd. If he has no Return of his Disorder he may Live so Long,
that we Shou'd have Bur Little relish Left for any thing-our being here
Reminds me of Pope, who Compares a Disappointing Life, to a Lingering
Death; & yet he never knew this Country & Consequently cou'd not with
Ioo ~ The Reapers Garden
half the Justice apply It that I Can." She hoped that George Ricketts's
death would liberate her from an island that offered her neither personal
security nor refinement and manners. 13
Mary Ricketts's sentiments, cynical as they were, expressed a common
predicament of Jamaica's white women. ]n a society dominated by patri-
archs,. who frequently took women of color for companions, white women
were rarely recognized as vital participants. And contrary to contemporary
popular opinion, which held that widows could succeed quite weU by
simpmy "marrying and burying," elite white women were fairly vulnerable
to financial misfortune. As a result, they were often eager, like Mary Rick-
etts, to retire to Britain, where their prospects would be more promising.
Few enjoyed the success of Teresa Constantia Phillips, the fashionable
woman from London society who once served as Jamaica's Mistress of the
Revels. She was nicknamed the Black Widow, for having married and sur-
vived a series of wealthy, short-lived men in rapid succession during the
1750s and '6os. Though she profited handsomely from their wills, her own
wealth did not secure reliabme status for hec When she died in Kingston
in 1765, almost no one attended her funeral. 14
The precariousness of life on the island resulted in perpetual financial
insecurity. Even when women married as well as Mary Ricketts had, the
death of their husbands could leave them in uncertain circumstances. In
their wills, Jamaican men commonly placed limitations on women's eco-
nomic status and generaHy favored children and friends over wives. Even
dower rights, which by common law allowed women the use of one third
of personal property and use for life of a third of freeho~d land upon the
death of their husbands, were not respected in all cases. Moreover, the
assembly placed a severe restriction on womeds inheritance in 1775, when
it passed a law to "prevent the severing of estates and plantations,. lands,.
slaves, tenements, and hereditaments, by way of dower.;; This law
increased women's dependence on male heirs or estate administrators, for
whom women's interests were not always a priority. 15
William Henry Ricketts would administer and dispose of his properties
and provide for the family as he saw fit. In 1770 Ricketts petitioned the
assembmy concerning four unprofitable parcels of land not attached to
Canaan, asking that he be permitted to vest the land in trustees who would
dispose of it for his benefit and that of the other beneficiaries of his father's
will. Just after the assembly assemed to his request, Ricketts moved to
Expectations of the Dead ·~ IOI
enhance his posltlon by making arrangements with Mr. Downer, the

gravely HI proprietor of Walling Ford estate, to exchange some slaves and
land. Downer "surrendered fifteen fine Negroes this Day besides those
some time ago," Ricketts reponed to his sister Polly. Both Ricketts and
Downer negotiated in the expectation of a death. "Commiserating his
Condition, together with the intimate Friendship that formerly subsisted
between his Father and mine," Downer induced Ricketts "to sell him one
valuable Fellow who did nor have to quit his Children and other connec-
tions, give him in Fee three women about 55 years of age, also grant him
for Life four more, which are to revert to me and my Heirs." The deal was
closed by Downer's "giving Security that they shall be forthcoming at his
D·eath,. or pay the value for which he conveys the liquidity of Redemption
of all the Negroes and lands." "By this," Ricketts wrote with evident sat-
isfaction, "I have secured a number of valuable Negroes to my Estate worth
at least fr500, also the lands of five or six hundred pounds value, besides
the other four Negroes on Reversion." The acquisition of working-age
slaves and land would help keep his properties productive and profitable,
so that Ricketts could support a family that extended across the Atlantic;
nevertheless, this and similar dealings did not settle the family's affairs for
long. 16
While WiBiam Henry Ricketts could depend on his business acumen,
the other heirs of George Ricketts continued to wrangle over the inherited
assets for three more decades. During the 1790s one of Colonel Ricketts's
female grandchildren fretted to her aunt that her brother George, the
executor of their mother's will, still had not given her her due. "My
brother and myself were left one Thousand pounds by my grandfather
Ricketts, and he left another by my Father, with the Interest from the Age
of thirteen. Likewise all my Mother's Arrears of Dower which was near
£ 2 ooo Sterling, and every other claim of hers, Alex told me Crawford had
rwelve Negroes which were my Mother's consequently they are mine."
Apparently, the young woman was overly optimistic about her birthright.
Her brother George wrote to say that the arrears on his sister's annuity
only totaled a few hundred pounds. Moreover, she had misunderstood the
legacy of her mother, Anne Ricketts. "By a Notarial copy of my Mother's
will," George G. Ricketts explained, "You will perceive that my Sister is
mistaken in thinking that my Mother devised to her any Negroes. I think
she is also greatly mistaken in the amount of arrears due to my Mother."
As executor of the estate,. he had enormous power to influence his sister's

weH-being, but also the welfare of the enslaved men and women who
counted as the assets of the estate. Estate executors wielded so much influ-
ence, in fact, that they became the subject of intense political scrutiny. 17
Executors
The executor stood at the center of transfers of wealth and, therefore, of
status and social continuity. Executors were responsible for administering
estates once a testator had died. They oversaw extensive properties and
commercial transactions; they rook care of dependents and rook charge of
slaves. Most children born on the island lost one or both of their parents
before they reached adulthood, and so for them executors were parental
figures. In choosing an executor, a testator bestowed considerable trust in
that person's character and expected honor and competence in the execu-
tion of his or her wishes, as well as loyalty to any descendants. As the key
figure responsible for implementing the will of the dead, the executor
managed the continuity of property and family. Although people often
preferred to appoint successful family members as executors, they fr·e-
quendy had to select from among friends or prominent businessmen. Ide-
ally, executors took control of the deceased's property, paid off creditors,
and executed the last wiU and testament. For these services estate executors
earned a significant commission. Typically, they charged between 5 and 10
percent of the net value of the estate. The commission alone was enough
to make executorship an attractive service, but the control of properties
and assets made it even more so. Judging by the frequent complaints of
legatees, executors often managed properties for their personal enrich-
ment.18
In the 1770s Simon Taylor took it upon himself to defend Chaloner
Arcedeckne's interests when Arcedeckne's aged and weakening mother,
Elizabeth Kersey, appointed among her executors Charles Kelsall, a man
whom Taylor deeply mistrusted. In 1773 Taylor wrote to warn Arcedeckne
that Kelsall was "as damned a raskall as ever lived" and "as great a Villain
as ever was hang'd.)' Taylor urged Arcedeckne to come out to Jamaica in
order to prevent Kelsall from possessing his "house, papers, & ·effects." In
.Arcedeclrne's absence, Taylor assured him that "in case your Mother should
be taken ill," he would go immediately to her home in Spanish Town "in
Expectations of the Dead _., 103
case of her death [to] take possession of the House, and every thing in and
about it," and "as your Attorney turn Mr. Kelsall out of Doors." At stake
was nothing less than the material integrity of Arcedeckne's family tree. "If
I have at any time the Acct. of your Mothers being sick, and gett to Town
before she dies, I defY him to hurt you." 19
When Elizabeth Kersey did die, in 1777, Kelsall moved to "take away
or place such papers &c. belonging to Chaloner Arcedeckne" and to "take
and secure such Bonds Notes &c. belonging to the deceased Mrs. Kersey
as her Executor." Taylor and two other attorneys for Arcedeckne's family
acted quickly to block Kelsall's design. "We shall Judge it improper to
admit you into Mr. Arcedeckne's house," they wrote, "until we can be fully
assured whether matters wiH be carried on amicably or adversedly." They
further cautioned Kelsall against "intermeddling." Stung, Kelsall pleaded
his case by invoking his service to Mrs. Kersey. He detailed uncompen-
sated expenses and unappreciated efforts stretching back to 1771, when he
had begun managing Kersey's livestock pen. "I say I have been most faith-
full to Mrs. Kersey and expected she would have left me a thousand
pounds which I deserve, but make a charge of IOO per annum as she could
not have got a person to have taken such Care and maintained him for
that sum." He would be willing to relinquish his executorship, but only,
he said, "if I am paid £700, and Mr. T and Kelly will give me one negroe
and a receipt for the money I may owe her [Elizabeth Kersey] which is
about f3oo." Taylor and his colleagues agreed to the settlement. "Had I
not interfered," Taylor reminded Arcedeckne a few years later, "I assure
you he would have given a very Extraordinary Acct. of her Effects. "20
In 1740 the Jamaican assembly had attempted to remedy abuse in fidu-
ciary commissions, in passing an "act for preventing frauds and breaches
of nust" by, among others, trustees and executors. The law directed
anyone who managed an estate on another's behalf to render to the island
secretary a yearly written account of "all the rents, profits, produce, and
proceeds" arising from the properties under his care. Failure to provide an
inventory would result in forfeitur·e of the executor's commission for each
year of dereliction, and a fine of a hundred pounds. The law's effectiveness
in limiting abuses is questionable. Executors followed a narrow and self-
serving interpretation of the law, by duly reporting inventories, while
retaining broad discretion in the execution of the estates. Moreover, the
assembly, made up of the wealthiest men in Jamaica, later undercut the
ra4 ~- The Reapers Garden
1740 regulations by opting to protect their flexibility in business admin-

istration over the rights of inheritors, many of whom lived in Britain . The
body acted in 1775 to defend executors from lawsuits by forcing creditors
to present their own proof of"actual receipt" of credits, rather than relying
on the general-issue statements of estate assets and debits that executors
often used in order to keep various creditors at bay. The act preserved the
right of executors to protect estates in their charge by protesting their
debts, without allowing creditors to use such statements against them. By
preserving the latitude of executors in this and other ways, the political
establishment safeguarded executorship as a business enterprise and a pillar
of the elite community. 2 1
Charged with carrying out the will of the dead with regard to material
possessions, executors occupied a powerful position in the social structure;
consequently,. they protected their privileges, and others avidly sought out
the job. For those who stood below merchants, sugar barons, and imperial
officials in the colonial hierarchy, executorship could be an easy route to
prosperity. "However poor a man may have previously been," reflected
former plantation bookkeeper Benjamin McMahon in the nineteenth cen-
tury, "upon his appointment as executor to a wealthy individual, nothing
is more common in Jamaica, than for him at once to become rich." In
Marly, the semifictional account of a petty Jamaican planter, the anony-
mous author related the risible tale of Mr. Wogan, a would-be executor
who attended the funeral of a relatively wealthy overseer. Wogan was a
member of the deceased overseer's funeral company, and after they
interred the body, he went with the rest of the party to the "buckra-house"
to hear the reading of the will. When Wogan discovered he had not been
named as executor, he left abruptly. Riding out with Marly, Wogan, "who
it seems had anxiously expected the appointment to the executorship, in
the bitterness of his disappointment, addressed Mady in a language similar
to the foHowing: 'It is no wonder I am a poor man. I have never yet been
appointed to an executor, while that fellow (meaning him who was named
for the office,) is always nominated: We have no reason to be surprised,
therefore, at seeing him get rich, while I, who am passing honest, and have
been five and twenty years in the island, am still poor-simply because I
have never been appointed to an executor.'" For his part,. Marly wondered
how honest the man could be, "for he could not conceive how such a trust
could have a tendency to enrich him who did his duties jusdy." 22
Expectations of the Dead ~ IOJ
Benjamin McMahon, who devoted an entire chapter of his memoir to

the habits of executors, held the opinion that they seldom fulfilled the
trust placed in them. He enumerated a variety of corrupt schemes perpe-
trated by untrustworthy executors. "Cases are constantly occurring in the
island," McMahon charged, "of the particular friends of the deceased,
having come into possession of the property, appropriar[ing] the greater
part of its proceeds to their own use, by virtue of their executorships, and
then tak[ing] the benefit of act, and then leav[ing] the unfortunate chil-
dren, with the miserable remnant." McMahon also accused executors of
seducing young female heirs under their care. "They have no sooner
arrived at the age of puberty," he alleged, "than every flattering and seduc-
tive charm will be presented to the mind, to induce them to live as mis-
tresses with the man, who was bound, by every principle of honour, to
protect them." This McMahon asserted to be "the general practice
throughout the island." Corrupt executors, he maintained, had inspired
the popular saying: "When a man dies in Jamaica, he is ruined for ever." 23
Even the most faithful executors, acting in the normal exercise of their
duties, could wreak havoc with the lives of the enslaved. Slaves suffered
for both a live master's profit and a dead master's debts. When a slave-
owner died in arrears, executors made hasty arrangements to sell enslaved
men and women. As satisfactory collateral for the payment of debts, slaves
were also subject to levies from creditors. Often, especially in the major
port rowns, where auctions brought good prices, the marshals seized slaves
by writ and confined them in jail until the appointed day of sale. Even
Edward Long, who was a vehement defender of Jamaican slavery, con-
demned the depredations executors often committed when restructuring
an estate's assets. "I do not know any thing in the colony system of slavery
so oppressive and detrimental to the Negroes, as this practice of levying
upon them, and selling them at vendue," Long avowed. "What severer
hardships can befall these poor creatures," he wondered, than to be sud-
denly "divided from each other, sold into the power of new masters, and
carried into distant parts of the country ... ? Numbers doubtless have
perished by these arbitrary removals." Hercules Ross, having frequently
during his three decades in Jamaica (between 1751 and 1782) witnessed
men and women being seized and sold to pay debts, appreciated the bitter
irony of such episodes-"that any class of human beings should be sold
for debts which they did not incur." 24
Both Long and Ross believed that slaves should be attached to the
soil-Long because he could not bear to see "flourishing" plantations
ruined, as much as from concern about the well-being of black families.
Yet slaves were simply too valuable as liquid assets to be conjoined with
real estate. Except when they were entailed to a property by will, they pro-
vided the most flexible means of asset management. When the assembly
did pass an "act to regulate the devises of negro, mulatto, and other slaves,
in wills" in 1775, the law did nothing to attach slaves to plantations. On
the contrary, it allowed executors to sue for recovery of slaves belonglling
to the deceased who were held by "a stranger, or other person having no
legal or just title thereto." At times, slaveowners might reward favored
slaves with a degree of autonomy or make casual business agreements with
other masters to allow enslaved men or women to work on other proper-
ties, where they could be closer to kin. The law now annulled these types
of arrangements when an owner died, by allowing executors to recall to
the estate or to the auction block men and women who had been hired
out or informally manumitted by the testator. In such cases the act of 1775
entitled an executor to act as deus ex machina, able to rend or restructure
social relations on behalf of dead owners with the stroke of a pen. 2 5
While there is no government record to indicate the extent of such dis-
placement in the eighteenth century, Long estimated in 177 4 that 400
slaves were seized by writ and forcibly relocated each year. The rate of dis-
location accelerated when the Jamaican economy declined in the early
nineteenth century. Even in the best of times, planters operated their fac-
tory farms on credit, given in anticipation of income from the next crop.
When the plantations ran effectively and when the prices for colonial pro-
duce were high, planters could always gain access to more capital. But
when disaster struck individual properties, as it often did, and when the
prices for most West Indian products fell in the early nineteenth century,
credit evaporated, mortgage holders seized the assets, and a planter's tide
to his estate ended with his death. What happened next was described by
the reform-minded planter Gilbert Mathison in r8n: "The Negroes are
sold in lots, families are torn asunder, a complete dispersion takes place,
and all the horrors of the African trade are again repeated." From the ces-
sation of the transatlantic slave trade in r8o7 until r827, when Jamaican
planters generally were struggling with mounting arrears, over 22,600
enslaved men and women were seized to pay debts. In all, they brought
Expectations of the Dead ~ IOJ
over fr.G million sterling at auction. A substantial number were sold to

settle dead people's estates. When an indebted slaveowner died, then, the
enslaved could expect to lose many of their social connections and to have
their families scattered about in a final act of domination. Here, again, the
dead continued to shape the society they left behind. 26
The Will to Freedom

The anxiety that most slaves surely felt upon the death of white masters
was tempered, for a select few, by the hope of receiving a legacy. Slave-
holders sometimes made provisions in their wiUs, giving instructions to
executors or heirs to free enslaved concubines or those who had provided
some other devoted service. 27 Manumission and legacies in these cases
depended as much on the will of the legatee as on that of the testator:
enslaved people had to struggle to acquire their bequests. Yet the rare
instances when they did were nor insignificant. The number of people who
acquired legal freedom by devise increased incrementally, and along with
their children and further descendants, they came to form a substantial
and vocal community of free people of color by the nineteenth century.
Enslaved women were subject to frequent, and often violent, sexual vio-
lation. No law or moral scruple prevented white men from forcing them-
selves on black females, women and girls alike. Resistance to a white man's
predations could get a woman beaten, tortured, or killed. Some women
negotiated this predicament by subjecting themselves to patrons, yielding
to some white man who could protect them from the rest. In such rela-
tionships, men continued to dominate and exploit their consorts, yet pro-
longed intimacy allowed the women to make some claims on them. Just
as women could lobby for their own protection, they could secure some
advantage for their children; in rare cases, this meant receiving a legacy of
freedom, money, or property when their patrons died.28
-when he made out his will in q86, Thomas Thistlewood desired that
his longtime mate, Phibba, be freed and given property. After his death,
"as soon as is convenient," he stipulated, his executors should "purchase
the freedom of a certain Negroe woman slave named Phibba the property
of the Honourable John Cope and who has been living with me a consid-
erable time past." He also intended to provide Phibba with the economic
means for relative independence-land and slaves: "I give devise and
ro8 ~ The Reaper's Garden
bequeath unto the said Phibba my Negroe woman slave named Bess and
her chiLd named Sam together with the future issue and increase of the said
Bess to hold the sai·d slav·e named Bess and her Child Sam together with
her future issue and increase unto the use of the said Phibba her heirs and
assigns forever." Phibba's autonomy would be guaranteed by the continued
enslavement of others. Thisdewood also directed his executors to set aside
a hundred pounds in Jamaican currency for Phibba to· purchase a plot of
land of her choosing and to build a house ''suitable to her station.'' Thistl,e-
wood offered to buy Phibba's freedom and establish her independence,
only provided that "no m·ore is required for such freedom than the sum of
Eighty Pounds current money of Jamaica." If her owner demanded more,.
then she would simply r·eueiv:e an annuity of "£15 per annum during her
life." The balance of Thistlewood's estate, less £50 each to two of his
acquaintances, went to his nephew and nieoe in England, his official
famHy. As it turned out, Phibba r·eceived her manumission six years afiter
Thistlewood's death. And it is not certain that Phibba received the rest of
her inheritance, for at the time that Thistlewood's will was proved, execu-
tors, bene6.ciaries,. and the law commonly thwarted the wishes of testa.tors
when it came to blacks. 29'
Apprehending that poor freed people, released from the financial respon~
sibiliry of masters, might burden the parishes, the Jamaican assembly passed
an act in 1774 to require slav·eowners to pay an annuity of five pounds to
the parish ~churchwardens for manumitted slaves. Until the assembly bowed
to pressure fmm England and voided this regulation in 1816, the primary
beneficiaries of wiUs often r.efused to p·ay the annuity, thereby condemning
the manumitted slaves to continuing bondage. Moreover, as most whites
died intestate, be·quests of free,dom from lesser slav,eowners were routinely
ignor·ed. Befor·e the I8I6 Slave Act,. manummssions by legacy required a
proved will ''executed wi.th all the Solemnili:ies essential for passing real
property." The 1816 act relax:ed this requirement through a provision that
allowed bequests of freedom to be legitimated by any document sufficient
to pass along personal property. Nevertheless, manumission by tegacy was
still a remote possibiDliry, and when it did oc·cur,. it was mostly an opportu-
nity for plantation managers to dd an estate of aging or recalcitrant
workers. In nearly all cases, the heirs who held the slaves trmed to implement
manumission as a business transaction, by seeking reimbursement for man-
umitted slav·es, in order to buy replacements.30
Expectations of the Dead -!'if I09
Frequently, slaveholders left their own children enslaved. At the

M·esopotamia estate in Thomas Thistlewood's Westmoreland parish, white
fathers manumitted only twelve of the fifty-two enslaved interracial chil-
dren who Hved on the plantation between 1761 and 1833· Some found this
state of affairs amusingly pitiful. Elsewhere, in 1768 overseer John Scott
wrote to Thomas Hall, an absentee proprietor in England, concerning
Ha.lfs son WilHam, who had recently been on the plantation. Scott com-
bined reports of William's activities with inventories of the slaves,. making
special mention of ''Zipporah's Child, which is the second she has had
since you was gone, the first was a Girl that died. The 2nd is really a fine
boy and is quite sensible for his age, which is near 15 mo.s old." Scott con-
tinued in a comic tone: "I can't say whether you've heard who the Father
is. He's very much like him and is more fair then some white women's
children: Mrs. Scott has had him Christened and his name is William. So
I leave you to guess who the Father is: It's a pitty he should be a slave."3 1
Even when whites sought to free their enslaved children, often someone
dse owned them,. making for a protracted and complicated process. In
1771 Simon Taylor wrote to Chaloner Arcedeckne, urging him to manumit
a woman named Catherine Chaplin and her children. The children were
the three sons that Catherine had had by a Dr. Collins, who had once
resided on Golden Grove estate. Before Dr. Collins died, h·e directed his
e:xcecutor, John Archer, to buy the children's freedom, but Archer kept the '
,. I
'
money allotted for their purchase and did nothing before he in turn died.
Archer "gave himself no trouble about it in his life time," Taylor explained,
"but by his Will he mentioned it & desires that they may be bought.,
Arcedeckne was reluctam, despite the intervention of both Taylor and
Arcedeckne's mother, Elizabeth Kersey. The children were part of an
,entailed legacy-their ownership would revert to Arc.edeckne's in-laws at
his death-and he could not compromise the longevity of the family
properties. 32
Catherine and her children were still ·enslaved in 1783,, when Arcedeckne
received a letter from Timothy Penny,. an acquaintance of Arcedeckne's late
mother. Penny again interceded on behalf of "Old & Faithful'' Catherine,
"now Growing in years, but very desirous of having her, & her Children's
Freedom." By now, Chaplin had survived another white companion, Jacob
Gutteres, whose will had directed his executors "to Purchase of & from
Chaloner Arcedekne, Esq. His heirs or Assigns the freedom of a Samba
IIO f':-- The Reaper's Garden
Woman Slave named Catherine Chaplin & her three Children named
John Collins, Edward Carvalo Collins & Isaac Chaplin." If the manumis-
sion could be purchased for £350 Jamaican currency, then Gutteres's estate
would also provide an annuity of £12. Penny, who claimed that Elizabeth
Kersey had often promised "that she would use her endeavours" to free
Chaplin and the children, had been asked by the executors to approach
Arcedeckne-and this nearly seven years after Gutteres's death. Having
taken surnames for herself and the children, Catherine certainly expected
to be distinguished from common slaves, who rarely had more than a fore-
name and a nickname, and to signify that she belonged to a legitimate
family, deserving of public recognition. Surnames notwithstanding, they
remained enslaved. Over more than twelve years' time, at least three tes-
tators demanded freedom for Catherine, John, Edward, and Isaac. Nothing
indicates that Arcedeckne ever freed them. 33
Matthew Gregory Lewis recorded the slightly happier story ofNicholas
Cameron, a mulatto carpenter enslaved on Lewis's Cornwall plantation.
Cameron's white father had charged his nephew and legal heir to purchase
the freedom of his natural son. "The nephew had promised to do so; I
had consented," Lewis wrote in r8r6. "Nothing was necessary but to find
a substitute.'' Before the nephew could fulfill his uncle's wishes, however,
he died suddenly, and the estate went to a distant relation. Lewis appealed
to the new owner to pay Cameron's manumission price, but to no avail.
"I felt strongly tempted to set him at liberty at once," Lewis wrote, but
he decided instead to protect his business interests. "If I were to begin in
that way, there would be no stopping; and it would be doing a kindness
to an individual at the expense of all my other negroes-others would
expect the same; and then I must either contrive to cultivate my estate
with fewer hands-or must cease to cultivate it altogether." Nicholas
Cameron continued to pursue his own freedom, hiring his labor out to
neighboring planters. Almost two and a half years later he had managed
to gather the £150 necessary to finance his escape from slavery.3 4
An 1832 letter from the planting attorneys on the Chiswick sugar plan-
tation to absentee owners in London shows familiar calculations by the
attorneys in a situation similar to that in which Cameron and Lewis found
themselves. In accordance with common practice, the late overseer of
Chiswick had "formed a connexion with one of the Women on the Estate,
and by her, had two children." In his will the overseer directed that the
Expectations of the Dead -l'l III
woman be freed, but the attorneys felt less compelled by the last wishes
of the overseer than by the practical needs of their enterprise. Cognizant
of the customary reluctance of managers to release productive slaves, the
woman knew she had to stage demonstrations to gain her release. ''As in
all cases of this kind," the attorneys acknowledged with chagrin, she "had
been much indulged for several years before his death, and naturally
became troublesome soon after that event; we therefore deemed it prudent
to free her." The attorneys received £200 for the woman and her two chil-
dren, presumably from the overseer's estate, and resolved to "invest in the
purchase of a family ofmuch more value, and more effective for the pur-
poses of the property." Anticipating a larger-than-usual harvest, they pur-
chased seven slaves for £315 as substitutes. This woman had been able to
play the system to her personal advantage. During her years as the over-
seer's companion, she had convinced him that when he died he might
reach back from the grave and touch his "illegitimate" family. In return
for the most intimate subjection, she finally received freedom for herself
and her children from her dead patron.3 5
Gradually, frequent unions of this kind between white men and black
women produced a growing population of people of color who, if they
could procure freedom at all, often gained it by legacy. In 1774 there were
approximately 23,000 people designated "mulattoes" on the island; only
4,000 of them were free . The closer to white in color and the higher the
social status of the father, the greater the chance that a brown man,
woman, or child would not be enslaved. As Edward Long noted, "the
lower rank of miscegenous unions remain in the same slavish conditions
as their mother; they are fellow labourers with the Blacks, and are not
regarded in the least as their superiors." As people of the lower rank were
usually the darker in color, across generations there was an incentive for
people of color to "breed up," by mating with whites to increase the for-
runes oftheir descendants. In this way, whiteness had real economic value,
rhe benefits of which could accrue upon the death of patriarchs.36
Despite all the difficulties, free people of color who were descended
directly from whites eagerly sought (and sometimes gained) shares of their
. progenitors' property. In q6I the assembly found that mulatto children
held property valued between £2oo,.ooo and f3oo,ooo in Jamaican cur-
rency, devised by their parents. This included "four sugar estates, seven
penns, thirreen houses, besides other lands unspecified," according to
II2 ~ The Reaper's Garden
Edward Long, who defended restrictions on such devises passed by the

assembly in 1761. The law banned what it called "exhorbitant grants and
devises made by white persons to Negroes and issue of Negroes," those of
real or personal estate valued at over £2000. Many property holders
objected to the restriction, incensed that it violated "their right to dispose
of their own effects and acquisitions, in the manner most agreeable to
their inclinations." Long admitted that the act of 1761 was "repugnant to
the spirit of English laws" but argued that it was a practical necessity for
the general good, which depended on dear and unambiguous white
supremacy. He hoped that limiting bequests to mulatto children in
Jamaica, as English law excluded "bastards" from inheritance, would
encourage white men to "abate (heir infatua(ed attachments to black
women'' and form racially pure families. Looking with disgust upon what
he caUed the "vicious,. brutal, and degenerate breed of mongrels" peopling
the Spanish Americas, Long expected that white Jamaicans could best
uphold the interests of British colonial society by "raising in honourable
wedlock a race of unadulterated beings. "37
Long did nonetheless approve of allowances for cultural assimilation.
Where the "polish of good education, and moral principles" could be
proved, wealthy property owners could still apply to the assembly for
exceptions. In 1790 George Bedward of Westmoreland parish petitioned
the assembly for permission to bequeath a large share of his estate to his
natural grandson, George James Bedward, "a free quadroon infant of
tender years, who hath been baptized, and will, when of sufficient age, be
brought up and instructed in the principles of the Christian religion."
Recognizing that the light-skinned child would be brought up according
to English religious and secular customs, the assembly assented to Bed-
ward's request and passed an act authorizing him to dispose of his estate
"in such manner as he shall think proper." In this case, it was clear that
George James posed little threat to the racial hierarchy of slave society. The
assembly continued to make similar exceptions for "respectable" people of
color through the early nineteenth century, as ~ong as it was dear that
white supremacy could be maintained through assimilation. 38
Still, whites were anxious about the free colored population, and for
some good reasons. Even as young G. J. Bedward grew to adulthood, a
growing and increasingly vocal group of free people of color protested the
restrictions of the act of 1761. Between 1790 and 1820 the free colored pop-
Expectations of the Dead ~ IIJ
ulation more than tripled in size, expanding from under IO,ooo to nearly
JO,ooo. By the second decade of the nineteenth century, free blacks and
coloreds made up over 40 percent of the rank and file in the Jamaican foot
militia. Working in service occupations, some had amassed impressive
assets, and feeling a swelling sense of their power, they commenced peti-
tioning campaigns to ease restrictions on their social activity. In r8r3 they
won the revocation of the legacy constraints. As a result, John Swaby was
able to bequeath two large estates to his mulatto son James in 1826. Listed
in the jamaica Almanack of r828, James Swaby owned 217 slaves and 331
head of stock and held a commission as a lieutenant in the British army.
Slavery could certainly coexist with a man like Swaby, but his success did
throw white supremacy open to question.39
But James Swaby was a rare exception. Many people of mixed ancestry
remained slaves. In 1832 about 10 percent of the total enslaved population
consisted of people of color who had white forebears. Most free people of
color remained poor, working as artisans, bookkeepers, or petty entrepre-
neurs. More imporrant, white supremacy remained one of the society's
central organizing principles, giving aid and cover to people who would
cheat nonwhites of their inheritance, even when it was legally due. "Of
all the robberies committed in the island," Benjamin McMahon wrote of
corrupt executors, "none have ever affected my mind more deeply than
those which are practised upon the poor, young, innocent brown people
who are thus thrown from affluence into penury and want." Free people
of color lived in such poverty in early nineteenth-century Jamaica that
they often died without any money at all and were buried at the expense
of the church or the parish. 4o
Black Market Bequests

Very few enslaved men and women could hope that posthumous interces-
sion by dead whites would alter their lives for the better. Yet a few more
could expect: bequests from fellow slaves, because they sometimes held
property and, within dose limits, disposed of it at death according to their
wishes. Struggling for some small measure of social continuity, with help
from reformers in England, over time the enslaved turned informal and
extralegal arrangements for property transfer and land tenure in to cus-
tomary rights and legal victories.
II4 ~ The Reaper's Garden
Within Jamaica, the enslaved carried on a dynamic internal commerce.

On larger plantations slaves were aHowed houses, gardens, and provision
grounds. Imported food was expensive, so planters ·compeUed the slaves
to feed themselves by farming small fruit and vegetable gardens adjoining
their hous·es and larger plots of land set aside for growing food. On the
one day during the week allotted for them to provide for th·emselves,
enslaved men and women raised livestock, tended food crops, and applied
their skiUs to petty manufactures, hoping to produce more than they
needed to survive. Then they marketed their goods among the estates or
took the products of their labor to great Sunday markets. There, amid ani~
mated socializing, the best-supplied-and most energetic and shrewd-
could generate profits to support their families. 41
Edward Long contended in 1774 that slaves heM 20 percent of]amaica's
circulating specie. ''They have the greatest part of the small silver circula-
tion among them,'' claimed Long, "which they gain by the sale of their
hogs, poultry, fish,. oorn, fruits, and other commodities, at the markets in
town and country." In this way, in spite of their masters' preeminence,, the
ens:laved ·established tent:ative economic distinctions among themsdv·es
and fragile social hierarchi·es that reflec~ed their own efforts. Although
most had to spend whatever they earned on essential staples, some man-
aged to save enough by the time they died to provide for their own
funerals and make bequests w friends and family members. Long asserted
that some had "been known to possess from £so to £200 at their death"
and that the ''industrious and frugal" ofi:en laid up £20 to £30. Long surdy
exaggerated the amounts, but he nevertheless pointed to a widespread
informal system of intergenerational transfer. Whatever status they had
managed to achieve among their fellows, enslaved men and women hoped
they could pass it on to their descendants, or use it in death to provide
support to their friends in bondage . 42
One might be surprised that slaveholders allowed slaves to have prop-
erty at all. Independent economic activity had the potential to sustain
autonomous social power and threaten slaveholders' hegemony. On the
other hand, masters were simply too stingy to provide for the total welfare
of their slaves. Even in conditions of land scarcity-·Simon Taylor told an
associate in 18m that the only chance he had of obtaining land for provi-
sion grounds was ''when a person dies that has a spot of one or two hun-
dred Acres and orders his Executors to seU ic"-planters valued these
Expectations of the Dead -l'l IIJ
grounds as crucial to the survival of the workforce. To the extent that the
enslaved provided for their own welfare, owners had more capital available
£or investment or personal consumption. However, though the slaves'
economy figured in slavehoMers' self-interest, it was, paradoxically, the
product of negotiation and struggle. To acquire and defend customary
privileges, slaves had to press masters to see that such economic arrange-
ments were part of the cost of doing business; slaves led masters to recog-
nize their mutual interest. As slaveholders allowed slaves to hire out their
skitls, market their crops and livestock, and keep their profits, the enslaved
came to view their internal economy as a right.43
Just as masters conceded the right to slaves' semiautonomous commer-
cial life,. they allowed informal inheritance rights. Enslaved men and
women made their last wishes known verbally to trusted kiln, friends, or
authority figures, who administered the deceased's effects without the
sanction of law. Legators passed on currency and livestock to whomever
they pleased and, over time, even began to will gardens and provision
grounds,. provided that the devisees lived on the same estate. "They are
permitted to dispose at their deaths of what little property they possess,."
Bryan Edwards wrote in 1793, "and even to bequeath their grounds or gar-
dens to such of their feU ow slaves as they think proper." And Cynric
Williams observed on his tour of the island in 1823, "They are allowed by
court·esy, in all cases,. to leave what property they may acquire to their chil-
dren or friends upon the same estate, but not to strangers.'' The master's
definition of a stranger was likely to be different from that of his slaves,
and for rhose who had rdatives on other estates the restriction was a severe
impediment to the reconstitution of famHy lines. The restriction also com-
pounded the injury done to slaves who were sold away from estates where
they had relatives. Yet despite the limitations, enslaved men and women
retained some abiHty at their deaths to preserve, stabilize, and re-create
relationships with kin and friends through material legacies. 44
WiHingness on the part of a master to leave it up to the enslaved to
determine their own rules of inheritance did not preclude participation in
disputed claims . Sir Henry Thomas De la Beche, the pioneering British
geologist and absentee landlord of the Halse Hall estate, wrote in his Notes
on the Present Condition ofthe Negroes in jamaica (r825) that custom "gives
the negro the power of disposing his property as he may think fit; the
nearest of kin generally bury the deceased, and take possession of his
n6"'" The Reapers Garden
grounds, house, & c." However, "those who wish their property to be left
divided in any particular manner, make a will for that purpose." As evi-
dence, De la Beebe reproduced the will of an enslaved "mulatto" man
named Richard Sadler:
This is the last will and testament of me, Richard Sadler, of Halse Hall. I
give and bequeath unto my dutiful wife, Frances Bell, (for her good conduct
and attention towards me during my illness) my house, and my household
goods, and my wearing appard, my mare, and furniture, and as to all the
rest, residue, and remainder, of my property and effects, of which I may die
possessed or entitled to. I devise and bequeath, that, after my burial, that
neither male nor female is to trouble the said Frances Bell about my prop-
erty and effects. And I hereby nominate, constitute, and appoint James
Butler to settle my affairs, for the said Frances Bell, of this my last will and
testament. Taken this 2nd day of July 1824, signed in behalf of Richard
Sadler.
The document was signed by James Butler, one of the Halse Hall book-
keepers, and marked by four enslaved witnesses: Frances, Thomas, Black,
and Nelly. The overseer and attorney for the plantation, Valentine B.
Cock, certified that "every thing of which he may die possessed shall
belong solely to Frances Bell." Despite Sadler's wishes, his other relations
laid claim to his estate, persuading De la Beche to read out the will in
public, "after which they were contented, and the widow took possession
of all that was left her." 4 5
One must use caution in interpreting Richard Sadler's will. De la Beche,
Hke most others who commented on slavery in the midst of abolitionist
political agitation in Britain, had an agenda. Although he was not a
proslavery ideologue, he was keen to render a sympathetic portrayal of his
family's business. He thought that abolitionists had exaggerated the suf-
ferings of the enslaved, though he also condemned the casual brutality of
many Jamaican slaveholders. Most important, he was among those
enlightened reformers who thought of the enslaved as subjects of both the
British Empire and their masters. fu British subjects, even slaves would
theoretically be entitled to certain rights-and the right to property fig-
ured prominently in such considerations. De Ia Beche, like many dave-
holders, was eager to show that his own subjects enjoyed such rights by
custom, lest he be found ro be a tyrant, and Parliament encouraged to
intervene against him. ]n publishing Sadler's will, De Ia Beche thus tried
Expectations of the Dead ""'" II?
to represent plantation slavery as a civilized institution. On the other

hand, the fact that De Ia Beche published the will for a reason .does not
mean that he fabricated it. De Ia Beche, who directed the world's first geo-
logical survey, was, after all, more attuned to empirical than to polemical
considerations. In the light of other evidence concerning bequests among
the enslaved, it is likely that the will reproduced by De la Beche corre-
sponded in large measure to the one prepared by Sadler.46
Treated as an actual testament, then, Sadler's will suggests several things
about the family legacies of the enslaved. Most important, legacies were
contested among the enslaved as well as among the free. This meant that
whatever principles of inheritance existed among them, competing claims
required an appeal to social authority. Slaves sought to give their bequests
the greatest possible weight, including, when possible, the sanction of law.
Witnessed by Frances, Thomas, Black, and Nelly, the signing of the will
was an event that invited acknowledgment from the enslaved community.
By appointing the bookkeeper Buder as executor, Sadler invoked the
authority of white supremacy and plantation hierarchy-a form of ratifi-
cation reinforced by the certification of the overseer. When a dispute
arose, the existence of the written document allowed De la Beebe, Halse
Hall's ultimate judicial authority, to settle the matter by intoning Sadler's
last wishes. "Although the attempt at legal form may cause a smile," wrote
De la Beche with mocking condescension, "the instrument answered
every purpose for which it was intended." Perhaps most significant was
that as a man with a white parent, Sadler had more access to and facility
with the tactics and tools of formal authority. Closeness to the cultural
practices of the powerful bred in him an expectation of successful familial
continuiry. 47
The overseer Thomas Thistlewood, who had facilitated a similar trans-
action in March 1758 for an enslaved "mulatto" man named Will, made a
note ofWill's last wishes in his diary. "Tuesday, 21st March: Write a mem-
orandum, how Mulatto Will's goods are to be disposed of at his death.
His wife's shipmate Silvia ro have his cow; her daughter Hester, the heifer;
Damsel his wife (Jimmy Hayes's wife) the filly & rest of what he has. He
desires to be buried at Salt River at his mother Dianah's right hand." A
week later, on Easter Monday, Will died; his final wishes regarding his
effects allows a brief glimpse into his network of intimate relations. His
desire to bequeath a cow to his wife's shipmate highlights the crucial
n8 ~*- The Reaper's Garden
importance of that peculiar kin relationship to families as a whole and not

just to the individuals who endured the middle passage together. The
women in Will's life were at the center of his last thoughts. His mother,
his wife, and her daughter were all to receive legacies, but his white father,
possible male children, and friends are not mentioned. Most surprisingly,
perhaps, his wife Damsel still receives the greatest portion of his effects,
though it appears he had to share her affections with Jimmy Hayes,. a
white man on the plantation, who claimed her as a consort. Despite this
most intimate intrusion, Will nevertheless sought in his last gesture to aid
his wife and the other women in his family. Will's bequests may indicate
his indination toward principles of matrilineal descent, but more certainly
they show a determination to brace a fractured lineage, of whatever kind.
Thus, his last wishes echo a hard fight against the fleeting nature of life,
connection, and legacy in Jamaica.4 8
As the testaments of Richard Sadler and Mulatto Will illustrate, the
genealogical principles that governed inheritance among the enslaved were
open and adaptive; in other words, they reflected the flux that character-
ized social life. The perpetual movement of people, from Africa to Jamaica,
to various properties, and to the afterlife, required, as anthropologist Jean
Besson has explained, that families create "networks of mutual exchange
and aid, elaborating biological ties on both parental sides." The enslaved
drew fictive kin and intimate friends into familial relationships that
extended through time. Cynric Williams recognized this network in the
early nineteenth century, when he compared inheritance practices among
slaves to "the present laws of France on wills, which restrain a testator
from bequeathing away his property to the exclusion of his relations and
children, though illegitimate." 49
Most eighteenth- and nineteenth-century commentators described
inheritance from the standpoint of male testators and never discussed
devises made by women. Yet most also recognized the relative openness of
inheritance practices among slaves. Long recognized the authority of "the
black grandfather, or father, [who] directs in what manner his money, his
hogs, poultry, furniture, cloaths, and other effects and acquisitions, shall
descend, or be disposed of, after his decease." WiBiam Beckford, writing
in 1788, argued, "Negroes absolutely respect primogeniture; and the eldest
son takes an indisputed possession of his father's property immediately
after his decease." However, contrary to Beckford's assertion, there is scant
Expectations of the Dead ~ II9
evidence that primogeniture was the general practice. Indeed, more evi-
dence suggests that family land passed on to "all descendants in perpetuity,
regardless ofgender, birth order, and legirimacy." The same year that Beck-
ford published his descriptive account of Jamaica, Hector McNeill
described a more open system of inheritance that also took into account
the intervention of plantation managers: "The possessions belonging to
old Negroes are commonly bequeathed by the deceased to his relations,
or they are bestowed by the superintendant on the most deserving and the
most needy; bur more particularly on those who possessed rhe greatest
share of affection of the deceased-an excellent institution to insure atten-
tion and comfort to the aged." John Baillie, who was the resident propri-
etor of the Roehampton estate from 1788 to 1826, observed that when
testators died without children, the parceling out of inheritance adhered
ro Mrican ethnic lines and affective ties. When a House of Lords com-
mittee asked him in 1833 what became of the property of deceased slaves,
Baillie told them, "They have all connexions more or less; the Mricans,
they call one another brothers and sisters, and so on. Those who are their
countrymen, they claim it; the master never gets it at all evems."5°
The rare descriptions of enslaved family inheritance patterns available
from nineteenth-century records suggest that the importance of daughters
as heirs equaled or exceeded that of sons. In 1823 one old man who had
worked in a livestock pen decided to leave five pounds to his daughter's
husband, the manservant to rhe pen's owner. He did this not because he
felt obliged by the marriage to do so, but because the man "had behaved
so well to her." The rest of his effects "he left to his daughter for herself."
An incident that Matthew Lewis recorded in his diary in r8r7 also hints
that daughters and their children were important inheritors of slave prop-
erty. Old Damon had two daughters, one married to a man named Piclde,
the other to Edward. Damon planned to split his effects between the two
women when he died, but Edward had declared publicly that "his wife
would remain sole heiress of the father's property." Shortly after Edward's
declaration, Pidde's wife had a miscarriage. It was her third, and she now
suspected witchcraft as the cause. Piclde and Old Damon came w Lewis,
who granted them a hearing. They rold him that "in order to prevent a
child coming to claim its share of rhe grandfather's property, Edward had
practised Obeah to make his sister-in-law miscarry." Lewis dismissed the
charge as groundless, even "foolish." It is possible that if Old Damon had
l I
120 ll!-- The Reaper's Ga.rden
had living sons, they might have been exclusive heirs; Lewis does hot say.
Nor does he divulge how contingent the inheritance of Pickle's wife was
on her having her own children. But the incident he described does at least
suggest that the right of women to inhedt the property of their progeni-
tors was strongly established, especially when they did have children. It
also indicates the vital importance of the patronage grandpar·ents tried to
bestow on their grandchildr,en.5 1
Clearly, slaves tried to retain or reconsritute familial links rhat stretched
as far across time as they could manage. Indeed, jusr two months before
Old Damon accused Edward of trying to truncate the family bloodline,,
Lewis heard a request from another of his slaves for help in maintaining
good relations between ancestors and descendants. Neptune came to him
''m reques;t that the name of his son,. Oscar, might be changed for that of
Julius, wHich (it se·ems) had been that of his own father. " Neptune's son
had chronically poor health,. and Neptune feared that the child's condition
resulted from his deceased grandfather's displeasure ov·er Neptune's failure
to name the child after him. Lewis concluded: ''They conceive that the
ghosts of their ancestors cannot fail to be offended at their abandoning
an appellation, either hereditary in the family, or given by themselves."5 2
Land and Linea&e

Veneration for anceswrs deriv.ed from traditions rooted in Africa. It also
provided the basis for a struggle between masters and slav:es over the inher-
itanc.e of Jamaican land. While preds.e inheritance patterns among the
enslaved are difficult to distinguish, it is possib~e to discern the increasing
importan·ce of land claims in struggles to establish and maintain famay
lines . Edward Long rather cynically assumed that the veneration blacks had
for their dders and for ancestry was srmmulated by the goods they ''enjoyed
by devise." Yet with respect to land, it is more accurate to say that Africans
and their descendants valued it and sought to possess it, in order to manifest
a preexisting respect for their ancestors. As anthropologists Sidney Mintt
and Richard Price have put it, they used land ''as a means of defining both
time and descent, with ancestors venerated locally, and wmth history and
genealogy both being particularized in specific pieces of ground." Africans
in most areas of the continent: that fed the Adantic slave trade owned land
corporately and had the right to farm and own the producrs of their labor,
Expectations of the Dead ~ 121
but rarely to sell, alienate, or rent their land. Indeed, common views on
landholding estabHshed ancient ancestors, who had settled the territory on
behalf of their descendants, as the true owners of land-an arrangement
Brimns might have likened to email. This beHef might explain why slaves
paid great attention, as so many planters observed, to the genealogy of plan-
tation ownership. Long noticed that "their attachment to the descendants
of old families, the ancestors of which were the masters and friends of their
own progenitors, is remarkably strong and affectionate." WiUiam Beckford
insisted that "they ~ev:erence a master who claims from inheritance." As soon
as Matthew Lewis arrived on his plantation from England, he said, "Twenty
voices at once enquired after uncles, and aunts, and grandfathers, and great-
grandmothers of mine,. who had been buried long before I was in existence,
and whom,. I veri]y beli,eve, most of them only knew by tradition. "53
Africans in Jamaica revered ancestral lands partly because they were
burial sites and places of social attachment and incorporation, where fore-
hears afforded spiritual protection from evil and chaos. Slaves,. when
forced to move from the land where their kin were buried, lost that pro-
tection,. as well as the limited securmry afforded by temporal social connec-
tions. The predicament provided a powerful incentive for the enslaved to
~earn how they could stay dose to their burial grounds and force masters
t:o respect their land rights. Older Mri.cans and Creoles born and raised
in slavery therefore learned to adapt corporate ancestral claims to accord
with familial inheritance claims. Just as Mricans tried to stay close to their
ancestral burial. grounds, they tried to pass them on to their children. As : !~
one commentator noticed, "they bury their Relations adjoining to their 'i ,.~
I, 'II
,,
I.
own House, which makes the House go to the Family as it were." For the
enslaved,. the staking of greater claims to territorial property was one
strategy for avoiding dislocation and sociam isolation. On family land,
slaves could found family lines and anchor widespread kinship networks.
This was no easy or ordinary achievement. Older survivors of slavery and
Creoles could deady claim a more secure ri~ht to land, but only those who
lived mong enough to have children, and whose children survived the rav-
ages of the colonial economy, could authoritatively link land with ]in-
eage.54
In 1783 Simon Taylor wrote to Chaloner Arcedeckne concerning a
piece of land claimed by an elderly man named Philander, formerly a
cooper on the Golden Grove estate. Philander was comparativdy privi-
I22 ~ The Reaper's Garden
leged,. having earned from Arcedeckne an annuiry of five pounds upo~

his "retirement" some years before from plantation labor. Now, he wanted
to leave a legacy. "It is a piece of land at the End of the Garden a~
which is entailed, he has been twenty times told he could not have tt,
but nothing Satisfies him, or indeed any Negroe, when they think that
· · t hey can get a t h"mg, " T:a:y1or recounte d . "It I·s not for the
by trnportunay .
Sake of the Children that are buried there that he wants it, but to glve
it away to some other Children after his Death for he lives there noW
unmolested by any one whatever." Philander certainly knew that he was
resting the limits of Taylor's indulgence by insisting that the customary
right to pass on goods and livestock extended to include the right to
bequeath land. Indeed, he was claiming land under entail-land that
Arcedeckne was legally forbidden to seH to anyone-so there IS m:
. r le pas~
sibiliry that he achieved his aim. But there is little doubt that Philander
was determined to pass down the hard-won concessions gleaned from a
life spent in slavery. Taylor's frustration with Philander highlights a co~~
plex and dynamic process of sharp negotiation that ultimately resulted Ill
slaveholders' informal respect for the land claims of the enslaved. Srrug~
gles such as Philander's probably played out all over the island, for in the
1780s William Beckford noticed how reluctant slaves were to "resign those
houses that were built by their ancestors, forego those grounds that were
settled by their forefathers, and which have been handed down for years,
and become the inheritance of the same family." In effect, Beckford was
descn"b'mg a system of two parallel land tenures: a forma'1 one, re gulated
·
by force of law, and an informal one, supported by the determined nego~
tiations of the enslaved.SS
These slaves' efforts coincided with pressure from Britain for systernic
reform, which eventually obliged slaveholders to take slave land claims
somewhat more seriously. Slaveholders in Anglo-America had largely been
left to run their own affairs, unril the expansion of the British Empire that
followed the United Kingdom's victory in the Seven Years' War, and rhe
imperial crisis wrought by the American Revolution,. provoked serio~s
.h . . . f .rnpertal
engagement Wit questions of tmpenal governance on the part o 1 .
policymakers. But beginning in the 1770s and with mounting intensity

after the rise of the antislavery movement in the q8os, officials in London
began to cons1"der h ow t I1e empire might more effectively ru1e ltS
. 0 verseas
subjects, who included a great many slaves. Edmund Burke, who was
Expectations of the Dead -i'l I23
among the most influential writers of the time, became convinced that the
enslaved should not be left "under the sole guardianship of their Masters,
~r their Attornies and Overseers." In 1792 he sent a seventy-two-point
Sketch of a Negro Code," originally drafted in 1780, to Home Secretary
Henry Dundas. The plan suggested more stringent imperial oversight of
slavery and the slave trade but also elaborated on how the enslaved might
becorue suitable subjects. Along with religion, family, and morality, Burke
believed ' "th e means o f acqumng
· · an d preservmg
· property" were essenua · I
to preparing slaves for their eventual assumption of British liberties and
responsibilities. To this end, he suggested they be given testamentary rights
to ~'devise or bequeath" any "lands, goods, or chattels" acquired during
theu lifetimes. Should a slave die intestate, Burke suggested-always
as~uming a male testator-his property should be distributed among "his
wrfe and children." It is not apparent that Burke knew anything of the
ongoing struggles to obtain inheritance rights in the Caribbean, and his
concept of family made no allowance for cultural difference, but his own
thoughts on bequests complemented the efforts of the enslaved them-
selves ' and by t he 1790s gave them influential allies among
. · · 1po 1·ICY-
1mpena
lllakers.5G
.Slaveholders, in this context, felt pressure from above and below. Cer-
tamly' bY t h e end of the eighteenth century t h e customary ng . h t to
bequeath land had been won. "They are permitted," observed Bryan
Ed~ards, a longtime resident of Jamaica, in his 1793 history of the British
Canbbe an, "to bequeath their grounds or gardens to sueh o f theu · £eHow
slaves as th ey t h'm k proper." Edwards rol d h'IS Bnus
1
.. h rea d'mg au d'1ence
what they Wanted to hear but also, just as important, what he had been
compelled to notice himself. "These principles are so well established," he
explained, "that whenever it is found convenient for the owner to
ex:change t h e Negro-grounds for other lands, the Negroes must be satis- ·
fied ' in money or otherwise before the exchange takes p1ace. It IS
· umver-
·
sal!y h '
t e practice." 57
Legacies of Struggle
Though the inheritance claims of the enslaved could provide the basis for
a social
. · that might challenge slaveholders' power, s1aves also h ad
coh es1on
· to work within the established hierarchy o f t11e slave society
an tnce ntive ·
I24 I"" The Reaper's Garden
to achieve and consolidate their inheritance rights. In time, as the

enslaved pushed the boundaries of their internal economy, they selected
people of increasing prominence in rhe plantation hierarchy as trustees
and executors of their "estates." When Edward Long wrote of bequests
among the enslaved population in 1774, he noted that legators nominated
"trustees, or executors, from the nearest of kin, who distribute them
among the legatees, according to the will of the testator, without any
molestation or interruption, most often without the enquiry of their
master." Only when the people who died had no close relations did the
superintendent, usually the overseer, divide the property as he saw fit.
However, by the nineteenth century enslaved blacks chose as executors
people who held positions in the social hierarchy that were more secure
·than their own. Recall that Mulatto Will deputed Thomas Thisrlewood
as his executor, presumably because he thought only a white man had the
authority to carry out his last wishes properly. Similarly, Richard Sadler
made the white bookkeeper James Buder his executor. As men of mixed
parentage, Will and Sadler were more likely to have access to white
patrons. Yet among enslaved blacks too, men whose social authority was
bestowed by plantation managers came to occupy a greater role in the
administration of bequests. 58
On smaHer properties or for domestic work, where masters and slaves
labored in close proximity, the executor might even be the proprietor.
Mr. Klopstock, the owner of a modest livestock pen, became the executor
for one of his slaves. The man made Klopstock responsible for parceling
out his property and for arranging his funeral, so "that he might be con-
soled in his dying moments with an assurance of the honours he should
receive after death." On large plantations, where blacks generally lived
isolated from whites, they turned to the black managers on the estates.
John Baillie told the House of Lords in 1832 that in case of any disputes
over legacies, he was content to leave their resolution to these head
people, constituted by the driver, the head cooper, the head mason, the
head carpenter, the head blacksmith, the head pen keeper, and the head
watchmen. "If there is any dispute," explained Baillie, "they bring their
Evidence of Connection, and it is arranged among the head people what
proportion belongs to one and what to another; sometimes they say Tom
shall ha.ve such a fruit tree, and Bessy another, and it is understood
among their family before their death.'' By co-opting head people as
Expectations of the Dead ~ T25
arbiters of inheritance claims in this way, slaves conceded the structure

of plantation authority in order to implicate it in the protection of their
claims .5 9
The enslaved kept shrewd account of what they considered to be their
land and its agricultural products. Cynric Williams once heard from a
slaveowner that his slave had come to daim compensation from him after
the master had cut off a branch of a calabash tree in his own garden. "The
negro maintained that his own grandfather had planted the tree, and had
had a house and garden beside it," wrote Williams in r823, "and he
claimed the land as his inheritance, though he had his own negro-grounds
dsewhere as a matter of course. The gentleman was so amused by Quaco's
pertinacy and argument, that he bought the land and tree, right and ride,
of him for a dollar.'' 60
By the end of slavery, the enslaved had turned customary usage into
near-legal rights wrested from the Jamaican planrocracy. Responding to
insistent recommendations from London, the Slave Act of r826 finally
codified the right of slaves to own chattels and to receive bequests, though
the law did not authorize lawsuits for the recovery of legacies until 1831,
when slaveowners were given the right to sue for the recovery of legacies
made to their slaves. The act of r826 formally sanctioned the executorship
of masters such as Mr. Klopstock on behalf of their slaves when it autho-
rized a slave's "owner, manager, or possessor" to act as trustee of slave
hequests. The reforms stopped short of mandating full protection and
were careful to subsume slave property rights under the ultimate sover-
eignty of slaveowners, but enslaved men and women conveniently ignored
the finer points and provisos of the law. As William Burge, a coffee
planter, Jamaica agent, and former attorney general of the island,
explained to the House of Lords in 1832: "A slave being once put into pos-
session of his provision grounds considers them completely his own prop-
erty, and he is allowed to dispose of them to such of his family as he
pleases. Those acquainted with Jamaica know," Burge continued, "that if
from any cause it becomes necessary to remove the slaves from one prop-
erty ro another,. or even change their provision grounds on the same prop-
erty, the greatest difficulty is found in reconciling them to the removal or
change." Indeed, planters paid what Burge thought to be "considerable
sums" to enslaved landholders in compensation for lost grounds. "A
person having to remove slaves must first of aU furnish them with new
I26 ~ The Reaper's Gat:den
Houses, and plant new grounds for them, and give them a compensation
for the grounds they have already, independently of their being at liberty
to go back and take all the provisions remaining in those grounds." As an
example, Burge cited an anecdote told to him by Simon Taylor. ''Adjoining
the houses and gardens of the negroes on one of his estates were some
cocoa-nut trees which had grown up, and were supposed to render their
Habitations unhealthy," Burge recounted, "but it was with the greatest
difficulty, and afi:er a length of time,. and by giving them money, he could
prevail upon them to allow him to cut them down . " In the face of ever
greater intervention by London into colonial affairs and of imminent
·emancipation of the slaves by Parliament, Burge deady wanted to repre-
sent slavery as a relatively mild institution and prohably overstate·d the
actual control that slaves had over their property. At the same time, it is
clear that the enslaved forcefully asserted their right to own and ex:change
property according to their wishes. 61
Some among the enslaved had apparendy grown so confident of their
property rights that they loosened the old African prohibitions against
selling or alienating land. Vice-Admiral C. E. Fleeming, who visited
Jamaica for sev·eraJ periods in the r8zos as the commander in chi.ef of the
naval force in Jamaica, told the House of Lords that slaves conducted
"transfers of property among themselves,." including exchanges of huts,,
houses, and grounds. ''I have known of persons who have acquired prop-
erty by inheritance passing it to others," said Fleeming, "for, when the
people are in little communities, they are very particular about their own
boundaries." Similarly, Edmund Sharp, who was an overseer on seven dif-
ferent properties between r8II and 1832, where he was in charge of bervveen
150 and 6oo slaves,. r·eported that blacks sold, exchanged, and willed their
houses and provision grounds "to any one upon th·e same estat·e, and that
without any objection,, that I ever heard of, upon the part of the master/' 62
Slaveholders' indifference had limits. Some families were so successful
at claiming possession of and passing on their land that planters felt com-
pelled ro intervene . In 1817 Matthew Lewis complained that some enslaved
men and women on his Cornwall plantation had come by inheritance to
be ''owners of several houses and numerous gardens in the village, while
others with large families wer·e either inadequately provided for, or not
provided for at alL" Reasserting his own dominion, whillie flattering him-
Expectations of the Dead ~ I27
self on his benevolence,. Lewis decreed that ''henceforth no negro should

possess more than one house, with a sufficient portion of ground for his
family." Lewis implemented his commands with little delay: "The fol-
lowing Sunday the overseer by my order looked over the v.i.llag,e, took from
those who had too much to give to those who had too liule, and made
an entire new distribution according to the most strict Agrarian law."
Lewis's draconian land reform surely reminded his slaves that it was only
determined effort, rather than the generosity of any slaveholder, that
enabled them to demand and defend some limited but crucial collective
self-determination-and that, even then, no gain made within the con-
fines of slavery was ever secure. 63
Though death inspired active and dynamic practices of social recon-
nection, scholars have often followed Orlando Patterson in positing a
metaphorical "social death'' as the basic condition of slavery. In language
echoing the theses of Robert Park and E. Franklin Frazier-that the
enslaved had been culturally stripped by slavery's rigors and terrors-Pat-
terson described social death as the absence of inheritance. "Formally iso-
lated in his social relations with those who lived," Patterson wrote of the
archetypal slave, "he also was culturally isolated from the social heritage
of his ancestors." Patterson was certainly correct in arguing that slaves
"wer·e not allowed freely to integrate the experienoe of their ancestors into
their lives, to inform their understanding of social reality with the inher-
ited meanings of their natural forebears, or to anchor the living present in
any conscious community of mernory.''' 64 Yet everything in this assertion
hangs on the word "freely,." and nothing was free in Jamaican slave society.
Recognition of actual inheritance practices among the enslaved should
therefore caution historians and others against viewing "social death'' as
an acmal state of being, while the history of slave bequests also reminds
us that social connections and communities of memory had to be created
through struggle.
~~
Death In Jamaica destroyed individuals, while generating a society. In the

mi,dst of catastrophe, people anxiously imagined the futur,e, expecting the
dead to assist them in their endeavors, just as they expected to play a con-
tinuing role in the lives of their own descendants. Legacy and inheritance
were cruciaJ features of slave society, less through precise rules of intergen-
erational transfer than as an inspiration to purposeful will and action. The

practices for managing financial transfers from the dead ro the living were
embedded in struggles over the nature and future of the society.
The deaths of powerful whites created opportunities for material gain
that coincided with the risk of massive social disruption. People grappled
with both risks and opportunities partly by struggling over the legacies of
the dead. With families, institutions, and the social order itself subjecr w
constant threat from demographic conditions and political insurrections,
bequests and legacies molded the character of Jamaican social life. A per-
sonal bequest-for free and enslaved alike-represented a means to stabi-
lize families and angle for social position. Executors were the crucial
mediators in this process: they could strengthen families or tear them
apart, implement the wishes of the deceased person or use their power for
private enrichment. Executorship was a means to great wealth but also a
sociaHy disruptive force in a debt-burdened economy, where the death of
a property owner might occasion the dislocation of scores of men and
women. In order to maintain the profitability of their properties, all slave-
holders, but especially the landed planters, had to contend with the com-
munal aspirations of their slaves. Inheritance daims, reflecting proprietary,
familial, and emotional attachments to land and goods, formed a signifi-
cant: part of those aspirations. To gain recognition for those claims, the
enslaved continually had to test, challenge, and negotiate the authority of
slaveholders, and in this sense the politics of inheritance formed a critical
aspect of the politics of slavery. The expectations of the dead thus shaped
social hierarchy and conflict over time.
Social patterns do not betoken social stasis. Relations between the living
and the dead helped stabilize tumultuous lives, but they were also agents
of change. People allied themselves with the dead not only to give some
regularity to the chaos of slavery,. but also to engage in battles to preserve,
reform, or end it altogether. Although death and power in Jamaica were
embedded in a larger transatlantic history, they also shaped and directed
that history. In other words, the dead had afterlives of consequence.
CHAPTER FOUR
Icons, Shamans, and Martyrs
IN DECEMBER r8o6, toward the end of the British transatlantic slave

trade, Captain Hugh Crow brought his cargo of 393 captives from the
Bight of Biafra into Kingston Harbor. The Mricans were crowded onto
the deck of the Mary when she steered past the sandy lowland keys of Port
Royal, where they witnessed a human sacrifice. Ten or twe.lve sailors, exe-
cuted for some breach of discipline aboard a warship of the Royal Navy,
were hanging on the gibbets that festooned the shoals. For the crew of rhe
Mary, familiar with the rough nature of military justice, the spectacle of
fellow tars dangling lifeless in chains and iron cages "excited more of pity
for their fate than of abhorrence for their offence," which, according to
Crow, "few persons believed was deserving of so awful a punishment."
The Mricans, who had already seen nearly a hundred of their number die
during their seven-week passage, "became dreadfully alarmed, lest they
should be sacrificed in the same manner," and the crew had "much diffi-
culty in preventing many of them from jumping overboard, and in
allaying their apprehensions." 1
Crow did not use the word "sacrifice" lightly. By the dme his memoir
was published in r830, its readers could congratulate themselves on the
abolition of the slave trade . He meant to suggest to them that the trade
was no more savage than the punitive customs of military rule. Indeed,
he indicated that human sacrifice, with all its atavistic connotations, was
the price of imperial order. The authority of the Royal Navy depended in
no small measure on its willingness to kiH the disobedient and make a
IJO 13!-- The Reapers Garden
Figure 4.1. Executions of convicted rebels, engraving by Joshua Bryant, in Bryant,

Account ,of the Insurrection of the Negro Slaves in the Colony of Demerara on the 18'th of
August, I823 (Georgetown, Demerara, I824), p~ate 12. The mustration depicts the pun-
ishment of three slaves impHcated in the uprising. A man hangs on the galLows, and two
heads mark the road to the p]antation in the distance. Similar scenes characterized the
Jamaican Landscape throughout the era ~f slavery. Courtesy of the British Library.
public spectacle of their corpses. Such demonstrations were a frequent

occurrence in Atlantic ports, especially during times of war, when naval
discipline was at its strictest. But similar spectacles were even more
common on the is.land, where slaveholders employed the most terrifying
tactics of state control (Figure 4.1). Though Crow may have meant merely
to salvage his own reputation by establishing a comparison with the
reputed cru:elties of slave traders, he also highlighted an important aspect
of the operation .of power throughout the world of Atlantic slavery: necro-
mancy,. the conjuration and manipulation of the dead for rhe purpose of
shaping acti.ons and events. To put it another way, naval officials and
Craw's crew knew just what rhe Mricans knew, that the dead were ever
present and could be conscripted for political service. By yoking the dead
to claims of authority, not only the Royal Navy, but all those who con-
tended for power could forcefully invoke the revenants of the departed.
In effect, those who used the bodies of the executed to proclaim their
Icons, Shamans, and Martyrs -.;a IJI
dominion were, just as surely as shamans, who claimed to hold influence '
over the dead, practicing a poillitically potent form of necromancy-
enlisting the transcendent to affect the outcome of worldly conflicts. By
invoking the power of the dead, whether as an admonition to rebels, as a
fcuoe from the other world, or as an example of martyrdom, the living
made the haunted and terrifying illandscape of spiritual existence apply to
temporal social struggles. 2
Icons
In his history of the British West Indies, the planter, poet, and politician
Bryan Edwards admitted that "in ·countries where slavery is established,
the leading principle on which the government is supported is fear: or a
s·ense of that absoillute coercive necessity whkh, ]eaving no choice of action,
sup·ers.edes all questions of right." Yet slave masters did not achieve the
fear requisite to maintain control over the enslaved by physical force alone. I '
They asserted their right to rule by trying to terrorize the spiritual imag-
inations of the enslaved . To do so, slave masters projected their authority
symbolically through punishment wreaked upon the bodies of the dead.
As anthropologist Katherine Verdery has noted, dead bodies carry great
symbolic weight: "They evoke awe, uncertainty, and fear associated with
'cosmic' conoerns, such as the meaning of life and death." Moreover,. when
dead bodies are managed with political intent, "their corporeality makes
them important means of localizing a claim." The physical presence of a
corpse connects its meaningfuill associations with its tangible location.
Using dead bodies as symbols,. masters marked their territory with awe-
inducing emblems of their power. 3
The use of terror to capture the imaginations of the enslaved was a staple
feature of social control in slave society. Slaveholders supplemented physical
coercion with even more menacing '(government magic," as they harnessed
the affective power of the dead and people's awe of the afterlife in an
attempt to transmute legal mastery into sacred authority. Yet though their
intent was to dominate the imagination, the routinization of terrifying
spectacles. only enhanced the importance of practices that associated dead
bodies and haunting spirits with political authority, practices that could
also reinforce the influence of slaves who were willing to resist or to rise up
and strike their masters. Both masters and slaves tried to boost their
I'
I,
132 &:a-- The Reaper's Garden
authority by drawing the connection between it and the transcendent. In

other words, they attached otherworldly significance to worldly concerns."i
Slaveholders faced a persistent threat of dispossession through slaves'
suicide. The harshness of the labor regime, social isolation, and diminished
status,. as well as the longing to return to ancestral lands, prompted many
among the enslaved to des:troy themselves. Henry Com, who worked for
fifteen years as a miUwright in the Jamaican parish of Westmoreland,
observed that unbearable workloads, physica.Ji punishment, and incessant
hunger led many Mricans to cut their own throats or hang themsdv·es. eel
remember fourteen Slaves,." he told a British House of Commons com-
mittee in 11[791, "that it was generally said, and I believe it was, from bad
treatment, that them [sic] rise in rebellion on a Sunday, who ran away into
the woods, and all cut th·eir own throats together." For some,. harsh treat-
ment only aggravated the general indignity of lost social status. One plan-
tation doctor who S•erved in Jamaica from 1755 to 1765 told the same
committee about an Mrican "man of consequence" who reportedly refus,ed
to work for any white man. Even after being punished by his overs·eer, the
Mrican told the overseer to warn his owner that "he would be a slave to
no man." Fearing that the man was an incorrigible rebel, the owner
ordered him removed to another plantation. ''His hands were tied behind
him; in going over a bridge, he jumped headlong into the water, and
appeared no more." Even Africans held in lower esteem still faced the kind
of disorienting social isoiation that could J,ead to irremediable depression.
The same plantation doctor owned a boy who "detested the idea of slavery
so much that he refused all support, which broughl on a dropsy, and ter-
minan~:d in his death.'' New African immigrants were known to kiH them-
selves more often than seasoned slaves; Creoles (those born on the island)
only rarely committed suicide. Commenting on the death rates for newly
arrived men,. higher than those for women, former overseer WiUiam Fitz-
maurice testified in ][791 that women, who were able to enter into rela-
tionships and work .as domestic s·ervants, had access to social roles and
protection unavaiiable to men. Consequently, he surmised,. men were
more depr•essed and committed suicide in Jamaica more often than
women. Recently arrived Africans "constantly told me,'' he said, "that they
preferred dying to living. ''s
Perhaps many Africans were sanguine about the prospect of suicide
hecause they believed they would return home to their ancestral lands after
I
'
Icons, Shamans, and Martyrs -!<1 IJJ i i
i
death, there ro be reunited as spirits and ancestors with lost kin and
friends. Mark Cook,. a clerk, schoolmaster, and smaU planter in Jamaica,
knew of severaill men and women, aU Mricans,. who had hanged or shot
themselves. Claiming to be acquainted with Mrican funeraills, he recog-
nized that the enslaved made "great rejoicings on those occasions,. because,
as I have understood from them, they thought their countrymen were
gone back to their own country again." When Lieutenant Baker Davidson
of the Seventy-ninth Regiment testified before a House of Commons
committee in 1790, he was asked if he knew of any cases of Mricans
''expressing. themselves with affection of their native country, and desiring
to return to h." Davidson replied, (jl did, . . . as I brought a Guinea
woman to England who wished much to be sent back to her own country;
and it is very common for Negroes when they are sick to say, they are
going back to their own country." "Do they say it with apparent satisfac-
tion?" the committee asked. ((They certainly do," Davidson said, "as they
express always a great deaill of pleasure when they think they are going to
die, and say that they are going to leave this Buccra country. "6
Slave masters throughout the Caribbean used spirit:ual terror to deter
Mricans from self-destruction. At least as early as the mid-seventeenth cen-
tury, British West Indian planters hoped that mutilating the dead would
impress Mricans with the slaveholders' power over the spiritual fate of the
enslaved. Africans,.lament,ed Richard Ligon, a seventeenth-century chron-
icler of slave society in Barbados, "believe in a Resurrection, and that they
shall go into their own Country again, and hav,e their youth renewed. And
lodging this opinion in their hearts, they make it an ordinary practice,
upon any great fright, or threatening of their Masters, to hang them-
selves." A p~anter acquaintance of Ligon's,. Colonel Walrond, had in a
short time lost three or four of his most valuable shves to suicide. Fearing
i
that they had set a costly example to others, Walrond ordered that one of I '
meir heads be chopped off and fixed to a pole a dozen feet high. He
marched all his slaves around the icon, commanding them to gaze at the
severed head, and he asked them to acknowledge that this was indeed the
head of one of the self-murderers . As they did, Walrond told them that
"they were in a main ,errour,. in thinking they went into their own Coun-
treys,. aft:er they were dead; for, this man's head was here,. as they all were
witnesses of; and how was it possible, the body could go without a head."
& Ligon remembered it, the Africans were convinced by the "sad, yet
134 IO;-· The Reaper's Garden
lively spectacle." They apparently changed their convictions,. and hanged

themselves no more.7
Though Walrond may have been spared funher losses of that sort,
Africans continued to kill themselves with distressing frequency in the
Caribbean, and slaveholders kept resorting to grisly techniques of deter-
rence. In the eighteenth-century Danish West Indies, C. G. A. Oldendorp
reported that "the head and hands of such suicides have been put in a cage
on public display-a measure not without effective results." In prerevolu-
tionary Saint-Domingue,. French slavers mmilated the body of the first
Ebo slave to die of suicide in a given shipment: they beheaded the corpse
or sliced off its nose and pried out its eyes, to prevent losses among other
captives from the Bight of Biafra, who were widely reputed to be prone
to suicide. With a simi1ar objective, Cuban merchants and masters in the
early nineteenth century incinerated corpses of other Mricans. 8
In Jamaica, such practices were widespread throughout the eighteenth-
century. Just before midcentury, an anonymous Jamaican planter wrote
that to prevent Africans from believing that they could escape the island
through death, their bodies were "ofr·en hanged up" by their masters to
show the living that the dead remained in Jamaica. It was around this time
that masters began to apply the punishment for outright rebellion---·
burning of bodies to ash-to suicides as well. And to dramatize the impos-
sibility of their repatriation in death, masters threatened to deny suicidal
slaves last rites. In 1751 the Anglican rector ofWestmoreland parish wrote
to his bishop that "to deprive them of their funeral Rites by burning their
dead Bodies, seems to Negroes a greater Punishment than Death itself
This is done to Self-Murderers." As late as the final decade of slavery, John
Stewart remembered a time when newly arriving Mricans committed sui-
cide to "return to their native country, and enjoy the society of kindred
and friends, from whom they have been torn away in an evd hour." He
also recalled the "dismal and disgusting spectacle" of their heads adorning
poles along public roads, and their bodies "sometimes consumed by fire."9
Whether such mutilations in fact constituted an effective deterrent is
open ro question. Dismemberment certainly represented a compelling
metaphysical threat to English Protestants, but there is little or no direct
evidence that Africans believed that losing their head or a limb would pre-
vent their return to ancestral lands. Many Africans had surely seen severed
heads taken as trophies by warring state authorities in Africa. Indeed, in
Icons, Shamans, and Martyrs ~ I35
parts of West Mrica, slaves were routinely beheaded after the death of
nobles, so that they could continue to serve their masters in the spiritual
world. European masters in Jamaica, only dimly aware of African parallels,
beheaded and dismembered their own slaves with a similar desire that the
dead continue their service. Through the treatment given dead bodies
slaveholders attempted to seize and manipulate the African vision of the
afterlife, to govern the actions of the living. 10
Mutilating the bodies of Africans who commined suicide was only part
of a broader agenda that made use of ritual execution to lend to worldly
authority a sacred, even supernatural, dimension. As with the punishment
of suicide, punishments for rebellion were meant to inspire terror in the
enslaved about their ultimate fate, in this case by visiting extraordinary
torments on their bodies before and after death. By the late seventeenth
century, slave rebels were being burned alive. Sir Hans Sloane, who visited
Jamaica just before the turn of the eighteenth century, described the grisly
tortures meted out to slaves and the meticulous method of executing
rebels, "by nailing them down on the ground with crooked Sticks on
every Limb, and then applying the Fire by degrees from the Feet and
Hands, burning them gradually up to the Head, whereby their pains are
extravagant." Only two weeks after Thomas Thistlewood arrived in
Savanna-la-Mar in 1750, he watched his host William DorriU order the
body of a dead runaway dug up and beheaded, with the head to be fixed
on a pole and the body to be incinerated . Just months later Thisrlewood
"saw a Negro fellow nam'd English belonging to Fuller Wood Tried, lost,
and hang'd upon ye rst Tree immediately (for drawing his knife upon a
White Man), his head Cutt off, Body left unbury'd.'' Once he assumed
the post of overseer on the Egypt sugar plantation, Thisdewood also had
occasion to use the dead to enhance his authority. In October 1752 he was
pleased to receive a letter, two returned fugitives, and "also Robin's head,
who was hanged yesterday for running away with those two boys." As a
warning to others he "put it upon a pole and stuck it up just at the angle
of the road in the home pasture." II
Lady Maria Nugent passed just such a signpost on her way to church
one day in r803. If the members of her party had not already promised
their attendance to the clergyman in Kingston, she protested to her diary,
"I would not have gone, for we were obliged to pass dose by the pole, on
which was stuck the head of a black man who was executed a few days
ago." Placing the bodies of the condemned along well-traveled paths served
to haunt those places with memories and narratives of crime and punish-
ment. Once, while touring western Jamaica in 1816, Matthew Gregory
Lewis was inspired to ask "to whom a skull had belonged, which I had
observed fixed on a pole by the roadside, when returning last from Mon-
tego Bay.'' As it turned out, the sev.ered head had been there for five years,.
since about r8n, when "a Mr. Dunbar had given some discontenr to his
negroes in the article of clothing them ... This was sufficient w induce
his head driver, who had been brought up in his own house from infancy,
to form a plot among his slaves ro assassinate him.'' The recycling of such
stories reintroduced past proof of white power into the present and fas-·
tened marks of it to particular places,, in the form of remains of criminals
like Mr. Dunbar's rebellious driver. At times, the colonial state even tried
to convert the oppositional discourse of the enslaved into narrativ·es of
slaveholder power. Jamaican authorities hanged Eboe Dick in r81'6 for
''making use of singing, propagating and disseminating seditious and rebel-
lious words, songs,, and expressions." Placing his head in "the most public
place at Lindhurst'' plantation, officials hoped to make him sing a dif£erent
song. Yet in their att·empts to inscribe thdr power on the landscape, slave-
holders also animated memories of resistance among the enslav·ed. Before
the executions of Dunbar's driv·er and his co-conspirators, while they wer'e
imprisoned and awaiting trial, a woman on a neighboring plantation ros·e
up against h·er overseer, grabbed him by throat,. and called out t:o her fellow
slaves, ''Come here! Come here! Let's Dunbar him!'' Dunbar's killer had
become a role model, and a single act of resistance h~d become a V•erb.
How many other slaves, seeing the skuHs of Dunbar's killer or of Eboe
Dick,. heard their stories in subsequent y·ears and thought, Here is where
a hero died? 12
That is not what slaveholders hoped for. They wanted the ghoulish dis-
plays to serve a dear purpose. Dead bodies, dismembered and disfigured
as they were, would he symbols of the power and dominion of slave mas-
ters. In their view, the s·evered heads standing sentry over the phntation
landscape conveyed a warning to potential r·ebds and reassurance to sup-
porters of the social order. Such symbols were thought to be efFective
because they had emotional power: they harnessed the otherworldly and
-. the sacred to specific bodi.es, places, and narratives, which in turn bore
witness to the sodal power of the rulers. Mosdy,. Jamaican slaveholders
----,
'
Icons, Shamans, and Martyrs ~ 137
brought these conventions from the British theater of social control,. bur
in the Caribbean those who were running the show had to restage several
elements of the exhibition .
Courting the Supernatural

Elaborate tortures and postmortem humiliations were stmdard punish-
ments in early modern Europe and England. As in Jamaica, they served
to graft saaed and social power onto the bodies of condemned criminals.
Disfiguradon and scorching gave criminals a foretaste of the punishments
their souls would receive in hell. Thus, human beings brought the wrath
of God to bear on enemies of the state. Dismembering corpses or exposing
them to be "consumed by the air and the birds of the sky" protected living
communities from the evil that criminal spirits might continue to work
in the world. Incineration of criminals' corpses effected complete physical
and metaphysical annihiillation. Denial of a deoent burial for the remains
arrested the spirit's passage into the other world and profaned the memory
of the dead, by fixing the attention of the living upon the rotting body.
Throughout Europe public exposure of bodies at places of execution and
at crossroads "formed part of a dual system which maximized display ...
The executions themselves were primarily meant as an example to the
inhabitants. Exposure of corpses along the roads was a special warning
directed at non-residents coming in." Indeed, late seventeenth- and early
eighteenth-century English guidebooks often mentioned gallows and gib-
bets as landmarks. 13
The fear and submission induced by such measures depended in part
on an understanding held in common by the rulers and the ruled. To a
degree, the populace and the overlords shared a religious idiom concerning
death and the afterlife, though they surely interpr,eted the lexicon differ-
ently, in accordance with their experience of material life and social hier-
.archy. Also, they shared an understanding of the religious ramifications of
courtroom protocol and public execution.
Assize judges, who descended on the English countryside twice a year
during the eighteenth century, carefully tailored their rhetoric to connote
godly paternalism, as well as the power and passion of righteous vengeance,
as a means of leghimating the rule of law. "When the time caine to pro-
nounce a deach sentence, "the powers of light and darkness were summoned
into 111:he court with the black cap which was donned to pronounce sentence
of death, and the spotless white gloves worn at the end of a 'maiden assize'
when no prisoners were left for execution." The rites of legal practke
likened judges to God, and thus they s·eemingly derived their authority
fmm the divine. A death sentence, then, represented a supernatural judg-
ment,. merely mediated by the state. At the p1ace of execution, dramatic
pageants of sin, redemption, and damnation organized the scaffold ritual.
The widespread sale of pamphlets containing the "last dying speeches and
co·nfessions" of the cond·emned created ·common expectations for the drama
of the exe.cutions. Recurring forms and cer·emonies drawn from religious
narratives and r·egional history played to "generations highly literave in
emblematic meaning." The gallows itself simultaneoasly proclaimed that a
given place was a ''city of law" and heralded the majesty of the authorities
who enforced the laws. SymboHc authority was enhanced by the judicial.
exercise of mercy and personal patronage. Judges wielded broad disc~etion
in the matter of waiving dea111:h sentences. The intervention of well-h,eeled.,.
influemial men often saved the lives of convicted felons. The effect was to
deliver people threatened by execution (who were disproportionately poor
laboring fo~k) into the custody of the propertied elite, who generally con-
trolled the legal institutions in the first place. In short, to enhance their
power, authorities drew on a common discourse ~bout legal ritual,. symbolic
authority, and death produced by local historical precedents relating to per-
sonal and cultural imeraction. 14
Such common forms of discourse were scarcer in Jamaica. Africans and
their des·cendants, schooled to understand very different and disparate
embl.ems of sac:red power, replaced the "visually literate audience" that had
been educated to interpret the sacred signs of English legal authority. One
can only assume that similar rites of terror read quite differently to an
audienoe in Jamaica thm they did in England. In Douglas Hay's concep-
tion, "Justice, Terror and Mercy," managed with delicacy and circumspec-
tion, tutored people to respect the authority of the elite in England. The
Jamaican plantocracy, which initially shared few cultural idioms with
slaves, and perhaps none with Africans, ruled largely through magistrates'
exercise of terror. Slaveholders, thoug,h they drew on the cultural resources
of England, had to adapt them to the Jamaican situation. 15
Un~ike the English <;ammon folk, Mricans and their children wer·e cul-
tural outsiders. When Edward Long evaluated Jamaican slave laws in 1774,
Icons, Shamans, an.d Martyrs -l1l I39
he opined that "the Mricans, first imported, were wild and savage in the
extreme." In ·expressing this view, he merely echoed the language of the
1661 Barbados slave code, which condemned "negroes" as a "heathenish,
brutish and an Uncertaine dangerous Kinde of people," who could not be
a.dequately governed by English law. Early in the life of the colony, law-
makers in Jamaica had drawn on the legal experience of both England and
Barbados. By the eighteenth century, the legislators had adapted their slave
codes to local conditions, chief among them the persistent threat of open
rebellion. The legal system was in place, but ~ belief system was not. 16
Rapid demographic turnover in the sugar islands meant that the imple-
menrers of social order could never count on having people know or inter-
nalize the rules. Moreover, the meanest enforcers of plantation discipline,
the "petty whites," shifted about constantly from plantation to plantation,
from colony to colony, and from Hfe to death. The "new-come buckra''
regularly .confronted "new Negroes'' of diverse origins. Jamaica was per-
petually threatened by its fluctuating and restless enslaved population. As
Long pur it, expressing the characteristic negrophobia of the planter class,.
"their intractable and ferocious tempers naturally provoked their masters
to rule them with a rod of iron." Their masters also struggled to conjure
an effective symbolic discourse to legitimate their rule, similar to the harsh
punishments of the military, but based on principles and practices pos-
sessing features peculiar to slave society,. quite different from those oper-
ating in England. 17
In r664 the Jamaican assembly established parallel courts specifically for
the trial and sentencing of slaves. In her study of the slave courts in Saint
Andrew's parish from 1746 to 1782, the historian Diana Paron has con-
vincingly argued that judicial practice in Jamaica "emphasized the differ-
ence between slave and free, and valorized the slaveholder's private
power," rather than "representing the supposed common discipline of all
to a single rule of law, as did the contemporary English spectacle of trial
and punishment." Throughout most of the eighteenth century, crimes
committed by slaves were tried before informal and irregularly scheduled
tribunals composed of thre·e freeholders and two magistrates, who were
usually prominent planters. Until 1788 there was no jury, and even after
the law provided for nine-man juries (paid two pounds each by the parish
vestries to auend), and then twelve-man juries in r8r.6, the defendants
I !
never had any opportunity to appeal. At any rate, there would have been I
140 };;- The Reaper's Garden
no time for appeal because, as the planter William Beckford remarked, "a
negro is often condemned in one hour, and receives execution in the
next." Rather than trying to instill in slaves the idea of a uniform system
of justice, slave courts demonstrated to the enslaved that in most cases the
will of themr masters and the law were one and the same. 18
It followed that the punishments decreed by the court resembled those
routinely meted out by slaveholders. Much more frequently than courts
in England, slave courts ordered corporal punishment, featuring use of
the whmp, that enduring symbol of plantation authority. Mutilation for
noncapita~ crimes-the chopping off of ears, noses, feet, and so on-con-
tinued long after European courts had discontinued such abuses. For the
capital crime of "assault on a white person" or "rebellious conspiracy,"
postmortem punitive measures were common. The frequency of mutila-
tions and aggravated death sentences, which in eighteenth-century Eng-
land were reserved for traitors, signaled the expansion of the very concept
of treason to include almost any crime committed by slaves; for any act
that could be interpreted as resistance to their absolute subjugation could
be defined as betrayal. 19 Paradoxically, a population that had fewer reasons
to be loyal to the ruling elite than had English common folk was more
regularly defined as traitorous. Slave codes and courts in Jamaica operated
on behalf of a narrowly conceived public interest comprising little more
than the collective interests of slaveholders. Planters and merchants may
have been convinced of the moral legitimacy of such a system, when they
bothered to justifY it, but they needed only to compel the enslaved to
respect the authority of fear.
The centerpiece of legal terror was punishment and execution used to
set an example. Yet unlike the regular, carnivalesque demonstrations of
state authority in England, Jamaican executions consisted of sporadic,
localized dramas. When groups of rebels were hanged or burned after
failed uprisings, crowds certainly gathered, but at most times, in most
parts of the island, public executions were used more to dramatize the
power of masters than to construct a community governed by recognizably
just laws and punishments. Mter a 1766 uprising in Westmoreland parish,
Thisdewood noted, "2 of the Rehel Negroes were tried yesterday and one
of them burnt with a slow fire (alive) near the gallows at Savanna la Mar,
yesterday evening; and the other, this morning at Cross-Path, where they
killed Gardiner." Killing the second rebel at the same place where the
white man had been slain certainly represented an attempt to reclaim the
place for white authority. This was common practice, as Thistlewood
remarked some years later, when "the head of Gold, the Rebel, [was] car-
ried to Leeward this evening, to be put up as a terror." After landing in
Saint Ann's Bay, Jamaica, in 1779, Captain Thomas Lloyd of the Royal
Navy saw a man and a woman "in irons, bound together, leading to trial,
and attended by very few people." He was told that they were runaway
slaves. At the time Lloyd was on his way to dinner at a plantation in the
interior but when he returned in the evening ro his ship, the Hercules Vict-
ualler, he inquired about the couple. An officer from another ship in the
harbor who had been ashore described what had taken place: "They were
both executed on the wharf, in the sight of the ship's company ... The
sister of the woman who was executed, bewailing her loss, the owner came
to her, and said, Take care of yourself, you B-, you see how your sister
is served. Upon enquiring of some of the Planters, the man had been
hanged for running away, and the woman for secreting him."zo
In the late eighteenth century, constables or deputy marshals were paid
to attend trials and carry out executions. In 1794, for example, the Saint
Thomas-in-the-Vale parish vestry paid the deputy marshal, George
Coward, two pounds for the trial and ten pounds for execution of Frank,
a black horse thief Coward collected one pound, twelve shillings for "the
Hire of a Horse and Cart to convey Frank to his gallows at Bog Walle"
The vestry also reimbursed him five pounds for providing a parry of light
dragoons with refreshment. The soldiers had been ordered to attend the
execution. The dragoons provided security as well as a reminder of the
imposing presence of the colonial state, but apparently they, along with
sailors in Saint Ann's Bay, constituted most of the audience for the execu-
tion of the enslaved couple. Perhaps the military officers and the slave-
holders conspired not only to keep the enslaved .in subjection, but also to
warn the long-suffering rank and file not to challenge military hierarchy.
After all, the West Indian garrison had an extraordinarily high mortality
rate; according to historian Roger Norman Buckley, the soldiers "were
driven to misconduct by the danger of rheir new lives." To control them,
officers were encouraged to "treat them aH like slaves." Common soldiers
may have watched such executions with conflicting feelings of pride and
anxiety: but for the grace of colonial power, they might be standing under
the gallows themselves. 21
The enshved were often tded, sentenced, and executed in towns, but
postmortem punishments usually took place on the plantations where
slaves had committed crimes or hatched their rebellions. Planters even
preferred that the entire d.emonstratmon of authority occur locally. In 1731,
landowners in the Carpenter's Mountains in Saint Elizabeth parish sent
a petition to the Jamaican assembly r·equesdng permission to set up a
court n·earby, so that they would not have to travel the "near forty miles
to give an ~vccounr of their white people, slaves, and cattle, in order to be
assessed." They also complained that the usual custom of trying slaves .in
the town of Lacovia, at such an inconvenient distance,. allowed many of
them to escape "just punishment." Planters proposed that they be allowed
to try slaves "nearest the place where any facts are committed." They rea-
soned,. "The example of such a trial, and the punishment ordered by the
justices and fr.eeholders, in the neighborhood, must strike a greater terror
in the other slaves than their bare hearing of its being acted at a distance,
although, if condemned to death, the head may be ordered to be put up
at the place where the fact was commiued." The petitioners hoped to har-
ness the whole judicial ritual to local authority, thereby making their pri-
vate rule synonymous with public power. Whether they got their way in
this instance is unknown; by a ·Century la~er, though, it seems dear that
while slave trials took place in towns, the executions had been relocated
to the count:ryside, to the scene of the crime. In the wake of the 18:31 Bap-
tist War, the Methodist ministers Thomas Murray and Henry Bleby
watched as thirteen convicted rebels were taken from the town of Lucea
into the Hanover parish countryside for execution. In any case, the
planters of the Carpenter's Mountains already possessed the ability to
deplo~y perhaps; their most fearsome token of authority: relics that haunted
the landscape. 22
Dmana Paton has shed light on the "detailed and finely calibrated lan-
guag,e" of the sent·ences involving mutilation in the Saint Andrew parish
slave court records. Not only was the court specific about which body
parts wouM be removed at what time from each individual criminal, it
often ordered that the severed pieces,. ·especially ears, be nailed to signifi-
cant landmarks. For example, magistrat·es ordered that ·ears be nailed to
the g.alilows, to watch hut gates, or quite often to great trees. Jamaican
authorities employed a ''symbolics of mutilation,'' by trying to impress on
the enslaved the meaning that such punishments had carried in Great
Icons, Shamans, and Martyrs -l1l I43
Britain a century eadier. They also innovated . The court often ordered
lashings to occur beneath large silk cotton trees and body parts to be
nail,ed tO the trees. Black people in Jamaica reportedly believed that the
spmrits of the dead dweUed in and around such trees, sometimes by choice,
but more often because they had been caught and trapped by magical
means. Jamaican whites were aware of this belief--some probably shared
it-and tried to manipulate it. In effect, they co-opted African under-
standings of spiritual capture.23
When European visitors and missionaries in Africa described Africans'
spiritual world, their biases often led them to misrepresent African reli-
gious ideas and practices. Nevertheless, they correctly acknowledged the
prominent place the spirits of the dead held in African social thought. In
the mid~eight·eenth century the first British missionary to the Gold Coast,
Thomas Thompson, noted that Akan-speaking Africans believed that "the
soul, after death, keeps haunt about the body, and is latent in,. or near its
fepository." All across West-Central Mrica in the seventeenth century, mis-
sionaries observed that ''those who had died violent deaths, outcasts, or
people who were not buried .... formed a category of ghosts and other
wicked spirits ... Religious precautions were taken to prevent them from
doing harm." But people could also harness and manipulate such spirits.
Among Africans shipped to Jamaica from the Loango Coast, who com-
prised as many as a quarter of enslaved immigrants during me last two
decades of the t:ransaclantic slave trade, minkisi, or spiritual charms, could
be used to effect one's wiH in the world. According to Robert Farris
Thompson, '''the nkisi [was] believed to live with an inner life of its own.
The basis of that life was a cap cured sou1 ... The owner of the charm
could direct the spirit in the object to accomplish mystically certain things
for him.'' By the late eighteenth century, whites certainly knew that such
techniques of spiritual capture made a strong impression on slaves. Simi-
larly, whites knew that blacks often feared and shunned the spirits of the
dead. Matthew Lewis observed in r8r6, of the beliefs of slaves on his prop-
,erty, "The duppies of their adversaries are very alarming beings, equally
powerful by day as by night, and who are spiritually terrific.'' Lewis learned
that an Mrkan man hospitalized with fits had been stricken by the specter
of a recently deceased white man whom the African had formerly
0 ,f£ended. He had received what Lewis called ccrh.e ghostly blow" when
passing through a burial ground used exclusively by whites.24
144 !;;!- The Reaper's Garden
Lewis's story highlights a cuneus congruence between the spiritual

beliefs of the enslaved and the disciplinary techniques of the plantocracy.
At Half-Way Tree in Saint Andrew, the old cotton tree that gave the spot
its name and that commonly bore the bodies and relics of maimed and
executed blacks lived next to a well-populated (and potentially dangerous)
church graveyard. In 1752 the Kingston parish vestry erected a public gal-
lows at Spring Path, on the same site as a "negro burying ground." The
evidence that the slave courts intended to domesticate the dead in accor-
dance with their understanding of Mrican cosmology is inconclusive. Yet
the rituals of sentencing and punishment, resulting from rapid and irreg-
ular trials before few spectators, were no doubt less fearsome to the
enslaved than the lingering presence of lbody parts and mutilated corpses
or, more precisely, the presence of the spirits that hovered around them.
Recall the unfortunate Mr. Dunbar's head driver, who, Matthew Lewis
learned, had been above suspicion until investigators searched his house.
There, they found not only Dunbar's watch, "but with it one of his ears,.
which the villain had carried away, from a negro belief that, as long as the
murderer possesses one of the ears of his victim, he will never be haunced
by his spectre. "25
Shamans
The way in which Mricans and their descendants in Jamaica harnessed the
dead to promote poHtical authority was not fully apparent to the plan toe-
racy until after Tacky's Revolt in q6o, though some knew that Africans.
brought magical talismans and medicines with them when they crossed
the Atlantic and that they tried to use them against their captors. Cruising
off the Windward Coast of Africa in 1751 aboard the Duke ofArgyle, Cap-
tain John Newton discovered that nearly twenty of the captive Africans
belowdecks had broken their chains. The slavers barely averted an insur-
rection, but days later the Africans tried another tactic: "In the afternoon
we were alarmed with a report that some of the men slaves had found
means to payson the water in the scuttle casks upon deck," Newton
recorded in his journal, ''but upon enquiry found they had only conveyed
some of their country fetishes, as they call them, or talismans into one of
them, which they had the creduHty to suppose must inevitably kill all who
drank of it." Relieved, Newton nervously congratulated himself on his
lcons, Shamans, and Martyrs ~ I45
own "superior" spirituality: "If it please God thay make no worse attempts
than to charm us to death, they will not much harm us, but it shews their
intentions are not wanting." Earlier in the century, some Englishmen
showed a greater concern with the efficacy of Mrican spiritual power.
Thomas WaMuck, an army officer stationed at Barbados in the early
I700S, wrote, "White men, overseers of plantations and masters have been
forced to leave this island by being bewitched by the Negroes." Yet most
Jamaican planters seemed as unconcerned as Newton. 26
When they wrote in diaries or in published accounts, whites in Jamaica
often referred casually to the magical practices of the enslaved. Before q6o
whites considered these practices to be a generally harmless and bizarre fea-
ture of slave life, nor unlike witchcraft and conjuring in Europe. In the
spring of 1753, Thistlewood watched as Guy, from the nearby Salt River
plantation, "acted his Obia, &c. with singing, dancing, &c. Odd enough''-
odd, bur nor serious. Early the next year, Thisdewood noted with amuse-
ment that Jinney Quashe, a well-known obeah man, was "pretending to pull
bones, &c. out of several of our Negroes for which they was to give him
money." Somehow, Jinney Quashe's clients discovered that he was a fraud,
and "they chased him out of the estate, frightened enough." The event
reminded Thistlewood of a scene he had witnessed in Yorkshire when a
noted conjurer from Wakefield, Black Lambert, was chased our of the town
of Acworth. Such innocent comparisons ended a few years later when an
islandwide slave conspiracy in Jamaica brought the alarming aspects of black
shamanism to the forefront of planter concerns.27
In the 1760s, two bodies of spiritual practice, obeah and myal, came to
the arrention of Jamaican authorities. Often conflated in the minds of
whites and in their descriptions, these two spiritual arts hdd a supernat-
ural political authority among the enslaved. Obeah and myal were used
both to mediate conflict: and to instigate it; they were both a threat to
communal equilibrium and a powerful social discipline. Sometimes too,
they provided an axis for insurrectionary action, for, as John Newton dis-
covered in 1751, supernatural power emboldened slaves to resist the
dominion of their masters and allowed blacks to believe more generally
that they could challenge whites. 28
"Obeah" (or "obia") was the catchall term used to describe a complex
of shamanistmc practices derived from various parts of Africa and con-
ducted by ritual specialists working largely outside formal institutions.
I46 l'*- The Reaper's Garden
Practitioners of obeah operated as herbalists and sages tending to physical,

social, and spiritual needs, though whites generally mischaracterized obeah
as simple witchcraft, thus failing to see its larger role in social and spiritual
healing and protection. Throughout most of the eighteenth century, it was
almost exclusively Africans who mastered obeah,. but one of the eadiest
reports to the House of Commons on Jamaican shamans claimed, "The
Negroes in general, whether Africans or Creoles, revere, consult, and abhor
them; to these Oracles they resort, and with the most implicit Faith, upon
all Occasions, whether for the cure ofDisorders, the obtaining of Revenge
for Injuries or Insults, the conciliating of Favour, the Discovery and Pun-
ishment of the Thief or the Adulterer, and the Prediction of Future
Events." The term "obeah" also referred to the charms that carried spiritual
power and could be placed strategically around an individual who was to
be cursed or protected. These were made of a variety of materials thought
to have sacred significance, including blood, feathers, parrot's beaks,
animal teeth, broken glass, eggshells, and dirt from grave sites. 2 9
Haunting and spiritual cure were central to Jamaican shamanism. In
1799, for example, Mr. Graham, a free black man and a Christian, report-
edly sought out an obeah man because "his first Wife, who was dead, came
into his ground and troubled him." The obeah man prepared "Guinea
Pepper and red head Roots," which Graham was to put above his door to
drive away the spirit of his former wife. Graham paid the obeal1 man a
rooster and a doUar for his services. One critical skill possessed by obeah
practitioners was "shadow catching," the ability to capture souls. In 1826
Alexander Barclay claimed to have been present at the trial of a "notorious
obeah-man, driver on an estate in the parish of St. David." One of the
witnesses against the driver was another slave on the same plantation.
When asked if indeed he knew the accused to be an obeah man, the wit-
ness replied,. "'Ees, massa, shadow-catcher, true ... Him ha coffin, (a little
coffin produced) him set for catch dem shadow."' The court asked for
further clarification and the witness complied: "'When him set obeah for
[somebody], him catch dem shadow and dem go dead."' 30
Like obeah, myalism addressed spiritual danger, though in the more
institutional setdng of a religious sect. As first described by Edward Long
in 1774, the "myal society" revolved around a ritual dance, performed to
manage the activities of spirits in the social world. The rite of initiation
involved a symbolic enactment of death and rebirth, in which the initiate
Icons, Shamans, and Martyrs ~ I47
danced under the influence of a narcotic potion until passing out, seem-
ingly lifeless. "In this state he continued," as Long described it, "no pulse,
nor motion of the heart, being perceptible," until the initiate was provided
with an antidote, at which point "the body resumed its motions, and the
party, on whom the experiment had been tried, awoke as from a trance,
entirely ignorant of any thing that had passed since he left off dancing."
Thomas Thisdewood was angry when he discovered in 1769 that his con-
sort's daughter, Coobah, had twice hosted the myal dance on the Paradise
estate, where "Egypt Dago, and Job, who are both Myal-men attend these
dancings." Soon after, he "reprimanded Coobah severely." The society was
supposed to offer protection from the workings of malevolent forces, but
especially from the unsettled spirits of the dead. Suffering under the evils
of enslavement, sickness, and social disharmony, the enslaved turned to
such tactics to negotiate a path in the world.3 1
People employed obeah men and women privately to treat disease and
to manipulate human behavior by harnessing spirits; they brought in myal
men (literally, "spirit men") to hold collective ceremonies of healing and

communion. These practices played an important role in explaining mis-
fortune and mediating disputes over illegitimate concentrations of posses-
sions or power among the enslaved-such as the privileges accumulated
by drivers and others who collaborated with slaveholders-but under
some circumstances, such necromancy also enhanced the political influ-
ence of ritual specialists and their patrons, when they rose to challenge the
plantation regime. If obeah and myai often acted to counter the power of
slaveholders, as some scholars have maintained, both were most authori-
tative when engaging with the problems presented by the presence of the
dead. Such practices offered people power over the most fraught and per-
ilous feature of life in slave society: the permeable frontier between life and
dearh. Rampant death made such arts of the spirit critical at all times, bur
as masters recruited dead bodies and parts of bodies to demonstrate their
power, the political significance of necromancy acquired paramount
importance for the enslaved. Many joined the myal society, as Long rec-
ognized, because initiates would supposedly be "invulnerable by the white
men; and, although they might in appearance be slai.n, the obeah-man
could, at his pleasure, restore the body to life." During the I770s, Long
described obeah as "a sort of witchcraft of most extensive influence ...
The authority which such of their old men as had the reputation of wiz-
148 !o;- The Reaper~ Garden
ards, or Obeah-men, possessed over [slaves], was sometimes very success-

fully employed in keeping them in subordination to their chiefs." In fact,
Long was looking back to q6o, trying to explain the role of such "wizards"
in the most extensive slave revolt in the eighteenth-century British
Caribbean.32
Tacky's Revolt, named for one its principal Mrican leaders, threatened
British control of Jamaica for the first time since the Maroon Wars of the
I?JOs. Taking advantage of the opportunity presented by troop redeploy-
ments during Britain's Seven Years' War against France and Spain, more
than a thousand slaves revolted in the first phase of the uprising, which
began on 7 April 1760 and continued until October of the next year. Over
that time, rebels killed sixty whites and destroyed thousands of pounds'
worth of property. "Whether we consider the extent and secrecy of its
plan, the multitude of the conspirators, and the difficulty of opposing its
eruptions in such a variety of places at once," wrote Long in his 1774 His-
tory of jamaica, Tacky's Revolt was "more formidable than any hitherto
known in the West Indies."33
During the revolt and the repression that followed, more than five hun-
dred black men and women were killed in battle, were executed, or com-
mitted suicide, and another five hundred were exiled from the island for
life. Tacky, having been shot by Maroons allied with the plantocracy, was
decapitated, and his head was displayed on a pole on the road to the cap-
ital, Spanish Town. The warning sign did not mark the highway for long;
Tacky's head was stolen, Long supposed, "by some of his country men
who were unwilling to let it remain exposed in so ignominious a manner."
Captured rebel leaders were liable to be burned alive. Bryan Edwards later
described the stoicism of one man at the stake: "The wretch that was
burnt was made to sit on the ground, and his body being chained to an
iron stake, the fire was applied to his feet. He uttered not a groan, and
saw his legs reduced to ashes with the utmost firmness and composure;.
after which one of his arms by some means getting loose, he snatched a
brand from the fire that was consuming him,. and flung it at the face of
his executioner." Other Africans reportedly cracked jokes in the hour of
death. The diaries of Thisdewood, who successfully defended his planta-
tion when the uprising came to his parish, confirm Edwards's published
account:s. Shocked planters and colonial officials responded to Tacky's
Revolt by tightening social control, updating their slave codes, and urging
more vigilant enforcement of existing regulations. In q61 the Jamaican

assembly considered, but ultimately did not pass, a bill to increase the
import duties on enslaved recruits from the Gold Coast, whom planters
bLamed for the revolt and who comprised more than a quarter of all
Mricans arriving in Jamaica. We cannot know whether this measure would
have calmed rhe aftershocks. Coromantees and their allies rose up again
in 1765, q66, and q67. 34
The aftermath of the rebellion threw the direct competition among dif-
ferent forms of sacred authority into stark relief. Tacky had planned and
instigated the uprising with obeah practitioners as his closest counselors.
He and his co-conspirators called on the shamans to use their charms to
protect the rebels from bullets and to administer binding loyalty oaths,
which required the plotters to consume a concoction made up of blood,
rum, and grave dirt, which they believed to have sacred significance. In
the wave of executions that followed the rebellion, none were more
impressive than those of the shamans. Revealingly, colonial authorities felt
that they needed to resort to more awesome displays than they normally
projected. In a report to the House of Commons, one witness described
the scene: '~t the place of execution he bid defiance to the Executioner,
telling him that it was not in the Power of the White People to kill him;
and the Negro Spectators were astonished when they saw him expire. On
the other Obeah-men, various Experiments were made with Electrical
Machines and Magic Lanthorns, which produced very little Effect; except
on one who, after receiving many severe Shocks, acknowledged his
Master's Obeah exceeded his own." Jamaican masters could not abide
sources of authority they did not wholly controL After Tacky's Revolt,
Jamaican law called for the death, imprisonment, or exile of "any Negro
who shall pretend to any Supernatural Power"; and the aggressive prose-
cution of enslaved necromancers remained a prominent concern in slave
court trials of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Execu-
tions of shamans took place with sufficient frequency (especially in tur-
bulent times) that Thomas Thistlewood could note matter-of-factly in his
diary, "Hear Srompe, the Mial Man, was burnt alive this evening, and his
wife (Dr Frazier's Poilu, a mulatto) hanged," without further comment on
the merits of the case. 35
Whites both believed in and doubted the efficacy of black supernatural
power. They continued to regard it as "superstition," but of a peculiarly
threatening kind. Most important, from the standpoint of the Jamaican

plantocracy, obeah could motivate the enslaved to direct political action.
In 1784 Judge John Grant rejected a master's appeal to stop the transporta-
tion of a convicted obeah man for the following reason: "If granted in this
instance," warned the judge, "application with equal reason might be
made, while a rebeHion might be raging throughout the country." Judge
Grant clearly worried about obeah's political potential, but in his notes on
the case he defined obeah as the "pretended exercise of witchcraft or sor-
cery, a crime which the new negroes bring with them from Mrica, and
which does infinite mischief among their feHow slaves." Such ambivalence
toward black necromancy characterized the colonial state's persecution of
its practitioners right through to the end of slavery and beyond. As long
as people believed in its power, governing authorities would have to
punish its practice. The consolidated slave act passed in Jamaica in 1823
clarified the real issue at stake: "Obeah practised with intention to excite
rebellion, or endangering the life or health of a slave, shall be punished at
the discretion of the court.'' As far as colonial officials were concerned, the
ban on obeah was a ban on alternative authority and social power. 36
As long as obeah's spiritual power remained credible, black men and
women, free and enslaved, wielded it to combat the woddly power of
whites. Authorities received periodic reminders that the enslaved con-
tinued to look to "wizards" for political guidance. The notorious rebel
Three-Fingered Jack, who led an outlaw band ofWest-Cenrral Africans in
1780, was reputed to be an obeah man. A conspiracy to revolt on the
Orange Vale plantation in Saint George parish in 1807 revolved around
the participation of Captain, reportedly a skilled obeah man who was to
administer loyalty oaths to the rebels and advise them on strategic maneu-
vers. Captain was an experienced and revered military sage. Colonial
authorities discovered, a decade after the fact, that he had also counseled
the Charles Town Maroons in the War of 1795-96. Less dramatic, but still
cause for concern, were more routine attempts to employ obeah against
whites. In a report to his cadre of evangelists back home, John Shipman,
the Kingston district chairman for the Weslyan Methodist Missionary
Society, described a fascinating encounter between a plantation overseer
and a free black man armed with an obeah charm. One night, about mid-
night, the overseer heard someone digging not far from his house. When
he looked out the window, he spotted a man whom he recognized digging
Icons, Shamans, and Martyrs ~ IJI
a hole and "depositing something which he knew to be an Obiah-Spell."

The overseer said nothing at the time, but the next morning "he sent for
the person who had done it and opened the hole and took out the deposit
(intimating that something extraordinary had informed him of it) and
found it to consist of a Bottle filled, I believe, with rain water, and some
feathers and eat's teeth." As Shipman put it, "This Gentleman got to
understand that it was intended to remove him from office, by death of
course." The overseer harangued the man, "informing him that he could
Hang him for what he had done" but then let him go, "charging him to
escape to America or some other place."37
Though missionaries like Shipman emphasized the spiritual harm
caused by "communication with evil spirits" and with "the Devil" (as had
prosecutors in seventeenth-century European and American witchcraft
trials), Jamaicis colonial government was more concerned with different
products of the supernatural imagination, particularly practices that
undercut the ability of the plamocracy to harness the influence of the dead
ro bolster irs own authority. Because black shamans drew their most
impressive power from the management of spirits and death, the prohibi-
tion amounted to a strategy to limit the prestige the enslaved could derive
from association with the spirits of the dead, while maximizing the power
of the colonial government's "magic." In this sense, power in Jamaican
slave society operated through various sorts of necromancy that would
influence the course of social events by invoking, reanimating, or placating
the dead.
Political authority nearly always has a uanscendem-that is, a
sacred-dimension. The dead, as representatives of an existence beyond
time, carry a mystical influence that: can be put to decisive use by the
living. In eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Jamaica, sacred spir-
itual authority resonated with the practical demands of domination, on
the one side, and of the struggle for survival under enslavement, on the
other. Supernatural beliefs and the machinery of the colonial state were
inextricably enmeshed. Colonial masters confronted African spirituality,
while black shamans wielded a (sometimes) countervailing political influ-
ence. In practice, neither masters nor slaves recognized a distinction
between material and spiritual power. As a political phenomenon, then,
colonial necromancy forces us to turn our attention to strategies for
manipu]ating cultural practices in a world where rhe dead were an active
152 "'" The Reaper's Garden
social presence, and where domination, dissent, and the threat of incred-
ible violence plagued every interaction.38
Martyrs
This haunted world extended well beyond the slave societies of the Amer-
icas. The iconic power of deaths of black rebels and shamans reverberated
across the ocean, where death meant other things and generated other
political possibilities. Historians have often gazed in horror at such grue-
some scenes, finding them reprehensible, or have averted their eyes,
moving quickly past the grisly events to focus on deeper structural
analyses. But they have seldom seen them as transitions, liminal moments
in the human progress toward the afterlife. In such moments, Mrican
rebels became transatlantic spirits, and those spirits played a generative
role in the political history of slavery. The rebellions of the 1760s, which
brought state power and popular necromancy into open conflict in
Jamaica, also inspired a significant moment of empathy back in the United
Kingdom-one that preceded a rising tide of antislavery sentiment that
would also draw strength from the continuing presence of the dead in the
temporal world. Here, too, the dead enjoyed an afterlife as a subject of
contention and an emblem of power, invoked by claimants to the mantle
of the sacred. Executed slaves became important symbols, entering history
in a way that masters could not control and making history in ways that
have often escaped notice. According to Africans' prevailing beliefs, the
spirits of executed rebels, at least those who were born in Mrica, probably
returned to Africa. Bryan Edwards acknowledged as much when, in 1760,
he penned a eulogistic poem from the perspective of a condemned insur-
gent looking forward to his repatriation: "On those blest shores-a slave
no more!" Yet the spirits of these rebels also continued to move through
the Atlantic world, fighting slavery, as they engaged with anxious investors,
sentimentalizing authors,. and vigilant masters, as well as successive gen-
erations of the enslaved.39
North American readers of the Pennsylvania Gazette could follow the
aftermath ofTacky's Revolt closely and ponder its implications for their
French and Indian War. As ships from Jamaica arrived in ports along the
eastern seaboard, passengers brought news of rebellion and reprisal. The
paper carried details of the executions: Scipio, Harry, and Cuffee, for
example, were executed at Spring Path, "first hanged, then their Heads
struck off, and fixed on Poles, and their bodies burnt." Readers learned
how four women named Sappho, Princess, Sylvia, and Doll, "who it
appeared had some Knowledge of the Conspiracy, were conducted to the
Place of Execution, with Halters round their Necks; and, after Quaco and
Anthony were executed, were re-conveyed to GaoL from whence they are
to be transported from this Island, and to suffer Death if they return." As
late as 1763 readers learned from a gentleman arriving in Boston from
Jamaica that several conspirators had been executed just before he left the
island. 40
The rebels haunted the enterprising families of Great Britain more than
they did the North Americans, however. From across the Atlantic, anxious
colonial investors could follow the trials of the Jamaican plantocracy in
the Gentlemen's Magazine, where in q6o readers also found articles con-
cerning "the duration of man's life," necessary "data for calculating annu-
ities on lives," and a discussion "on the intermediate state of souls." In
June they first learned of Tacky's April rebellion: fifteen overseers killed,
four plantations in Saint Mary's burned and destroyed, and most dis-
tressing, t:he commercial convoy that had been set to sail on I May
delayed. In July the magazine reported that Tacky and his chief lieutenant
had been killed and that the plantocracy had vanquished the insurgency.
August brought news of fresh uprisings in the prime sugar parishes of
Westmoreland and Hanover. It would be another year before gentlemen
could read, in August of 1761, the good tidings that the Jamaica fleet had
arrived under convoy of the Lively, which had f7o,ooo on board "for the
use of the merchants." At last, interested parties must have believed, the
public executions and the macabre icons of planter power had finally
worked their magic on the minds of t:he enslaved and brought them back
under control. 41
Even as Jamaica seemed to grow quiet, the spirit:s of the rebels animated
English literature, generating sympathetic affinities between slaves and
freeborn Brit:ons. Tacky's Revolt and its aftershocks coincided with the
United Kingdom's overwhelming victory in the Seven Years' War, after
which the empire acquired vast new territories and assumed sovereignty
over an unprecedented number of diverse and far-Bung peoples. The
immensity of the conquered territory provoked widespread discussion on
how hundreds of thousands of new subjecrs could be incorporated into a
154 "'" The Reaper's Garden
single orbit of imperia~ allegiance. In this context, many whites began cre-
atively to imagine affiliations with aliens, including the enslaved, rhar were
based on their own deeply felt way of identifying with other Britons. The
existing style of speech and narrative of belonging briefly brought the dead
rebels into the fold. News of the executions circulated amid prevailing sen-
timentalism and popular Christian martyrology, which helped the British
to envisage their nation as a moral community founded in persecution,
death, and religious virtue. AB this imagined community expanded, how-
ever briefly, to include the enslaved, the political killings of African rebds
were understood according to the same conventions used to describe the
passion of Jesus Christ and the political executions of later martyrs. In a
bizarre appropriation, perhaps mirroring the way that the enslaved made
spiritual sense of official homicide, the deaths of African rebels became the
subject of an empathetic poetry of death and righteousness, emerging in
sentimental scenes of suffering and fortitude that argued in favor of the
possibility of a united polyglot British nationality. 42
Inspired by tales of heroic suicides, the :first major antislavery poem,
Thomas Day and John Bicknell's Dying Negro (1773), posited a union
between blacks and whites, cemented by Christianity. Claiming to be
based on a true story, it presented the lament of an enslaved black man
in England, newly baptized and betrothed to a white servant, awaiting
transport to the dreaded West Indies. Preferring death to life in the
Caribbean, the man prepares a suicide sonnet for his intended wife and
then fataUy stabs himself. To his master, he proclaims the superiority of
Christian death to the prerogatives of property ownership.
And thou, whose impious avarice and pride

the holy cross to my sad brows denied,
Forbade me Nature's common rights to dairn,
Or share with thee a Christian's name;
Thou too farewell! for not beyond the grave
Extends thy power, nor is my dust thy slave.43
The poem helped to establish a recurring pattern in abolitionist literature,

glorifying the African who chooses Christian redemption in death over
servitude in life.
Remarkably, even slaveholders participated in propagating this trope.
Bryan Edwards was so moved by the sight of the executed rebels of 1760
that he wrote one of his first poems in rhe voice of a condemned African
who faces his executioners with dignity and defiance. Edwards, whose for-
tune depended on slaveholding, nevertheless found in the death of Alico,
his allegorical African rebel, a way to evoke a sacred struggle for liberty, the
rallying standard of Bririshness. "Firm and unmov'd am 1," declares the
African at the stake. "In freedom's cause I bar'd my breast-In freedom's
cause I die." Africans might even represent sacred national virtues better
than slaveholding Britons. "Now, Christian, glut thy ravish'd eyes," chal-
lenges Alico; "I reach the joyful hour I But know, pale tyrant, 'tis not thine
Eternal war to wage/The death thou giv'st shall but combine/To mock thy
baffied rage." Finally, Alico salutes death, "how welcome to th' opprest!"
for it brings liberation: "Thy kind embrace I crave/Thou bring'st to mis'ry's
bosom rest I And .freedom to the slave/" Tacky's rebels were martyrs, the
poem contended, in an ironic twist of fare; here, a savage pagan plays the
role of the savior of humanity and embodies the virtues dearest to British
hearts. But this moment of empathetic identification arrived too soon to
have a significant impact on imperial policy. Evocations of martyred rebels
served writers who wanted to show their political sensitivity to the question
of imperial sovereignty, bur outbursts like Samuel Johnson's notorious toast
"Here's to the next insurrection in the West Indies!" notwithstanding, state-
ments by literary men did not convince the metropolitan elite to support
such rebels against British slaveholders-not yet anyway.4 4
Tacky and his fellow conspirators, shamans, and martyrs provided more
direct inspiration to the enslaved in Jamaica. These rebels arguably enjoyed
their most significant afterlife when they entered popular history. In r8o7
Simon Taylor told his cousin, "I believe we are on the eve of a rebeUion
breaking out." Several newly arrived Africans on Taylor's plantation had
risen up and attempted to stab their driver. Taylor apprehended them,
interrogated them, and made a startling discovery. There had been "some
improper Communication" between his own slaves and those on a frontier
estate, "the Negroes of which Estate have always been the foremost in all
Insurrections from the year 1760,. 1765, & 1767." As a consequence, Taylor
learned, "all new negroes know of the insurrection of 40 years ago." He
asked rhetorically, "If something were not going on, for what reason would
they tell these New Negroes who have not been four months in the island
of what happened before any of the negroes sent there were born?" Taylor
himself had sharp memories of the events of the q6os. He had returned
from his sojourn at Eton just in time for the 1765 revolt. Taylor's own
rs6 ~ The Reaper's Garden
overseer was kiUed and decapitated by the rebels, who set fire to several
sections of cane field, as they caHed their fellows to arms by "singing their
war song." Given the turnover in Jamaican population, he must have
expected the revolts to have been long since forgotten by the enslaved.
But apparently the latest rebels on Taylor's plantation had been inspired
by lessons from the Jamaican past. Taylor caught a glimpse, reflected in
his letter, of an oppositional political history, taught and learned on
Jamaican plantations, a radical pedagogy of the enslaved. In surreptitious
conversations and certainly in sacred rituals, the dead figured in the goals,
strategies, and outcomes of slaves' political activity. The spirits of genera-
tions past indicated what might have been possible in the 1760s, and what
might still be, in Jamaica.45
By the time Taylor discovered this subversive school of historical
thought, the imperial context was quite different than it had been in the
176os. Whereas patriotic Britons were able to feel themselves favored by
God in the outcome of the Seven Years' War, many felt cursed by events
of the 1770s, 1780s, and 1790s, and this perception would contribute to
the emergence of a different approach toward dead slaves, which presented
them less as symbols of irrepressible liberty than as evidence of national
sin. Although slave rebels could be seen as embodying British virtue in the
midst of national triumph and conquest, the intervening decades had
brought the American, French, and Haitian revolutions; rare was the
Briton who could celebrate violent resistance in such dangerous times. In
fact, martyred rebels never made so great an impression on the British
imagination as would the more passive victims of slavery, the heaps of men,
women, and children who died unheralded. Whereas black martyrdom
illustrated the uansoceanic availability of the dead to serve political pur-
poses, martyrdom was not so influential as deaths that could be summoned
without raising the specter of retributive violence, those which allowed the
projection of sentimental concern and the possibility for imperial renewal,
without admitt:ing the justice of slave revolution. The black casualties of
Atlantic slavery would affect political history less as icons of sacred
authority than as the focus of arguments about national morality. Heroic
rebels would influence imperial politics less than would rhe black victims
of ordinary murders, which) happening to occur at a more opportune time
than Tacky's Revolt, had extraordinary consequences.
CHAPTER FIVE
The Soul of the British Empire
IF THE TIME was not yet right in the 1760s for martyred slave rebels to
win posthumous battles in the imperial capital, by the r78os, changing
conceptions of the proper relation between the living and the dead had
helped advance the antislavery movement in Great Britain considerably.
Beginning in the mid-eighteenth century, as rising evangelicalism, popular
sentimentality, and the fashionable genre of graveyard literature focused
British pubHc attention on the relation between death and moral values,
the high mortality rate in Britain's Caribbean slave colonies became a cen-
tral focus of a massive movement for colonial reform.
Between the r78os and the end of slavery, as partisans debated the
causes of high mortality, they made the dead central players in the politics
of antislavery. The antislavery movement, particularly in its evangelical
Christian incarnation, drew strength from a new rhetoric about slave
mortality; what had earlier been described principally in economic terms
became a moral problem of viral importance to the "soul" of the British
nation. Nevertheless, arguments about deaths among the enslaved showed
an interpenetration of feeling and reason, of sentiment and calculation,
rhat blended new styles of thought and speech with very old~indeed,
one could say, unenlightened~impulses. Discussions of the sin of slavery
were intertwined with consideration of judgment and the afterlife. Fear
of damnation thus helped spur legislation to abolish the slave trade, reg-
ister all slaves on colonial plantations, and finally end slavery in British
colonies.
Goods Thrown Overboard

Late in the summer of ry8o, five Liverpool merchants, including WiHiam
and John Gregson, the former and future mayors of the city, outfitted the
William to trade for slaves in West Africa. When the ship reached the Gold
Coast early the next year, its captain, Richard Hanley, found another ship
for sale, a recently captured Dutch prize, the Zorgue, or Zong. He bought
the vessel for his employers, dispatched the fortunate news, and transferred
the William's surgeon, Luke Collingwood, to the Zong as captain. Colling-
wood and a crew of seventeen immediately commenced purchasing slaves
to sell in Jamaica. As battles with the Dutch erupted along the coast,
Collingwood cruised the trading forts, managing to acquire 440 captives.
He also took aboard the outgoing governor of Anomabo, Robert Stubbs,
who had been suspended for instigating a dispute with local chiefs. 1
On 6 September ry8r, the Zong left West Africa. The length of the
Atlantic voyage stretched unexpectedly to eleven weeks; mortal sickness
gained on the crew and cargo. By the time the ship was in sight of Jamaica
on 27 November, seven members of the crew and more than sixty enslaved
Africans had died. The epidemic promised to kill more before long. Sick-
ness aboard the slaver would surely cause wary port authorities to quar-
antine the Zong in the harbor, thus alerting potential buyers to defects in
the cargo.
Collingwood steered the ship away from the island (he would later
claim that he had mistaken it for Hispaniola), pushed back into the encir-
cling sea, and caUed a meeting of his officers. He told them that the ship's
fresh water supply was low, that the sickest slaves below would surely die,
and that when they did they would lose all value, cost the owners dearly,
and diminish the expected remittance to their employees; but "if they were
thrown alive into the sea, it would be the loss of the underwriters." His
briefing held special appeal for the officers, who were promised the "priv-
ilege" of a certain number of slaves upon sale of the whole lot:. The value
of the officers' share would be determined by averaging the sale price of
the entire cargo. Every sick and dying African who brought a low price at
auction would reduce the officers' commission. 2
Collingwood showed a clear familiarity with the maritime insurance
policies then applicable to the slave trade. Indeed John Weskett's Complete
I
Digest of the Theory, Laws, and Practice ofInsurance, published earlier that I
I,
'I
The Soul of the British Empire -l'l 159
year, provided a calculated justification for the actions Collingwood was

about to take: "Whatever the master of a ship in distress, with the advice
of his officers and sailors, deliberately resolves to do, for the preservation
of the whole, in cutting away masts or cable, or in throwing goods over-
board to lighten his vessel, which is what is meant by jettison or jetson,
is, in all places, permitted to be brought into a general, or gross average:
in which aH concerned in ship, freight, and cargo, are to bear an equal or
proportionable part of what was so sacrificed for the common good, and
it must be made good by the insurers in such proportions as they have
underwrote." 3 Backed by sound financial rationalizadon, Collingwood
ordered the slaughter of the sickest and weakest Mricans for "the preser-
vation of the whole," averring also that it might be crueler still to let them
linger without water until they died of their illnesses. 4 It would be better,
he might have said, to end their worldly suffering and resurrect them as
parr of a "gross average." The chief mate, James Kelsal, initially opposed
the plan, or so he later testified in court, but he did not resist the order.
On 29 November, crewmen came into the dark and suffocating hold,
selected fifty-four ailing men, women, boys, and girls, and took them
above into sunlight and fresh air. Then they bound their hands and cast
them overboard. The next day they came for forty-three more. Cerrainly,
not all of these people were terminally ill, for one Mrican man had the
strength to grab hold of a rope that hung overboard, drag himself up to
a porthole, and clamber back into the ship, where crew members found
him hours later. Momentarily shielded from Collingwood's surveillance,
the sailors sympathized with the man and returned him to the hold.
Maybe they suspected that they and their own sick mates might have been
similarly dispatched, if only they had been worth something dead.
The next day it rained, and the crew collected enough fresh drinking
water to add a three-week supply to the ship's store. Then, on Collingwood's
orders, they came below to take 36 more Mricans . The crew managed to
bind and jettison 26 of them before the last IO leapt unfettered into the sea
and escaped to drown themselves. In just three days, CoUingwood and his
crew had caused the deaths of 132 Africans.
The captain and crew conducted this business as they watched the
terrified Africans thrashing about helplessly, choking and sputtering as
the sea swallowed them whole. Remaining in his cabin below, Robert
Stubbs, former governor of one of the busiest slave-trading posts in the
r6o !:;!- The Reaper's Garden
Atlantic world, saw and heard the drowning slaves from his portal. He
was only a passenger, he said later, and had nothing to do with the trans-
action; perhaps he also thought it beneath him to sully his hands with
the business. Housed beneath Governor Stubbs's quarters, the Africans
could hear only the screaming and splashing, as they waited in the dark-
ness for their turn. Whether from disease, dehydration, or sheer fright,
thirty more of them died in the hold before the ship made landfalL On
9 December the Zong came within sight of Jamaica again. The slaver
made harbor by 22 December, docking in time for Collingwood, Stubbs,
and the crew to celebrate Christmas on land.
On 28 December the merchant firm CoppeUs & Aguilar offered two
hundred survivors of the massacre for sale, advertising them as "choice
young Coromantee, Fanree, and Ashantee Negroes" (Figure 5.1).5 What
became of them? How did they narrate the experience to others in Jamaica?
At presenr, historians do not know who bought the Mricans or where they
may have gone, much less with whom they commiserated, who retold their
stories to others, or how they resolved to live with the certain knowledge
that whites were willing to murder them, methodically and systematically,
without apparent purpose. We do know, however, that many Britons told
and retold the story,. in the vocabulary of evangelical moral sentiment,
because they were certain that Collingwood, his crew, and the courts of
Great Britain had grossly distorted the meaning of death.
((Death More Dreadful Made"

The moral outrage exemplified by the reaction of evangelical Christians
to the Zong massacre animated emerging abolitionist sentiments. The
event provided a graphic example of the primacy of economic calculation
over human life in the system of slavery. In the context of eighteenth-
century conceptions of death and the dead, the articulation of this moral-
istic trope motivated a passionate politics. Antislavery campaigners
superimposed the image of slavery that crystallized in the Zong case on
the major parliamentary inquiries into the material and spiritual well-
being of the enslaved in the British Caribbean. Making the high mor-
tality rate in the Caribbean a focus of committee hearings in 1791 and of
the slave registration legislation of 1815, Padiament regarded slave mor-
tality, the accumulation of dead black bodies, as an important dimension
The Soul of the British Empire ·~ I6I
•+•-• ~Sth o~cemiter, r1k.

BORt:SAl.E at Bla(A R;tlJ,,.~
"" Wedl'lefchy rbe 9:h oay ot Ja.
•u•n nel'r. on a.oarrt the Snip
e,
z 0 11 G u ku,Ar Co/Jint'tUOiccl
C•mm•ndOJ. (r .. •m ta•Golti Coai~
·Of APilJc", 2QO choLe you'~i
. I
Co""'""'''' '""til, and Aj)""'''
N I 0: R 0 E S, by
~Cipptlls lJJ Aguilar.
Figure p. The survivors of the Zong massacre, advertised for sale by the merchant firm
Coppells & Aguilar. Supplement to the Royal Gazette (Kingston), 28 December 178r.
I62 J;;- The Reaper's Garden
of debates over the abolition of the Atlantic slave trade and colonial
slavery. At the moral center of antislavery concern was a figure-indig-
nation at the triumph of greed over human life-that found expression
in rhetoric about the deaths of slaves. This was more than propaganda;
moralistic evocations of the enslaved dead grew out of deep convictions.
They also relied on conventions of discourse that stemmed from pro-
found transformations in the eighteenth-century Anglo-Atlantic world. G
As Britons struggled to come to terms with revolutionary changes in
their demographic, economic, political, and religious experience, concern
for the fate of Africans and their descendants, at a remove from the imme-
diate upheaval at home, impelled abolitionists to articulate idealized
notions of the British moral order at home and abroad. The dead became
a symbol, a rhetorical device that abolitionists could bring to bear on
political life. Detailed narratives of pain and death, and later the human-
itarian use of demographic statistics, gathered power at the intersection of
British idealism, sentimentalism, and evangelicalism.
In eighteenth-century Britain a dramatic increase in life expectancy
accompanied the onset of the industrial revolution. The ravages of the
plague, which had reduced the population of England from about 5.25 mil-
lion to less than 4·9 million between 1657 and r686, yielded to steady pop-
ulation growth by the middle of the eighteenth century. Once inoculation
and vaccination had brought smallpox under control, Britons saw the first
signs of a population boom. However, steady progress in life expectancy
did not lead directly to the spread of more secular or "rational" ways of
viewing death. In fact, at midcentury the perception was that Great Britain
had experienced a dramatic decline in population.?
Many writers in Britain shared the view that the population of the "civ-
ilized" world had fallen, morally as well as numerically, since ancient
times. Many also believed that the spread of commerce was to blame for
the decrease. In a well-received essay, the Reverend John Brown argued
that excessive commerce "brings Superfluity and vast Wealth; begets
Avarice, gross Luxury, or effeminate refinement among the higher Ranks,
together with general Loss of Principle." In his explanation, "Vanity and
Effeminacy" reduced the desire to marry among the elite, and "Intemper-
ance and Disease" rendered the "lower Ranks" partially impotent. "This
Debility is always attended with a Shortness of Life, both in the Parents
and the Offspring; and therefore a still further Diminution of Numbers
The Soul of the British Empire ~ I63
follows on the whole." Two bills introduced in Parliamenr in 1753 and 1758
sought to determine the extent of the supposed decline, by establishing a
nationaill register of births, marriages, and deaths. Both bills failed when
they ran up against popular fears that "numbering the people," King
David's great sin (Sam. 24:1-25), would incur divine wrath. Most viewed
death and demography not through the lens of medical science but
through the apocalyptic visions of Christianity. Indeed, men and women
of feeling-especially authors and dissenting evangelicals-eschewed dis-
enchanted rationalism in favor of emotionally charged public interactions
with the dead. 8
In the early eighteenth century, orthodox Protestanrism held that death
severed all meaningful communion between the living and the deceased.
Unillike Catholics, in whose view the prayers of loved ones and the interces-
sion of the Church could improve the state of passing souls, Protestants
knew that their fate was fixed at death. As the historian Philip Almond has
put it: "On the last day, the judgement would be made by God. An.d when
this life was done with, and this world passed away, there would remain
only a state of t:otal blessedness and a state of interminable misery in the
stark symmetry of contrasts between heaven and hell." The only proper
approach to death, then, was lonely and anxious preparation for eternity.
Popular guides t:o the ars moriendi (art of dying), such as William Sherlock's
Practical Discourse concerning Death, first published in r689 and appearing
in thirty-two editions by 1759, urged, "This ought to be the Work and Busi-
ness of our whole Lives, to prepare for Death, which comes but once, but
that once is for eternity." Such convictions isolated individuals from eternal
communities-communities in which the living and the dead interacted
across the boundary between the physical and metaphysical worlds-and
distanced the dead from the routine concerns of the living. 9
By midcenrury, the increasing currency of Enlightenment phHosophy
tended to reduce the emphasis on eternal damnation and suffering, at least
among the literate upper echelons of British society. The image of God
commonly took on a more benevolent, detached, and rational aspect. For
many, the idea of "natural death" replaced notions of death as a "transcen-
dental trauma." As the historian Roy Porter has explained, "Death ceased
to be the ultimate enemy, requiring heroic acts of will, faith, purgation,
and penitence. Instead dying came to be widely treated as an easy transi-
tion to a more blessed state, a natural metamorphosis to be accepted, even
I64 Oi-- The Reaper's Garden
welcomed." It was not so for everyone. For members of the rapidly

growing evangelical sects, only a grateful fixation on the death of Jesus
Christ could afford the assurance of ultimate salvation. 10
Beginning in the 1730s and 1740s, the Protestant revival washed up on
neady every shore of the Anglo-Atlantic world. Distressed by what they
saw as spiritual torpor, the decline of clerical authority, and the spread of
rationalism, George Whitefield, Charles and John Wesley, and many other
Protestant ministers resolved to rouse people's faith with passionate hom-
ilies about the death of Christ and his gift of salvation. Ministers aban-
doned the previous century's difficult and uncertain preparations for death
and advocated instantaneous deliverance through faith and repentance.
Though the evangelicals scorned Enlightenment skepticism, they did
adapt to new currents of thought and expression that srressed the validity
of personal experience and induction; the experience of faith in Christ's
sacrificial death came to determine individual confidence in salvation. 1 1
Yet despite the assurance offered to believers in the martyred Christ,
evangelicals generally subscribed to a providential worldview according to
which hell's terrible punishments would be visited on entire nations. Not
only was the individual sinner at risk of eternal damnation, but whole
societies risked awful retribution if they refused to renounce their sins and
amend their ways. Eighteenth-century evangelicals conceived the world as
a divinely sustained moral order. In this view, Providence was also "their
inescapable summons to mould the world to a righteousness which would
avert deserved national disaster, relieve the mundane sufferings of men,
and pave the way for the salvation of their eternal souls." Thus, the terrors
of the afterlife were brought to bear upon the social and political world.
By making the death of Jesus the crux of both personal and national
redemption, evangelicalism put death at the center of its vision of moral
renewal and moral order. Evangelical religion supplied a neady irresistible
motivation for purposeful moral action, and new conventions for
expressing moral sentiments and for representing relationships linking the
dying, the dead, and the living helped shape the moral impulse at the
heart of abolitionism.12
As the evangelical movements attracted ever-larger followings, their
themes converged with those of popular writing about death. In 1732 a
London printer produced an inexpensive new edition of John Foxe's Book
ofMartyrs, containing an account ofthe sufferings and death ofthe Protestants
The Soul of the British Empire -l'l I65
in the reign ofQueen Mary, originally published in 1563. Its graphic depic-
tions of the executions of the Protestant faithful confirmed the dignity of
suffering and dying for religious principles. Published in cheap install-
ments throughout the century, the Book ofMartyrs was among the most
widely read and most affecting texts of its rime. As the historian Linda
CoBey has observed, "Foxe's martyrs could stand for Everyman. They
induded women as weB as men, the poor and insignificant as well as the
eminent and prosperous, and all ages from the venerable old to the most
vulnerably young." They helped create a sense of nationhood founded on
persecution, death, and Christian righteousness. 13
Graveyard poetry, which emerged from the classical elegy in the early
eighteenth century, paralleled the popularity of martyrology. Graveyard
poets gained an audience throughout the century by inviting readers to
reflect on the meaning of death as they joined self-conscious narrators on
descriptive tours of church vaults and night walks through burial grounds.
Appearing first in the I7 40s and '50s, Robert Blair's work The Grave,
Thomas Gray's Elegy Written in a Country Church Yard, and Edward
Young's Complaint or, Night Thoughts on Lifo, Death and Immortality were
among the most widely published writings of rhe latter half of the eigh-
teenth cenrury. Young's poetic address to a "worldly infidel" went through
rwelve editions in rhe 1750s alone. "What is this World?" Blair asked his
readers. "What? but a spacious Burial-field unwalled ... Sin has laid
waste, Not here and there a Country, but a World." The narrator of
Young's Complaint, pining by the grave of his stepdaughter, pleads for the
strength to quit a living death of sin, to break the "Thread of Moral Death
that ties me to the World." Similar sentiments governed Elizabeth Rowe's
Friendship in Death, originally published in 1728, and then followed by
seven more editions up through the 1750s. In a series of imaginary letters
from the dead to the living she cautions readers to be mindful of the after-
life and turn away from sin, so that they could look forward to experi-
encing the ineffable pleasures promised to the faithful. Emotionally
affecting in tone, the work also signaled the ascendance of moral senti-
mentalism as a discourse of advocacy. "Nothing teacheth like death,"
wrote WiHiam Dodd in his popular reflections on the subject, which were
reprinted frequently between 1763 and r822 (Figure 5.2). 14
The convergence of elegy and evangelicalism often reflected personal
connections between poets and preachers. Robert Blair had a personal
The Reaper's Garden
Figure 5.2. Graveyard ethics. Frontispiece, Dodd on Death, in William Dodd, Reflections
on Death (London, 1796), engraving by W. Hawkins. This image shows a minister
walking through a graveyard, drawing lessons on mortality from his meditations there.
"What is that I read on yonder tomb?" reads the caption below the illustration. Cour-
tesy of Houghton Library, Harvard College Library (2003)-ECw9).
The Soul of the British Empire -i'l r67
relationship with the dissenting minister Philip Doddridge, whose Rise

and Progress of Religion in the Soul (1745) had a formative influence on
evangelical thinking. James Hervey, himself an evangelical preacher,
taught pious lessons in the hugely popular Meditations among the Tombs
(1746), writt:en in the tradition of graveyard poetry. Hervey and the
Wesley brothers appreciated Edward Young's Night Thoughts because it
dovetailed with fervent Christianity in highlighting the depravity of man
and affirming the reality of the supernatural, while stressing the
authority and authenticity of personal feeling. Upon Hervey's death in
1758, William Romaine, an associate of George Whitefield and, like him,
an evangelist to the poor, composed and published a sermon in Hervey's
honor, The Knowledge of Salvation Is Precious in the Hour of Death. It
went through twelve editions before the end of 1759. 15
The popularity of such writing served t:0 keep death at the center of
moral sentiments, given more secular expression by Edmund Burke and
Adam Smith. In A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origins of Our Ideas on
the Sublime and Beautiful (1757), Burke argued that pain, danger, sickness,
and death give rise to the strongest human passions. Such passions were
also at rhe heart of Smith's Theory ofMoral Sentiments (1759). In the suf-
fering and death of another, a person could discover empathy, the prereq-
uisite for all moral concern. "We sympathize even with the dead," wrote
Smith, especially with the victims of malign intent. Empathy could "ani-
mate anew the deformed and mangled carcass of the slain," inspiring, in
Smith's account, the "horrors which are supposed to haunt the bed of the
murderer, the ghosts which, superstition imagines, rise from the grave to
demand vengeance upon those who brought: them to an untimely end."
Of course, where Smith and Burke offered reasoned worldly accounts of
the relation between pain, death, and sentiment, the torments of hell and
the possibility of eternal salvation weighed more heavily on the moral
imagination of evangelicals and other Christians. Indeed, religiously
inspired mortuary writing had set: the stage for a much broader concern
with the moral sentiments that connected the living with the dead. 16
In early eighteenth-century Europe stories about death and pain among
ordinary people proliferated, narratives that linked the concerns of readers
to the experiences of others. Realistic novels, autopsies, and various social
inquiries all made the dead and the dying available for representation and
interpretation beyond the traditional realms of religion and family. Perhaps
I68 ~· The Reaper's Garden
.
more Important, such ~ccounts .mtroduced complex caus a1 explanations · for
a·
death. Gothic and Romantic narratives, revolving as t h. ey ·d'1d around evoc
h tic
rive images of pain and death, helped build a morally charg.ed aesrhers
around mortality that directed sentiment toward the mortal tn·a1· s 0 for e to·
. ·
These novel literary forms worked with emerging re1tgwus discourse ce.
encourage new spiritually charged narratives o f cause an d consequen . f.
. ht .of rhe so
Increasingly, and with greater effectiveness, the maral wetg
fering or lifeless body could be used as leverage in a partisan dlspu~· 17 es
In the late eighteenth century, British views about the radical c =:re
wrought by the rise of industrial capitalism and the expansion of e Ptic
were couched in this idiom. The booming commerce in the At1:n ts
region enhanced the public profile and political prestige of the mere ane·
.
and planters involved in West Indian trade, even as Bntons began ro expha[
nence Is ocanons an tsonentmg new wor. envtronme · From w
. d. I . d d' . . k . nts l ge
they could learn about colonial slavery, most people un derstood ar.e1
plantations to be the analogue, perhaps even the archetype, 0 f the nov. hal
crorms o f pro duction
. sproutmg. up around them. As Rob.m Blackburn . rhe
· "The noveIty of the slave plantation, the commerct·al m egapohs,.
put It:
.
proto-mdustnal . vtllage,
. the capitalist factory posed fun d amental quesnohe
05
.
about the relations between production and reproduction, . an d· about
. t f
. . . of new productive
compatlbiluy . forces with . a stable
. . con fi gurarwn 0
family and state."Is r
. . wouId disrup
Just as many feared that the new economic orgamzatton hat
d. · I 1· · . 'al values t
tra mona tfe, they also worried that the same commerCI e
fi I d h
. slave trade and fed the plantations
ue e t e Atlantic . wou ld upset
· rnor
heir
sacred relationships. Did the absolute power that masters held over r fa
slaves confirm that property rights included the license to dispose 0edi
slave's Hfe? Under such circumstances could death itself remam sacr h. (
. . . . ' . . of dear ,
D1d the new matenahsm have Its own designs on the meamng of
M . . . aranree
ortuary wnttng emphasized that earthly wealth was no gu . e
. . .
eternal salvatton; in fact, it could prove to be quite the oppostte. "Letsur
''Aft,
is our Curse," wrote Young in Night Thoughts, the bitter frmt of he
b . I A 1 r: .
ram ess rt. our runous .
Chanoreer .
[who J Dnves headl ong towardsdfol
r
precipice of Death I Death, most our Dread I Death thus more drea
made," 19 •
An appreciation . ·1 ar!y disUW

· · for elegy and the literature of suffering s1rnt not
guished men and women "of feeling" in Jamaica, though they could
The Soul of the British Empire --;o I69
share the~ .B nns
. . h P br , . over slavery. When Thomas Harrison, the
attar ~ u Ic s anxtety
read ney
a1 dgeneral and· ad vocate-general of JamaKa,
. .
heard Mght Thoughts
ionabl ou by . the Reveren d Wllham
. - Jones in 1779, he reacted with fash-
"Wer I e sentiment
. ~ s ur ar -nosed practicality. In tears, he protested,
b h d
e
fond f h to mdul . read.mg much of such books, I should be extremely
gem
Busino t , em, bur it w ou'd abso Iute1y mcapacitate
. c atten d"mg to my
me ror
a gravess. dBryan Ed ward s, t h e planter, politician, and historian, was also
''poor {~r poet. His 1764 "Elegy on the Death of a Friend" featured a
1 yan slave" pinin " · h
Edward g Wit accents w1"ld" over h-1s masters' grave. A nd
. . . ove beel"mg sympathy for the enslaved. He acknow1-
S Was not ab
edged the
a Neg · sever aJ poems, me
FInJUStice of sl avery m · 1u d"mg "Ode, on Seemg ·
ro un 1,
asked the e~a' published in 1773· "Why triumph o'er the dead?" he
"'Tis revelmg mourners. Because death had carried an African home:
now the hero lives, t h ey cry, I ReIeas'd fi, rom s1av'rys' ch am:
t e bill · IF ar o 'er
h
bow'..s ~ surge he flies/ And joyful views his native skies/ And long-lost
0
• agai " ~
antipath n. er Edwards's encomiums for dead slaves did not signal
attend to·y toward
h ~
sl avery. L.l k e Thomas Harrison, Edwards~ ha d b usmess
. to
. Jamatca.
Engli h' e owned m ore t h an fift een h un d re d sIaves m . 20
a great s men at ho me generaJl y reacted to the tmmoralrty
· · o f s1avery w1t·h
er sense of .
planters . urgency. In the conspicuous materialism ofWest Indwn
.
leties. . d"tscerned something that epitomized their greatest anx-
£, moralists
:Yangelical . ~
eJcistenrial
.
s In particular saw in colonial slavery an example o t e
f h
Christian ~~truggle between the "dark bondage of sin and the light of
Workin . berty that was carried on in each individual soul." As the
r public of Bntam
U[Ure, gIna · · saw in slavery a dysropian vision of t herr· own
1
ceit and d~y e~angelicals saw in slaveholders the height of individual con-
(177 ) ] Isdam fo r t h e promise
. . of salvanon.
. In Thoughts upon S''tavery
4 ' ohn ~ 1
their c es ey cautioned slaveholders that if they did not change
" ourse,
11.doptin ~ th ey ns ~
. ked . the only thmg
losmg . that truly mattered ·
th e cru ·fi
g the Ian guage o f moral sentiment and alluding to t he Image
. 0f
no SylhC1 ed savtor,
·
he asked "Do you ever feel another's pain? Have you
Ot [he bl
Pathy?. . · · Wh en you' saw the Bowmg
. eyes, the heavmg. breasts,
a stone eedtng 51"d e and tortured limbs of your fellow creamres, was you
a brut ~, H · p1antets
. · 0f
ll'lurder' or
''--r e. e accused slave traders and West Indian
Present . !h. y hand, thy bed, thy furniture, thy house, thy lands are at
statned . h I ~
110 more . Wtt blood," he charged. "Surely iris enough: accumu are
gutlr ·" And "Regard nor money!" Wesley warned . "All, t h ar a man
I70 ~;~- The Reapers Garden
hath wdl he give for hts hfe! Whatever you lose, lose not ~. of all
. . . . our soul:
nothing can countervail that loss." It was common for evangelicals when
denominations to see themselves as God's special prosecutors. S~ udah
th.· e evangelical Gustavus Yassa, formerly the slave and. satlor ?ha ws
Equiano, approached fellow evangelical Granville Sharp m . 1783. wlt ane
~o
of 132 Mricans killed for their insurance value, a mighty rhetoncal wGe dp011
came into Sharp's hands, one he knew he had been chosen Y b 0 I~ I
wield. 21
~
Granv11le
. Sharp was, by the 1780s, the most promment . an tislavery learn
ed
.
patgner . . Sh arp h a.d t a.ken up t h'e ad voc acy of enshavp's
. Great Bntam.
m
bl ks .
ac m 1765, after he met Jonathan Strong, who had com.e to Sb arhis
brother WilHam seeking medical aid for deep lash wounds inflicted y to
West Indian. master.
. . 1770, having already worked flor severaJ years
In SharP
prevent masters from forcibly removing their slaves from England, hose
b
egan to advocate for James Somerset, a recaptured runaway slave . w
n lish
master intended to send him to Jamaica. Immersing himself m E.g r's
.
property .
and slavery law, Sharp prepared the wmnmg . f £0 r Somerse
. . . bne . . Lord
defense of his right to remain in England. In 1772 Chief Jusnce 'pg

Mansfidd ruled that while nothing prevented slave'h o ld . firom owP1
· ers frolll
h . . 1aw sanctwne
. d t h e remo
. val of slavesl ·ry
uman property, no posmve
England. Though Mansfield stopped considerably short of r ul'mg 5· ave
d as
on English soil to be illegal, his decision was widely misinterprete an
d . . gained the reputanon· a5 the Jll
omg just that. Granville Sharp thus
h h
w o ad reaffi rmed that England was by definition a "fjree " country.
22
. con·
Sharp's political energy derived from his beHef in Providence and hisl ..v:
. the moral governance of the world. In ]776 he argued t hats
cern With · ave•;v~
· Iated the moral law of universal benevolence,
VIo · on w hIC
· h ng
· hteous Jcind
go
ernment ought to be based. "Upon the gospel Dispensation, all m~ ry.
. . ofSwvethe
are to be esteemed our brethren," Sharp wrote in just Limttatton
''Espect'ally are we boun d, as Christians, to commiserate
· an d assist
· , toSharp
Utmost of our power all persons in distress, or captivity." Not only dtd d~
undermine the rdigious endorsement of slavery, but he argued that aning
1
savery . . was an tmperanve
aguanon . . o f evangeI'tcal Ch nsnani~r
. . 'rv In keep . dg~
· h prevru'I'tng evangeIical themes, Sharp raised the specter o f divine Jd0 by
Wlt
mem, suggesting that slaveholders might even be eternally condemne m~
h.
t eu own sIaves. "Let. SIaveholders be mindful of the approach'1 ~ g consu
chou·
marion of all earthly things," he warned, "when, perhaps, they wtll see
The Soul ofthe British Empire -;;~ IJI
sands of th
,. ose men, who were formerly esteemed mere chattels and private
Property . .
and 'commg m the douds, with their heavenly Master, to judge tyrants
love!"oppressors
H ' and t~ call t h em to account for their. want o f broch erIy
Law of e extended . "1 ar warnmg
. · . a simi . to t h e nation
. and th e empue
. . m . TL
1 ne
Fo ,de Retrzbutron, a Serious Wtirning to Great Britain and Her Colonies,

un don U;nquesttonable
Ryra ·
Examples of Gods Temporal Vengeance against
~&~~ 0 ers and Oppressors. Perhaps Sharp was drawmg
..
the rhe . duecdy on
Pro toncal strategies of Philip Doddridge, whose influential Rise and
· 'gress of R t · .
itna . e tgton m the Soul (1745) acknowledged that people must
gme
it " b c the e . o f d1vme
xecuuon . . law, and "feel somethmg . of the Terror of
'fh' erore they could be convmced. .
to turn to [he Gospel for dehverance.
at Would 1. .
voic f · exp am why Sharp ended his just Limitation of Slavery m the
eo .God·· "D epart from me ye Curs'd into everlasting Fire, prepared for
the D
lh evil and h'Is Angels (Matt. XXV. 40.41)."23
roughout }.ust Ltmttatzon
. . . of Slavery, Sharp
. . 1d
accursed ,, , smg e ' out as most
wiij . t~e TYRANNY in America" where "the abominable plantation laws
· Pennu a · . . . . .. .
his Wrer capncwus or passiOnate master, with Impunity, to depnve
Prop c~ed slave even of his life."24 Such outrage at the convergence of
lllasserty nghts an d t h e nght
· · response tot he Z ong
· foreshadowed his
to kill
acre.
Portents oi' D
...., 'J oom
lhe .2ongcase b
Gitb came · efore the English courts under the name Gregson v.
en. as d"
the Gr~ a tspure over an insurance claim. Upon learning of their loss,
....,• hoUl gsons. and th etr· partners promptly filed a claim with theu · msurer,
·
.Gtlb . as Gtlbe rt, rorc · d
132 slaves each valued at rhury poun s ster mg.
1·
err r fu . , . .
Lond e sed to pay. The ensuing lawsuit was 6rst heard at Guildhall,
ttable on,
I·
6 on 6 M arch 1783.. Gilbert argued that the defendants were not
"'! he G or the· i ncompetence of Collingwood's plannmg . and navigauon.
· ·
of the
tegsons h
asserted that the Zong had been put in distress "by t e pen s
"I
5eas, and . . · " an d th a t the
t:aptai , . contrary currents and other misfortunes,
ns acno h" f .
1allle tr ns Were sensible. For his part, the first mate and c te Witness
w . (C0111·tngwood having died by time of the heanng)
that its 1\..elsal · con 6rme d
h
qOWev
as the c · , . . .. h· d
aptams nght and responstbthty to make sue JU gmen ·
rs
bound er,. at lea t . r.
· s one observer m the courtroom was 1rusrrare Y
· d b rhe
artes of h A_,. ·
t e 1ega] arguments. In an anonymous letrer to the JvJ.ornmg
172 <!- The Reaper's Garden
Ch~onicle and London Advertiser, one that surely caught Gustavus Yassa's
attention, a spectator testified, "I waited with some impatience, expecting
that the Jury, by their foreman, would have applied to the Court for infor-
mation how to bring the perpetrator of such a horrid deed to justice."
Instead, the jury found in favor of the ship's owners, and the court ordered
the insurers to pay for the slaughtered property. 2 5
Still refusing to pay, Gilbert appealed to the Court of King's Bench for
a new trial. The appeal was heard on 22-23 May 1783, before a panel of
three judges presided over by ChiefJustice Lord Mansfield, who had adju-
dicated the Somerset case more than a decade eadier. Granville Sharp was
in the courtroom. He may have come hoping to hear that no positive law
sanctioned the willful murder of slaves; instead, he listened as the judges
recognized Solicitor General John Lee's arguments in favor of the owners.
Lee insisted: "It has been decided, whether wisely or unwisely is not now
the question, that a portion of our fellow-creatures may become the sub-
ject of property. This, therefore, was a throwing overboard of goods, and
of part to save the residue." Mansfield agreed in principle: "Though it
shocks one very much, the case of slaves was the same as if horses had been
thrown overboard." Nonetheless, Mansfield ultimately did order a new
trial to reconsider the necessity of the jettison and the contractual Hability
of the underwriters. The ten Africans who jumped into sea of their own
volition were excluded from consideration; by asserting their agency,
Mansfield ruled, these had voided their insurance value. The result of that
new trial, if it ever was held,. remains unknown. In any event, the case
moved abruptly from the Court of King's Bench to the court of Christian
opinion, where Granville Sharp proved to be an expert litigator. 26
Through a tireless letter-writing campaign, Sharp highlighted the moral
stakes involved in the case, by emphasizing the incommensurability of the
Christian and the commercial views of death. Outraged that, rather than
require that a criminal judgment be rendered, the authorities had ordered
a new trial "concerning the value of those murdered Negroes!" Sharp first
wrote to the Lords of the Admiralty, requesting that they initiate a murder
trial. "The most obvious natural right of human nature is at stake," Sharp
wrote, "the dghr even to life itself" He conrinued, ''A right to live ought
by no means to have been suppressed in favour of a mere pecuniary claim
in the most doubtful species of property." As the cultural theorist Ian
Baucom has recognized, the "horror and outrage" inspired by the massacre
The Soul of the British Empire -;,r I73
was compounded by the recognition that it was in itself "a financial trans-
action." Advocates for the owners had convinced the court, and thereby
established in legal precedent, that "in drowning the slaves Collingwood
was not so much murdering them as securing the existence of their mon-
etary value." In doing so, the British nation itself became implicated in
the intentional killing of human beings for financial gain. 27
In Sharp's view, this could only bring a terrible judgment upon the
entire country. "For the sake of national justice, that the blood of the mur-
dered may not rest on the whole kingdom," he urged the Lords of the
Admiralty to take action: "The only pleas of necessity that can legalJy be
admitted, or are worthy of being mentioned in this case, are-1st, A neces-
sity incumbent upon the whole kingdom to vindicate our national justice,
by rhe most exemplary punishment of the murderers mentioned in these
vouchers;-2nd, The necessity of putting an entire stop to the Slave Trade,
lest any similar deeds of barbarity, occasioned by it, should speedily involve
the whole nation in some such tremendous calamity as may unquestion-
ably mark the avenging hand of God, who has promised to destroy the
'destroyers of the earth.' " 28 Sharp supplied them with a r38-page hand-
written packet of material, including his letter urging that they conduct a
murder investigation, a brief account of the massacre, and his own tran-
script of the trial at the Court of King's Bench. He also provided them with
a copy of a letter he would send the first Lord of the Treasury and a copy
of a petition sent from the insurers to William Pitt, the chancellor of the
Exchequer. Without waiting for government action, Sharp consulted with
rhe legal scholar Dr. Thomas Bever and at his own expense enlisted attor-
neys to prepare a criminal prosecution. Nevertheless, the Lords Commis-
sioners of the Admiralty never initiated a murder nial. In fact, there is no
evidence that they even opened Sharp's letter. 2 9
In another letter, to the Duke of Portland, first Lord of the Treasury,
Sharp enclosed the same materials he sent to the Admiralty. This time he
invoked the threat of personal damnation,. quoting an earlier letter he had
sent to Lord North. "I only wish, by the horrible example related in the
enclosed papers, to warn your Grace, that there is an absolute necessity to
abolish the Slave Trade and the West-India slavery; and that 'to be in power,
and to neglect, as life (and I may add, the tenure of office) is very uncertain,
even a day, in endeavoring to put a stop ro such monstrous injustice and
abandoned wickedness, must necessarily endanger a man's eternal welfare,
I74 ~- The Reapers Garden
be he ever so great in temporal dignity or office.' This was my warning to

Lord North eleven years ago."3°
Sharp sent a full account of the massacre to the newspapers, and he
continued writing to influential men to repeat his description of"that hor-
rible transaction," which, if not for its appearance in a business dispu1e,
"might have been known only amongst the impious slave-dealers, and
have never been brought to light." The reaction extended well beyond
evangelical circles. Responding to Sharp's entreaties, the bishop of Peter-
borough admitted, "Were religion and humanity attended to, there can
be no doubt that the horrid traffic would entirely cease; but they have too
small a voice to be heard among the clamours of avarice and ambition."
Dr. Porteus, bishop of Chester, but soon to be bishop of London,
acclaim,ed Sharp's efforts: "Your observations are so just, and so full to the
purpose, that I can add nothing to them but my entire approbation ...
I hope the attention of the public will be excited by your efforts." But
public agitation would not have to depend on Sharp's efforts alone. Most
important, he inspired other writers, who from his description of the Zong
massacre crafted an indeHble image of the enslaved dead both as the vic-
tims of English greed and as portents of national doom. 31
In the wake of the Zong incident, antislavery activists fashioned parables
(planters accused abolitionists of spinning pure fictions) that featured
greed, slavery, and death as fixed points on a triangle. The stereotype
refl.ected the widely held view that the only ethical approach to death and
to the dead was to envision the moral progress of the individual soul.
Evangelical abolitionists charged that in the commercial arrangements that
defined slavery and the slave trade, money replaced the soul as the ultimate
desideratum in death. Moreover, the murder of heathens was a compound
crime, extinguishing not just the living body but aho the eternal soul
before it could know Christ and be assured of salvation. For antislavery
writers, prepared by sentimental and evangelical discourse on death, the
Zong massacre became the archetypal impression of slavery, one that had
everything to do with their opinions about appropriate relations with the
dead. Most important, as historian David Brion Davis remarked, their
accounts "fixed an unforgettable image in the mind of the reading public,"
one that outlined an enduring moral critiqueY
Abolitionist writers began retelling the story of the massacre almost
immediately, and they very quickly turned the Zong into a metonym for
The Soul of the British Empire ~ 175
colonial slavery. In his Essay on the Treatment and Conversion of African

Slaves in British Sugar Colonies (1784), James Ramsay, an Anglican vicar
and former slaveholder in the West Indies, affected shock and near disbe-
lief at the case, calling Collingwood a "sick monster." In the minds of
other writers, there was nothing anomalous about the Zong murders.
Quobna Ortobah Cugoano, a radical antislavery activist from the Gold
Coast and author of Thoughts and Sentiments on the Evil ofSlavery (1787),
dred the Zong massacre as only one example of the "vast carnage and mur-
ders committed by the British instigators of slavery." He took care to high-
light the economic rationale behind the kiHing of slaves, "a very shocking,
peculiar, and almost unheard of conception: They either consider them as
their own property, that they may do with as they please, in life or death;
or the taking away the life of a black man is of no more account than
{alcing away the life of a beast." In 1788, John Newton, the evangelical
recror of Saint Mary Woolnoth and a former slave trader, recounted the
Zong case as one of the principal "specimens of the spirit produced by the
African trade." Bur it was Thomas Clarkson who did more than anyone
ro secure the association of slavery with death, and the untimely death of
slaves with greed. 33
In his celebrated Essay on the Slavery and Commerce of the Human
Species, published in 1786,. then revised and expanded in 1788, Clarkson
presented killing for profit as a common custom of slavers. Prefacing his
essay with praise for the "pious endeavors" of Granville Sharp, Clarkson
proceeded to "lay open the feelings of the reader" with tales of atrocity and
avarice meant to illustrate t:he very antithesis of the Christian approach to
Hfe and death. He identified Collingwood's decision to "jettison" the
Africans, those "victims, which avarice had determined to sacrifice to her
shrine," as a "diabolical resolution." And though Clarkson called the mas-
sacre ((unparalleled in the memory of man, or in the history of former
times," he also made it representative of colonial slavery in general.3 4
He supplemented his accounr of the Zong massacre, "an authentic spec-
imen of the treatment which the unfortunate Africans undergo," with
other stories, including one about the kiHing of a sick child. Buyers offered
such a low price for the weak and emaciated boy that the officers feared
his sale would bring down rhe average sale price of the cargo and cost each
of rhem about six shillings. They ordered the surgeon to throw rhe boy
overboard. When the surgeon refused, they "carne to the horrid resolution
I76 J::(-- The Reaper's Garden
of starving him to death." They confined him, withholding food, water,

and human contact, but for that of the chief mate, "who was continually
going backwards to see if he was yet dead." After eight days, the boy died,
"to the joy of the impious" slavers, according to Clarkson.35
Having made his moral point with such illustrations, Clarkson rein-
forced it with numbers. He found slave traders "guilty of the charge of
having been accessory to the destruction of no less than twenty-five thou-
sand of their fellow-creatures/' positing calculated callousness as the cause
of the high number. "It is conjectured," he asserted, "that if three in four
survive what is called the seasoning, the bargain is highly favourable."
Clarkson did not limit his discussion of the murderous nature of the slave
trade to the deaths of Mricans. Having personally interviewed thousands
of sailors in London, BristoL and Liverpool and examined muster lists for
slave ships, he went on to observe in his Essay on the Impolicy of the Slave
Trade (q88) that mortality rates for white sailors in the Mrica trade were
even higher than those for the enslaved. The slave trade was not a "nursery
for [British] seamen," as elite opinion maintained, but "a Grave" destroying
"more in one year, than aH the other trades of Great Britain when put
together destroy in two. "36
Uniting the economic reasoning behind the Zong murders with general
statistics in this way enabled Clarkson to argue convincingly that colonial
slavery "cannot be carried on without the continual murder of so many
innocent persons!" As for slavery's beneficiaries, he admonished them,
"Exult in riches, at which even avarice ought to shudder, and which
humanity must detest!" Reading Clarkson, Britons could hardly avoid
interpreting his image of murderous slaveholders in the light of more gen-
eral anxieties about ill-gotten gains in a rapidly changing social order. In
another society, or at another time, Clarkson's indictments might have
uken the form of an accusation of witchcraft; in late eighteenth-century
England the means of expression for condemning the nefarious accumu-
lation of riches derived from moral sentiment, evangelicalism, and the
rhetoric of death.37
Echoing GranviHe Sharp's rhetoric,. Thomas Clarkson wondered how
the "sin" of the slave trade might be j1udged in heaven . "If the blood of one
man, unjustly shed, cries with so loud a voice for the divine vengeance,
how shan the cries and groans of an hundred thousand men, annually mur-
dered, ascend [he celestial mansions, and bring down that punishment
The Soul of the British Empire ~ I77
which such enormities deserve!" He suspected he already knew the answer.

The success of the North American rebels and the resulting rift in the
British Empire seemed to prove God's displeasure, even as it provoked
widespread anxiety over the proper course of imperial governance. During
the 1780s a ruinous series of hurricanes had thrashed the West Indies, com-
pounding the economic distress caused by war. Storms and earthquakes,
"the violent and supernatural agitations of all the elements," could be seen
only as the "awful visitations of God for this inhuman violation of his
laws." After all,. as Ottabah Cugoano had asked a year earlier, "What
wickedness was there ever risen up so monstrous, and more likely to bring
a heavy rod of destruction upon a nation, than the deeds committed by
the West Indian slavery and the Mrican slave trade?" Africans were victims
of ''improvident avarice," Equiano wrote in his 1789 description of the
deadly holds of slave ships, and this could speH only a disaster of biblical
proportions for Great Britain.3 8
Abolitionists worked with feverish intensity to avert the impending
apocalypse. In April 1787 Granville Sharp and Thomas Clarkson joined a
dedicated group of Quakers to help initiate a broad-based nationwide
movement with evangelical rhetoric as its motor. Between 1787 and 1794
Clarkson worked tirdessly to distribute damning information about the
rrade, lobbying members of Parliament and traveling all over Eng]and to
help set up local abolition committees. James Phillips, a successful book-
seller and member of the London committee, published reams of pam-
phlets and book-length studies, including Clarkson's essays and abstracts
of parliamentary debates on slavery and the slave trade.39
Novels, plays, and poetry concerning slavery also attracted a wide audi-
ence in the late 1780s and early 1790s. The emergence of the antislavery
movement coincided with an explosion in printed material, and suddenly
Africa and colonial slavery were hot topics. Personal connections between
influential authors and West Indian colonists, along with the improved
circulation of news from around the empire, contributed to a growing
awareness of the conditions endured by colonial subjects, enslaved and
free alike. 40
As sentimental fiction sharpened the sensibilities of British readers, sto-
ries of sufFering in slavery became test cases for moral feeling. Hannah
More, an evangelical and one of the most prolific "sentimentalist" writers
of rhe period, also wrote The Black Slave Trade (1788). Abolition commit-
I78 "'" The Reaper's Garden
tees scored important propaganda victories by publishing and distributing

William Cowper's Negroes Complaint, a melancholy poem written from
the point of view of an enslaved African. Cowper, an evangelical poet, had
earlier expounded on the role Providence played in punishing national
sins. Inviting readers to empathize with his own trials as a slave, Olaudah
Equiano published his antislavery autobiography in 1789, taking every
opportunity to remind his readers that he had often prayed for death to
emancipate him. The reading public already understood African suicide
as a political condemnation of slavery-even an act of martyrdom-~~-~ a
reaction that Equiano acknowledged by referring to his own reading of
Foxe's Martyrology. Situating his yearning for death within the contempo-
rary genre of spiritual autobiography, Equiano reminded his audience that
the truest desire of a Christian ought to be spiritual freedom from tem-
poral bondage, but also that earthly masters who failed to respect that
wish were undoubtedly sinful. 4I
The literature also dramatized the stakes in popular struggles that con-
vulsed industrializing England. The broad dissemination of colonial
morality tales about greed and indifference to human suffering spurred
nationwide petition campaigns against the slave trade in q88 and 1792.
As Robin Blackburn has observed, "abolitionism as a movement derived
strength from its association with the critique of the operation of pure
market forces ... West Indian planters were attacked for working their
slaves to death and making profits from an inhuman, immoral and irre-
ligious system." The populace in English industrial towns used anti-
slavery rhetoric to asserr that "where they conflicted, humanitarian and
familistic values should prevail over business and property interests, and
that capitalism and industrialism should be obliged to adjust to a self-
reproducing human order." It should come as no surprise, then, that the
first petition drives were incubated in burgeoning and fractious industrial
towns. Manchester, which occupied the center of the spreading commer-
cial and industrial networks but still had no parliamentary representative
or municipal corporation, took the lead in circulating public petitions
against the slave trade. Other industrial towns, including Birmingham,
Sheffield, and Leeds, followed suit. By June 1788 over a hundred anti-
slavery petitions had arrived at the House of Commons. Drawing their
tenor of righteous indignation from evangelicalism, they generally sub-
jected the slave trade to moral judgment, referring w it as "repugnant,."
The Soul of the British Empire ~ .I7!)
"reproachful," and "inconsistent with the Profession of the Christian reli-

gion."42
The movement benefited from the involvement of a network of weU-
connected AngHcan evangelicals centered around Clapham in South
London. The Clapham Seer, or the Saints, as they were sometimes called,
rook up the abolitionist cause as part of an "international spiritual agenda''
that aimed to bring spiritual renewal to the world by cleansing it of indi-
vidual and national sins. It was in consultation with these influential evan-
gelicals that, in July 1787, the London Committee had made the decision
to concentrate its efforts on abolishing the slave trade through parliamen-
tary legislation, thereby deferring an attack on slavery itsel£ which would
be widely construed as an attack on property rights. Granville Sharp
opposed the concession, declaring, "My own opposition is not merely
against the slave trade, but also the toleration of slavery itself.'' But the
leading role in the antislavery campaign had by then shifted to the most
influential member of the Clapham Sect, WiHiam Wilberforce.43
William Wilberforce, a young, wealthy, and charismatic M.P., had con-
verted to evangelicalism in 1785 during a protracted "spiritual crisis" pro-
voked by his reading of Phillip Doddridge's Rise and Progress of Religion
in the Soul As he considered the implications of his awakening, he con-
sulted closely with John Newton, who had ascended in the esteem of pious
Christians from the hated occupation of slave trader to the status of
revered spiritual tutor. Newton surely influenced Wilberforce's revulsion
for the slave trade, and over the next two years Wilberforce also began to
consult James Ramsay and Thomas Clarkson. Early in 1787, in the course
of conversations with his friends, Foreign Secretary W W Grenville and
William Pitt, the reformist prime minister, Wilberforce resolved to intro-
duce a bill in the House of Commons to abolish the slave trade. He con-
sidered it his "sacred charge." 44
At Pitt's suggestion Wilberforce agreed that there should first be hearings
w gather more "factual" information about the trade. On II February 1788
Pitt appointed a committee of the Privy Council to consider the state of
the slave trade. As the council gathered testimony, Wilberforce and
Clarkson worked to ensure the presence of compelling witnesses for abo-
lition, to counter the influence ofWest India lobbyists and Liverpool mer-
chants. After compiling 850 pages of evidence, the Privy Council published
its report in Aprilq89. Wilberforce brought a motion for abolition to the
180 ~· The Reapers Garden
floor on 12 May that year, but as a result of heavy pr·essure from proslavery
interests, the House of Commons delayed consideration until after it could
hold its own hearings and gather its own evidence. By mid-1790, the
House of Commons had gathered another I,JOO pages of testimony and
reportage, yet because proslavery witnesses had dominated the process,
Wilberforce had to ·call for still more examinations, to begin early in 1791.
Finally, on 20 April 1791 at half past three in the morning, and after a two-
day debate, the House of Commons voted on Wilberforce's measure. The
poll resulted in defeat for the abolitionists, 163 votes against the biU and
88 in support. 45
Enlightened Self-Interest
In Jamaica, Simon Taylor read the news of metropolitan abolitionism with
alarm. In 1788 he began to complain binedy to his business partner, the
former M.P. Chaloner Arcedeckne, about the "people of England," who
were so "willing to represent us as Devils incarnate." The antislavery
activists were "mad Enthusiasts," Taylor wrote, "miscreants," "fanaticks,"
and "villains." He wondered what had become of sound English judg-
ment. ''All of this madness respecting of the African trade is of the most
serious nature & is an axe to the root of their most valuable Commerce,"
he warned. "Such a Phrenzy I believe never struck any people but madmen
before and none of Don Quixod's exploits are to be compared to it." 4 6
Aft.er all, the reasonable arguments were on the side of the slaveholders,
for their defense of slavery did not rest on visions of the afterlife, spiritual
progress, or the rhetoric of moral sentiment. Taylor could take comfort in
the fact that abolmtionist images of slavery had as yet failed to overcome
the influential discourse of proslavery advocates, witnesses, and writers.
Testimony and opinions favorable to West Indian interests dominated the
Privy Counca report and had already begun to explain the deaths of
enslaved Africans as an unfortunate consequence of individual manage-
ment failures and as a result of African maladies. Apologists offered seem-
ingly rational, rather than religious, explanations for the lethal nature of
Atlantic slavery.
As early as 177 4, writers who owed their fortunes to slavery were
shaping the explanations that slavery's apologists would continue to use
until emandpation sixty years later. Edward Long, the slaveholding planter
The Soul of the British Empire --l:l I8J
and celebrated author of the three-volume History ofjamaica, responded

to Granville Sharp's earliest indictments of slave mortality by asserting that
homicidal avarice ran patently counter to slaveholders' self-interest: "The
more mercenary a planter's disposition is, the stronger must the obligation
grow upon him to treat his labourers well, since his own profit, which he
is supposed alone to consult, must necessarily prompt him to it." His
fellow Jamaican planter William Beckford followed Long's logic in his
Remarks upon the Situation ofthe Negroes in 1788, extending this reasoning
ro encompass the motivations of the transatlantic slave traders: "Suppose
a cargo should consist (as many do) of six hundred slaves, and one half of
them should perish from neglect, or from want of the common necessities
of life; and the remainder be reduced by inanition to skin and bones; what
advantage can this large cargo boast, rhus conditioned, over one of half
that number, out of which the loss has been small and rhe passengers
healthy?" Hector McNeill employed a similar approach in his Observations
on the Treatment of the Negroes in the Island ofjamaica (q88). He argued
that a fortuitous rise in the price of slaves had inspired greater interest in
their longevity. "Times and circumstances have altered wonderfully," he
wrote. "The value, or more properly speaking, the original price of the
Negro, has, in the course of thirty years, risen upwards on one third ...
The proprietor is therefore led to view the Negro Property as an object of
great concern,. and consequently is disposed to preserve it by every prudent
method." This connection between the fortunes of planters and the well-
being of slaves also underlay the argument that enslaved blacks were better
off than English laborers, who, being without invested owners, "must pay
or starve." The argument still made sense to many, but by 1788 many
others believed chat the potential consequences of such thinking had
already been demonstrated by Captain Collingwood of the Zong. The
simple equation of the contentment of slaves with the contentment of
their masters had grown increasingly less convincing to broad sections of
.. h pu,bl"IC. 47
rhe Bnt1s
Slaveholders had to admit to the high mortality suffered by the
enslaved. Nor only was it was obvious to most observers; more important,
it served masters' argument that the slave trade should continue. In q88,
speaking of one parish in Jamaica, Edward Long told Parliament, "There
are some Sugar Estates which have sustained their population by annual
births, and are not under the necessity of buying Recruits. Bur I never
r82 !::!-· The Reaper's Garden
heard of more than Eight such Estates; and they are, in proportion to the
rest in that Parish, only as 1 to 70." Similarly, in q88 William Beckford
acknowledged, ((No man, who is acquainted with the West Indies, can
suppose it possible that the average upon estates in the islands, can pre-
serve a given number of negroes, without the aid of foreign purchase.
Some plantations bury more than others; and it is natural! to suppose, that
where the labour is disproportionate, there will be the greatest mortality.''
Planters granted that slaves sold to pay debts or those who labored hard
on insolvent properties suffered enormously, but Long thought this situ-
ation could be solved simply by attaching them to the land. The reasons
for high mortality, however, were generally attributed to aberrant features
of colonial slavery and causes beyond the control of planters. 48
Long ascribed mortality in the slave trade to accidents and errors. "The
objection,. that many die in transportation to the colonies," he main-
tained, "does not bear against the trade itself, but against some defect or
impropriety in the mode of conducting it." A reduction in death rates
awaited only "efficacious remedies." Blaming abuses on lower-class over-
seers, Long excused plantation owners altogether. In cases of willful cru-
elty, only the strict application of the law was wanting; for example, "a
white person, found guilty of wantonly murdering a Negroe, should be
adjudged a felon, and suffer death." In any case, he attributed most mor-
tality in the islands to exotic Mrican diseases or the difficulty of adjusting
to changes in climate. 49
Long also initiated the oft-repeated accusation that blacks were largely
responsible for their own demise. He blamed infant mortality on enslaved
women, who he said spread venereal diseases, practiced abortion widely,
and maintained poor child-rearing habits. Suicide he blamed on Africans'
inordinate fear about European intentions. Oddly enough, he identified
African judicial practices as the reason for this panic. "Their edicts are
mostly vindictive," he surmised, without the benefit of any knowledge or
expertise on the subject, "and death or slavery the almost only modes of
punishment." Claiming falsdy that 99' percent of enslaved Africans were
criminals in their own countries, Long maintained that it was natural that
they would "entertain horrid notions" about sale to the Europeans "and
often struggle for rdiefbefore they quit the coast." Given these conditions,.
Africans were better off enslaved in the colonies, where a mere few might
"perish by casualties," than at home, where "all should die by the hand of
the ,executioner. " 50
Following Long, Beckford argued that the anticipation of death among
Africans subjected at home to "a worse slavery than they will experience
in our colonies" offered the best evidence that blacks were better off in
Jamaica. Beckford added that suicide was a cultural problem, an ethnically
specific practice. "The Eboe negroes," he explained, "are particularly
addicted to suicide." In this he only represented the widespread prejudices
of Anglo-Atlantic planters. James Pinnock, a Jamaica barrister and slave-
holder, recorded privately in his diary in 1781 that, "Hope, the Sail Maker,
a very good Negroe generally but an Eboe, hung himselfon a quarrel with
Friends." Bur Beckford extended to an absurd extreme the claim that
Africans were largely accountable for their own high mortality rate. Put-
ting forward a view shared by many planters, he argued without evident
irony that Mricans killed themselves by attending the funerals of their
friends and relations. "It is notorious," he insisted, "that more slaves are
ruined in principle and health, at those dances which are allowed at the
burials of their dead, than by any other intercourse or occupation what-
ever." Chaloner Arcedeckne heard much the same when he queried a plan-
ration doctor with rwenry-five years' experience in Jamaica. "With regard
to the mortality of slaves," Dr. William Wright explained, "it is not in
general owing to severity or oppression," but "to their going to distant
Parts w Negroe Plays in the night where they dance immodestly drink to
,excess, sleep on the cold ground or commit many acts of sensuality and
intemperance." Such explanations for deaths in bondage, similar to what
might today be recognized as a "culture of poverty" argument, were to
form the core of the defense of the slave trade and slavery right up until
emancipation in the 183os. 51
The Jamaican plantocracy responded to the abolitionist petitions in
Great Britain primarily in the terms used by Edward Long. In two com-
mittee reports sent by Jamaica's House of Assembly to the House of Com-
mons at the end of q88, slaveholders argued that the decrease in the slave
population was due largely to various "causes not imputable to us, and
which the People in Great Britain do not seem to understand." The reports
attributed most deaths to an imbalance in ratio between the sexes, which
inhibited the birth rate, and to epidemic diseases from Africa. To explain
r84 ~ The Reaper's Garden
mortality in Jamaica, the planters offered tortured calculations that sub-

tracted an inflated number of runaways, Maroons, and free blacks from
the total numbers of Africans imported since 1655, to conclude that only
26,491 slaves had "decreased" in well over a century. Fifteen thousand of
these, they proposed, had died between the years 1780 and 1787, when war,
a series of violent hurricanes, and famine had wrought havoc on the island.
Slaveholders thus sought exoneration by referring to the same catastrophic
events that Granville Sharp had taken as evidence of God's judgment.5 2
To blunt the charge of murderous cruelty, the reports enumerated the
recent adjustments to the legal administration of slavery, among them
stricter punishments for the wanton murder of slaves and accountability
on the part of overseers. Simon Taylor rushed to send a copy of one of
the new laws to Chaloner Arcedeckne, "to show to the people we are not
such inhumane beings as those wicked Enthusiasts represent us to be &
that people cannot murder or destroy Negroes as they do Dogs at home."
The assembly produced statistics on capital punishment showing that very
few slaves had actually been executed. "In order more effectively to prevent
the Destruction of Negroes by excessive Labour and unreasonable Pun-
ishments," a new law required the surgeon of every plantation, "to give an
annual Account of the Decrease and Increase of the Slaves of such Plan-
tation, with the Causes of such decrease, to the best of his Knowledge,
Judgment, and Belie£" Infant mortality would be arrested by the offer of
financial incentives to overseers, "Twenty Shillings for every Slave born on
such Plantation, Penn, or other Settlement." In short, and in sharp con-
trast to the spiritual discourse of the day, calls for slight modifications in
civil administration and appeals to the self-interest of the propertied classes
encompassed nearly the entire rhetorical explanation of the death of slaves
by apologists for slavery. By distancing themselves and their business from
the deaths they caused, slaveholders and their allies sought to remove as
many of the dead as possible from the growing debate over slavery, and
thus reduce the legions of dead slaves arrayed against them by abolitionists
to a small band of spectral aberrations. Slaveholders hoped to kill symbol-
ically those whom slavery had already killed physically.S 3
An Abstract of the Evidence

Carefully coordinated by Jamaica's principal lobbyist, Stephen Fuller,.
proslavery testimony carried the day when the M.P.'s voted on Wilberforce's
The Soul of the British Empire ·--l':! r85
first abolition bill in 1791. Nevertheless, the moral figure of slavery as

murder occasioned by greed took more definitive shape in the testimony
of the witnesses for abolition. Despite the failure of the 1791 motion for
abolition, the testimonial evidence gave abolitionists another opportunity
to frame and publicize slavery as a moral problem that revolved largely
around the deaths of the enslaved. Late in 1790 Wilberforce managed to
hav:e an abstract of the abolitionist testimony published and distributed to
each M.P. In 1791 me abolitionist publisher James Phillips printed fifteen
hundred copies of a second edition, and within two weeks abolition com-
mitt,ees had distributed it widely.s4
The questions asked by the House of Commons committee in 1790
and 1791 and the testimony given at the hearings revealed that slaves'
deaths and their moral implications now occupied an important: place in
rhe consideration of slavery and the slave trade and showed also the per-
sistence of the imperial moral crisis kindled by the captain of the Zong.
Ostensibly set to collect information only about the slave trade, the hear-
ings brought life in the sugar colonies under dose scrutiny, allowing abo-
litionists to draw as damning a picture of the institution of slavery itself
as they had already drawn of the trade. The slave trade was becoming syn-
onymous with massacre, and slavery with unnatural and untimely death.
The parliamentary hearings of 1790-1791 did take into consideration
the intricate details of trade and economy, but Wilberforce and his co-
counsel William Smith spem considerable time inquiring into the human
roll levied by the slave trade and colonial slavery. The hearing investigated
the whole of the British Caribbean} bur as Britain's most populous and
profitable colony, Jamaica featured prominently in the testimony. The wit-
nesses went a long way toward establishing that the cruelty of overseers
and the hardened avarice of slaveowners caused the high mortality in the
West Indies. Testimonial evidence confirmed the impression that many
M.P.'s had formed from the proposed preamble to a clause of Jamaica's
Consolidated Slave Law (1787), which sought to make plantation overseers
more accountable. Reported in the Cornwall Chronicle and reprinted in
the preface to Abstract ofthe Evidence, the language disclosed "the extreme
,cruelties and inhumanity of the managers, overseers, and book-keepers of
estates" and asserted,. "It frequently happens that slaves come to their death
by hasty and severe blows, and other improper treatment." Wilberforce's and
Smith's questions focused on the callous disregard for black life, for
example: "Have you ever known persons who were known to have been
~-----------·-·--····-·--·- ..
I86 !$-· The Reaper's Garden
guilty of great severities to their Negroes, and who were commonly

reputed to have murdered them?; Have any instances fallen within your
notice, wherein, besides regular punishments, Negroes have been treated
by the overseers with capricious cruelty?"ss
Men who had experience in the sugar colonies answered with illustra-
tive stories meant to excite sentiment over episodes of suffering and death.
Dr. Jackson, who had practiced medicine in Savanna-la-Mar in the mid-
I770S recalled an instance where a flogging had killed an enslaved man.
Asked if there had been any attempt to punish the killer, Dr. Jackson
admitted that he was aware of none. Yet there had been public concern.
"People said that it was an unfortunate thing, and they were surprized that
the man was not more cautious, as it was not the first thing of the kind
that had happened to him; but what they chiefly dwelt upon was the loss
that the proprietor sustained."56 Several others reponed similarly unpun-
ished murders. Robert Cross, a former bookkeeper, overseer, and soldier
in Jamaica, told of another overseer who, "by severity," had "destroyed
forty out of sixty'' of the slaves in his power in the course of just three
years.S7 Henry Coor, who resided fifteen years on the island as a mill-
wright, described punishments for the enslaved in evocative detail to show
just how severe overseers generally were:
I have known many of these poor creatures, who have been whipt upon the
ladder to the number of 100 to 150 lashes, and sometimes to the amount of
two cool hundreds, as they are generally known by the overseers;. I have
known many of these poor creatures returned to the place of their confine-
ment, and in the space of one,. two, or three days, at the overseer's pleasure,
have been brought out to the ladder again, and have received the same com-
plement, or thereabouts,. as before; and they generally make a point never
to take these tortured creatures off the ladder till all their skin, from their
hams to the small of the back, appears to be nothing but raw flesh and
blood, and! then they went over the whole parts with salt pickle, which,
while the pain lasted, appeared to me, from the convulsions it threw them
into, to be more cruel than the whipping.58
Coor also told specific stories that emphasized how inured w suffering
and death whites in Jamaica had become. He told the parliamentary com-
mitt:ee about Old Quasheba, who had been brought to the overseer as a
runaway whHe Coor sat dining with him. After dinner, the overseer sum-
marily hanged Quasheba with the aid of one his clerks. Coor heard her
r
The Soul of the British Empire ->:J r87
choking and screaming for several hours. When the clerk came, "appar-
endy in great spirits," to brag about the deed, Coor reproached him. But
the clerk retorted, "Damn her for an old bitch, she was good for nothing,
what signifies killing such an old woman as her." The plantation manager
sent for Coor the foUowing morning to find out what had happened,
incensed that Coor could see his "master's Slaves murdered in that manner,
and not let him know of it." Coor simply responded that it was not his
business,. "cruelties of that kind were so common in the plantations, that
I had thought no more about it." The plantation manager was furious
over the loss of property, but nor angry enough to dismiss the overseer,
who had produced very profitable crops in the past. Evangelical audiences
who read the published testimony later could not fail to see that nowhere
in the story had anyone spoken of concern for Old Quasheba's immortal
soul. 59
Coor did observe, however, that "cruel treatment" had driven many
enslaved men and women to suicide. Substantiating the common aware-
ness that Mricans believed they would return home after they died, stories
of suicide confirmed the misery of slavery and countered proslavery testi-
mony suggesting that Africans might be happier under colonial slavery
than at home. Their performance at funerals also provided evidence of
their readiness to find escape in death. Several witnesses testified to the
"the great joy which is discovered at their funerals by their fellow-slaves,
and which joy is said to proceed from the idea that the deceased are
returning home." By contrast, at least one witness reported that: funerals
in Africa were more sorrowful affairs. When Wilberforce and Smith pur
the question to several more witnesses-"Did you ever know Negroes to
commit suicide, and under what circumstances?"-the responses corre-
sponded to popular Romantic descriptions of suicides as heroic tragedies
for which the fault lay with a corrupt and unfeeling world. As such, sui-
cide functioned as the ultimate proof of oppression, much as rhe decisions
of the ten Mricans who leapt freely overboard from the Zong indicted the
venality of Captain Collingwood and his officers. Go
As had been the case wirh rhe Zong massacre, the parliamentary testi-
mony on slavery set up an equation linking slavery, death, and money, the
willful substitution of financial gain for the fate of the soul. Slaves were rou-
tinely worked to death. "Hard work," as well as severe punishment, "cer-
tainly occasions a constant decrease in the able Negroes," explained former
z88 ~ The Reaper's Garden
overseer William Fitzmaurice. "I am v·ery sorry w say," he acknowledged,

"that a great number of Negroes are hurried to their grave" by having to
ke·ep up an unbearable pace on work gangs. He spoke on good authority..
During the last four years that Fitzmaurice lived in Jamaica, h·e bought
ninety-five slaves and sold fifty-two of them. These "were aH that were
living, and thos·e fifty-two I did not sell as seasoned Slaves; if I had
attempted to keep them till the usual time of seasoning, I should have had
a greater decrease, and on this very account I sold them." Seizing on such
estimates of death and devaluation, Wilberforce and Smith asked,. "Did
you ever hear any calculation made concerning the time which an Mrican
Negro would be required to last in order to repay the price of his pur-
chase?" Fitzmauric·e admitted only that there had been an old saying in the
parish of Saint Thomas-in-the-Vale, Jamaica, "that if a negro lived s·even
years he paid for himself." But slaves could not always be kept alive long
·enough to secure a r:eturn on the investment. 6I
Fitzmaurice told a story about one gendeman's plantations in Saint
Thomas-in-the-Vale, where, "by over pushing, the most parr of his Negroes
were destroyed while he was in England, and when he returned he found
his estates almost without Negroes, and judgements against him to the
amount of a large sum of money to various people, and those Negroes that
lived were taken upon writs of Venditioni; I purchased mysdf, at a public
sal!e, fifty odd to cover a debt for a house in Kingston. lrt such a volatile
)l
market,. few owners could be concerned about the family lives of the
enslaved. Dr. Harrison, a former plantation doctor in Jamaica, told the
committee that there was no "encouragement given to bring up families;
the general opinion being, that it was better to purchase new Negroes, than
to rear Negro childr.en.'' Witness after witness came before the House of
Commons committee to confirm Ottabah Cugoano's allegation that "the
great severities and oppressions loaded upon the wretched survivors are
such that they are continually wearing out, and a new annual supply
wanted,'' to replace 11the great multitude of human souls that are actually
deprived oflife by carrying on that iniquitous business." Against Cugoano~s
ideal image ofall individuals' having an essential existence as souls precious
in the sight of God, the testimony to the House of Commons in []91 gave
an impressi·on just like that held by Captain Thomas Lloyd of the Royal
Navy: to slaveholders, enslaved men and women "were very generally con-
sidered as black catt:l·e, and very often treated like post horses."62
An Abstract of the Evidence concluded by invoking Hercules Ross, who

resided in Jamaica from 1761 to 1782. In the early 1770s Ross attended a
series of meetings in Kingston called by Thomas Hibben,. the most emi-
nem: Guinea factor, or slave dealer, in Jamaica, who wanted to debate the
wisdom and morality of the Mrican slave trade. At these meetings, Ross
delivered the opinion that the trade was contrary to both "sound policy''
and ''the ~aws of God and nature," and that it ought to be abo~ished. He
voiced this conviction no more than a few years after he had seen a par-
ticular group of slaves sold in Kingston's public square, survivors of an
·,event eerily similar to the Zong massacre. Before they arrived at auction,
these thirty-odd men and women had been packed, along with about four
hundred others, into the hold of an unnamed English ship that had sailed
from the coast of Africa. One night, it struck the reefs surrounding the
Morant Keys, three small sandy islands clustered just southeast of Jamaica.
The officers and cr.ew took their boats ashore with provisions and arms.
They lefi: the Mricans shackled aboard the slaver. Through the night, the
captives wrenched free of their irons and fashioned life-rafts from pieces
of the vessd. The next morning, from the shore half a league away, the
officers and cr·ew watched as the Mrican women and children floated
towards them upon the rafts, attended by the men who could swim.
Fearing that the Mricans would soon come aft.er their food and water, the
offi·cers and crew resolved to kill them. '~ the poor wretches approached
the shore," Ross recalled, "they actually destroyed between three and four
hundred of them." Only thirty-three or thirty-four survived for sale in
Kingston. P:erhaps the details of this massacre, a decade before the voyage
of the Zong, convinced Hercules Ross that the slave trade was a source of
"great destruction and great misery ro the human race." Perhaps also, the
others holding the academic debate in Kingston were aware of the event
or were convinced by Ross, for they finally decided in the majority "that
the trade to Africa for slaves, was neither consistent with sound policy, the
laws of nature, and morality." In spite of that, the most profitable days of
the slave trade to Jamaica were still to come.63
When An Abstract ofthe Evidence circulated among the public, it helped
inspire half a million Britons to sign petitions calling for the abolition of
the slave trade in 1792. In April of that year, the House of Commons
r:esponded to public pressure by voting to end the slave trade by 1796. But
the abolition bill met vehement opposition when it reached the House of
I90 !Oi- The Reaper's Garden
Lords. Though they were not beholden to popular opinion, the lords
avoided voting the measure down directly; instead they stalled it once
again, by demanding that the evidence collected by the Commons be pre-
sented anew to them. One motion away from victory, frustrated aboli-
tionists would wait another decade before Parliament sanctioned their
cause again. 64
The abolitionists' disappointment in Parliament was not totaL A few
modest reform measures, of the kind acceptable to the more enlightened
slaveholders, became law in the 1780s and 1790s. In 1788 Sir William
Dolben, one of two M.P.'s for Oxford University, sponsored a regulation
act to ameliorate the lethal conditions aboard slave ships. To alleviate ship-
board overcrowding that generated "putrid disorders and all sons of dan-
gerous diseases," the act sought to limit the number of slaves that could
be carried per ton and to provide piece-rate financial incentives to ship
captains and surgeons for slaves landed alive. A decade later, in 1799, a
similar act regulated the carrying capacity of slavers in relation to their
physical dimensions. A 1790 statute responded to the Zong massacre by
prohibiting the insurance of slaves, except for narrowly defined risks; a
law passed in 1794 explicitly banned the recovery of losses incurred by
throwing slaves overboard. But by 1793 antislavery rhetoric had lost some
of its allure for many M.P.'s, who were now more touched by the tales of
killing and chaos emanating from the French and Haitian revolutions.
When the London Corresponding Society, formed in 1792 by such radical
"British Jacobins" as Thomas Hardy, declared their support for abolition,
many began to suspect that the Abstract of the Evidence might be as dan-
gerously subversive as Thomas Paine's Rights ofMan, a strident defense of
the French Revolurion.6S
Chains ofMeaning
The deluge of sentimental antislavery narratives in the 1780s had begun
to lose some of its emotional force by the end of the century, as people
recognized the limits of sentimental politics. As the literary historian
Adam Lively has argued, "The enormous actual gulf between European
and enslaved African was bridged in the imagination by projecting onto
slavery conventional melodramatic scenarios. The ami-slavery aesthetic
spoke more of the reader and of his (or very often her) existence than it
The Soul of the British Empire ~ If) I
did of that of the slave, its ostensible subject." Even antislavery testimony,
based on first-hand experience, offered its narratives in the sentimental
terms that the English found convincing at the time. The literary enthu-
siasm for victims of suffering drew sharp criticism in the 1790s, and even
the most sentimental writers began to feel they had been self-indulgent.
According to the cultural critic Debbie Lee, Romantic writers continued
to writ:e powerful moral critiques of slavery, albeit more oblique ones.
«Since the topic had been made so explicit for so long," Lee says, "such
writers considered it most powerful when least obvious, most familiar
when unfamiliar, and truly intimate when seemingly distant." Relying
more heavily on aUegory, Romantics evoked antislavery sentiments in
"t:races, '' symbolic substitutions that could still be read for their political
meanings. 66
There was a similar, though less subtle, development in the way people
applied graphic arts and statistics to further antislavery aims. The circula-
tion of abolitionist anecdotes abetted by the enormous growth in print
media in the latter half of the eighteenth century gave pictures and num-
bers a new power to sum up and signify antislavery themes. Both visual
images and demographic figures acquired the ability to stand for senti-
mental stories whose moral was already understood. Empathy and abstrac-
tion converged in the combination of representations of dead and dying
slaves and recitations of unnatural decreases in population. The guiding
spirit of Edward Young, the poet of Night Thoughts, who inspired readers
to draw moral lessons from relations with the dead, and of John Foxe,
whose Martyrology appeared in five new printings between 1784 and r8oo,
continued to inform the public, as it learned to interpret increasing quan-
tities of numerical and pictorial information. "For over a century Young
was the poet of Christian sensibility par excellence," the literary historian
Stephen Cornford contends, "and his poem signaled the beginning of an
era when the search for truth, certainty and knowledge t:ended to find
answers in idealism rather than empiricism, in enthusiasm rather than
pragmatism. " 67 In fact, during the antislavery campaigns, idealism and
empiricism were dramatically united. Demographic data combined with
visual imagery allowed people to survey and grasp immense amounts of
information about events that they could never experience, yet traces of
moral sentiment remained attached to these abstractions. Chains of mean-
ingful association bound the Zong massacre to future discussions of slavery,
and the ethical outrage that crystallized in its wake could be provoked in
a flash by an image or by a recitation of numbers. Both could function as
empirical proof of an ethical argument.
William Blake's antislavery engravings, for example, encoded the evan-
gelical approach to death in macabre detail, along with the condemnation
of colonial slavery. In 1791-92, as Britons considered the evidence of inhu-
manity in their West Indian colonies, Blake worked on his engravings for
John Gabriel Stedman's Narrative of a Five Years' Expedition against the
Revolted Negroes ofSurinam. When the book appeared in 1796, antislavery
activists scoured it for anecdotes and imagery that could excite abolitionist
feeling, though Stedman himself had fought a bitter campaign against the
Maroons and was an apologist for colonial slavery. From original water-
colors by Stedman, Blake fashioned scenes of torture and death that were
powerfully evocative but also, through the viewing conventions of the
period, taken as accurate representations of objective truth. One of the
images, A Negro hung alive by the Ribs to a Gallows, brought traditional
iconography of death, horror, and evangelicalism together to create an
enduring emblem of antislavery sentiment (Figure 5.3). The image depicts
a man suspended from a gallows by a hook run through his rib cage.
Around his body, skulls adorn sticks and bones litter the ground. Evoking
the traditional memento mori, Blake announces the universal approach of
death, made specific in the black man's imminent fate. The man stares
directly out of the page without expression; perhaps he is already dead.
But the open eyes of the man, suspended alive like Christ, also signify
spiritual redemption and everlasting life . He embodies Blake's radical
Christian vision. Blake's efforts to represent those killed for revolting
against their status as chattel probably influenced his Visions ofthe Daugh-
ters ofAlbion (1793), which David Erdman has described as an "indictment
of the 'mistaken Demon' whose code separates bodies from souls and
reduces women and children,. nations and lands, to possessions. "68
After he finished his engravings for Stedman's Narrative, Blake took
other opportunities to make moral images of death. He produced more
than 537 watercolors and 43 engravings for the 1797 edition of Night
Thoughts, and in 1805 he began drawing the images of death, judgment,
and the afterlife that would appear in the r8o8 edition of The Grave by
Robert Bhir. Soon after, he painted his impression of James Hervey's Med-
itations among the Tombs. Blake's engravings of the tortured body of the
Figure 5··3· A Negro hung alive by the Ribs to a Gallows, engraving by William Blake, in
John Gabriel Stedman, Narrative ofa Five Years' Expedition against the ReZJolted Negroes of
Surinam, vol. r (London, 1796). This image was based on a 1773 eyewitness description
from Suriname. The victim hung there alive for three days, unri! he was finally bludgeoned
to death by a sentry he had insulted. Blake gave the scene the iconic status of a cruciflxion
and arranged the memento mori dearh's-heads ro draw attention to rhe ship off the coast,
.implicating overseas empires in the execution. From rhe collection of the James Ford Bell
Library, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis.
194 "'". The Reapers Garden
black man thus exemplified his larger concern with death, redemption,
and the moral government of the world. 69
Other artists made the connection between death, slavery, money, and
politics more explicit than did Blake. Though British satirists generally
accepted the prevailing contempt for blacks, they sometimes mined the
topic of colonial slavery in order to lampoon greed, political corruption,
and the degeneracy of elite society. The 1791 House of Commons debate
and the petition campaign that followed it provoked more direct reflec-
tions on slavery. The satirist James Gillray engraved Barbarities in the West
lndias (Figure 5.4), based on an incident reported by Sir Philip Francis to
the Commons that April. The caricature shows a sinister-looking overseer
stirring a slave in a boiling vat of sugar cane juice. Nailed to the wall
behind him are some small animals, a severed black arm, and a single pair
of black ears. As J. R. Oldfield has pointed out, this image, like similar
caricatures, expresses ambivalence about the merits of abolition. Gillray
may well have been satirizing what proslavery advocates saw as the excesses
of antislavery testimony. Nevertheless, such images gave vivid form to the
connections linking death, greed, and slavery and lodged them in the
visual imagination of the viewing public. 7°
The best-known abolitionist image of the period (perhaps excepting
Josiah Wedgewood's kneeling slave) showed the plan and sections of a
slave ship, modeled on the Brookes of Liverpool, which, like the Zong, car-
ried Africans from the Gold Coast to Jamaica. In late 1788, when aboli-
tionists in Plymouth published an image of the packed lower deck of a
slaver, it quickly came to Thomas Clarkson's attention. He had a more
detailed version published in the spring of 1789, which he distributed to
members of both houses of Parliament in advance of Wilberforce's first
motion for abolition. The icon also appeared more widely in myriad anti-
slavery tracts and pamphlets, posted in the streets of Edinburgh or even
framed and displayed in private homes, and in the first edition of the
Abstract ofthe Evidence. The London committee arranged for the printing
and distribution of eight thousand additional copies in q88-89.71
The image of the plan and sections of a slave ship encapsulated moral
censure of the commercial way of death, rendered emblematically rather
than anecdotally (Figure 5.5). "Here, in diagrammatic form," explains Old-
field, "were human beings reduced to the levd of inhuman objects,. treated
as so much merchandise and stowed on board ship in the most: appalling
The Soul of the British Empire
Figure 5·4· Barbarities in the W'est lndias, drawing by James Gillray, 23 April 1791, in The Wi>rks ofjames
Gil/ray (London, 1849). A plantation overseer uses a whip handle to stir a black body into a vat of boiling
sugar, as he exclaims, "B-r your black Eyes! What you can't work because you're not well?-but I'll give
you a warm ba11:h to cure your Ague, & a Curry-combing afterwards to put Spunk into you." Nailed ro
the wall in the background are several dead animals, a black person's severed arm, and a pair of human
ears. The capcion refers to the parliamentary debates of 1791: "Mr. Frances relates, 'Among numberless
other acts of cruelty daily practiced, an English Negro Driver, because a young Negro thro sickness was
unable to work, threw him into a Copper of Boiling Sugar juice, & after keeping him steeped over head
& Ears for above Three Quarters of an hour in the boiling liquid, whipr him with such severity that it
was near Six Months before he recover'd of his Wounds & Scalding.' Vide Mr. Frances speech corrobo-
rated by Mr. Fox, Mr. Wilberforce & c. &c." Reproduced by permission of the Huntington Library, San
Marino, Califo.rnia.
conditions."72 Perhaps more important, lt was impossible to escape the

impression that the Brookes was a tomb, a mass grave that yielded hand-
some rents to tt:s owners.
If the story of the Zong symbolized the Atlantic slave trade as a moral
dystopia, the plan of the Brookes refined the abstraction. "Designed,"
according to Thomas Clarkson, "to give the spectator an idea of the suf-
ferings of the Mricans in the Middle Passage," the image effected a subtle
The Reaper's Garden
Figure 5· 5· Detail from Plan and Sections ofa Slave Ship, frontispiece to An Abstract of
the Evidence Delivered before a Select Committee of the House of Commons in the Years I790
and IJ9I (London, 1791). Originally published in 1789 (printed by J. Phillips), the
image, which has been reproduced frequently down to the present, represents the cargo
hold of the Brookes, a Liverpool slaver which traded in Jamaica in the 178os. One of the
larger ships in the trade, the Brookes carried as many as 609 enslaved Africans in its
hold. Courtesy of the Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library, Duke
University,. Durham, North Carolina.
shift in evocative technique, inspiring horror not through the details of suf-
fering, but through irs lack of detail. Although close inspection of the image
would reveal gender distinctions, shackl.es, and bodily contortions, nothing
indicated the anguished cries, or the blood and filth in the hold. For
viewers trained by moral sentimentalism and gothic fiction to see authen-
tically human experience in such details, the revelation that slavers could
coolly reduce human bodies to such neat, lifeless patterns was in itself hor-
rifying. Viewers who knew the stories ofsuffering and death contained in
the Abstract of the Evidence had to notice the absence of such stories, the
absence of humanity, from the plan of the slave ship. Indeed, the generic
nature of the image forced them to seek stories of suffering and death in
the accompanying text. As an abstract rendering of the confluence of death
and calculation, the image both summarized the traces of various senti-
mental and evangelical ethical narratives and foreshadowed the emergence
of the demographic debate on the enslaved population of the West Indies.
That debate only intensified after the abolitionists had finally brought a
halt to the British transatlantic slave trade. In the rhetoric that attended
that victory, the Zong again played a role. As Ian Baucom has recognized,
the story of the Zong massacre assumed a truly generic form in the House
of Commons abolition debate of r8o6. During the debate "the story of the
massacre was retold: though now not as the story of a particular historical
event ... but as one in a series of equivalent stories."73
Of course, the general understanding of the slave trade as commerce in
death was only one factor in the ultimate success of the abolition bill that
year. Recent evidence indicates that West Indian planters, especially in
Jamaica, faced a crisis of overproduction in the early years of the nine-
teenth century that severely eroded confidence in the sugar industry
among imperial policymakers. As Robin Blackburn has wryly observed, it
was only after the threat of Jacobinism and the French Revolution had
faded, and once a majority of M.P.'s were "convinced that abolition did
not contradict 'sound policy,'" that "knowing it to be dear to the heart of
rhe middle-class reformers, they allowed themselves to be shocked by the
appalling brutalities of the Atlantic slave trade." N everrheless, by pro-
voking anxiety over God's judgment of the British Empire, the generic
representation of the slave trade had inspired passionate and crucial polit-
ical action and would continue to frame the terms of the succeeding
episodes in the debate over colonial slavery. 74
'"54n Arithmetical Proposition"

Following the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade in r8o7, the old
theory that a decline in population could result from an immoral eco-
nomic bargain formed the underpinning for the movement to bring about
registration of slaves, an amelioration in their living conditions, and their
eventual emancipation. Debates in Britain about the correlation between
the magnitude of the population and its moral welfue, which had begun
in the mid-eighteenth century with the earliest attempts to "number the
198 !;!- The Reaper's Garden
people," now focused on colonial slavery. The first nationwide census in

r8or had demonstrated that the British population was not, in fact, in
decline, but the moralists were not satisfied; they transposed their argu-
ment to the slave colonies, where it appeared to be justified. In 1815, again
backed by a mass campaign, parliamentary aboEtionists pressed for a reg-
ister of the enslaved populations in the West Indies. The proposed bill was
meant to ensure, through carefully monitoring of patterns of birth and
death in the colonies, that no new slaves were smuggled in from Mrica.
Though the intercolonial slave trade was still legal, strict enforcement of
the ban on the African trade was imended to encourage planters to breed
rather than buy their workforce. Merchants and planters in the colonies
were hostile to the proposed legislation, rightly fearing that such a census
might reveal embarrassing statistics. It was common knowledge that slaves
failed to reproduce themselves naturaUy in the sugar colonies and that
their numbers had decreased since the end of the transatlantic slave trade,
but slaveholders hoped to hide the extent of the demographic debacle.
Following the path hewn by Long and Beckford, they again blamed the
decrease on factors beyond their control. The Jamaican assembly protested
in 1815 that after the abolitionists had abused them "in detail," with anec-
dotes of cruelty and barbarity, "we are [now] attacked in the mass, and
told, that although we have refuted the items, the general charge of crudty
and oppression must be just, because the slaves have not increased, but
diminished, in number." The colonial assemblies' protests were enough to
obstruct the imposition of a central register, administered from London,
but there was enough pressure to persuade them to establish colonial reg-
isters under local control. The registration returns continued to document
a profound demographic crisis. Confronted by the numerical ''facts,"
advocates on both sides of the slavery issue again invoked the dead in spir-
ited debates.75
Planters and merchants reprised the arguments laid out by Long: rogue
underlings were beyond rheir control, and rhe bad habits of the enslaved
were responsible for their poor life expectancy and low birth rate.
Immoralliity, superstition, abortion, and even witchcraft served as conve-
nient scapegoats for the demographic decline. The gothic novelist and
slaveholder Matthew Gregory Lewis summarized planrers' sentiments per-
fectly in his diary: "Say what one will to the negroes, and treat them as
weH as one can, obstinate devils, they will die!'' Such sarcastic reasoning
The Soul of the British Empire -!S I99
could not undo the ordinary conflation in the popular mind of slavery,
avarice, and death that had been established in the r78os and 1790s. As
long as this simple chain of associations remained intact, abolitionist argu-
ments continued to be morally convincing, even when they no longer
relied on sentimental discourse. As incriminating statistics were reported
in from the West Indies, antislavery activists in Britain came to see them
as an index of the basic inhumanity of slaveryJ6
The recorded statistics acted as seemingly "rational" analogues ro
detailed stories of physical suffering. Thomas Powell Buxton spoke for
many humanitarians when he told an 1832 parliamentary committee on
the state of the West Indies that the decrease in the slave population was
"the best of all tests of the condition of the Negro." Basing his argument
on his understanding of Malthusian population theory, he asserted that
barring "great convulsions ... increase can only be prevented by inrense
misery." In this way Buxton folded a generic argument,. about the
immorality that caused demographic deterioration, into what seemed a
scientific truism. He justified his argument in terms appropriate to an age
in which the influence of sentimental rhetoric was yielding to bureaucratic
rationality. He cited population decline, he said, "because it cannot be
liable to the imputation of any excitement of feelings;. ir was a purely
rational argument, it was addressed only to the understanding, it was an
arithmetical proposition." The statement was sly. Such numbers certainly
excited feeling, but sentiment now came cloaked in the authority of
reason. The ethical corollary to John Weskett's gross averages, demo-
graphic statistics carried narratives of suffering with them. Despite the
transition from moral sentimentalism to humanitarian empiricism, emo-
tional weight attached to rhe dead remained a fundamental feature of
British morality. For the devout, redemption for the British Empire could
only come with the cleansing of the national soul through the restoration
of proper attitudes toward death and the dead,. and rhis required expiation
for the sin of slavery. The mora] climate that developed in response to the
death of slaves was an important factor in Parliament's decision to mitigate
slavery in r823 and finally to emancipate the enslaved in the r83os.n
Popular antislavery politics in the Age of Reason were less a rational
pursuit than a national exorcism, a campaign to rid the British Empire of
a great eviL Antislavery rhetoric and activism emerged as an important
part of the British vision for the colonial moral order in the late eighteen tb
200 l:;l- The Reaper's Garden
and early nineteenth centuries. At its center was an evangelical under-

standing of death and redemption, couched in the rhetoric of moral sen-
timent.78 Reacting to deep demographic changes and political-·economic
tensions in Britain, mortuary politics in antislavery discourse projected
idealized resolutions of domestic crises onto the British West Indies. The
image ofWest Indian slaveholders as depraved lcillers satisfied a widespread
yearning,. especially on the part of evangelicals, to find the evH at the root
of contemporary social strains. Yet as long as systematic murder was se,en
largely as the result of moral failure, antislavery polemics were vulnerable
to at l~east one of the counterarguments by merchants and planters: that
the moral condition of black men and women was the source of their
failure to propagate.
Evangelical antislavery activists reli,ed on a religious understanding of
population trends. As a resuh,, they often believed that planters had only
m attend to the moral instruction of enslav~ed blacks in ord.er to see their
numbers grow naturally. In 1806 Wilberforce assured skeptics that the
slaveholder need only ensure "that the negroes are well fed, regard paid to
their health, their habits, to their domestic comforts, and, above all, to
their moral improvement; and he will soon find them rapidly to increase
in numbers." In this respect, many evangdical aboHtionists agreed with
plant·ers that the slaves' "morally degraded condition," their savagery, w:as
pardy to blame for rampant mortality among them. Abolitionists advo-
cat·ed the reformation of slaves' moral state as a means w achieve demo-
graphic increase. Much of their effort w "ameliorate" slaves' condition in
the 1820s focused on winning freedom for evangelicals to proselytize in the
colonies;. Once protection had been guaranteed evangeHst missionari~es to
the coloni.es., many ~espectable reformers were content to see slavery con~
tinue in a milder, because more pious, form. But though this solution may
have soothed the conscience of evangelicals in Britain, overs~eas missionaries
actually ha:d to confromc the somewhat different spiritual convktions and
freedom struggles among the enslaved. The result of such encounters
would propel antislavery rhetoric and acdon well beyond British r·eformers'
more~ limited vision of moral reform.7 9
CHAPTER SIX
Holy Ghosts and Eternal Salvation
To REDEEM THE souL of the British Empire, it was necessary to save the
souls of its heathen inhabitants. If Britons were to avert a divine calamity,
they would have to bring imperial subjects, including the enslaved in
Amerka, to God. Fearing that the souls of so-called heathens would face
heU,, eternal oblivion, or "spiritual death," evangelical Protestants in the
second half of the eighteenth century entered into a worldwide competi-
tion to sav,e souls. The matter was urgent, for the terrors of hell weighed
heavily on the minds of evangelists, and they knew that heathens were
damned unless they could he converted, "pmucked from the burnings, and
rescued from heathenish and savage darkness." Not to desire their salva-
rion was canst"dered '""m h urnan, " even "d
, evt"1"1sh ."I
Late in the year 1824 the Baptist missionary William Knibb embarked
for Jamaica aboard the merchant ship Ocean,, to assume the mission of his
deceased brother Thomas. Violent weather in the English Channel delayed
his passage for two months and forced Knibb, barely twenty-one years
old,, to reflect upon his own mortality. Death was often on William
Knibb's mind as he ~ay in his berth. He was weU aware that Jamaica was
among the most dangerous places to which an evangelist could go, "the
g,ave of the Europeans,'' a colony where no insurance society would
underwrite a policy on any man's life, on any terms. Thomas had died
after just fifteen months on the island, before he reached the age of
twenty-five. "But if such a short period is allotted to me," WiUiam wrote
to his relatives at Kettering, "my prayer is that I may be able to do the
202 l>!o- The Reaper's Garden
work of an Evangelist and be faithful to death, that thus I may receive the
final and. eternal benediction of well done, good,. and faithful servants.''
Rejoicing at the thought ofThomas's role in the symboHc death and spir-
itual rebirth represented by baptism, William clearly hoped that his own
endeavor would equal his exalted impression of his brother's. Thomas was
doing the good work of John the Baptist, seen as the prototype of the mis-
sionary,. who associated total immersion in water and the subsequent
laying on of hands with (!passing from death unto life." 2
If Thomas's early success gave William cause for optimism, he grew
more pessimistic once he began ro learn something about slave society for
himself One morning during his voyage Knibb discussed slavery with a
fellow passenger, a Jamaican planter. The planter related aspects of life in
Jamaica that Knibb found intolerably wicked. The slaveholder claimed
never to punish any slaves but women, ''as they cannot be brought into
subjection without it." He alleged that he personally knew overseers who
employed an old woman "to bring them all the young females when they
arrive at maturity for the purpose of debauchery and crime." Knibb was
outraged ro hear that masters commonly had sex with female slaves ~Tor
the purpose of incr.easing their stock!.'!" The planter himself lived in adul-
tery and had heen doing s.o since he was sevent,een years old. And though
he was "employed in purchasing the bodies and in a certain sense the souls
of his unhappy fellow~creatur,es,'' the planter, Knibb was astounded to
hear, expe.cted to go to heaven on account of his good deeds. "He is -an
odious picture,." Knibb remarked in his journal, "of the brutalizing and
immoral tendency of this execrable system. "3
Knibb's initial experience of the stan: of religion in Jamaica confirmed
his view of the deleterious effects of slav;ery on the condition of the human
souL In one of his first leuers from the colony to his Bristol friend Samuel
Nichols,. Knihb was almost despairing: «I have now reached the land of
sin, disease, and death, wher,e Satan reigns with awful power, and carries
multitudes captiv:e at his wilL Here rdigion is scoffed at, and those who
profess it ridiculed and insulted. The Sabbath is violated, and a desire
seems to manifest itsel£ by many of the inhabitants, to blot the Creator
out of the univers,e he has £ormed." It is true that when Knibb arrived in
Jamai·ca, the devo·ut were few and scattered. Most planters paid little heed
or financial support to the local clergy, and the Christianity practiced
among blacks was thoroughly unfamiliar to the Englishman. He foundl
Holy Ghosts and Eternal Salvation -a 203
cause for hope, however: Knibb had arrived in a colony whose endaved
population was undergoing widespread Chrisdanization. 4
Death .and Salvation

UntH the late eighteenth century, Christianity's influence among the
enslaved was severely limited. The Anglican Church in Jamaica had no
bishop until 1824, and it confronted a chronic shortage of clergy. Local con-
cern £or the welfare of the church was weak, and neither the vestries nor
t:he leg~slature provided adequate financial support. The church oould barely
must,er the resources to minister to the free white population, so it made
£ew attempts to convert slaves or serve their religious needs. Evangelical
miss.ions, with a greater sense of purpose and the help of fortuitous circum-
stances, made slow and halting progress but ultimately achieved consider-
abJ.e success in bringing Christianity to the majority of the Jamaican
population by the middle of the nineteenth century.5
The Grim Reaper cultivated a distinctive form of Christianity in
Jamaica, more like the Mrican forms of worship and fellowship that white
missionaries hoped to dislodge. Like everyone else on the island, mission-
aries rarely survived long. Consequently, there were never enough of them
among the overwhelmingly black population to inculcate unadulterated
versions of Christian beliefs and ceremonies. And because until the end
of the transatlantic slave trade Mrkans migrated to the island in steady
numbers as replacements for the exhausted, black people could always find
famiUar alternatives to European cultural practices. White missionaries
could only plant the seeds of interest in their religion; if it were to capture
the imaginations of the enslaved, it would have to resonate with their
d.e,epest concerns. As a result, more than anything else, death and slavery
determined the development of Jamaican Christianity.
The progress of Christianity on the island depended to a large degree
on the course of theological struggles surrounding the representation of
the afterlliife and ceremonies of interment. The Protestant doctrine of the
separation of body and soul-according to which souls were consigned
immediately after death to heaven, hell,. or oblivion-ran counter to wide-
.spread popular belief in the continuing presence on earth of the spirits of
the dead. Despite their differing views on the institution of slavery, planters.
and missionaries shared a sense of superiority vis-a-vis the enslaved, agreed
on their savagery, and desired that their burial ceremonies be reformed.

Understanding funerals as contested arenas where people enacted their
views on the afterlife, evangelical missionaries worked m change them and
thereby reform black relations with the dead. Their efforts eventually had
a significant impact on black religion and mortuary practice.
Nevertheless, Christianity did not simply supplant African-derived spir-
ituality in Jamaica. The religious transformations encompassed basic con-
tinuities. Enslaved blacks underwent genuine conversions, but because
they interpreted missionary teachings through their own experience, they
adapted Christianity to their primary interest in the relation of death and
spirit to the political tensions of slavery. In this way, struggles over the rep-
resentation of the hereafter were at the same time contests over the moral
worlds within Jamaican slavery. Most of the new Christians among the
slaves did not abandon their belief in the persistence of earthly ghosts and
spirits. Rather, they now tried to harness the specters of Jesus Christ and
the Holy Ghost to their struggles against the indignities of enslavement.
Equality in the afterlife, a central tenet of Christian teaching, inspired
social egalitarianism among people who continued to believe in the imbri-
cation of the spiritual and temporal worlds. Christianity offered an idiom
of protest shared with alHes in the United Kingdom, thus helping the
enslaved argue that slavery was incompatible with righteous Christian
imperial rule, even though the missionaries themselves were more circum-
spect about stating it. Yet for both missionaries and slaves the power of reli-
gion in this world revolved around ideas about death.
-i::l~
Protestant missionaries shared some fundamental approaches to the dead

and the afterlife. They shared a belief in the separation of body and soul
at death. Evangelicah also assumed that the souls of those who remained
outside the influence of their spiritual teaching were doomed to extinc-
tion-or worse, eternal torture in hell-after the passing of the body. Bur
Moravians, Methodists, and to a lesser extent Baptists all shared an abiding
faith in the redeeming power of the death of Christ . Believing above aH
else that the path to eternal life had been opened by Christ's willingness
to sacrifice himself for mankind, Protestant missionaries were obsessed
with death and its rneaning. 6
Baptists like Thomas and William Knibb, arriving after the official
establishment of the Baptist mission to Jamaica in r814, emphasized the
Holy Ghosts and Eternal Salvation ~ 205
possibility of spiritual rebirth from the living death brought about by sin,
a regeneration rhar could be achieved by ritual cleansing. When William
Knibb thought of his brother's mission, he imagined him in the river, bap-
tizing people who ''seemed lost as though no man cared for their souls."
Having been told of "Jesus the friend of sinners," the enslaved now had
an opportunity to repent, "washed in his blood, and regenerated by his
Spirit," metaphoricalJy "BURIED (not sprinkled!!) with him in Baptism,
that they may rise to newness of life. "7
Other Protestants surpassed the Baptists in their preoccupation with
death. The Moravians, who opened the first Protestant missions in Jamaica
in 1754, made a fetish of Christ's crucified body. Nickolas Ludwig von
Zinzendorf, the Austrian nobleman who emerged as the spiritual leader of
the Moravian Unitas Fratrum in the eighteenth century, believed that
because Christ had atoned for human sin, people had a duty to repay the
suffering and dying Jesus with love and adoration. Among the brethren,
this belief manifested itself in speech and song as a preoccupation with
Christ's wounds, blood, and corpse, which "came to be revered as mystical
entities deserving man's adoration in and of themselves," and not only as
symbolic expressions of Christ's sacrifice. "Blest Flock in th' Cross's Atmo-
sphere," went a verse of one Moravian hymn, "you smeH of Jesu's Grave,
f The Vapours of his Corpse so dear I Are the Perfume you have. I hs scent
is penetrant and sweet; I When you kiss each other and greet, I This Scent
discovers that you were/To Jesu's Body near." Such imagery was a promi-
nent feature of Moravian proselytizing. "We will preach nothing bur Jesus
the Crucified," they maintained at midcentury. "We will look for nothing
else in the Bible but the Lamb and His Wounds, and again Wounds, and
Blood and Blood." 8
In Jamaica, they avidly pursued this course. Once, stricken with a
serious fever, Brother Zecharias Caries called the "baptized Negroes" to his
bed. "I spoke to all of them of the suffering Saviour," he reported to his
diary, "of going to be with him, and of seeing the wounds in his hands,
and feet, and side." When they were feeling healthy, Moravians would
preach for "upwards of two hours, the account of our Saviour's last words,
his sufferings, and death." Such recitals formed the core of Moravian con-
version efforts. One Moravian missionary admitted as much when he told
a parliamentary committee in 1791 that "the plain Testimony concerning
the Death and Passion of Christ the Son of God, together with its Cause
The Reaper's Garden
and happy Consequences, delivered by a missionary touched with an

experimental Sense of it, is the surest Way of enlightening the benighted
minds of the heathen in order to lead them afterwards Step by Step into
aU Truth."9
The Methodists followed the Moravians, establishing a permanent mis-
sion in Jamaica in the 1791, but they emphasized the importance of the
death of individual sinners over the event of Christ's death. All humankind
was vile and doomed, Methodists agreed, but was loved by Christ nonethe-
less. In order to return the Savior's love, sinners must die and be reborn-
" Die to Live, as He died that they might live." Eternal life would be the
reward for a loving death. Methodists taught people to keep their thoughts
on the afterlife, w remind themselves constantly that they were working
toward a future state of eternal reward, "to look with tranquility upon the
tomb, and to consider death only as a friendly messenger." Because death
was the happy occasion when one passed from this life into eternity,.
Methodists often viewed the event as an opportunity to make sure that the
last words spoken were a testimonial to faith in Christ: the deathbed scene
was the conclusive evidence of a person's piety. The way of dying was tes-
timony to the Christian way of living. Accounts of death experiences
became a common feature of Methodist literamre, read aloud at society
meetings all over the world. 10
In reports from Kingston, Rev. William Fish provided careful descrip-
tions of all Methodists who passed away there and of their last days and
their demeanor at the moment of death. In 1804, for example, he com-
mented on the death of EHzabeth Poynter, an elderly bbck woman. "I am
informed her last days were her best," related Fish . "She grew more fervent
than ever; and enjoyed a great increase of the love of God," until the
moment "when she cheerfully resigned her soul to Him who had bought
it with His own blood." Elizabeth Poynter had been a devout and prac-
ticing Christian and her salvation was not in doubt, bur even practicing
sinners could be saved in their final hour, and the Methodists took special
notice of expressions of faith from them. Expression by the dying of faith
in Christ provided Methodists with the clearest proof of an individual's
candidacy for eternal life. Without that proof they remained anxious over
the fate of t:he person's sout Fish described the case of an elderly black
woman who had been sick for many years but regularly attended religious
meetings. One night after an evening catechism, she died before a friend
_j
Holy Ghosts and Eternal Salvation _, 207
couilld be called to hear her last words. "Our hope of her is therefore
founded on her conduct and experience in lift, and not on her dying tes-
timony," wrote Fish. He clearly would have felt greater certitude about her
salvation if he had possessed an account of her last words. 11
Methodists were most comforted when the aim of praising Jesus the
Savior could sum up the meaning of an entire life. So they celebrated sto-
t-ies in which a person narrated in one final utterance the entire meaning
of his or her existence through reference to Christ. In the published Mis-
sionary Notices devout Protestants of all sorts looked for deathbed anec-
dotes similar to the one concerning Mr. Allen, a young missionary sent to
Jamaica from England in the r82os. Just days after he arrived, Mr. Allen
was seized with a fever and inflammation of the lungs and kidneys.
''During his affliction he had severe struggles with the adversary of his
soul," read the letter from his colleague, Mr. Young. As he lay dying, Mr.
Al!len wondered whether he had not angered God by failing in his mission
to the heathens of Jamaica, but just before he passed away, he concluded,
"The Lord hath not sent me to Jamaica to labour, but to praise him!" He
implored his fellows to praise God with him, repeating again and again
that Christ was with him. Finally, wrote Mr. Young, "he lifted his trem-
bling hand, and waving it in token of victory, exclaimed, with emphasis,
'Praise! Praise! Praise!'-and then, sinking into the arms of death, left us
to write, 'Blessed are the dead that die in the Lord."' In the presence of
more than fifteen hundred people, Mr. Allen's colleagues interred him in
the Methodists' private burial ground, dose by the tombs of five other
missionaries recently fallen in the Jamaican "field of toil." 12
The brevity of Mr. Allen's career, like that of Thomas Knibb's, under-
scored the most basic problem missionaries faced in Jamaica-and in the
tropics in general: all had difficulty staying alive. All the missions to
Jamaica suffered the high mortality rates that characterized life in tropical
slave society. In his History of the Moravians in jamaica, J. H. Buchner
noted that of the sixty-four brethren and sisters who had been buried on
rhe island between 1754 and 1854, only one had endured the rigors of mis-
sion work for as many as nineteen years. By contrast, six died within their
first year and ten served only one year. The average term of service for
those who died in Jamaica was less than five years. The Methodists fared
no better. From the advent of the West India mission in the q8os to the
early r82os not a single European missionary survived as long as twenty
20810i- The Reaper's Garden
years in the field. The Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society's official

minutes tried to describe their plight lyrically: "By far the greater part were
cut down 'like a flower:-as a flower, parched by the Sun's direct ray,'
before it scarcely blooms." In the r82os and r83os, among missionaries of
aU denominations, terms of service averaged just three years. An aura of
doom surrounded the missionaries' temporal endeavors; it was perhaps
especially appropriate in Jamaica that they should focus most of their ener-
gies on preparing for the aftedife.l3
Slavery and the Hereafter

As much as mortality retarded the progress of the missions, the entrenched
institution of slavery shaped their development by setting limitations on
the activities of evangelists and shaping the priorities of the enslaved. In
the early eighteenth century,. British churchmen were still loosely an:ached
to the idea that only heathens should be enslaved. Slaveholders feared that
christening slaves would "destroy the Property of them in their Masters
and Mistresses, and the Right of selling them at Pleasure." By midcentury,
however, no one was particularly worried about this difficulty; besides,
other more important reasons kept Christianity from taking firm hold
among the slaves. Their short life spans and the rapid importation of
replacemenrs from different parts of the Mrican continent meant that the
slave population continued to be divided by language and regional eth-
nicity. Church of England officials complained that they could not,
without the benefit of a common tongue among the enslaved, effectively
instruct them. This situation suited planters, however, "it being as impos-
sible for Slaves that do not understand one another to carry on a plot
against their Master, or the country in general, as it was for the Inhabitants
of the primitive World to carry on the building of the Tower of Babel,
after the confusion of languages happen'd amongst them." Security was
always of paramount importance to the managers of slave society, and they
often suspected that Christianity might provide a subversive, unifYing illan-
guage for slaves. In 1739 Governor Trelawney accused the rector of Saint
Thomas-in-the-East of sedition for teUing enslaved converts to keep the
Sabbath holy: slaveholders interpreted the rector's exhortation as encour-
agement to slaves to defy their masters. Any intercession between a master
and his slaves, no matter how piously intended, was unacceptable. 14
Holy Ghosts and Eternal Salvation _, 209
Slaveholders, when they began to feel threatened by the emerging view

in Britain that slaveholding and Christian virtue were incompatible,
aggressively defended their way of life. Worried about the missionaries'
connections to the antislavery movement in Britain and concerned about
the "democratic manners" of evangelicals and their converts, slaveholders
throughout the British Caribbean often saw mission work as a threat to
the existing social order. Preaching to crowds that included slaves, mission-
aries often encountered hostility from whites, which made many of the
evangeHsts feel "the spirit of Martyrdom." When the Haitian Revolution
deepened their general insecurity, planters attempted a comprehensive
crackdown. The Jamaican assembly, in passing legislation in 1802 that pro-
hibited preaching by "ill-disposed, illiterate, or ignorant enthusiasts," sanc-
tioned the widespread harassment of evangelists, especially those who were
black. The imperial government voided the act, but in 1807 the assembly
passed a new consolidated slav,e code, commonly called the persecution
law, that banned all missions except for that of the Anglicans. Kingston
went a step further, in making it illegal to sing psalms or hymns. Again,
rhe metropolitan government in London intervened on behalf of the mis-
sionaries, ultimately guaranteeing their right to preach, in the "ameliora-
tion" legislation of 1823, yet the hounding continued in the consolidated
slave act of 1826 and in the vigilantism of slaveholders. 15
Mission work faced a severe cultural limitation, in addition to the
obvious difficulty of survival in the tropics and persecution by slaveholders:
the reluctance of Africans to accept the practicality or legitimacy of Chris-
tian rites. Among the most obvious considerations was that Sunday was
rhe only day that slaves had to work in their gardens; resting on the Sab-
bath could lead to starvation. Also, the Methodists and Moravians found,
just as the Anglicans had,. that most slaves were not interested in their ver-
sions of Christianity. One reason was that the low status accorded to mis-
sionaries by powerful whites made their authority suspect in the eyes of
slaves. Spiritual power was supposed to confer some mastery over the mate-
rial world, but most of the missionaries were nearly destitute. Describing
black people's attitude toward the poor Moravian craftsmen among them,
the Anglican rector ofWestmoreland observed: "Negroes in genera] make
very shrewd remarks, and one observed to me 'that even the Overseer never
goes to hear those people, or admits them to his table,-that they were
never sent for as Clergymen to bury or baptize white people; that they
2IO ~ The Reaper's Garden
never heard of my making shoes, binding books v~v.' and as they distin-
guish a mule by the name of A 'Horse-negroe,' so they call A Moravian
Clergyman A 'Parson-Negroe'; and from his poverty generally hold him in
contempt." 16
The rector also commented on another aspect of the connection
between material and spiritual power. He noted in 1788 that blacks gen-
erally thought of Christianity as another form of obeah. Obeah was prac-
ticed in part as a method of harnessing spiritual powers for material ends,
and the practitioner required a fee for services rendered. Simaarly,. Angli-
cans customarily charged three dollars a head for baptizing slaves. But
since planters generally retused to pay the fee, conscientious churchmen
often baptized slaves for free. This practice had the effect of making Chris-
tianity appear valueless. As the rector put it: "They estimate the strength
of the charms which they purchase from the Obea-man, by the price that
he exacts; from whence they argue, that the Christian Obea (baptism) can
be little worth, since obtained at no expence." 17
The slaves' doubts about the social status of missionaries and the utility
of their religious practices were fortified by skepticism about Christian
eschatology. Most Protestant views of death and the afterlife had no reso-
nance with those most commonly held by the enslaved. Even African Mus-
lims in Jamaica, who shared the Christian bdief in the God and heaven
of the Bible, did not accept Christ as their principal savior. One leader of
a Muslim communiry, Muhammad Kaba Saghanughu, who came from an
important Islamic clerical family in West Africa, prepared a treatise in
Arabic on prayer that implored his followers to think about death and "the
matter of the tomb." His manuscript described the end of the world and
the Day of Judgment, when only the prophet Muhammad could intercede
on behalf of humankind. Few among the enslaved held even this much in
common with the missionaries. 18 Thomas Coke realized that slaves had
little inclination to believe in a worldview "which promised happiness in
another life; bur which professedly came from that God, who, though infi-
nite both in justice and power, had so mysteriously withheld it from them
in the present life." .Moreover, why should slaves and poor blacks look
beyond the grave to a future of rewards and punishments, Coke wondered,
when the very existence of a Christian hereafter was so suspect? "Of mis-
eries in a future state they could have little to fear, while estimating their
present: circumstances; and of felicities they could have but little to hope,
Holy Ghosts and Eternal Salvation ·'" 211
when considering that they depended en rirely upon the mercies of that
God who had permitted their present condition." 19
The missionaries emphasized the separation between this world and the
next. Once the threshold was crossed, an individual soul had little or
nothing more to do with temporal life. To Africans and their children,
who considered that human spirits played an active role in daily affairs,
such a partition between the living and the dead was implausible. As Coke
understood, the idea of an afterlife occurring in a radically different and
unfathomable place made little sense to the sons and daughters of Africa.
Africans associated the afterlife with their ancestral lands. Creoles also
seem to have refused to recognize a distinction between the material and
spiritual worlds. One Anglican churchman knew a group of Jamaican-
born slaves who supposedly believed the following: "After their Death,
they shall serve their first Masters, or Mistresses, in the same Capacities,
as they did in this; only with this Difference, that they shall be able to do
any bodily Labour without being tired with ir." 20 Even if the slaves were
misleading their white interrogator, artfully pretending that they could
not imagine a life outside slavery, the way they framed their representation
of immortality indicates a settled helief in temporal and spatial continuity
between life and afterlife.
When they did accept the basic idea of a future stare of rewards and
punishments, they generally understood that since suffering weighed so
heavily upon them in this world, they could expect only happiness in the
next. Whites, by contrast, must anticipate God's vengeance. "If you speak
to rhem of future punishments," said a former plantation doctor in his
testimony before the House of Commons in 1791, "they say-'Why
should a poor Negro be punished; he does no wrong; and that fiery caul-
drons, and such things, are reserved for the White people in the other
world as a punishment for the oppression of Slaves.' "21 Here, the enslaved
clearly rejected the premise that each individual bears rhe burden for orig-
inal, transcendental sin, believing instead that eternal judgments were
determined by the temporal relations of social power.
With their own deities and cosmologies, Mricans were, as one Christian
observer put it, "accustomed to pagan rites." Of these, none were more
important than the rites for the interment of the dead. The rector of Saint
Catherine, John Venn, discovered as much when he offered to baptize a
black man whom he found "sensible and well-inclined." The man refused
212 t:l-· The Reaper's Garden
to be christened because, according to the rector, then he "must go to no

more Dances, nor have any of their antic Ceremonies about his Grave, of
which these poor ignorant Creatures are fond to a surprising degree. " 22
Venn probably should not have been surprised. Mricans and their descen-
dants drew vital communal sustenance and political power from their par-
ticipation in funerak In final rites of passage they established the categories
of belonging and marks of distinction that organized sodallmfe. They also
articulated moral principles. Common beliefs and rituals associated with
death shaped the moral discourse that highlighted their common values,
which often transcended and challenged the imperative of slavery. Whereas
slaveholders preferred their slaves to be divided among themselves and,
with few exceptions, degraded to the level of beasts, the enslaved used last
rites to affirm their shared humanity and articulate their own principles of
moral and social interaction. When social conflicts arose, slaves drew on
the values expressed through relationships with the dead to challenge the
domination and authority of masters. Gathering at night, beyond the gaze
of their surveillants, slaves could consider their strength in numbers, rec-
ognize spiritual powers unavailable to the whites, and plan collective actions
to improve their circumstances.
Many eighteenth-century Jamaican colonists recognized that black
funerals posed a threat to their security. Though general laws had been
passed in the late seventeenth century against large assemblies of slaves,
the correlation between funeral "plays" and open revolts, like the connec-
tion between shamanism and political authority, emerged more dearly in
the mid-eighteenth century. In particularly tense times, such as the 176os,
planters were reprimanded for permitting funerals on their estates. In that
decade Edward Long concluded that slaves' funeral gatherings had "always
been their rendezvous for hatching plots." 23
By the eady nineteenth century, the association between shve funerals
and rebellions was firmly established in the minds ofJamaican lawmakers.
In 1809 the Jamaican assembly examined evmdence of a foiled consphacy
to revolt on New Year's Day. Witnesses came before a committee of the
assembly to testify that the Society of Black Lads, a dancing club formed
by Kingston slaves, had organized the plan around funeral ceremonies and
had sealed pacts among themselves with grave-dirt oaths. Dr. Richard
Chambedain, a Kingston magistrate, told the committee that a few weeks
befom·e New Year's Day he had observed "symptoms with respect to the
Holy Ghosts and Eternal Salvation -:o1 2I3
negroes' dresses and actions, similar to former conspiracies." On Sundays

he noticed "the carrying of many coffins, with B.ags, but what were in the
coffins I cannot say, with drums and boatswain's calls, accompanied with
the Coromantee war-yell." The committee asked him if he had any reason
to believe that anything other than corpses were carried in the coffins. "I
always have been of opinion that they contrived to carry arms and ammu-
nition in such coffins," Chamberlain answered. He had never dared to
open and inspect the coffins. Instead, he based his supposition on the
cryptic comments of the enslaved. He told the committee that he had
often "heard the negroes say, 'something more in the coffins than dead
bodies."' What they had meant by "something more" was open to spec-
ulation, but whether the coffins contained material or spiritual weapons,.
the assemblymen were alert to the hazard that they represented. 24
In r816 an overseer in Saint Elizabeth parish discovered that Dick, an
African man known also as the king of the Eboes, had attempted to
organize a rebellion at the funeral of a child. According to Matthew Gregory
Lewis, who described what he knew about the conspiracy in his diary,
"above a thousand persons were engaged in the plot, three hundred of
whom had been regularly sworn to assist in it," by "eating earth from
graves.'' The overseer who detected the intrigue was a Frenchman from
Saint-Domingue, who was understandably alert to potential disturbances
among the enslaved. He had noticed the exceptionally large gathering of
unfamHiar slaves for a child's funeral at Lyndhurst Penn, where the
mourning father roasted a hog for the guests. The overseer "stole softly
down to the feasting hut," wrote Lewis, "and listened behind a hedge to
the conversation of the supposed mourners; when he heard the conspiracy
detailed." At the high point of the funeral feast, the overseer heard Eboe
Dick and a chorus of supporters rally for the insurrection with song:
Oh me good friend, Mr. Wilberforce, make we free!

God Almighty thank ye! God Almighty thank ye!
God Almighty, make we free!
Buckra in this country no make we free:
What Negro for to do? What Negro for to do?
Take force by force! Take force by force!
CHORUS:
To be sure! To be sure! To be sure!
2I4 ~· The Reaper's Garden
The next morning the Frenchman revealed his discovery to the parish
authorities, who arrested "the King of the Eboes" and one of his two co-
captains. The plamocracy hanged the Eboe king within five days of his
trial and had his head stuck on a pole at Lyndhurst. The captured co-
captain, who was to be transported from the island, burned down his
prison door and escaped briefly into the hills, before he was apprehended
a week later, hiding in the hut of a "notorious Obeah-man" in the neigh-
boring parish of Westmoreland. 2 5
The Jamaican assembly responded to such threats by passing a revision
and consolidation of existing slave law in 1816, including a measure explic-
itly prohibiting night buriak Ostensibly enacted "to prevent riots and
nightly meetings" among the enslaved, and to stop slaves from disturbing
the "public peace" and "endangering their healths," the regulation stipu-
lated that "all negro burials shall in future take place in the day-time only,
so that the same may be ended before sunset." Free persons permitting
night funerals on plantations or other properties were to be fined; slaves
attending such ceremonies were to be flogged. 26
Christian missionaries had their own criticisms of slave funerals, and
their own reasons for attempting to suppress or modify the ceremonies.
Christianity's growing impact on Jamaican slave society at the turn of the
century derived partly from an ability to engage with black views of the
afterlife and the dead. Indeed,. missionaries tried explicitly to change
the slaves' moral outlook by transforming their relations with spirits and
the afterlife and by changing their conduct at funerals. Anglican minister
James Ramsay inspired many with his Essay on the Treatment and Conver-
sion ofAfrican Slaves in the British Sugar Colonies (1784). "Religion has a
two-fold purpose," Ramsay wrote: "man's ultimate fate as an individual,
and his conduct as a member of society." Missionaries talked mostly as if
it was conduct that determined one's ultimate fate, but just as often, they
acted as though the conception of one's ultimate fate would determine
conducr. For Christian lifestyles to take hold, it was necessary for mis-
sionaries to instill, in the words of the Methodist evangelist Thomas Coke,
"adequate conceptions of rewards and punishments beyond the grave."
Changing the attirude black people had toward death and the dead was a
fundamental part of the missionary effort to make them good, "civilized"
Christians, thereby ensuring their ultimate salvation. 2 7
Holy Ghosts and Eternal Salvation --l':l 215
Discrepancies between "Negro" and "Christian" ways of understanding

the afterlife underlay the struggles that played out around burial cere-
monies. Christians of all stripes singled out black funerary rites for special
condemnation, both for their disregard of biblical strictures and for their
unfamiliarity. "Their practices at funerals were unnatural and revolting to
a high degree," remarked Baptist missionary James Phillippo, expressing
particular dismay at coffin divination and spiritual inquests. The Moravian
historian J. H. Buchner excoriated the slaves, especially the Mricans, for
being "much attached to their heathenish religion, which is of the lowest
kind ... By far the greater part adhered to their heathenish practices, such
as the sacrifice of fowls, and other offerings at the grave of departed
friends. "28
As white Christians eagerly acknowledged, such revulsion for and the
urge to change black mortuary practices converged with slaveholders' con-
cerns about security, however distasteful the institution of slavery may
have been to many missionaries. In q88 W Stanford, the rector ofWest-
moreland parish, wrote a letter to Bishop Beilby Porreus in London
explaining the urgent need to proselytize among the enslaved. Before Stan-
ford had arrived in Jamaica in 1779, he had served as an army chaplain on
the Mosquito Shore of British Honduras, where he had once enrolled a
small company of Christian blacks t:o help t:o put down a slave revolt. In
Honduras, as in Jamaica, the enslaved had organized rebellions based on
authority derived from the sacred aura of the dead. They were "under the
most powerful influence of Obea or witchcraft," Stanford told the bishop,
rhe fear of which "prevented our best disposed Negroes being faithful in
the instant of danger." Only the black Christians had proved reliable.
"This affair pointed our to me the advantages that might be derived to
Jamaica by a religious instruction of our Negroes," continued Stanford,
which would help to suppress "those drunken nocturnal Funerals," where
the enslaved planned and organized "intestine dangers" to the colony.
Existing laws for the suppression of such meetings would inevitably be
ineffective, Stanford maintained, as long as blacks favored autonomous
cultural practices. Indeed, he thought that regulations banning large
assemblies, drumming, and dancing among blacks rendered them more
dangerous. "These very restrictions," asserted Stanford, "irritated and
inflamed their minds, and at the same rime furnished them with rebellious
2I6 ~;;- The Reaper's Garden
Ideas, by comemplating their own strength in the multitudes that

attended, for at many of those funerals I have seen above a thousand
Negroes coUected." Only a committed program of baptism and religious
indoctrination would wean the enslaved from their subversive ceremonies
for the dead. 29
In an extended report on Jamaican slave religion in 1820, the Methodist
district chairman John Shipman outlined just such a strategy for reforming
black funerals. Shipman recognized that distinct relationships with the
dead were among the most significant aspects of the cultural gulf sepa-
rating "heathens" from Christians. He had discovered that many blacks
who had already been converted to Christianity maintained notions and
practices relating to the dead that did not derive from European Christi-
anity. Shipman offered "their heathenish veneration for the dead," as the
principal evidence of the need for a more effective program of Christian
instruction. Black funeral processions, proceedings at graveside, annual
visits and presents, and "prayers to the dead" all illustrated to Shipman
the debased state of "Negro Religion." They might also have reminded
him that communal bonds among the enslaved, extending to include the
dead and reaching back to Africa, could function effectively in the absence
of white tutelage.3o
Shipman rejected the notion that the spirits of the dead maintained a
presence in the material world or a relationship with the living. He was
especiaUy displeased with the account of an African woman who had lost
her adolescent daughter. Every Christmas, he was told, this woman went
to her daughter's grave "to mourn her death in the most feeling manner.
She regularly makes a kind of sacrifice by killing a Fowl over the grave,
and then brings it home, boils it, and rice, which she distributes to her
fellow servants,. but never tastes poultry herself." The connection between
the graveside sacrifice and the sharing of a meal made no sense to
Shipman. The kind of communion practiced by the old woman and her
feHows offended Shipman's expectation that fellowship with the dead
shouM be reserved for the celebration of Jesus Christ's death. 31 Indeed, for
most Protestants, the afterlife was a matter of the exclusive relationship
between the solitary sinner and the Son of God. Moral behavior in life
was intended to prepare an individual for the final judgment. Mter that,
one's spirit should have nothing more to do with society. For bbcks, the
spirit world remained intertwined with their own lives. The most signifi-
Holy Ghosts and Eternal Salvation -:;I 217
cant difference was that blacks, rather than looking exclusively to the sym-
bolic death of Christ to find a path to eternal salvation, looked to the
spirits of dead friends and relatives to order their moral understanding of
the temporal world.
To change that state of affairs, Shipman suggested a reordering of rela-
tions with the dead. He argued that missionaries should catechize slaves
regarding death and immortality and manipulate burial rites, in order to
transform belief and behavior. "It is well known," Shipman reminded his
fellow missionaries, "that nothing operates so powerfully on the minds of
negroes who understand the general principles of Christianity, as those
important truths which relate to death and a future state." Blacks were to
learn the truths about the future state through catechism. It was important
that potential converts first understand that they were all, by virtue of the
faU of Adam, "born in sin and guilt, and subject to pain and death." For
slaves, redemption would require special attention to their duties as ser-
vants. The catechism contained several lines admonishing servants to obey
happily and never speak ill of their masters, even behind their backs. Slaves
were to be made to understand that their eternal future hinged on their
willingness to remain subordinated. "To what place after death will wicked
bad servants go?" asked the catechism, to which the slaves had to reply,
''To hell; to be tormented forever." Then the lesson offered hope: "But
where will good, obedient, faithful servants go after death?-To Heaven:
to be happy with God forever."32
The catechism tried to render heaven and hell as explicitly as possible.
HeH was a physical place, "a dark, bottomless pit, full of fire and brim-
stone," where one would spend eternity amid weeping and wailing and
gnashing of teeth, as bodies lay burning in hellfire. Souls were to be per-
petually tormented by their own emotions: pride, willfulness, malice, envy,
grief. desire, fear, rage, and despair. Believers and good people, on the
other hand, would assume their spiritual bodies in heaven, "a place of light
and glory," where they would know and love God,. and live in everlasting
joy and happiness, suffering no want, pain, or sin. In short, the denizens
of hell remained embodied and mortal, perpetually dying, while only
those graced by God achieved immortal spirituality. By hammering home
these two images of the afterlife, Shipman argued, evangelists would use
fear and hope to entice slaves to feel "ashamed of their past errors," to
"practice every vinue, and to experience that pleasing hope, through a
2I8 ~ The Reaper's Garden
conscious interest in Christ, which will disarm death of its sting, and
render them happy in the joyful expectation of a glorious immortality."33
Shipman insisted that the repeated performance of Christian cere-
monies to reinforce these principles would wipe out heathen funerary
practices. Baptized blacks expected to have the biblical burial service read
over them as part of their last rites. At countryside funerals the service was
performed by anyone who could read, and in the towns by an acknowl-
edged minister. Shipman noticed that at these funerals, despite some
clamor and drinking, people seldom played drums, danced, or offered
libations to the dead. The observation was cause for optimism: a change
in burial practice must soon lead to a change in belief. When mourners
repeatedly heard a funeral service reflecting what Shipman described as
"our views on this subject," presumably, they were encouraged to converse
and refl.ect on death in a less inappropriate manner. "There can be no
doubt," Shipman declared, "that in time their superstitious notions
respecting a future state will die away, and they led to form opinions of a
future existence consonant to Scripture," powerfully stimulating them to
"holiness of life. ''3 4
By itself, however, baptism was not enough to change behavior. It did
so only in connection with black people's attachment to respectable
burials. So while hoping that a change in practices would lead to a change
in beliefs, Shipman also urged missionaries to use Christian burial services
to reward proper conduct. Those who had engaged in unacceptable activ-
ities should (!at death be disgraced, by being denied a Christian burial,"
he urged, repeating a suggestion made by James Ramsay in 1784. Adultery
and obeah were the most egregious offenses. Even the bewitched, who had
fallen under a curse and had "given themselves up for death through a hea-
thenish, and superstitious belief that they have been obiahed by another,
let them not have the privileges of a Christian burial; because such notions
are not only heathenish but destructive to themselves, hurtful to their
owners, and subversive to every Christian principle and practice." Recog-
nizing that bbcks placed enormous importance upon giving and having
proper burials, no matter what beliefs underpinned the funeral itself,
Shipman proposed that "any ceremony omitted on such occasions which
contributes to make the funeral less pompous and respectable would have
a great effect on the living." Changes in slaves' mortuary practices, thought
Shipman, would mean changes in the symbolic representation of their
moral order and alterations in the everyday politics of slave society. What
a powerful weapon of indoctrination the Christian funeral could be when
reserved for the worthy!35
Conversion and Continuity

The circumstances were far more favorable to the efforts of Shipman and
his fellow missionaries in r82o than they had been for his predecessors in
the eighteenth century. By the time Shipman took up his post as Methodist
district chairman in Jamaica, sweeping changes in the social, demographic,
and political climate of the West Indies had made a forceful impact on
black relations with the dead and had helped create a more auspicious cli-
mate for the spread of Christianity. A few aims were actually shared by
planters and evangelists-and slaveholders made some accommodations in
response to pressure from London that facilitated the missionaries' success.
At a deeper level, the social and demographic changes wrought by the
Haitian Revolution and the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade, along
with the continuing initiative of black people themselves, provided the
impetus for significant transformations in black religion.
By the second decade of the nineteenth century, evangelists had learned
some hard lessons from their persecution by slaveholders. White mission-
aries came to Jamaica with explicit orders not to get entangled in the pol-
itics of the ((slavery question" and to avoid antagonizing the planters in
any way. Regardless of the missionaries' attempts at appeasement, planters
and the colonial assembly were vigilant about restraining missionaries'
efforts, curtailing their autonomy whenc;ver trouble arose, and routinely
harassing their disciples. Colonial slaveholders continued to think of the
missionaries as "designing demagogues, who, under the mask of extraor-
dinary sanctity," meant to "disseminate rhe most poisonous political opin-
ions." As Hope Waddell remembered it, "the religious instruction of the
slaves, and their admission to church privileges, were fiercely resisted by
the dominant portion of the community." Even though the British gov-
ernment, negotiating Britain's own Protestant revival, disallowed the n1ost
repressive legislation against the evangelists, they were subject to frequent
harassment. 36
Missionaries made every effort, short of abandoning their missions, to
appease planters. Thomas Knibb had explained to his brother William
220 !o'!- The Reaper's Garden
that baptisms in Jamaica were administered eady in the morning, so that

slaves would not be late for work and slaveholders would have no reason
to "scorch'' the evangelists. John Shipman boasted that his report "Religion
among the Negroes'' contained nothing "either for or against slavery, but
being solely confined to the subject of the moral improvement of the
slaves." Content to give Caesar his due, Shipman sought to maintain a
sharp distinction between the material and the spiritual, the eternal and
the temporal. "I consider eternal things of infinitely greater importance
than any thing earthly," he wrote, "so it has been my constant rule, to
leave civil and political questions, for the discussion, and decision of Leg-
islators and Politicians." Concerning the struggles of the enslaved,
Shipman aimed to act according to Saint Paul's admonition, "to know
nothing among those to whom I have spoken the word of life, but Christ:,
and him Crucified." This he affirmed despite his assertion of the worldly
advantages that might accrue to planters once the hopes of their slaves
were set on the Christian afterlife and their desire for heaven had made
them more faithfully obedient (Figure 6.1).37
To some extent, the planters, who alwa:ys feared developments they
could not control, had to tolerate the missionaries. Smarting from sharp
criticisms coming from Great Britain, and occasionally convinced by the
argument that Christianity could be used as an implement of social control,
many masters softened their resistance to the evangelists. Most planters still
considered it dangerous to encourage slaves to submit to a higher authority
than themselves, but if they were to convince outside authorities that they
were responsible subjects of a Christian empire, they could not chase
Christ's messengers off the island. 38 Slaveholders remained skeptical about
whether coaxing slaves into better behavior with promises of heaven would
make them more compliant. Nevertheless, they did agree that for reasons
of security funerary rites of Mrican origin should be monitored and mod-
ified. Yet even as increasing numbers of planters showed leniency toward
white evangelists, developments in the Atlantic world allowed the enslaved
to take the initiative in spreading Christianity on terms they could accept.
The Haitian Revolution had a powerful influence on the spread of
Christianity in Jamaica. When enslaved Africans set fire to the northern
plains of Saint-Domingue in 1791, they initiated a demographic transfor-
mation that had important religious consequences in nearby Jamaica. As
the revolution engulfed their plantations, French slaveholders fled to
Holy Ghosts and Eternal Salvation -~ 221
_VlSJ'l.' OF A MISSlONARY AND WIFE TO A PLhNTATIQ~{ 'l'iLI.A.GE.
Figure 6.1. Visit of a Missionary and Wife to a Plantation Village, engraved illustration, in James M.
Ph.illippo, jamaica: Its Past and Present State {London, r843), facing 372. A missionary and his wife are
shown as visiting dignitaries to a village of plantation workers. Though the image was published afrer the
emancipation, Phillippe began his mission in Jamaica in 1823, and so the work probably reflects his expe-
riences among the enslaved as well as the newly emancipated. Courtesy of Harvard College Library.
accessible slave societies, Jamaica among them, with as many of their

slaves as they could still control. Many took advantage of the turmoil and
escaped by traveling the short distance to Jamaica in smaU canoes. Despite
the attempts of Jamaican officials to monitor and control the influx of
black people from Sainr-Domingue, thousands of "French negroes"
arrived in Jamaica and began to interact with other slaves in towns and
plantations. Many of these new slaves were already Christian. In Saint-
D'Omingue, enslaved men and women worshipped and proselytized with
the Jesuits-often forming separate congregations with an autonomous
leadership-until the suppression of that order in the r76os. After that,
many slaves worked independently as catechists and spiritual counselors,
employing approaches that combined Christian doctrine and practice
with pre-Christian spiritual customs. Two decades before the Haitian Rev-
olution, Edward Long, reviewing Christianity among slaves in French
colonies, assumed it to be completely superficiaL "I have seen many of
222 J;;- The Reaper's Garden
them provided with store of crosses, relicks, and consecrated amulets," he

wrote, "to which they paid the most sincere veneration, though wholly
uninformed of any thing more than the efficacy of 1:hese baubles, the
necessity of adoring the Blessed Virgin and a few chosen saints, the power
of their priest to absolve sins, and the damnable state of all heretics." Con-
trary to Long's dismissive interpretation, black Catholics were rrue
believers who had intermingled their traditional belief in the worldly pres-
ence of the dead and the power of spiritual medicine with a vision of
Christ as a symbol of decentralized and democratized authority. 39
While many such Christians came to Jamaica from Saint-Domingue
during the revolution, even more came directly from Africa. Almost as
soon as the Haitian Revolution erupted, French slave-trading operations
in West-Central Africa utterly collapsed. British slavers rushed in to take
advantage of the opportunity. During the revolution, Jamaican planta-
tions drew about sixty thousand slaves from the Angolan trade, about a
quarter of all the enslaved Africans who arrived between 1791 and 1805.
Many of those who arrived from Saine-Domingue and West-Central
Africa came from communities that had had long exposure to Christianity
and maintained norions of the afterlife that joined Christian cosmology
with traditional beliefs and practices. Christianity had been adopted as the
state religion in Kongo in 1491, and thereafter the state maintained rela-
tions with the European Catholic Church. But elements of Christian doc-
trine and practice spread through West-Central Africa over several
centuries as a result of lay Christians acting as interpreters and catechists
to the Kongolese peasantry. From the earliest conversions, Africans
adapted the motifs, symbols, and revelations of Christianity to fit their
own needs, customs, and cosmological precepts. The symbolism of the
Christian cross, for example, converged with more ancient perceptions of
the cross as a symbolic meeting place of spirits, and the crucifix became,
like other spiritually significant material objects, a sacred medicinal object.
Similarly, the catechismal literature of the seventeenth century referred to
the church as nzo a nkisi, which can be translated as "holy grave." Thus
the church itself was associated with the burial site, the most important
material focal point of relations between the living and the dead. Priests
in Kongo even referred to themselves as nganga, the word used locally for
spirit mediums. 40
,-----
Holy Ghosts and EternaL SaLvation ~ 223
It is not clear precisely how such ens]aved Catholics shared their reli-
gious beliefs and practices with other enslaved men and women in
Jamaica. Bur in Saint-Domingue, as elsewhere in the Americas, enslaved
Catholics served as the key interpreters of missionary doctrine to other
slaves, and there are hints that the recently arrived "French Negroes" had
some religious influence. One slave, Jupiter, was tried for obeah in Saint
Ann parish in 1794 but was acquitted for lack of evidence. Five years later,
after the importation of untold numbers of French-speaking slaves from
Saint-Domingue and amid news of the disastrous British expedition to
put down the revolution there, Jupiter appeared in court again. Again he
stood accused of being an obeah man, of pretending to "have communi-
cation with the Devil and other Evil Spirits." This time, however, he went
by the name of mon ami. It is difficult to draw any strong conclusions
from this bit of information, but ir hints at the influence French-speaking
blacks may have had on those shamans who sought authority among the
enslaved in Jamaica. It is likely that the Catholic newcomers from Saine-
Domingue and West-Central Africa encouraged further reconciliation and
amalgamation of traditional African and Christian beliefs and practices
among the Jamaican slave population. 41
The demographic transformation wrought by the end of the transat-
lantic slave trade complemented the changes initiated by the Haitian Rev-
olution. Mter 1808 rhe proportion of Africans in the Jamaican slave
population continued to shrink, from about 45 percent in 1:807 to only
25 percent by 1:832. High numbers of these surviving Africans were
undoubtedly people from West-Central Mrica, who made up more than
a quarter of aU those imported between 1792 and 1:807.'n So even while
Creoles, who had no rdigious experience in Africa and were therefore
more open to Christian teachings, came to predominate among the slave
population, many of the remaining Mricans could be expected to have
had exposure to some form of Christian cosmology and ritual even before
they arrived in Jamaica. Such demographic "creolization" precipitated a
creolmzation of the spirit world.
Eighteenth- and nineteenth-century contemporaries often noted that
unlike Mricans, who bdieved they would return home after death, Creoles
never anticipated a return to Africa. However, both Mricans and Creoles
believed that human souls remained attached to their birthplace. As the
percentage of Mricans in the enslaved population declined, more and more

spirits stopped departing for the Mrican ancestral lands,. and Jamaica
became overrun by restless and potentially dangerous specters. The enslaved
population turned increasingly to novel sources of supernatural power to
manage the situation. The spirits of the dead, or duppies, could be either
benign or malevolent, and in time Christianity came to be the best protec-
tion against malicious ghosts. In the r82os one enslaved Jamaican told
another that he no longer believed in duppies, "that Duppy was all lies; that
he was gone to the Debbi~ who had tied a big chain round about him a
thousand years long, and cursed him into a pit, and that he must not come
out tiU Jerusalem should tumble down, and be built up again new." Clearly,
the supernatural power of Christianity could be invoked against compelling
metaphysical threats. By the end of the nineteenth century Jamaicans com-
monly understood that if a "duppy come at you and you call the name
of 'God' it will not go away, but no sooner 'Jesus Christ' is called than it
vanishes." 43
Concern about the earthly presence of spirits made the Baptists'
emphasis on the immanent and energizing Holy Spirit all the more attrac-
tive to the descendants of Mricans, who took the lead in advancing Chris-
tianity among their enslaved feHows. In the mid-eighteenth century,
itinerant preachers in Great Britain and the American colonies had flouted
the institutional structures of the Church of England by speaking direcdy
to large popular crowds in a movement that historians know as the Great
Awakening. In passionate rhetoric, ministers admonished people to form
personal and direct relationships with Jesus and with God, relatively
unmediated by church authority. Enslaved blacks were often in the crowds
that heard such messages. One of them was George Liele, born a slave in
Savannah, Georgia, who experienced a vision of his own death and
damnation at a Baptist meeting. Assuming the revelation to be a warning
from God, he called upon the Lord to accept him as a dedicated servant.
Liele had the good fortune ro be owned by Henry Sharp, a deeply religious
master, who freed Liele to travel and preach among the other slaves, but
after Sharp was killed in the American Revolution, the family disputed
Liele's daim to freedom and he fled to Jamaica, to settle in Kingston.
There Liele began preaching again in 1784 and quickly built a sizable, pre-
dominantly enslaved congregation, for which he opened a Baptist chapel
in 1793. Less than a decade later, Thomas Nicholas Swigle, one of Liele's
Holy Ghosts and Eternal Salvation """' 225
free black converts, established a second Kingston church with about five
hundred members. Liele also baptized Moses Baker, who later established
a congregation in the parish of Saint James and eventually amassed a fol-
lowing of about three thousand slaves and free blacks on plantations in
western Jamaica. Out of these early congregations emerged a network of
black itinerant preachers, the Native Baptists, who won widespread con-
versions among the enslaved. 44
Baptists emphasized spiritual rebirth over rhe constant hectoring about
daily behavior and ritual practice that Methodists favored. More impor-
tant, the prominence of the Holy Spirit in Baptist conversions facilitated
dramatic progress in the spread of Christianity. In Jamaica, as in all the
Atlantic territories controlled by Protestants, Christianity premised on
individual access to the power of the Holy Spirit meant that many African
and African-American converts could, as historian John Thornton has
speculated, "practice a new form of spirit mediumship and thus accept a
set of revelations rhat was acceptably Christian and yet conformed to their
concepts of religious truth." Accentuating the ecstatic and experiential
dimensions of Christianity, Baptist forms of worship among black people
allowed extensive continuity between pre- and postconversion belief and
practice. 45
Black Baptists continued to understand that the spirits of the dead
operated powerfully in the material world. The new Christians believed
this upon conversion and continued to believe it as they spread the gospel.
Blacks were moved emotionally by Christ and the Holy Spirit in a manner
not wholly inconsistent with spirit mediumship. Thomas Burchell, a Bap-
tist missionary in Montego Bay, described the intense passions generated
by consideration of Christ among the newly baptized in his diary. "Whilst
we contemplated the dying Redeemer, and partook of the memorial of his
love," he noted, "we sat in wondering amazement, now weeping, now
rejoicing.'' William Knibb was "surprised at the avidity'' manifested by the
"poor, oppressed, benighted and despised sons of Africa" when they
received a sermon. "If the preacher feels affected," Knibb learned, "they
are frequently melted to tears, and a sobbing is heard through the whole
of rhe chapel." Many in his congregation seemed to believe that Knibb
was a reincarnation of his late brother Thomas, or at least that Thomas's
spirit accompanied William's ministry. "Ah, sweet Massa, him just like him
broder," they would say, "him voice, him face ... me hope Massa do
: l
226 I'!- The Reaper's Garden
well." Knibb preached at the funera~ of one his brother's former students,
who, his mother was convinced, had died of fright because he thought
William was Thomas's ghost-an indication that younger generations
retained their progenitors' readiness to see the spirits of the dead at work
in the world.46
The Native Baptists, who had limited contact with white missionaries,
most clearly evinced such continuities of both belief and practice. White
Christians reviled the disciples of George Liele, Moses Baker,. and the
other early Baptists for their retention of African religious characteristics,
much as Edward Long had deprecated black Catholics. Most troubling for
them was the blacks' tendency to favor personal contacts with the Spirit
over authorized interpretations of written text, an inclination that earned
them the appellation "Spirit Baptists," as described in detail in the mem-
oirs of Scottish missionary Hope Waddell: "The grand doctrine of these
people was the Spirit's teaching. It gave life. The written word was a dead
letter." These Baptists received revelations in ''dreams and visions of the
night," called "the work" of the Spirit, which guided the spiritual rebirth
of converts and formed the subject ofweekly class meetings with religious
leaders . As Christ was led into the wilderness, these Baptists believed, his
disciples must mimic his search and his journey. "To the bush, the pas-
tures, or the cane fields, those people resorted at night, when preparing
for baptism,. and were ordered to lie down, each apart, without speaking,
but keeping eye and ear open to observe what way the Spirit would come
to them." Like Waddell, most whites considered the Spirit Baptists to be
practicing a senseless and debased. form of Christianity and spared few
opportunities to criticize them for what they called "the nonsense into
which they torture the texts of scripture, and scraps of the church service."
Indeed, they considered the leaders of the Native Baptist sects to be little
more than "Christianized obias . "47
Black Jamaicans adapted Christianity to their social concerns, just as
they adapted it to older spiritual beliefs. Frequently, enslaved convicts
invoked Christianity in common conflicts with other slaves. Believing that
being baptized, or becoming Christian, meant absolution for all past sins,
many blacks turned to Christianity to relieve themselves of debts. Once,
an old man complained to his master that a newly christened neighbor
had refused to pay an outstanding debt of one doubloon. When the old
man tried to coUect his due, the Christian claimed ignorance of the debt,
Holy Ghosts and Eternal Salvation ->:~ 227
and he told his creditor that he had "lent the doubloon to Quamina, but
he was not Quamina now; he was a new man, born again, and caJled Tim-
othy, and was not bound to pay the dead man, Quamina's, debt." When
the plantation master ru]ed against Quamina-cum-Timothy, he began to
grumble that Christianity was "no worth." The elderly man, for his part,
complained that the spread of Christianity had reduced the influence of
the old spiritual talismans. "Formerly," he said, "people minded the pun-
tees, hung up in trees and grounds as charms to keep off thieves," bur
now, "since there was so much preachy-preachy, the lazy fellows did
nothing but thie£" 48
Many people, thinking that perhaps the missionaries wielded a superior
species of magic, hoped Christianity would protect them from obeah. Yet
at times they would turn to obeah practitioners to resolve problems that
Christianity could not. John Shipman complained of black Christians
who "continue[d) strongly attached to Obiah, attributing to second causes,
or to what is worse, to infernal agency,. what belongs to the Judge of aH
the earth." Some of the baptized had as much confidence in the power of
obeah as they had ever had,. and they continued to consuh and respect the
authority of shamans, especially to seek spiritual cure and to resolve
Jamaica's persistent problems with haunting. 4 9
This is not to say that Christianity had no impact on black religion,
especially on mortuary practice. In response to legal pressure and mis-
sionary preaching, black burial rituals became less clamorous and elaborate.
As early as 1818, the Kingston magistrate William Savage observed that the
enslaved were now more likely to behave with "decency in the interment
of rhe dead, which was formerly conduct:ed in a very noisy manner." Black
Christians who wished to have their loved ones buried in denominational
graveyards observed strict standards of conduct handed down by the white
missionaries, though many Mricans, Christian and otherwise, carried on
much as they had before, simply by disaggregating various elements of
their burial! ceremonies: they interred the body in the daytime, under
supervision, then gathered together illegally at night to make sacrifices and
to drink and dance with their shipmares and coumrymen.5° Under rhe
pressure of proselytizing and demographic change, African national cate-
gories of belonging articulated during funerals slowly yielded to those of
religious denominations, and the piety of Christian practice came to define
group inclusion as much as regional origin or social sratus did. Yet funerals
228 * The Reaper's Garden
still set certain communal boundaries and remained a vital forum for the
expression of social values, and ritual specialists among the enslaved stiH
drew authority from their privileged understanding of the threshold
between life on earth and the afterlife.
Preachers shaped perceptions of the hereafter and guided last rmtes,
believed to be among the most basic of ethical obligations. Religious fig-
ures, as they presided over funerals, brought images of the afterlife into an
emotional forum for publicizing worthy ideals and principles of human
conduct and made death and the dead the focal point of moral distinc-
tions. Black preachers defined good and evil in terms that slaves found
compeHing-and slaves recognized evil in the social relations of slavery.
When Ebenezer, a Native Baptist traveling wirh Cynric Williams in 1823,
preached to an assembly of two hundred to three hundred slaves on the
Herenhausen plantation, he spoke of the afterlife in ways that recalled
Shipman's catechism but that explicitly linked the terrors of hell to the
horrors of slavery.
Brothers . , . You think that when dea[h comes, uouble comes no more-
Ha! ~ou wiU nor be dead six minutes before the devil wiU catch you, put
you in the bilboes, and set twenty thousand drivers on you. They have no
catde~whip, but they will poke you with fire stick rill your teeth grind to
the roots. Death will come no more.-You may be hungry till your entrails
twist to pieces, they will give you no plantains-nothing but lead, and that
only as hot as h-11, it will burn a hole in your belly.-Your tongue will
roast with fever,-they will give you no water-there is not a drop there-
only boiling brimstone, nothing else to drink, tiH Barnes come through your
nose. You think to run away!-you will never see the day-your foot wiH
roast in the red hot bilboes for n.venty thousand years.5 1
Hunger, fever, and sadistic overseers-hell appeared a lot like Jamaican

slavery. Such tortures were agonizingly familmar to plantation slaves. They
could only have been distressed to imagine that their plight could int·ensify
and continue for.ever. Few of them would have been surprised to learn
that the Devil's chosen henchmen were plantation drivers. And by impli-
cation, the sermon cast the planter in the role of the archfiend. Once lis-
teners had identified drivers and planters as evil incarnate, they could
proceed ro a moral condemnation of the whole social hierarchy upon
which slavery rested. Shortly before delivering his sermon, Ebenezer had
taken the opportunity to speak at a funeral. Then he had ended his short
oration on equality in death with a simple declaration: "Brethren, all

Christians, white and black man, all one colour-Samba and mulatto-
no man bigger than another."5 2
The intersection of ideas about death and the dead with persistent
social struggle produced Christian slaves who were restless in ways the
missionaries had not anticipated. Enslaved Christians, maintaining their
belief in the earthly presence of the spirits of the dead, and looking now
to the Holy Spirit to restrain harmful ghosts, also found that Christianity
could be used to secure status in slave society. What is more, they discov-
ered that it could be used against the whites, and even against slavery itself.
Christianity provided a framework for a moral critique of slavery in alan-
guage that metropolitan elites were obliged to regard. From what they
could learn of developments in Great Britain, they knew that evangelical
Christians were at the forefront of movements for political reform, and
they could see for themselves that colonial slaveholders felt increasing pres-
sure from demands for religious toleration. Christianity seemed in this
context to provide a winning argument for improvement in conditions
for the enslaved. The missionaries' association with the antislavery cause
in Britain made Christianity more relevant to the enslaved people's
habitual! efforts to limit the power of their masters. h gave them a sense
that in their struggles to attain dignity, concessions from the system, and
ultimately freedom, they were allied with authorities greater than the local
plantocracy. 53
As much as they worried about obeah men, slaveholders ended up
tearing the influence of black preachers, whose sermons could be a source
of insurrectionary moral authority. Dr. Stewart West, a magistrate in the
parish of Saint Thomas-in-the-East, admitted as much in 1818, when he
complained that black Baptists were "overrunning the country, preaching
nonsense and sedition in their nocturnal meetings." There was a black
preacher on every estate in his neighborhood, West worried, "before it
was known to the white people." Whites in the parish eventually discov-
ered that these preachers advocated human equality on earth as in heaven,
even as they preached on other topics "of the most dangerous tendency."
Dr. West endorsed the wisdom of the .r8r6 law that prohibited "the prac-
tice of ignorant, superstitious, or designing slaves" of preaching without
permission. Because slaves and whites ostensibly had Christianity in
common, enslaved Christians often took the lead in proclaiming their
concerns to authorities. Responding to a parliamentary inquiry into the

effect of religious training on the enslaved population, one lawyer high-
Hghted the role of Christians in representing slave grievances. "Whenever
a party runs away from any Estate to the Governor, or to a Magistrate,
to make complaint of their Master, or overseer, as is occasionally the
case," he wrote, "upon strict investigation the Christians are commonly

found to be the Ringleaders." As enslaved Christians took the lead in rep-
resenting grievances to authorities, they also stoked the political ambi-
tions of their fellows in bondage, drawing on their renewed ways of
finding meaning in death, the afterlife, and the work of the dead. 54
Still, white missionaries dung tenaciously to the idea that their ultimate
aim was to redeem souls, not to end slavery. Under extremely perilous
conditions, that intention gave them hope and satisfaction. Most would
have agreed enthusiastically with the sentiments of the Methodist preacher
J. Walters, who evaluated his effort "to promote the immortal welfare of
my fellow man" from his sickbed at the end of 1831. He praised the Lord
for several times pulling him ''from the verge of the tomb" and salvaging
his labors from the "gloom of death," which had resulted in the modest
success of his mission. "In the past year," he rejoiced, "I have witnessed
death bed scenes of persons of aU colours in whom the triumph of religion
has appeared conspicuously. I have read the funeral service over at least 30
or 40 whose disembodied spirits had reached the climes of unmingled bliss
where the weary are at rest." While the missionaries gloried in saving
benighted souls, many enslaved blacks celebrated Christianity because they
thought it would bring justice to Jamaica. Even as Brother Walters lay
dying, appraising his efforts, Christian slaves in the western parishes of the
island were staging the largest: slave revolt ever to take place in a British
colony. Hope Waddell, in his own account of mission work in Jamaica,
recognized that the enslaved continued to form their own ideas about: the
connections between Christianity, death, and the moral order of island
life. When white masters succumbed to Jamaica's endemic morbidity,.
enslaved believers saw the power of Christianity at work against the slave-
holders. '' 'Buckra die hard this time,' said the negroes; 'since gospel come,
buckra die hard!' "55
CHAPTER SEVEN
Gardens of Remembrance
MoNUMENTS TO THE DEAD commemorated slavery even as it ended. In

the 18305, with the West Indian economy in decline and political pressure
to emancipate the slaves increasing, people in Jamaica registered the
struggle over slavery through their public memorials to departed friends,
family members, and advocates. Slaveholders celebrated their dead fellows
by praising their magnanimity and civic virtue, while the enslaved conse-
crated and defended their burial grounds. Tombs and memorials worked,
as place-names did, "ro impose a permanent memory" on the Jamaican
landscape, which would shape future struggles to establish the political
truth about slavery. Was ir a civilizing institution that made it possible to
extend English dominion abroad? Or did it represent the very reverse of
English liberty and justice~a great historic evil? Had it left a scarred and
haunted terrain, where survivors negotiated countless social, psychological,
and spiritual hazards? Was slave society, by contrast, a cradle of redemp-
tion for black heathens brought at last to Christianity or the starting place
for martyred rebels forging the path to freedom? Such questions could
never be definitively answered, but they did frame a war of representation
that recruited the dead for public service. Monuments and burial grounds,
as enduring memorials to the dead, justified claims to territory and pm-
vided a focus for meaningful accounts of common history, by attaching
sacred significance to noteworthy locations. 1
Remembrance, as an attempt to found some continuity in the midst
of flux, rupture, and loss, became a strategy for both b]ack and white
232 ,.__ The Reaper's Garden
Jamaicans: immortality might be achievable through symbols, in the

enduring form of the physical landmark. By mobilizing individual and
coUective memories, the living honored the deeds of ancestors, while
simultaneously legitimating past and future group struggles. The dead
helped people identify personally with political positions taken during
events past, thereby informing present agendas and political claims. Mon-
uments to the dead were, as they still are, surrogates-not only for indi-
viduals but for groups of people as well, along with their values, desires,
and exertions. The paradox is that "eternal remembrance" is sustained in
temporal conflicts over particular places. Monuments and burial grounds
an:ached communal memories to struggles over places, making partisan
interpretations of events into a politics of death, in which nothing less
than the right to belong in Jamaica was at stake. 2
--7:113l-·
On the night of 27 December 1831 a roaring fire at the Kensington estate,

high above Montego Bay, signaled the start of the largest slave rebellion
ever to threaten a British colony. In the weeks and months that followed,
the western parishes of Jamaica were convulsed by what the Methodist
missionary Henry Bleby later called "the death struggles of slavery." Black
men and women, already convinced that their liberation was at hand,
refused to work, burned cane fields and factories, and defended themselves
with firearms and cudasses when attacked. The action was organized
largely by Sam Sharpe, a Baptist preacher and enslaved domestic worker
in Montego Bay, along with a dedicated cadre of Native Baptists, many
of whom held important positions in plantation hierarchies. Thousands
stayed in rebeHion for as long as two months, earning the revolt the
enduring appellation of the Baptist War, as they wreaked havoc in the
already debt-ridden sugar parishes of Saint James, Hanover, Westmore-
land, Manchester, and Saint Elizabeth. According to the Jamaican
assembly's summary report released in March 1832, 207 properties in these
parishes, and another 19 elsewhere, had suffered some degree of damage.
In aU, the assembly estimated that the island had sustained over £1.15 mil-
lion sterling in josses, mostly due to arson, looting, destroyed crops, and
lost labor. The figure included the cost of those killed in the suppression
of the revolt and those executed in the aftermath, though not the £175,000
spenr on military operations.3
Gardens of Remembrance -l'l 233
The repression was swift and bloody. Though the enslaved rebels had
k.iHed only 14 whites, about 200 slaves died in the fighting and ar least 340
more were executed by the state after cursory trials. The bodies of the slain
were left strewn on the roads or were tossed ignom.iniously into mass
graves. Writing twenty years later, Henry Bleby described the carnage in
Montego Bay. "At first shooting was the favourite mode of execution," he
remembered, "but when the novelty of this had ceased the gallows was put
in requisition." The condemned were hanged three or four at a time on a
gibbet erected in the public square. "The bodies remained stiffening in the
breeze," a fixture at the center of town for several weeks. "Other victims
would then be brought out and suspended in their place, and cut down
in their turn to make room for more; the whole heap of bodies remaining
just as they fell umil the workhouse Negroes came and took them away,
to cast them into a pit dug for the purpose, a little distance out of the
rown." Around the town ofLucea, in Hanover parish, the authorities sent
convicted slaves to their home plan rations to die. In a letter to his Pres-
byterian brethren dated 8 May 1832, one witness described how the men
were packed into ox carts, "each prisoner pinioned, with a rope on his
neck and a white cap on his head ... In this way they were carried up,
under a strong guard, into the midst of the burned properties, distances
of twelve to thirty miles, and the sentence was carried into effect on the
estates." Under martial law, some of those convicted by courts-martial
were decapitated, and their heads adorned poles in the towns and coun-
tryside. Others were sentenced to military-style floggings varying from
:fifty to five hundred lashes. When civil rule resumed on 5 February 1832,
rhe repression continued. Sixry-five percent of those convicted in civil
trials were condemned to death; almost no one was acquitted. Conceiv-
ably, sentiments similar to the last announcement of rebel leader Sam
Sharpe sustained many of the condemned until the end: "I would rather
die upon yonder gallows, than live in slavery." 4
The plantocracy's vengeance also extended to the missionaries. Even
before the end of martial law, planters and their supporters in the parish
of Saint Ann formed the Colonial Church Union, which aimed to expel
"sectarian" missionaries from Jamaica and organized mobs to harass
anyone thought to be too friendly to the interests of the enslaved. The
union quickly drew support from the majority of whites in the western
234 1*-· The Reaper's Garden
parishes. Within days they had destroyed Baptist and Methodist chapels
in the towns of Montego Bay and Falmouth. Mob vio~ence spread out
from there to engulf small towns throughout the island, where furious
whites wrecked and torched Methodist and Baptist churches and molested
nonconforming missionaries. An angry white mob tarred and feathered
Henry Bleby. The Baptists William Knibb, Francis Gardner, and Thomas
Burchell were arrested and arraigned before the assizes, perhaps luckily, for
they might have been killed by the mobs had they not been incarcerated.
"Shouid I escape," William Knibb wrote to his mother from the Monrego
Bay jail, "I shaU return to England, as I am not safe from assassination in
this part of the world." Knibb left for England on 26 April JI832. Thomas
Burchell of Montego Bay was also driven from the island, despite having
been cleared by the court of assizes of any responsibility for the rebellion.s
The Baptist War and the paroxysms of violence that followed it con-
vinced powerful people in Great Britain that colonial slavery was
doomed. Lord Goderich, Colonial Office secretary at the rime of the
rebellion, understood that "now that an indigenous race of men has
grown up, speaking our own language and instructed in our religion, aU
the more harsh rights of the owner, and the blind submission of the
slave, will inevitably at some period, more or less remote, come to an
end." Blacks had become "unfit for slavery.'' Just as important, the lurid
accounts of the white reaction related in public forums by Knibb and
other missionaries when they returned to Britain demonstrated that
Jamaican slaveholders were no exemplars of British civilization. With a
revised understanding of imperial interests, the Colonial Office began
seriously considering proposals for immediate emancipation. In this way,
the last and the largest slave rebellion in Jamaica hastened the passage of
the act of 20 August I833, which decreed the formal abolition of chattel
slavery throughout the British West Indies beginning I August I834· As
a concession t:o planters, the law stipulated that most freed people would
still be required to work without pay for their former owners as "appren-
tices" for another six years, until August I840, but a concerted aboli-
tionist campaign and the resistance of black people to the new system of
bondage forced an eady end to apprenticeship. British Caribbean slavery
finally passed away on I August I8J8. 6
In the midst of these momentous events, a politics of dearh, remem-
brance, and territory both reflected and animated the prevailing conflicts
Gardens of Remembrance 41 235
between masters and slaves, and between slaveholders and their white
opponents. As slavery ended, the dead were invoked to commemorate par-
ticular interpretations of the history of the institution and to provide sym-
bolic positions from which to fight future battles between former slaves
and former masters, imperial subjects and foreign peoples, and pious
Christians and their persecutors. Claims to freedom, claims to mastery,
and claims on the civic life of Jamaica aU emanated from memorials to
the dead.
Revered in Rest
Reflecting the plantocracy's close cultural ties to the mother country,
monuments and memorials to the dead among whites in Jamaica gener-
ally followed British precedent in their placement, literary conventions,
and architectural style. In the old and densely populated Saint Andrew
Parish Church cemetery, for example, the burial patterns, iconography,
and memorial inscriptions broadly reflected changes in the response to
death that resembled those in Great Britain over the seventeenth, eigh-
teenth, and early nineteenth centuries. A seventeenth-century memorial
s.ryle characterized by simplicity, stoicism, and practical depictions of
physical death yielded, by the mid-eighteenth century, to a style that fea-
tured lavish neoclassical decoration, open sentimentality, and effusive
encomiums of the character and achievements of the deceased. (Memo-
rials for evangelicals, who preferred simple Christian motifs and senti-
ments and who criticized opulent styles of commemoration, were the
. )7
e:xcepnon.
Monumental inscriptions, much like the obituaries that appeared in
late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century newspapers, commonly
highlighted the unique talents or civic accomplishments of the deceased.
When John Waugh died of a "putrid fever" in 1794, the Royal Gazette car-
ried an account of his passing and a "short sketch" of his character. As
eulogies generally do, the entry highlighted the aspects of his life deemed
worthy of commemoration and thus recommended for emulation. The
memorial commended Waugh for his "temperance" and "beneficence,"
as well as his penchant for "reading the best authors" and perusing "the
newest periodical publications." His passing was "gready lamented by an
extensive circle of friends and acquaintances." Upon his burial on his
Melrose estate, his friends were said to have shed "many a briny tear" in
"mournful tribute to his memory." Like such obituaries, monumental
inscriptions might mention the cause of death-a fever, an accident, or,
in rare cases,. a murder. Yet the more important purpose was to idealize
the lives of dead by singling out aspects of character and personal history
that could represent larger communities of memory and then promote
the values of these communities in perpetuity, by usefully attaching them
to a consecrated piece of ground. To this end, the greatest slaveholders
favored monuments revolving around conquest, power, and friendship,
masculine "virtues" integral to their social standing. By inscribing these
in chapels, churchyards, and family mausoleums, the elite could hope to
be revered in memory, to conjoin their attempt at immortality with the
fate of their territory. s
William Beckford, who died in England in 1770, was among the
wealthiest and most celebrated of the absemee planters. He is memorial-
ized by a statue erected at Guildhall and paid for by the city of London.
Beckford stands, in resplendent attire,. the very image of the conquering
patriarch, surrounded by symbols of church and state; a woman is seated
beside him, and his foot rests on the back of a fallen slave. In the heart of
London, the Beckford rhus immortalized continues to this day to proclaim
the political power of the eighteenth-century planter class and its central
place in the British Empire.9 This was how most among the resident plan-
tocracy would have liked to be remembered, as valued agents of imperial
power.
Residents of Jamaica generally imported their funerary monuments
from Britain, and so they tended to be smaller and more allegorical, fea-
turing "mourning figures, cherubs, cornucopias, urns and draperies,."
rather than the majestic portraiture so popular in English sculpture.
Though they rarely approached the grandeur of their British counterparts,
commemorative monuments in Jamaica attempted to evoke similar mean-
ings. In the last decades of the eighteenth century the public erected mon-
uments to popular governors. When Governor Basil Keith died in 1777,
Jamaica's House of Assembly resolved to erect a marble monument in the
Spanish Town parish church, so that he would "ever live in the remem-
brance of a people, to whose happiness he so much contributed"; Keith
had acted decisively to suppress a slave rebellion in 1776. Ultimately
costing nearly a thousand pounds by the time it was installed in q8o, the
Gardens of Remembrance ~ 237
life-sized winged cherub, hovering with a laurel wreath above an orna-

mented funerary urn, honored Keith's "zeal and unwearied assiduity"
during his brief three-year governorship. Io
Still more impressive was the monument to William Beckford's nephew
Thomas, Earl of Effingham, and his wife Catherine, who died within
weeks of each other in 1791. Effingham governed Jamaica for only two
years before he died, bur his passing was marked by elaborate ceremony.
His state funeral was magnificent, costing nearly eight thousand pounds
in Jamaican currency. For the monument, the assembly contracted John
Bacon of the Royal Academy, among the most celebrated English sculptors
of his time and the architect of the public memorial to Admiral Rodney's
victory over the French at the Battle of the Saints. Effingham's monument
is eighteen feet high and six feet wide, a dark gray panel framing a gray
and white obelisk, all in mottled marble. Near the apex are symbols of the
governor's office-mace and sword, scales, and a purse. At the base rests
an urn carved with classical motifs and Effingham's coat of arms. A female
figure, representing Jamaica, hugs the urn, as a cherub holding an olive
hranch rests on a cornucopia spilling over with tropical fruit. On the
pedestal is an epitaph attributed to Bryan Edwards. The inscription
recounts Catherine's death at sea and the "melancholy return" of her
remains, and also romanticizes Effingham's death as a marital reunion.
"He-the fond and indulgent husband, She-the cheerful and obedient
wife-In their deaths they were not divided." The memorial was erected,
according to the inscription, "to perpetuate the remembrance of so illus-
trious a pattern of conjugal affection." But it also purposes to "manifest
the public sense of the many public and private virtues" of the respected
governor, which included, according to the assembly, his "firm and inde-
pendent conduct" and his "mild and equitable administration." Effingham
had served in a time a great anxiety, when the plantocracy was suffering
the insults of the abolition campaign and, more dangerously, the threat
from the nearby Haitian Revolution. The governor earned the enthusiastic
gratitude of the slaveholders when he sent armaments and military stores
to the planters in French Saint-Domingue, thereby proving, even as the
slave trade came under attack back in England, that the interests and sol-
idarity of slaveholders transcended national rivalry. 11
Monuments to public officials were less common than physical tributes
to the dead representatives of power in the private sphere. In choosing a
burial ground, individuals and families chose to make a permanent iden-

tification with a particular place. The religiously devout often preferred to
take their last repose in church crypts (if they could afford the cost) or
churchyards. Most planters, however, especially those in the countryside,
chose to consecrate their own estates with their remains. Touring Jamaica
in r689, Sir Hans Sloane noted, "Planters are very often buded in their
Gardens, and have a small Monument erected over them," adding, in a
gibe aimed at popular beliefs, "Yet I never heard of any of them who
walk'd after their deaths for being buried out of Consecrated ground."
William Lewis, the grandfather of Matthew Gregory Lewis, had his body
sent from England to Jamaica in 1774, so that he could be buried next to
his wife, Jane, in the family mausoleum at the Cornwall estate in West-
moreland parish. In r8r6 Matthew Lewis, who observed that his ancestors
had "always had a taste for being well lodged after their decease," was effu-
sive about the beauty of his family's mausoleum, situated in the heart of
a bountiful orange grove: "If I could be contented to live in Jamaica, I am
still more certain, that it is the only agreeable place for me to die in; for
I have got a family mausoleum, which looks for all the world like the the-
atrical representation of the 'tomb of all the Capulets.' " A statue ofTime,
with scythe and hourglass, looked down on the entire structure. Lewis
admired its decorative exterior, festooned "with sculptured stones-Arms,
angels, epitaphs, and bones." Inside the mausoleum was a tomb of white
marble raised up on an ebony platform. Inspired, Lewis considered fol-
lowing his grandfather's example-''For I never yet saw a place where one
could lie down more comfortably to listen for the last trumpet." 12
Lesser white plantation personnel were also laid to rest in garden burial
grounds. Even though only the wealthier whites could afford to erect
monuments and mausoleums, doing so remained an aspiration for others,.
as attested by the semifictional Marly in 1828. The tide character "did not
forget his ancestors'' when he achieved success, bur built a mausoleum in
the garden of his Happy .Fortune estate over the grave of his grandfather,
"with suitable inscriptions, in commemoration of his merits, and of the
melancholy fate of those who gave him birth." Unwilling to be counted
among the infamous "rich-let heirs, that let their fathers lie without a
monument," Marly felt compelled to erect a "lasting memorial of his grat-
itude for the exertions of the first of the Marlys, which had been the means
of placing his rank among the highest in the land." As Marly's monument
suggests, epitaphs tied meaningful language to significant places. Inscrip-

tions commonly named family members; those influenced by eighteenth-
century sentimentalism and Romanticism did so in affecting terms. They
also sometimes proclaimed the deceased's religious affiliation and hopes for
the afterlife, though the inscriptions for women referred to heaven and
God more often than did those for men. 13
In a few cases, such as that of the merchant Thomas Hibben, inscrip-
tions explicitly championed secular materialism. Hibbert, among the most
successful eighteenth-century slave traders at Kingston, died unmarried in
17 8o. Though in his will he expressed a desire to be interred in the garden
of his Kingston house, he was ultimately buried in a vault at his Agualta
Vale estate in the parish of Saint Mary. On a hilltop southwest of the plan-
tation great house a funerary urn bearing the family coat of arms, boasting
that Thomas Hibbert had resided on the island "with little interruption
almost 46 years," defiantly flouts the authority of organized religion over
the meaning of death:
This lonely tomb can boast no church's care,

No solemn sprinkling and no prelate's prayer,
But rites more powerful sanctifY the dust
Where rest rever'd, the ashes of the just;
Pray'rs from the poor, that sooner reach the sky,
And holier drops that fall from friendship's eye.
Hibbert's monument claims the right to determine the bounds of virtue,

in maintaining that despite his lying outside the sanctity of churchyard,
the slaver had been a just and benevolent man, as well as a good friend.
These qualities, rather than fealty to religious doctrine, had earned him
rhe right to perpetuation of his memory. 14
Members of Hibbert's family, who erected the monument, preferred
that he be remembered for his public character more than for his religious
piety. In this they were not alone. Indeed, in the 1820s Hibbert's monu-
ment came to represent the ideal memorial to slaveholders when it
appeared in a painting by the artist and architect James Hakewill.
Hakewill had won fame in London for paimings depicting Roman ruins
in Italy and for his iHusrrations of the great homes of [he Windsor gentry.
When Jamaican planters hired him to portray their plantations, they
c../tt;7t1N!lm.J fIt/: ?.1~ fjl:/0/r/I'C 0~-:t-

.
,U: "'([{t'dtrr. Valr•, .~·r .1f!n7·'
Figure 7.1. Monument of the late Thomas Hibbert, Esq., at Agualta Vttle, St. Mary's, by James HakewiU, in
his Picturesque Tour of the Island ofjamaica, ftom Drawings Made in the Years 1820 and r821 (London,
1825). By permission of Houghmn Library, Harvard College Library (SA 2638.20"'F).
hoped to associate themselves with the grandeur of Hakewill's earlier sub-

jects, just at the tim·e British colonial slavery was falling into economic and
political decline. Perhaps they suspected that soon it would all be gone,
and their descendants would be left with only these grandiose tributes.
Hakewill's depictions show the plantations as their owners liked to see
them, magnificent and productive places where contented slaves worked
dutifully to help implant British civilization. Among the idyllic views of
plantation scenery is the painting of Thomas Hibbert's monument,
perched high above the fertile river valley below. Towering against the sky,.
the urn dominates the mountains in the background (Figure 7.1). The
Hibbert coat of arms faces the viewer, only partially obscured by the high
fence around the pedestal. It would be hard to make a stronger claim to
permanent tenure on the land. 15
Gardens of Remembrance ~ 24I
Emphasizing the monument's commanding position in the island land-

scape, Hakewill's painting broadcast the Hibbert family's claim to viewers
throughout the empire, but it also advertised the Jamaican planrocracy's
more general assertions of legitimacy. Undoubtedly aware of attacks on
rhe morality ofWest Indian slaveholding, Hakewill painted a scene testi-
fying to the serenity of slavery. Occupying the center, instead of the mon-
ument itself, are a white gentleman in top hat and coattails, two dogs
frolicking on the grass, a saddled horse, and a black attendant, surely
enslaved. The relationship between the master and the slave anchors the
social meaning of the monument. The master, directing the slave's atten-
tion to the monument, compels him to note the prominence of the dead
slaveholder, while the intimacy of the figures in the image allows a viewer
to believe that the black man might respect or even appreciate the dom-
inance of such men. For a monument, this conveyed an unusually direct
statement about the institution of slavery. Though faithful servants had
appeared in British portraiture since at least the seventeenth century and
figured in many eighteenth-century military scenes, mortuary monu-
ments rarely remarked on the politics of slavery or relations with slaves,
whether friendly or hostile, until the demise of the institution was immi-
nent. Drawing on an old convention, Hakewill's depiction of a master
tutoring his vassal on the greatness of dead slaveholders carried a new
meaning in the 182os. It registered a shift in practices of remembrance
from the confident expressions of power and civic virtue displayed by
eighteenth-century monuments to a kind of recalcitrant nationalism,
which had to protest slaveholders' public worth. 16
Such posthumous declarations reached something of a crescendo with
the Baptist War and emancipation. In the western parishes of the island,
no fewer than five monumental inscriptions referred directly to the Baptist
War,. naming the rebels as savage murderers and the defenders of slavery as
models of virtue. John Pearce's tomb in Hanover noted his widow's grief
and promised vengeance to the insurgents: "John Pearce, most barbarously
murdered 30 Dec. 1831 by the slaves on the adjoining estate, leaving his dis-
consolate widow to deplore his untimely end. Who so shedderh mans
blood by man shall his blood be shed." The officers and men of rhe Sixth
Battalion Company, which defended the plantocracy during the rebellion,
similarly memorialized their fallen comrade, light infantry private Obed
Bell Chambers. The monument inscription, which observes that Chambers
242 J;;-· The Reaper's Garden
"fell to an Ambush of Rebdlious Slaves near this spot" on 3 January 1832

and "was crueUy butchered," urges viewers to remember that he "died a Sol-
dier and an honest man.'' One monument even held the insurgents respon-
sible for the deaths of several infants. On the Carlton estate in Saint James,
a family erected a memorial to "ANNA, ]EMIMA, and }ESSIE, three infant
daughters of Robert and Anna Cron; the two former d. on the eve of
Christmas 1831, being the period when the fatal rebellion of that date broke
out in this island; the last d. two days afterwards." 17
As much as some memorials cited the rebels for cruelty, butchery, and
barbarism, a few monuments, including the rare ones dedicated by
planters to slaves, represented slaves as devoted supporters, and slavery as
a benign institution. The memorial to William Walker at Lucea parish
church in Hanover set paternalist fantasies in stone.
Wm. CARR WALKER Esq., of Bamboo estate in this parish, b. II Jan. 1778,
d. 16 May 1832, whose mortal remains were interred at Bamboo. This mon-
ument is erected by his afflicted wife. He was an affectionate husband, kind
brother, sincere friend and universally beloved master by his peasantry, who
protected his pro perry during the rebellion of 1831, while all around were in
Aames.
Not far from Lucea, a Hanover gravestone similarly heralded the fidelity
of Robert, head driver on the Tyrall estate, "who was shot by the rebels
defending his master's property, 8 Jan. 1832." 18
Such commemorations of slave revolt were fairly new. No extant memo-
rial inscripcion refers to Tacky's Revolt in q6o, though more than sixty
whites were killed. By contrast, only fourteen whites died at the hands of
the Baptist War insurgents. Indeed, for almost the entire duration of
British slave society in Jamaica, from 1655 to the eve of the 183.1-1832
revolt, on]y two monument inscriptions connected with slave rebellion
have been recorded. One of them was for Martha of Saint Catherine's
parish, the wife of Edmon Ducke, "she being Most Barbarous]y Mur-
thered by Some of their own Negro Slaves" in 1678, and the other, erected
at Cross Path (now Banbury Crossroads) in Westmoreland parish, routed
the civic accomplishment of John Guthrie,. colonel of the parish militia,
who fought with more success than his predecessors during the protracted
Maroon Wars of the 1730s. 19 Perhaps slaveholders were reluctant to com-
memorate great moments in the history of slave resistance for fear of
inspiring future generations of would-be rebels. If memorializing the dead

as either victims of slave rebellions or defenders of slavery was rare
throughout the turbulent history of British slavery in Jamaica, then it is
unclear why, to repudiate insurrection and vindicate slave society, whites
suddenly felt the impulse to enlist the assistance of the dead in the wake
of Jamaican slavery's final great revolt.
The most likely possibility is that when acceptance of antislavery
activism in the United Kingdom put West Indian slaveholders outside the
pale of acceptable British social norms, the monuments of the slaveholders
registered their disaffection. Slaveholders and their supporters were
enraged in t:he era of the Baptist War to find themselves on the wrong side
of British history. As the successful campaign to abolish the slave trade
reemerged in the 182os in the form of influential campaigns first to alle-
viate slavery and then to emancipate the slaves, many white West Indians
reacted wirh fierce resentment, inflammatory speeches, and threats of
secession from Great Britain. 20 White protest merely convinced many
enslaved men and women that powerful forces in Great Britain were on
their side, and emboldened them to strike for their liberation. In turn, the
revolt ratified slaveholders' sense of betrayal by the colonial power. Slave-
holding whites finally stood face to face with the specter of a world turned
upside-down and, recognizing their loss of influence in the British Empire,
many reacted with bitter terrirorialism. Even as they were being written
out of the British national narrative, the planters used their monuments
ro claim a place for their preferred version of local social history.
In the immediate aftermath of the rebellion, before they set about com-
memorating their own dead, they attempted to deny commemorations by
rheir enemies. Militias and state executioners intentionally prevented
proper burial of convicted rebels. "They were consigned with every inci-
dent of indignity to a felon's grave," recalled Thomas Burchell in his mem-
oirs, "or left to moulder where they perished by the hand of violence:
'Their ashes flew-No marble tells us whither; with their names, No bard
embalms and sanctifies his song.'" Slaveholders and their supporters also
reacted against memorials for missionaries, whom they considered the
local representatives of metropolitan antislavery. White mobs persecuted
nonconformist missionaries by destroying their chapels and defiling their
burial monuments. The cenotaph to the memory of evangelist James
Mann "was torn down," wrote Burchell, "and dashed to pieces by men
who arrogate to themselves the almost exdusive possession of intelligence

and good breeding, but who showed themselves capable of trampling with
equal recklessness on the rights of the living and the relics of the dead." 21
These frenzied desecrations were purposeful. They engaged the critics of
slavery by attacking their capacity to mark the landscape of memory. This
tactic was not reserved for slaveholders. The enslaved also joined death,
remembrance, and place in a struggle to ensure that their own claims
would endure-and they were not entirely unsuccessful.
A Coffin for Slavery

The Baptist War represented a departure from eighteenth-century slave
rebelHons. Rather than staging a revolt to escape enslavement, while
leaving the slave system intact,. and rather than representing a struggle to
achieve complete autonomy, the Baptist War evinced Creole aspirations
to an integrated Jamaican society, where blacks might live as free farmers,
in dignified relations with whites. In essence, the war illuminated the birth
of an inchoate nationalism. Claims to territory,. manifested in proprietary,
familial, and emotional attachments to land, formed a significant part of
those aspirations. Struggles over memorials to the dead and over burial
grounds were, in turn, important elements in those claims and a critical
dimension of the politics of the enslaved. 2 2
A charged conflict over the memorial to a fallen leader distinguished
I
one of the revolt's hardest-fought batdes. As fire began to engulf the sugar
estates of Saint James parish on 28 December 1831, the Western Interior
Militia under the command of Colonel James Gringon retreated from
Shettlewood barracks to the Old Montpelier plantation, three kilometers
closer to Montego Bay. They were pursued by bands of slaves who had
risen up, led by the rebel "Black Regiment," 150 men under the command
of the popularly appointed Colonel Johnson, who had been a slave only
the day before. Just as the rebels prepared to destroy Old Montpelier's
sugar works on the evening of 29 December, the Saint James militia reg-
iment arrived to reinforce Grignon's troops. Though less than a quarter of
the black rebels held firearms, they engaged the militia and suffered heavy
casualties, including the death of Colonel Johnson. But the next morning
Grignon panicked and ordered another retreat. "With such ignoble haste
was the retreat conducted," remembered Henry Bleby, ((that the Colonel
Gardens of Remembmnce ~ 24 5
did not stop to inter the only one of his own men who had been kiHed
in the action of the preceding night." Both the dead militiaman and the
body of Collionel Johnson lay unburied, as the insurgents took the estate
and set its buildings ablaze; then, "raking the corpse of the white man out
of the coffin which had been hastily prepared for it, they threw it into the
flames, and,. putting the body of the black leader Johnson in its place,
buried it with the usual ceremonies." 23
Bleby neglected to mention just what the usual ceremonies were. Since
rhe majority of those involved in the rebellion were Native Baptists, the
service probably involved some recitation of scriptural wisdom, a
reminder of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, and an assurance of Johnson's
place in God's kingdom. The desecration of the white body and the con-
fiscation of the coffin were even more significant. Coffins were themselves
memorials. Protecting the enduring integrity of the body, they were
simple monuments to the dignity of the dead. By swapping the cadavers,
the rebels consciously and explicitly inverted the symbolic order that
placed white above black. Yet their action also signaled an attachment to
burial practices adopted from whites. Far from being universally accessible
in early nineteenth-century Jamaica, coffins were a status symbol that
marked the place of the deceased in the social hierarchy. In fact, coffin
burials had also become an index of adaptation to Jamaican Creole
society, where whites and blacks defined dignity in increasingly similar
terms,. while maintaining their social antagonism. 24
Coffins traveled to the Caribbean with whites, having come into general
usage in Europe only in the seventeenth century. Archaeological records
suggest that Africans and their descendants in the Caribbean began to use
coffins over the course of the eighteenth century, as slaves were integrated
into plantation hierarchies or as they converted to Christianity and came
ro expect equality in the afterlife. On the Gold Coast, it appears that
Africans did nor use coffins until the mid-nineteenth century. Caribbean
slaves were interred in coffins much earlier. Evidence from a large planta-
tion cemetery in Barbados indicates that masters reserved coffins as a
reward for highly valued slaves. The limited archaeological data from
Jamaica show a mixed pattern. Sometime between 1670 and 1760, three
enslaved young adult males (aged twenty-one to twenty-five at death) were
buried in coffins at the Seville plantation in Saint Ann parish. Because
their interment occurred before evangelization became widespread in
2461'!- The Reaper's Garden
Jamaica, their conversion to Christianity is an unlikely explanation for the

presence of the caskets. Moreover, all three were buried with their heads
facing east, in contrast to the prevailing contemporary Christian custom
of west-facing burials, and two of the three were interred with grave goods,
including a knife and two new clay tobacco pipes. More likely, the young
men were native to Jamaica, and whoever buried them was still heavily
influenced by West Mrican burial customs and cosmologies, yet alert to
the social value of European material syrnbols. 2 5
In Jamaica, as in other slave societies in the Americas, coffin burials
became ever more common, and eventually universal. By the 182os, if the
proslavery writer Alexander Barclay is to be believed, when slaves died
who had been especially "valuable and faithful servants," masters generally
gave "immediate directions" to the plantation's carpenters to make a
coffin, while the family of the deceased provided "the shroud and furni-
ture." More than simply indicating the transformation of Mrican cultural
practices, the increasing use of coffins suggests that the enslaved used them
to claim status in Jamaican society. As the actions of the Baptist rebels at
Old Montpelier made abundantly dear, coffins were as much political
symbols as cultural artifacts. A coffin burial showed respect for the dead
and signified honor among the living, who created communities of
memory from such gestures of esteem. When those Baptist rebels took
care to bury their Colonel Johnson, they demanded such respect and
claimed places for themselves by seizing a permanent place for Johnson at
the site of his heroic death.2 6
Just as coffins indicated something about the social position or aspi-
rations of slaves, the spatial arrangements for interment connoted social
claims on territory. Near towns, and on some plantations, special burial
grounds were set aside for slaves, bur on most countryside plantations
the family determined the place of interment. Many blacks were accus-
tomed to burying their kin beneath their houses or in their yards. In his
Manners and Customs in the West India Islands (1790), J. B. Moreton
mentioned that enslaved families in Jamaica buried their deceased kin
inside their houses, sometimes under their beds. John Baillie, the resident
owner of the Roeharnpton estate in Saint James parish from :1788 to 1826,
also noticed that Africans buried their dead in their own houses. The
practice was associated most strongly with people from West Africa.
Ludewig Ferdinand R121mer, who worked on the Gold Coast for the
Danish West India and Guinea Company in the 1740s, wrote that
Africans normally buried the deceased "in the house where the person
has lived, but no one, except for the closest friends, knows the exact
place." 27
When the dead were not interred beneath or inside the house, they
were commonly buried in the small gardens nearby. Matthew Lewis
insisted in 1816 that black people always buried the dead in their own gar-
dens. ''Adjoining to the house is usually a small spot of ground, laid out
into a sort of garden and shaded by various fruit-trees," noted John
Stewart in 1823. "Here the family deposit their dead, to whose memory
they invariably, if they can afford it, erect a rude tomb." Alexander Barclay
described slave tombs that were "built commonly of brick, and neatly
white-washed." The white-washing was dutifully repeated every
Christmas, observed Barclay, "and formerly it was on these occasions cus-
tomary to kiH a white cock, and sprinkle his blood over the graves of the
family." 28 In 1825 Reverend Henry Beame even claimed to have desecrated
a black mausoleum: "I once saw on one of those tombs a raised niche. On
raking away a marble slab from before it, I found two small figures or
images rudely sculptured, and on asking the man what this meant, he
.replied, that the one reminded him of his wife, and the other of his child.
I wished to take them away, but the agitation of the man at once proved
that they were connected with superstitious feelings. "2 9
The figurines that Breame wanted to seize were common in black burial
grounds of the period. In one graveyard near Spanish Town, according to
James Phillippo, "there was scarcely a grave that did not exhibit from two
to four rudely carved images." These embodied another continuity with
African mortuary practice. Europeans in West Africa often remarked upon
similar little monuments-male and female figures, generally made of
rerra-cotta, often painted and adorned-that represented either the
deceased or the notable persons who had attended him or her in life. Yet
whereas in Africa these effigies commonly indicated the presence of a dead
king or great man, in Jamaica they seem to have been more ordinary
memorials for the benefit of friends, families, and communities. Most
important, they highlighted the reverence in which the enslaved held
burial places, which demarcated both social and spiritual space.3o
Edward Long speculated in 1774 about slaves' emotional attachment to
burial grounds. "It cannot be imagined," he hypothesized, "but that they
have a powerful attachment to the spot where they were born; to the place
which holds the remains of their deceased friends and kindred." By the
early nineteenth century it was dear that he had been essentially correct.
In 1807 John Blackburn, a planting attorney and thirty-five-year resident
of Jamaica who had managed thirty sugar estates, offered the following tes-
timony before a government committee: "Every [slave] house has a garden
round it, of a quarter or half acre or more; they are attached to the spot:,
and they are attached to the graves of their forefathers." Henry John
Hinchcliffe, a judge of the Jamaican Vice-Admiralty Court,. asserted in
1833 that a family's burial plot was "one of the Means of identifYing their
Residence, and it goes to their Relations."3I
Tombs and burial plots marked out more than claims to real estate.
Such sites also mapped the spiritual terrain, helping the enslaved to nav-
igate a treacherously haunted landscape. Matthew Lewis,. with his gothic
author's sensibility, wondered about the spiritual dimension of burial
grounds in 1816. Understanding that his slaves were "very much afraid of
ghosts (whom they call the duppy)," Lewis questioned why they would
have their dead buried in their own gardens. "But I understand their argu-
ment to be, that they need only fear the duppies of their enemies, bur have
nothing to apprehend from those after death, who loved them in their
lifetime." Lewis also learned that the enslaved paid careful attention to the
spiritual history of different tracts of land. An African man on his plan-
tation had recently been stricken with fits and seizures, and Lewis sus-
pected that he had eaten a poisonous pffiant from a nearby grove. That
explanation earned no credibility with the enslaved, who assured him,
"one and aU, that nothing could possibly have induced him to eat an herb
or fruit from that grove, as it had been used as a burying ground for " 'the
white people.''' They proposed an alternative theory: "They had no sort
of doubt," wrote Lewis, "that in passing through the burying-ground he
had been struck down by the duppy of a white person not long deceased,.
whom he had formerly offended, and that these repeated fainting firs were
the consequence of that ghostly blow." Whatever the actual cause of the
man's fits, it was obvious to Lewis's slaves that the afflicted African had
failed to learn his way around.3 2
Once people acquired an attachment to a particular place and an under-
standing of its sociospiritual landscape, they were loath to move to unfa-
miliar territory. Planters found that when they tried to move "negro
Gardens of Remembrance -;;1 249
villages," they could meet fierce resistance. William Shand, a prolific estate
owner and planting attorney in the early nineteenth century, ran int:o
trouble when he tried to resettle a village that was situated on a riverbank
that often flooded. "They strongly objected, but did not give any Reason
for this." Though "houses were prepared for them, equally good as those
they had left," the enslaved were still set against the relocation. Shand and
his brother went down ro the village "to distribute clothing, and in order
to prevail on them to remove," but once they had given out the clothes,
as many as three hundred people attacked the Shands with brickbats and
stones. Shand was adamant, and he eventually got his way. Another
planter, John Baillie, had to give up on a similar effort. He told a com-
mittee of the House of Lords that he had once had insurmountable diffi-
culties when he attempted to relocate some of his slaves to new lands.
"They have been so reluctam," he testified, "that after purchasing a prop-
erty of r,ooo acres of land and 137 negroes, they expressed themselves so
unwilling to remove that I gave up the purchase and abandoned the
removal." 33
Enslaved families were reluctant to leave property that they considered
their own, houses and gardens they had tended, and burial grounds that
allowed an increasingly native population to feel an ancestral connecti.on
to the land. Just as important, slaves also hesitated to encroach on new
and perhaps spiritually perilous grounds where the unfamiliar dead,
unplacated by ritual and ceremony, might be unwiBing t:o countenance
alien settlements. The concern was immediate. Following the end of the
transatlantic slave trade in r8o7, when planters fell deeper into debt and
began to break up estates and seH off movable assets, enslaved men and
women suffered frequent displacements, entailing separations from fam-
ilies, living and dead, and removal to foreign landscapes. In 1834, the
magistrate R. R. Madden visited an abandoned plantation in the parish
of Saint Mary where the resting places of the dead demarcated safe and
unsafe territory. His guide, a local black man, told him that the estate
was overrun with ghosts and necromancers: '"It was no good to walk
about such a place, buckras all dead, niggers all dead too, no one live
there but duppies and obeah men."' There was danger in this place where
none but wizards tended the memory of the deceased. It was better to
stay in territory rendered familiar by the cultivation of communal
remembrance. 34
One mont:h before the final emancipation of r August 1838 Jamaica's

governor, Sir Lionel Smit:h, issued a proclamation to the soon-to-be freed
slaves on their new rights and duties. It recognized their desire to "remain
on those properties on which you have been born, and where your parents
are buried" but warned them not to suppose that their houses, gardens,
and provision grounds were their own property. Governor Smith knew
that the dead marked the land as surely as legal deeds and tides, but he
may not have anticipated the degree to which practices pertaining to
death and commemoration would also mark the passage from slavery to
freedom. 3 5
~~
When emancipation finally came, it was greeted by celebrations aU over

the island. In Falmouth, where the recently returned William Knibb had
his congregation, slavery was given a funeral-not as a sign of respect or
to mark a sacred spot, but as a countermemorial, a way of fixing fear and
hatred upon an unloved thing and tying it to the ground. In a paradoxical
inversion of customary ceremonies of respect, as the enslaved claimed their
freedom, they used the rites of death, which had been the focal point of
so many struggles within slavery, ro commemorate its end and determine
its future meaning.
An hour before midnight on the last night of]uly 1838, the final evening
of enslavement, more than two thousand black men, women, and children
gathered at the Baptist chapel to sing a funeral dirge:
The death-blow is struck-see the monster is dying,

He cannot survive till the dawn streaks the sky;
In one single hour, he will prostrate be lying,
Come, shout o'er the grave where so soon he will lie.
When the clock struck midnight, William Knibb shouted to the emo-
tional throng, "The monster is dead! The negro is free!" and begged three
cheers for the queen of England. The crowd erupted in cheers, its exulta-
tion rattling the windows of the chapel with what Knibb called a "strange
yer sacred joy." At dawn, a multitude assembled around a coffin con-
raining a chain, handcuffs, an iron collar, and other "hateful ensigns of
usurped command." The names of two proslavery newspapers were
painted on the sides. The coffin's memorial plate bore the inscription,
,--
Gardens of Remembrance -i'1 251
''Colonial Slavery died July 31st, 1838, aged 276 years," and also "Sir
Hawkins," the pioneering sixteenth-century British slave trader. The
crowd sang, "Now slavery we lay thy vile form in rhe dust; I And buried
forever, there let it remain; I And rotted, and covered with infamy's rust, I
Be every man-whip, and fetter, and chain!" They buried the sarcophagus
and planted a young coconut tree at its head, which acted simultaneously
as a symbolic tree of liberty and a prison for slavery's spirit.3G
Two days later, a group of more than five hundred children held a sim-
ilar rite at the chapel on Salter's Hill. As they prepared for the "burial of
slavery," they produced and then condemned its symbols-the whip, the
chain, and the shackles-in demanding that the whip be cut up, the
chain broken, and the shackles destroyed. When this was done, the chil-
dren let out a cheer. Then, when the question arose, "What was to be
clone with the remains of slavery?" they answered in unison, "Bury them,
bury them." Yet there was disagreement about where the Jemains should
be interred. Some hesitated to bury slavery near the chapel, out of con-
cern that they might desecrate sanctified ground. However, others won
rhe argument by contending that "Salter's Hill would be the most appro-
priate place, as its grave could be watched, so as to prevent its rising
again." It was a wise consideration, based, one might say, on a prescient
understanding that the dead would give meaning m future struggles over
land, labor, and civic rights, that the ghost of slavery would continue to
haunt black people, and that watching over slavery's memorial was a vital
and abiding duty.37
In Restless Memoriam
The meaning of places is never fixed, even those sacred places which hold
rhe memories of the dead. Significance shifts restlessly with rime, as pop-
ulations move, monuments accumulate, and new memories are layered
upon the old. Despite people's best efforts to daim a permanent meaning
for a chosen location, their markers merely enter into future battles over
the commemoration of historical events and the future of the social order.
This was especially the case with Jamaican slave society; where the dead
were active participants in successive generations of conflict.
In rhe last decades of British West Indian slavery, slaves and slaveholders
competed for possession of Jamaica. The primary weapons rhey employed
2 52 !':!-· The Reaper's Garden
in this contest were the same as they had always been~nrearms, whips,
cutlasses, as well as law, religion, and racial ideology. Nearly as important,
however, were landmarks for the dead, which turned disputed frontiers
into domestic provinces of communal belonging, gardens for the remem-
brance of privileges, rights, and sacred duties. This was a significant facet
of what hisrorians and anthropologists often call creolization, the devel-
opment of local institutions, customs, and worldviews peculiar to West
Indian society. Increasingly, Creole slaveholders and Creole slaves staked
their dairn to Jamaican territory and history with monuments, coffins,
memorial inscriptions, and spiritual cartography.
Staking a claim to places of memory was nor the same thing as control-
ling them. Competing interests and the play of power shaped the meaning
of location, just as they did the meaning of death. The dead and their
monuments carried multiple legacies. Consider the fate of Simon Taylor's
Prospect Pen,. where he lived for much of the last three decades of his life,
where he buried his brother Sir John Taylor, and where he himself was ini-
tially buried, according to his wishes. Taylor would have wanted Prospect
Pen to serve as a lasting landmark for his family, but his desire to claim it
as sacred family soil clashed with his instincts as a shrewd and ruthless
property owner. When he died in 1813, Taylor's remains were taken to the
pen and interred next to his brother's in the central courtyard of the man-
sion. Yet in his wiH he had directed that Prospect Pen be sold, and his
executor John Shand saw no way of both selling the property and pro-
tecting the graves "from profanation." "Under these circumstances," Shand
wrote to the heir, "I submit to you the propriety of taking up the bodies
of Sir John and Mr. Taylor and removing them either to the churchyard
of Saint Andrew or Saint Thomas-in-the-East where the principal family
Estates are situated where a proper tomb and vault might be erected with
such a monument as you shall think proper." Taylor's nephew agreed,
moving his father and uncle to Taylor's Lyssons estate, where he raised a
monument to both men in 1814. Sir John Taylor was remembered for being
''amiable in his manners, steady in his attachments, and exemplary in the
practice of social and domestic duties," while Simon Taylor was praised as
"a Joyal subject, a firm friend and honest man," who had "fair:hfully and
ably fitted the highest offices of civil and military duty'' in Jamaica. 38
Simon Taylor was born, lived, and died in a society organized to satisfy
his desires, the quintessential Creole. During his lifetime no one had a
more secure daim to historic significance in Jamaica. But his legacy now
is not as he would have wished it. Today, none care to remember the per-
sonal qualities memorialized on his tomb. Taylor is recalled now only as
one of the greatest of sbveholders, who elevated property above humanity,
and whose resdess claim to a lasting legacy is everywhere contested by the
descendants of the enslaved. Taylor's first resting place, Prospect Pen,
renamed Vale Royal, became in 2006 the official residence of Jamaica's
first black woman prime minister, Portia Simpson Miller. It was easy to
imagine Simon Taylor turning in his grave, kicking at the top of his lead
coffin in an attempt to burst back into the world and set things right. 39
The monuments to Simon Taylor's social enemies would have a better
claim on the future. Through the end of chattel slavery and apprentice-
ship in 1838, the rebel leader Sam Sharpe lay in an unmarked grave. In
the I84os, William Knibb and a group of fellow Baptists exhumed
Sharpe's body and reburied him in a newly rebuilt Montego Bay chapel.
When Knibb died in r845 at just forty-two years of age, freed men and
women returned the favor by erecting a monumental piHar in the church-
yard of the Knibb Memorial Baptist Chapel in the town of Falmouth.
"This Monument was erected by the Emancipated slaves," the inscription
reads, "to whose enfranchisement and elevation his indefatigable exertions
so largely contributed, by his fellow labourers who admired and loved
him, and deeply deplore his early removal, and by friends of various
creeds and parries." The memorial expressed esteem for Knibb as "A Man,
a Philanthropist, and a Christian Minister," praised universally by people
of faith, "and who being dead yet speaketh." Of course, Knibb was not
speaking for himself; he was made to speak for his fellows. By allying him-
self with Sam Sharpe, Knibb had earned a place in popular memory that
Simon Taylor, for aU his power and property, would never have. The ceno-
taph was more than a tribute to Knibb. It embodied memories of the
struggle against slavery, engaging the dead to evoke a polemical history of
Jamaica that could validate ongoing efforts to liberate the descendants of
the enslaved. 40
~f;;i.
The end of slavery was by no means the end of its story. The hopeful years
immediately after emancipation were followed by the reassertion of mer-
chant and plamer dominance. The social antagonisms established in
slavery governed the tensions that shaped a very tenuous freedom. While
254 PZ- The Reaper's Garden
newly freed workers claimed houses and grounds for peasant farming, the
masters' offspring continued to use the power of property against them.
The legacy of slavery persisted through the nineteenth and twentieth cen-
turies' reign of white supremacy. What came after emancipation was the
memory of what had gone before. The "days of slavery" came to signify
the origin of a new battle in the eternal conflict between the weak and the
powerful, a war in which the dead were not indifferent. Jamaica's occu-
pants all recognized, in various ways, that the landscape was haunted, vis-
ited by the spirits of heroes, villains, and victims of the past, who would
continue to intervene in unfolding developments. Remembrance of the
dead made an ineffable history intimate, accessible, and inspirational, in
turning a usable past into a us.eful one, which could motivate consequen-
tial action in future struggles. And because these struggles never end, the
dead rarely rest in peace.
EPILOGUE
Regeneration
THE GRIM REAPER, death personified as a living entity, is often portrayed

brandishing a scythe or sickle, an agricultural tool used to reap a harvest
of the dead. In this vision of death, the scythe signifies the cutting off of
temporal existence and the removal of the dead from life's flourishing field.
But in order to understand the world of Atlantic slavery, it is helpful to
envision the reaper as a gardener as well as a harvester. In Jamaican slave
society and its transatlantic hinterlands, at least, death tended and nur-
tured the activities of the living, cultivating their understanding of the
world and their struggle to shape it. In this reaper's garden, death helped
to constitute life, and the dead were an undeniable presence.
Was the reaper's garden peculiar to Jamaica? Were its features excep-
tional phenomena in a unique place? The story of death and power in the
Jamaican world ofAtlantic slavery is admittedly bizarre, even monstrous.
hs telling follows few straight chronologies and requires a bundle of inter-
pretive approaches, encompassing analyses of the supernatural and the
physical, the diplomatic and the violent, the artistic and the brutally
mechanical. The resulting narrative may be unfamiliar, but it is central to
rhe greater history of America and to the way in which that history is told.
Jamaica was unique in many ways. Its central role in the fortunes of
British imperial slavery, its particular mix of peoples and their cultural
inheritance and innovations, and its distinguishing events all gave the
island a singular history. Nevertheless, Jamaica shared many characteristics
with societies elsewhere in the world of Atlantic slavery. From North
l
256 !;!- The Reapers Garden
America to Brazil, in different ways, death cultiyated the principal features

of social and political existence: short life cycles, rapid accumulation of
wealth, the intensity of efforts to reconstitute social belonging, and the
efficacy of symbolic identification with the dead.
Variations in migration patterns, governing institutions, labor regimes,
and political developments made other histories of slavery; death, and
power distinctive. Demographic catastrophe struck wherever sugar plan-
tations or mining were at the base of commercial enterprise. In nearby
Saint-Domingue, which surpassed Jamaica in economic profitability, the
conditions of life were parallel. On the sugar estates of Bahia and Pernam- I
buco in the northeast of Brazil, death rates were even higher than in
Jamaica, and birth rates lower. The dead piled up around Brazi]'s gold )
mines at Minas Gerais roo, and in the sHver mines of Spanish New
Granada,. Peru, and Mexico. Only where the enslaved wiled in less rig-
orous labor regimes, growing coffee, tobacco, or cotton, could their .num-
bers increase without overseas recruitment. Wherever mortality exceeded
I
I
r
~
r
£ertility, the slave trade sustained the development: of the Americas and ~
~
brought a shifting assortment of Mrican workers, with their ideas about I
'I
death and tbeir strategies for managing rdations with the dead. The trade
fed each region differently. Brazil, for example, drew a greater percentage
of its population from West-Centr:tl Mrica and fewer people from the
Bight of Biafra or the Gold Coast. The transatlantic trade was never as
important in North America, where pred~ominantly sdf-reproducing
Creole populations emerged beginning in the mid-eighteenth century and
the descendants of Europeans were nearly everywhere in the majority (the
sugar-growing region in the lower Mississippi River vaUey and th~e rice
swamps of the Carolina lowcountry being exceptions) .1
Differences in demographic patterns complemented institutional differ-
~enc~es in slave societies. Where the Catholic Church was an established \
I
pres~ence, stare officials took an even deeper inter,est in death rites and the I
way they defined the intersection of spiritual and civic order. In the nom-
inally Catholic societies, those who deviated from church dogma con-
cerning the sacraments could be punished as heretics, and the pressure to
conform brought Mrican and Eumpean cosmologies and practices together
under the umhr:ella of th~e Church. In at [~east one well-documented case
lI
'
I
in Brazil, there was a great rebeUion over an 1836 law that hann~ed tradi- I I
'
l
\
1
Epilogue -~a 257
tional church burials and mandated the c_reation of a new cemetery on the
outskirts of the city of Salvador. Wherever Mricans and their descendants
maintained their own fragile institutions under slavery, they interpreted it
in the light of mdeas about rdations between the living and dead, to
organize their lives within the institution or plot their resistance against it,
most famously in the Vodou ceremonies that bolstered the morale of the
Haitian revolutionaries. Even in the northern reaches of the North Amer-
ican mainland, where black bodies were barred from white burial grounds,
graveyards and burial societies emerged as the first Mrican-American insti-
tutions-to such an extent, in fact, that by the eady eighteenth century,
officials felt compelled to ban night funerals. As the North American
example suggests, occasions for mortuary politics did not depend on the
mortality rate. Even where demographic conditions were least destructive,
the meaning people made of death and the dead formed a crucial part of
their politicallives. 2
Indeed, this was not a politics limited to life in the wodd of slavery.
The heirs of slav,ery in the United States continued to create alliances and
antagonisms from the carnage of the Civil War and the Jim Crow lynching
pogroms that produced the "strange fruit" immortalized by Abel Meeropol
and Billie Holiday. Victims of racial terror haunted and animated the civil
rights movement. Similarly, urban America's drug wars and the HIVAIDS
crisis of late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries have generated new,
high~y political categories of belonging that inspire action-one thinks
immediately of the streem: gang affiliations cemented by bonds of death,
commemoration, and honor,. or of same-sex marriage, emerging from
communities ravaged by fatal dis,ease. As the dead circulate with acceler-
ating speed and near-boundless reach in today's dectronic media, who can
cell what kinds of social formations, political movements, and practices of
remembrance will result from the global AIDS pandemic and the twenty-
first century wars of terror, in which mass killing, martyrdom, and the
rhetoric of perpetual hostility dominate the culturallandscape? 3
The question can arise only because relations between the ]iving and
the dead are an important part of the historical process wen beyond
Jamaican slave sociecy. They have perhaps featured to some degree in all
of human history. The case of Jamaica, then,. merely throws more general
processes into sharp relie£ It is common for people to organize their social
I
I
r ,
I
l
lives to preserve some continuity between life and death; to claim authority
by associating with and invoking the dead; to allow perceptions of the
afterwodd to guide worldly activity; and to stake out territory by erecting
commemorative landmarks. Though the way people do these things may
vary, the same kinds of questions can be asked about other times and
places: How have people made sense of death culturally and use of the
dead politicallly? What has been the consequence of mortuary polidcs?
-!a~
What might rea.ding politics through the social and cultural history of
death mean For our general understanding of history-the wa.y we think,.
write, and read about the past? To begin with, the history of death, power,
and slavery in British colonial Jamaica suggests a new perspective on the
history of the present. It is customary to narrate the history of America
alongside conv·entional accounts of modernity, which chronicle the retreat
of the sacred and the spiritual when confronted by the advanc·e of reason
and science, the expansion of freedom, and the extension of material
progress. Although such histories represent some broad trends, progressive ~
I
'
r
narratives do litde to explain popular politics within and beyond the world I
of slavery, where it is evident that the spiritual and supernatural inspired 1
purpos~eful action. The emphasis on secularization accounts better forcer-

tain types of elite discours.e than for the actual trajectory of social and l
I
political change in world history. "Modern" ways of thinking about the I
dead, whether expressed in the building of cemeteries apart from popula- I1
\
tion centers or in the declining authority of established religion, did not
mean that the dead had been banished from the concerns of the living,
}
only that the dead would enter the social struggle in new ways. The imma-
\I
teri.al continued to shape the material; the sacred and secular remained t
im:ertwined. The world of Jamaican slavery,. wh·ere the dead were aetive
players in the most significant political disputes, at the very heart of II
Britain's imperial enterprise, serves as a reminder that the modern world
was still an enchanted one.4
For several r·easons;, Jamaica's place in the history of Anglo-America is
~
rardy given due consideration. First, narratives of historical progress cus-
(
tomarily focus on what Europeans and their descendants have done. Fol- r
lowing conventions derived from nineteenth~century white supremacy,. 1 I
territories with predominantly nonwhite populations have remained segre- ,:
gated from mainstream accounts of economic, political, and social evolu-
.\
i
Epilogue -!!! 259
tion. Modemity, as indicated by capitalist accumulation, the experience of

dislocation, and a self-conscious sense of the novelcy of one's predicament,
is rarely claimed for acquisitive slaveholders and their heterogeneous armies
of labor,ers, drawn from far-off worlds to work in protoindustrial agricul-
ture. Second, national historiography, which anachronistically reduces
imperial and colonial history to the prehistory of the nation-stat·e, conven-
tionally excludes the British Caribbean from histories of North America.
Because Jamaica, along with the other Caribbean colonies, failed to join
the American Revolution, its history,. as crucial as it was to the implantation
of the British in America, has been consigned to that of the "Third Wodd"
or the "non-West,." a melange of poor, postcolonial states on the margins
of official memory. Finally, Jamaica's history is inconvenient. Because
"progress'' generally signifies a positive good, the violent rule of great slave-
holders does not fit comfortably into chronicles of political development.
The popular perception (which appears in some professional histories too)
that the rise of Anglo-America represents the advance of liberty, justice,
and civil rights requires that the prevailing story of the British colonies
overlook or explain away slavery's ghastly brutality. Tales about the heroic
struggle of liberal principles in a tyrannical world have seemed more cred-
ible as a result of this exclusion. Where economic success coincided with
the extension of representative government, slavery could be seen as a
'''peculiar institution," and its existence as an anomaly, a paradox. 5
To read Jamaican slavery as representative of early America, rather than
as anomalous,. is unsettling, but also Hluminating. The shift in perspective
yields insights into the ways in which people have negotiated the cata-
strophic effects of a successful imperial economy, into unlikely patterns of
identification, into affiliations and collective struggles that enlist the intan-
gible to accomplish worldly ends, and into the claims the dead make on
the living or that the living make for the dead. Just as people have invested
the dead with their own desires for the furur,e, we make meaning of the
past to chart our way forward from the present. "We understand that his-
tory never repeats itself," wrote the historian Emilia Viotti da Costa, "but
we uansform historical events into metaphors and see universality in
uniqueness." Such metaphors guide our knowledge of imminent predica-
ments, but only when we can perceive precedent in the past. 6
"What could we possibly have in common with the British colonial
America I have described? One might see similarities between the brutal,
deadly, and profitable wodd of Jamaican slavery, on the one hand, and,
on the other, twenty-first-century America's gross material inequalities,
burgeoning prison populations, and the seemingly constant warfare that
provides billions to profiteers and steady work for morticians. Today's
world of accelerating ruin and reconstruction might seem an inheritance
from an earlier time. From that point of view it might be easier to recog-
nize the story of death and power in the world of slavery as a specter that
troubles the present. Jamaica's story would be just one dark episode in the
larger history of what the writer Colin Dayan has memorably called the
gothic Americas, a vast territory "filled not only with spirits of the dead
seeking rest and recognition but: with other corporeal spirits who recall the
terrors of slavery," as well as the "monstrous, institutionalized magic"
involved in turning humans into commodities.?
If people looked to the past to find the roots of contemporary forms of
inequality, domination, and terror, rather than the origins of freedom,
rights, and universal prosperity, they might see early colonial Jamaica as
home to the people who made the New World what it became. Simon
Taylor might be seen as a founding father, Thomas Thistlewood, a model
colonist, and those who fought against them, heroes to be celebrated and
emulated. If circumstances should ever make such a reading inevitable,
this dark vision of British America certainly would seem an undeniable
precedent, and the reaper's garden a haunting metaphor for popular pol-
itics in an age of catastrophe. And perhaps this image embodies a useful
parable too, for stories of political experience that teach us how people in
the most catastrophic circumstances have struggled to make their world
anew could one day teach us how to do the same.
~~
"The dead have no rights," believed the great political philosopher and
slaveholder Thomas Jefferson. "Our Creator made the world for the use
of the living and not of the dead." One generation could not "foreclose
or burden its use to another." For Jefferson, the dead represented tradition
and stasis, their claims on rhe living an encumbrance. He was only partly
correct. As an Enlightenment revolutionary, he both assumed and advo-
cated the possibility of a radical disjunctUre separating past, presem, and
future, and at the same time he slighted the impulse to look to the dead
for guidance. True, any dominion the dead might possess is granted by
the living. Yet human beings cannot help situating themselves in time, by
Epilogue ~ 261
uniting in imagined communities that include the dead as well as the

unborn. Especially in the midst of crisis, flux, and chaos, people "anxiously
conjure up the spirits of the past to their service," in order to navigate
through a turbulent present. In such periods, the dead are used less as an
anchor than as a rudder, offering the weight of precedent not merely to
sustain a "cult of continuity," as some would have it, but to animate a pol-
itics of regeneration for a fluid world. None of the practices that make up
political history are givens: belonging must be articulated, authority con-
stituted, inheritance disputed, communal morality acknowledged, terri-
tory claimed, and memory revised. In these activities, the dead not only
provide a focus for continuity-they are the inspiration for change. In the
struggle to shape the future the dead do not necessarily have the last word,
but they always have a voice. Perhaps the most valuable fruit to be
obtained from the Reaper's Garden, then, is a simple truth. For those who
know that tomorrow is not promised, yesterday is not past. 8
Appendix
Abbreviations in Notes
Notes
Index
~I*-
APPENDIX
African Immigration to Jamaica,

I74I~I807
The foUowing two illustralions show the volume and

regional distribution of the transatlantic slave trade
to Jamaica from 1741 to 1807. The data have been
drawn from David Eltis, Stephen D. Behrendt,
David Richardson, and Herbert S. Klein, eds., The
Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade: A Database on CD-ROM
(Cambridge, U.K., 1999).
31 number of enslav,ed llm.m,J,gra,nts e:mbarked to Jamaica
..
IJq
s:
('I) 0 N
0
IUl
0
.ji>..
·0
U1
0
C)
0
...,.
p
00
0 ~
ft> 0
8•0 b
g
b
0
0
0
0
·0
§ b
8 8 § §
'!""
p....j Bight of Biafra
~
n
... Gold Coast
g!::"! ....
...
.....
I
West-Central
Sierra Leone
~ Bight of Benin
Ul•
0
:;:3 Seneg1ambia
rt
(r region unspecified
en
Bight of Biah
f
n Gold Coa.st
......
~ at Wes,t-Central
~ ...... Sierra Leone
ro
rt
&
Q Bight of Benin
0
.._ Senegambia
r~egion unspecified i
~. Bight of Biafra
~ GoldiCoast
.....
~ ~
T
..... c ...
Q)
~
West-Central
Sierra Leone
00
0 ~ 0 Bight of Benin
;:! !I» Sene gambia
:Q.
region unspecified
~ I»~
•CD
r;· Bight of Biafra
§ a.'"'!I Gold Coast
'f;' CD
,-CD ......
West-Central
cr.s.
0
c;·
;::,
~ Sierra Leone
t!b
=
L 0
~
0 Bigh,t of Benin
Senegambia
t:::l cD
r·egion unsp,ecified
..,rt~- 3
r::r
iT .... m Bi,ght of !Biaha
....0 :...-
c:
....
:::;!
"'
:m
·-
0
::11
......
.....
·=
......
cb
Gold Coast
West-Central ·
Sierra Leone
c Bight of Benin
Senegambi1a
region unspedfied
B·ight ot Biafra
........ Gold Coa.st
-
CD
.!..
0111·
g
West-Central
Sierra Leone
Bight of s~enin IIi
Senegambia
region lmspecilied
Bight of Biafra
Gold Coast
....
CD West-Central
Q
...... Sierra Leone
b
..... Bight of Benin
Senegambia
reg:ion unspeci11ied
I I I I I
.....I
I I I I I I I 1 I I 1 I I
0 C.ol ..... g ~
-.1
~
co
0""
0 •0 0 0 ·0 0
0
0 g b 0
g
:0
·0
g b
0·
0
0
0
0 0 0 8 0 0 0 0
L
-,
number o,f ~ensl1aved imm'igrants embarked tolaniv~ed in Jlamaica
~
_.. ,....&. -L
_.. _.. -L -L ......
011 cc c.u .p.. ........
~
0> CD 0 -L 11\:1 C11 0) (XI
_o _o 0 p .P _o 0 0 ,0, 0 0 0 0
b b b 0 b 00 00
8
0
0
0
0
8
0
0
0
8
0
0
0
'0
,0,
0
0
0
0 0 0
~ ~I I
I
I I
I I I
I I
I I I I I I
il
I I
1741-1750
I I I 'I
I I I
c
(1)
n
I»
~
0
1751-176~0
17s1-1no
---
85,1100
'
- , ',!
, ff
' ll f , I
I
I
I
'!»
.....
~·
CD,
a..
CD
3
rc:::r
!»
--.
;;><;"
CD
c..
......
(D
3 1771-178,0
g
...
;:Ill;"
m
~ 178~1-179~0
::::::s
1791-1800
18:01-18~07
Figure A.z. The Transatlantic Slave Trade to Jamaica,, 174I-I807: Volumes of Embarkation by Decade
Abbreviations in Notes
Add. MSS Additional Manuscripts

ADM Admiralty Series
BMS Baptist Missionary Society Archives, Regenr's Park College, University
of Oxford, Oxford
BT Board of Trade Series
c Chancery Series
co Colonial Office Series
FBN Fiche Box Number
res Institute for Commonwealth Studies, London
PRO Public Record Office, Kew, London
T Treasury Series
Vanneck Papers Vanneck Papers, Cambridge University Library, Cambridge
WI West Indies
WMMS Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society Archives, School of Oriental
and African Smdies, London
r
Notes
Prologue
r. Robert Renny, A History ofjamaica (London, 1807), 241.
2. Trevor Burnard, "European Migration to Jamaica, 1655-1780," William
and Mary Quarterly 53, no. 4 (October 1996): 779, 77'6. These were survival
rates for people who served as resident: factors for the Royal Mrican Com-
pany between r684 and 1732. SeeK. G. Davies, "The Living and the Dead:
White Mortality in West Africa, 1684-1732,'' in Stanley L. Engerrnan and
Eugene D. Genovese, eds., Race and Slavery in the 'Western Hemisphere:
Quantitative Studies (Princeton, N.J., 1975), 83-98.
3· F. G. Cassidy and R. B. LePage, eds.,. Dictionary ofjamaican English, 2nd
ed. (Kingston, 2002), 18; Richard Allsopp, ed., Dictionary ofCaribbean Eng-
lish Usage (Oxford, U.K.., 1996), 61; Oxford English Dictionary Online, 2nd
ed. (Oxford, U.K., 2007); Michael Craton, Testing the Chains: Resistance to
Slavery in the British Wfst Indies (Ithaca, N.Y., 1982), 336-337; '~n Act for
the Better Order and Government: of Slaves," article 24, 1696,. Acts of
Assembly Passed in the Island of]amaica.from I68I to I737, inclusive (London,
1738). When members of the Assembly of Jamaica clarified the law in 1744,
they explained: "It was the true intent and meaning of the said recited act
that the words 'crime of encompassing and imagining the death of any
whit:e person, by any slave or slaves,' should be deemed and adjudged a
crime of as high natur,e as the crime of murder, and should be punished as
such." Journals ofthe Assembly of]amaica, entry of 20 December 1744,3:673.
4· W. Bruce Willis,. The Adinkra Dictionary: A Visual Primer on the Language
of Adinkra (Washington, D.C., 1998), 162-163; J. F. Ade Ajayi, "On the
Politics of Being Mortal,'' Transition, issue 59 (1993): 32-44.
272 ~ Notes to Pages 6-8
5· Katherine Verdery, The Political Lives of Dead Bodies: Reburial and Postso-
cialist Change (New York, 1999), 23; Peter Brown, The Cult of the Saints:
Its Rise and Function in Latin Chris.tianity (Chicago, 198I), esp. 25-26.
6. Verdery, The Political Lives of Dead Bodies, 31; Philippe Aries, The Hour of
Our Death,. trans. Hden Weaver (Oxford,. 1991 [I98I]); David Cressy, Birth,
Marriage, and Death: Ritual Religion, and the Life-Cycle in Tudor and Stuart
England (Oxford, I997), 475; Bruce Gordon and Peter Marshall, "Introduc-
tion:. Placing the Dead in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe," in
Bruce Gordon and Peter Marshall,. eds., The Place of the Dead: Death and
Remembrance in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, U.K.,
2000), I5. For a somewhat different approach to the politics of mortality,
see Achille Mbembe, "Necropolidcs," Public Culture I), no. I (Winter 2003):
11-40.
7. Renny, History ofJamaica, 19·3; Francisco Guerra, "The Infl.uence of Dmsease
on Race,, Logistics, and Colonization in the Antilles," Journal ofTropical
Medicine .and Hygiene 69· (1966): 23-35; Philip D. Curtin, "Epidemiology I
and the Slave Trade," Political Science Quarterly 83, no . 2 (New York, 1968):
I
190-216; Alfred W. Crosby, The Columb.ian Exchange: Biologi.cal.and Cul- f
tu.ral Consequences ofI492 (Westport, Conn., 1972); B. W. Higman, Slave

Populations ofthe British Caribbean (Baltimor·e, Md., 1984); Kenneth Kiple, I
'
ed.,. The A.frican Exchange: Toward a Biological History of Black People,

(Durham, N.C., 1987); Richard Sheridan, Doctors and Slaves: A Medical !
.and Demographi,c History of Slavery in the British Wht Indies, z68o-z834, I
I
(Cambridge, U.K., I9·8s); Raben: Jay Lifton, The Broken Connection.~ On
Death and the Continuity of Life (New York, 1979). For a partkularly
impressive study of the impact of death on everyday illife in Brazil, a former
slave society, see Nancy Scheper-Hughes, Death without Weeping: The Vio-
lence ofEveryday Life in Brazil (Berkeley, Calif., 1992).
8. Sidney W. Mintz and Riichard Price, The Birth ofAfocan-American Culture:
An Anthropological Perspective (Boston, 1992 [1976]); Richard Price, "The
Miracle of Creolmzation: A Retrospective," New West Indian Guide 75, nos.
1 and 2 (2001): 35-64; Michel-Ralph Trouillot,. ''Culture on the Edges: Cre-
olization in the Piantation Context," Plantation Sodety in the Americas I,
no. I (Spring 1998): 8-28; Stephan Paimie, "Is There a Model in the
Muddle? 'CreoHzation' in African Americanist History and Anthropology,''
fun Charles Stewart, ed., Creolization: History, Ethnography, Theory (London,
2.007), q8-200.
9· For hmstorians' approaches to cultural transformation in slavery, see espe-
cially Kamau Brathwaite, The Dev.elopment of Creole Society in Jamaica,
I77·0~I82o (Oxford, I97I); Ira Berlin, Many Thousands Gone: The First Two
---------------~·"1
Notes to Pages 9-I4 -l<l 273
Centuries of Slavery in North America (Cambridge, Mass., 1998); Philip

D. Morgan, Slave Counterpoint: Black Culture in the Eighteenth-Century
Chesapeake and Lowcountry (Chapel HiU, N.C.,. 1998); John Thornton,
Aftica .and Afticans in the Making of the Atlantic World, I4oo-r8oo, 2nd
ed. (Cambridge, U.K., 1998); Michael Gomez, Exchanging Our Country
Marks: The Transformation ofAftican Identities in the Colonial and Ante-
bellum South (Chapel Hilill, N.C., 1998); Paul E. Lovejoy, ed., Identity in
the Shadow of Slavery (London, 2ooo); Gwendolyn Midlo Hall, Slavery
and Aftican Ethnicities in the Americas (Chapel Hill, N.C., 2005). For a
compelling critique of the way the concept of identity has constrained
histories of politics, see Frederick Cooper, Colonialism in Question:
Theory, Knowledge, History (Berkeley, Calif., 2005), 59-91. On cultural
borrowing and appropriation, see Stephan Palmie, Wizards and Scientists:
Explorations in Afto-Cuban Modernity and Tradition (Durham, N.C.,
2003), esp. 137-139; and Joseph Roach, Cities ofthe Dead: Circum-Atlantic
Performance (New York, 1996).
10. Patrick Browne, The Civil and Natural History ofjamaica (London, 1789
[1756]), v, 9; Specifically, I employ what historian David Armitage has
termed a cis-Atlantic approach. See David Armitage, "Three Concepts of
Atlantic History/' in David Armitage and Michael J. Braddick, The
British Atlantic World, IJOO-I8oo (New York, 2002), n-27.
n. James C. Scott, Domination and the Arts ofResistance: Hidden Transcripts
(New Haven, Conn., 1990), xii.
12. Grey Gundaker, "Creolization, Complexity, and Time," Historical
Archaeology 34, no. 3 (2ooo): 124; Lee Drummond, "The Cultural Con-
tinuum: A Theory of Inrersystems," Man 15, no. 2 Gune 1980): 352-374;
Philip D. Morgan, "The Cultural Implications of th,e Atlantic Slave
Trade: Mrican Regional Origins, American Destinat:ions, and New
World Devdopments," Slavery and Abolition 18, no. 1 (April 1997):
122-145·
r. Worlds ofWealth and Death

1. Chades Leslie, A True and Exact Account ofjamaica (Edinburgh, 1740),
50-51.
2. Richard S. Dunn, Sugar and Slaves: The Rise of the Planter Class in the
English \%st Indies, r624-I7I3 (New York, 1972), 19-21.

3· Philip D. Curtin, The Rise and Fall of the Plantation Complex: Essays in
Atlantic History (Cambridge, U.K., 1990), 23-27; Dunn, Sugar and Slaves,
46-83.
274 J;!-- Notes to P:ages IJ-I9'
4· Dunn,, Sugar and S/av,'fs, 2.0; Kenneth Morgan, Slavery. Atla:nti:a.

and the British Economy. r66o-r8oo (Cambridge, U.K., 2ooo}, .
'5· Dunn,. Sugar and Slaves, 149--223; Richard Sheridan, Sugar and
An Economic History ofthe Bri.tish ~s.t Indies, r62'3-I775 \.IU''"""'L............"
19'73), 208:-23);, "State of Jamaica in the Year 1739 at the Time '
cation of the Maroon Blacks," Long Papers, Papers on the ·
Jamaica,, British Library,. Add. Ms. 12435; Trevor Burn.ard, "'A '
tier Sodery: Marriage and Demographic Failure in Early l
]o·urnal ofSocial Histo·ry 18, no·. I (Falll 199·4): 64; Jack~ Gree11e,,
ofHappiness: The So'Cial Development ofEarly Modern British
tbe FormatiO'n ofAmerican Culture (Chapd Hill,. N.C., 1988),
Trevor Burnard,. "E Pluribus Plures: African Eclmidties in · : ·
and Eighteenth Century Jamaica," jamaican Historical Review -:LI
10; Return of the Number of White Inhabitants, Free People of
and Slaves in the Island of Jamaica, No¥ember 1788:, PRO,. CO
f. 173. The population figure £or 1838 is estimated from the •oensus; ·
See George W. Ro,bert:s, Th,e Population ofjamaica (Cambridge,,
1957}, 3·30.
6.. These figures are drawn from T. G . Burnard, '"Prodigious .~:u~...u~~:i:l
Wealth of )at.maka before the American Revolution," Economic ·
&view S4, no. 3 (2001): 506~524.
7· Andlfew Jackson O'Shaughn,essy, An Empire Divided: The Americanr
lution and the British Caribbean (P'hlladelphila, 2ooo),, 3·-3·3i ·
"The Formation of a Commercial Lobby: The West India. !merest,
Colonial Policy and the American Revolution,"' His.tori.cal
no. I (March 1997): 71-95.
8. Leslie quoted in Burnard, "'Prodigious Riches,"' 506; Edwards
O'Shaughnessy, An Empire Divided, l·
9'· Burnar,d, ~'E Pluribus Plures,." 777; Trevor Burnard, "Eumpean
to Jamaica," William and Mary Quarterly 53, no. 4 (Octo her 19196),.
Roberts, The Fop,ulation ofjamaica, 31-33; Burnard, Mastery, 111ri/J'"'ilili
D:esi.re: Thomas Thistlewood and His Slaves .in the Anglo'-]amaiean
(Chapel Hill, N.C., 2004), 16~17.
10. David W. Gallenson, White Servitude in Co.lonial America: An
An.alysis (Cambridge, U.K, 19S:I),, 84-85; Bwnard, "European
to Jamaica," 778, 78:2-783; N. A. M. Rodger, The Wooden
Anatomy ofth:e Georgian Navy (London, 1988), 104.
n. johnny New:...co.me in th.e Island ofjamaica (William HoUand,. U'XOO!f!lr:Jf.
18oo), Institute of Jamaica, P I 132 D.VI; Roger Norman 'Buckle~
British Army in the West Indies: Society .and the Military in the
Notes to Pages 19-23 -l'£l 275
tionary Age (Gainesville, Fla., 1998), 37-38, 179-184; Buclcley, "The Fron-
tier in the Jamaican Caricatures of Abraham James,'' Yale University
Library Gazette 58, nos. 3-4 (April 1984): 152-162.
12. Bernard Bailyn, voyagers to the West: A Passage in the Peopling ofAmerica
on the Eve of the Revolution (New York, 1986), 220-221, 224, 215, 238.
13. M. Dorothy George, London Lift in the r8th Century (New York, 1925),
21-61; John Landers, Death and the Metropolis: Studies in the Demographic
History of London,. r67o-I83o (Cambridge, U.K.,. 1993), 86-88.
14. Bailyn,. Voyagers to the West, 238; Alan L. Karras, Sojourners in the Sun:
Scottish Migrants in jamaica and the Chesapeake, 1740-r8oo (It~aca, N.Y.,
1992), 14-15; T. C. Smout, N. C. Landsman, and T. M. Devine, "Scottish
Migration in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries," in Nicholas
Canny, ed., Europeans on the Move: Studies on European Migration, rsoo-
I8oo (Oxford, 1994), 76-112.
15. Marly; or, a Planter's Lifo in jamaica (Glasgow, 1828), 5; Jack Jing~e,
quoted in B. W. Higman, Slave Population and Economy in jamaica, r8oo-
I934 (Kingston, 1995 [1976]), 129.
16.. Douglas HaU, ''Absentee Proprietorship in the British West Indies, to
about 1850,." jamaican Historical Review 4 (1964): 15-35; LoweU J. Ragatz,
"Absentee Landlordism in the British Caribbean, 1750-1833,'' Agricultural
History 5 (193.1): 7-24; Gad Heuman, ''The Social! Structure of Slave Soci-
eties in the Caribbean,'' in Franklin W. Knight, ed., General History of
the Carib.bean, voL 3, The Sl4ve Societies ofthe Caribbean (London, 1997):
153-154·
17. R. B. Sheridan, "Simon Taylor, Sugar Tycoon of Jamaica, I740-18I3,»
Agricultural History 45 (1971): 285-296; quotation, 286; Betty Wood, ed.,
"The Letters of Simon Taylor of Jamaica to Chaloner Arcedeckne, 1765-
1775.'' in Betty Wood and Martin Lynn, eds., Travel, Trade and Power in
the Atlantic, 1765-I884 (Cambridge, U.K., 2002), I-155·
r8. Heuman, "The Social Structure of Slave Societies," 154; Edward Brath-
waite, The Development of Creole Society in Jamaica, I770-I82o (Oxford,
1971), 135-150; Burnard, Mastery, Tjranny, and Desire, 19-22, 41-45, 66;
quotation in Marly, 7; Christer Perley, "Slavery, Emancipation and the
Creole World View of Jamaican Colonists, 18oo-1834," Slavery andAbo-
lition 26, no. 1 (April 2005): 93-114.
19. Burnard, Mastery, Tyranny, and Desire, 40; PhHip D. Morgan, "Slaves and
Livestock in Eighteenth-Century Jamaica: Vineyard Pen, q;o-q;I,"
William and Mary Quarterly 52, no . I Qanuary 1995): 47-76; Morgan,
"Three Planters and Their Slaves: Perspectives on Slavery in Virginia, South
Carolina, and Jamaica, 175D-1790," in Winthrop D. Jordan and Sheila L.
1
i
276 .~ Notes to Pages 24 -29
Skemp, eds., Race and Family in tbe Colonial South (Jackson, Miss., 1987),
68-78; Douglas Hall, In Miserable Slavery: Thomas Thistlewood in Jamaica,
I750-IJ86 (Kingston, 1999 [1989]).
20. Burnard, Mastery, Tyranny, and Desire,. I9; Daniel Defo·e quoted mn Peter
Earle, The World ofDefoe (New York, 1977), 131;. Barbara Solow,. ''Slavery
and Colonization," in Solow, ed., Slav.ery and the Rise of the Atlantic
System (Cambridge, U.K., 19•91), 21-42.
21. Richard B. Sheridan, Doctors and Slaves: A Medical and Demographic His-
tory of Slavery in the British West Indies, I68o-I834 (Cambridge, U.K.,
1985), 196. Slaves born on the island could generally expect m live longer
than African migrants.
22. David Richardson, "The British Empire and the Atlantic Slave Trade,
I66o-r8o7,'' Oxford History of tbe British Empire, vol. 3, The E£ghteenth
Century (New York, 1998), 440-464.
23. Ibid., 442; Richard Sheridan, "The Slave Trade to Jamaica, 1702-r8o8,"
in Barry W Higman, ed., Tr:ade, Gov,ernment and Society in Caribbean
History, I70G-1920 (Kingston, 1983), 2; Colin Palmer,, Human Cargoes: The
British Slave ·rr:ade to Spanish America, I700-I739 (Urbana, Ill., 1981);
David Eltis,. Stephen D. Behrendt, David Richardson, and Herbert S.
Klein, The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade: A Database on CD-ROM (Cam-
bridge, U.K., 199·9).
24. David Richardson, "Through a Looking Gmass.: Olliaudah Equiano and
African Experiences of the British Atlantic Slave Trade," mn Philip D.
Morgan and Sean Hawkins, eds., Black Experience and the Empire
(Oxford, 2004), 69.
25. Paul E.. Lovejoy and David Richardson, "Trust, Pawnship,. and Atlantic
History: The Institutional Foundations of the Old Calabar Slave Trade,"
American Histori,cal Review 104, no. 2 (April 1999): 333-355·
26. Philip D. Curtin, The Atlantic Slave Trade: A Census (Madison, Wis.c.,
1969),, 22; Philip D. Morgan, ''The Cultural Implications of the Atlantic
Slave Trade: African Regional Origins, Ameri.can Destinations and New
World Developments," Slavery and Abolition 18, no. I (AprH 1997): 135.
For Mricans,. these ethnic designations had more specific meanings. See
Gwendolyn Midlo Hall, Slavery and African Ethnicities in the Americas:
Restoring the Links (Chapel Hill, N.C., 2005).
27. This point is teUing1y made in Stephanie SmaUwood, ''Commodified
Freedom: Interrogating the Limits of Anti-Slavery Ideology in the Early
Republic," journal of.the Early Republic 24 (Summer 2004): 192; Barbara
L. Solow, ''The Transatlantic Slave Trade: A New Census,." William and
Mary Quarterly sS, no. I (January 2001): 9-!6.
Notes to Pages 29-32 --!1l 277
28. See, for example,. Herbert S. Klein and Stanley L. Engerman, "Long-Term
Trends in Mrican Mortality in the Transatlantic Slave Trade,." in Routes to
Slavery: Direction, Ethnicity, and Mortality in .the Transatlantic Slave Trade,.
special issue, Slavery and Abolition r8, no. r (April I997): 36-48.
29. For a summary of fifteen important autobiographical accounts, see
Jerome S. Handler, "Survivors of the Middle Passage: Life Histories of
Enslaved Mricans in British America," Slavery and Abolition 23, no. r
(April 2002): 25-56.
30. Igor Kopytoff and Suzanne Miers, '~rican 'Slavery' as an Institution of
Marginality," in Kopytoff and Miers,. eds., Slavery in Africa: Historical
and Anthropological Perspectives (Madison, Wise., 1977), 3-8I; Paul E.
Lovejoy,. Transformations in Slavery: A History ofSlavery in Africa, znd ed.
(Cambridge, U.K., 2000), II2-I39i Jane I. Guyer and Samuel M. Eno
Bdinga, "Wealth in People as Wealth in Knowledge: Accumulation and
Composition in Equatorial Africa," journal ofAftican History 36, no. I
(1995): 91-120; quotation from Robin Law, "Introduction," in The British
Atlantic Slave Trade, vol. I, The Operation of the Slave Trade in Africa, ed.
Robin Law (London, 2003), quotations,. xli-xllii, xlvii-xllix.
31. Richardson, "Through a Looking Glass," 64; C. G. A. Oldendorp, A
Caribbean Mission, ed. Johann Jakob Bossard, trans. Arnold R. Highfield
and Vladimir Barac (Ann Arbor, Mich.,. I987 [1770]), 208; P. E. H. Hair,
"The Enslavement of Koelle's Informants," journal ofAfrican History 6,
no. 2 (I965): 19'3-203.
32. As historian Joseph C. Miller has powerfully demonstrated for West-
Central Mrica, individuals were "kidnapped, sold, resold, and captured
again in the course of repeatedly disrupted lifetimes." See Joseph C.
Miller, Wfly of Death.: Merchant Capitalism and the Angolan Slalle Trade,
I730-I830 (Madison, Wise., I988), 225 ..For a sensitive examination of
"serial displacement'' in the Bight ofBiafra, see Alexander X. Byrd, "Cap-
tives and Voyagers: Black Migrants across the Eighteenth-Century Wodd
of Olaudah Equiano'' (Ph.D. diss.,. Duke University, 2001), 37-49;
Jerome S. Handler, ''Life Histories of Enslaved Mricans in Barbados,"
Slavery and Abolition I9, no. I (April I998): I29-141; quotation, 132-133;
Affi,exander Falconbridge, An Account of the Slave Trade on the Coast of
Africa (London, 1788), 12; David Northrup, Trade without Rulers: Pre-
Colonial Economic Development in South-Eastern Nigeria (Oxford, I9'78),
I0)-107.
33· Quotation from Igor I<::opyroff, "The Cultural Biography of Things:
Commoditization as a Process," in Arjun Appadurai, ed., The Social Life
ofThings: Commodities in Cultural Perspective (Cambridge, U.K., 1986),
r -
278 f;!- Notes to Pages 33-35
65; Orlando Patterson, Slavery and Social Death: A Comparative Study

(Cambridge, Mass., 1982), 35-76; Walter Johnson, Soul by Soul· Lifo inside
the Antebellum Slave Market (Cambridge, Mass., 1999), 19-44.
34· Olaudah Equiano, The Interesting Narrative .and Other Writings, ed. Vincent
Carretta (New York, 1995 [1789]), 47-54; Vincent Carretta, Equiano
the African: Biography of a Self-Made Man (Athens, Ohio, 2005), 17-30;
Vincem Carretta has raised reasonable doubts about Equiano's birthplace
and the veracity of his account of enslavement in Mrica. Nevertheless,
whether it represented his personal experience or a composite of life histo-
ries, gleaned from other formerly enslaved Africans with whom he shared
his London miHeu, Equiano was accountable for the truth of collective
experiences. Therefore, his account of Africa remains a reliable memorial
of the enslavement process. See also Alexander X. Byrd, "Eboe, Country,
Nation, and Gustavus Yassa's Interesting Narrative," William and Mary
Quarterly 63, no. I Qanuary 2006): 12-3-148.
35· Law, "Introduction," in The British Atlantic Slave Trade, r:xliv.
36. Northrup, Trade without Rulers, 83, 153; Equiano, The Interesting Narra-
tive, 54·
37. Patrick Manning, Slavery and African Life, Occidental, Oriental, and
African Slave Trades (Cambridge, U.K., 1990), 58; Falconbridge, An
Account of the Slave Trade, 19; Thomas FoweU Buxton, The African Slave
Trade and Its Remedy (London, 1840), 117; Boniface Obichere, "Slavery
and the Slave Trade in Niger Delta Cross River Basin," in Serge Dager,
ed.,. De fa traite a l'esclavage (Nantes, 1988), 2:48.
38. Falconbridge, An Account ofthe Slave Trade, 51-52; Hugh Crow, Memoirs
of the Late Captain Hugh Crow (London, 1830), 36-37; "James Jones ro
Lord Hawkesbury,'' 26 July 1788,. in Elizabeth Donnan, ed., Documents
Illustrative of the History of the Slave Trade to America (New York, 1965),
2:590.
39· For a historical treatment of Atlantic Mrican military campaigns, see
John K. Thornton, Warfare in Atlantic Africa, IjOO-I8oo (London, 1999);
Lovejoy, Transformations in Slavery, 68-70; John Thornton, Africa and
Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, I400-I8oo, znd ed. (Cam-
bridge, U.K.,. 1998), n6-125; W A.. Richards, "The Import of Firearms
into West Africa in the Eighteenth Century," Journal ofAfrican History
21 (1980): 45-46; Ray Kea, "Firearms and Warfar·e on the Gold and Slave
Coasts from the Sixteenth to the Nineteenth Centuries," journal of

African History 12, no. 2 (1971): 185-213; Phyllis Martin, "The Trade of
Loango in rhe Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries," in Richard Gray
and David Birmingham, eds., Pre-Colonial African Trade: Essays on Trade
in Central and Eastern Africa before I900 (London, 1970), 153·
-------------------------
Notes to Pages 36-39 ~ 279
40. Kwame Yeboa Daaku, Trade and Politics on the Gold Coast, r6oo-IJ20
(Oxford, 1970), r8o; "W. de la Palma to Ass. of X, 5 September 1705,'' in A.
Van Dantzig, ed., The Dutch and the Guinea Coast, r674-I742: A Collection
of Documents at the Hague (Accra, 1978), II2; "Short Memoir to Demon-
strate That the Slave Trade Is Inseparable of the Free Trade" in Van Dantzig,
The Dutch and the Guinea Coast, 24o-244;]. D. Page, A History ofWest
Africa: An Introductory Survey (Aidershot, U.K., 1992 [1955]), 107-IIo; J. K.
Fynn, Asante and Its Neighbours, IJOO-I807 (London, 1971), 57-83.
41. Manning, Slavery and African Life, 65-66; Adams quotation in John
Adams, Remarks on the Country Extending .from Cape Palmas to the River
Congo (London, 1966 [r823]), 45· For descriptions of the coastal trading
garrisons, see A W. Lawrence, Trade Castles and Forts ofWest Africa (Stan-
ford, Calif., 1964); Colin Palmer, Human Cargoes: The British Slave Trade
to Spanish America, IJOO-IJ39 (Urbana, Ill., 1981), 42-44.
42. Robin Law, "Slave-Raiders and Middlemen, Monopolists and Free-
Traders: The Supply of Slaves for the Atlantic Trade in Dahomey, c. I7I5-
I8)o," journal ofAftican History 30 (1989): 45-68; Law, The Slave Coast
of West Africa, I550-I750: The Impact of the Atlantic Slave Trade on an
African Society (Oxford, 1991); Mahdi Adamu, "The Delivery of Slaves
from the Central Sudan to the Bight of Benin in the Eighteenth and
Nineteenth Centuries," in Henry A. Gemery and Jan S. Hogendorn,
eds., The Uncommon Market: Essays in the Economic History of the Atlantic
Slave Trade (New York, 1979), 172-178; Lovejoy, Transformations in
Slavery, 59, 8o; Michael A. Gomez, Exchanging Our Country Marks: The
Transformation ofAfrican Identities in the Colonial and Antebellum South
(Chapel HiU, N.C., 1998), 64-65, 91; John Matthews, A Voyage to the
River Sierra-Leone (London, q88), reprinted in Kenneth Morgan et al.,
eds., The British Atlantic Slave Trade, 1:189, 209-210.
43· See Miller, "Way of Death, 442, 381, 151, 385, 389, 391, 399, q6, 201-203;
see also Miller,. "The Numbers, Origins, and Destinations of Slaves in the
Eighteenth-Century Angolan Slave Trade," in Joseph E. Inikori and
Stanley L. Engerman, eds., The Atlantic Slave Trade: Efficts on Economies,
Societies, and Peoples in Africa, the Americas, and Europe (Durham, N.C.,
1992), 77-n5; and Miller, "Central Mrica during the Era of the Slave
Trade, c. 1490s-r8sos," in Linda M. Heywood, ed., Central Africans and
Cultural Transformations in the American Diaspora (Cambridge, U.K.,
2002), 56. See also Martin, "The Trade of Loan go," 153.
44· Equiano, The Interesting Narrative, 55.
4 5. William Bosman, A New and Accurate Description of the Coast of Guinea,
Divided into the Gold, the Slave, and the Ivory Coasts (London, 1967
[1704]), ].65; John Newton, "Thoughts upon the African Slave Trade," in
I -
i
I
280 ~· Notes to Pages 39-42
Bernard Martin and Mark Spurrell, ecls., The Journal of a Slave Trader
(London, 1962), 103; Miller, ~y of Death, 5; Robert Harms, The Dili-
gent: A Voyage through the Worlds ofthe Slave Trade (New York, 2002), 299;
Elisabeth Isichei, Voices ofthe Poor in Africa (Rochester, N.Y., 2002), 29,
30, 35· 39-4I.
46. Incidences of ritual cannibalism occurred in West Africa as part of the
practice of medicinal magic, especially to enhance military prowess or
supernatural power. The lmbangala ofWest-Central Mrica, ruthless war-
riors and inveterate slave naders, were known to practice ritual canni-
balism in the seventeenth century. See Robin Law, "Human Sacrifice in
Pre-Colonial West Mrica," African Affairs 84, no. 334 (January 1985), 58;
and John Thornton, "Religious and Ceremonial Life in the Kongo and
Mbundu Areas," in Heywood, Central Africans, 82-83.
47· Hugh Crow, Memoirs of the Captain Crow (London, r83o), 33; Ashy
quoted in Handler, "Life Histories of Enslaved Africans in Barbados,"
134; Law, "Human Sacrifice," 57-58, 73.
48. Law, "Human Sacrifice," 67-68, 70; diary of Antera Duke, 6 November
1786, in DaryU Forde, ed., Efik Traders of Old Calabar (London, 1956),
50, 52. For clarity's sake, I have used the modern English transcription by
A. W. Wilkie and D. Simmons; ibid., 19 December 1786, 52; Eltis,
Behrendt, Richardson, and Klein, The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade; Sheila
Lambert, ecl., House ofCommons Sessional Papers ofthe Eighteenth Century
(Wil-mington, Del., 1975) (hereafter HCSP), 69:276.
49· Robert W. Harms, River of Wealth, River of Sorrow: The Central Zaire
Basin in the Era of the Slave .and Ivory Trade, IJOO-I89I (New Haven,
Conn., 1981), 197, 210; John Thornton, "Cannibals,. Witches,. and Slave
Traders in the Atlantic World," William and Mary Quarterly 6o, no. 2
(April 2003): 273-294.
50. Olifert Dapper, quoted in Isichei, Voices of the Poor in Africa, 53; Stephan
Palmie, Wizards .and Scientists: Explorations in Afro-Cuban Modernity and
Tradition (Durham, N.C., 2002), 176-I8r; Rosalind Shaw, "The Produc-
tion of Witchcraft /Witchcraft as Production: Memory, Modernity, and
the Slave Trade in Sierra Leone," American Ethnologist 24, no. 4 (1997):
861-868; James H. Sweet, Recreating Africa: Culture, Kinship, and Religion
in the African-Portuguese World, I44I-I770 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 2003),
162-163; John M. Janzen, Lemba, I650-I930: A Drum of Affliction in
Africa and the New World (New York, 1982).
51. Miller, ~y of Death, 4-5; Wyatt MacGaffey, "The West in Congolese
Experience," in Philip D. Curtin, ed., Africa and the West: Intellectual
Responses to European Culture (Madison, Wise., 1972), 54-57. The legend
Notes to Pages 42-45 -lo:! 281
of the cowries maintained that the shells came from the waters just off
the coast-they actually originated in the Indian Ocean-where they fed
on the corpses of slaves dumped there. According to oral testimonies,
"the bodies, or sometimes dismembered limbs, when puHed ashore were
covered with attached cowries." Jan Hogendorn and Marion Johnson,
The Shell Money of the Slave Trade (Cambridge, U.K., 1986), 156.
52. Committee instructions to Richard Miles, 14 November q8r, PRO, BT
6 I 6, f. 128; As an example of "death duties," in 1793 Captain Samuel
Gamble paid "the King a duty of 15 Barrs and 3 I 4 for every Whiteman
that died in the River" at Rio Nufiez, Sierra Leone. Bruce L. Mouser, A
Slaving Voyage to Africa and jamaica: The Log of the Sandawn, I79J-I794
(Bloomington, Ind., 2002), 56, 82, 90; Jerome Bernard Weaves to Com-
mittee of Merchants, 30 January 1782, PRO, T 70 I 33, f. 10; extracts of
letter from Cape Coast Castle relating to Mr. Hope, 8 March 1738, PRO,
T 70 I 4, 122-123; Richard Miles to Company of Merchants, 6, 12, and
22 June 1782, PRO, T 70/33, f. 20; Mouser, A Slaving Voyage, 8o.
53· Thornton, Africa and Africans, 251-253.
54· Equiano, The Interesting Narrative, 55· For a perceptive discussion of
death among enslaved Africans from the Gold Coast see Stephanie E.
Smallwood, Saltwater Slavery: A Middle Passage from Africa to American
Diaspora (Cambridge, Mass., 2007), 135-152.
55· Lambert, HCSR 69:276; Richardson, "Through a Looking Glass," 72.
56. Mouser, A Slaving Voyage, 98; Equiano, The Interesting Narrative, 58;
James Field Stanfield, Observations on a Guinea Voyage, in a Series ofLet-
ters Addressed to the Rev. Thomas Clarkson (London: James Phillips, q88),
reprinted in John Oldfield, ed., The British Transatlantic Slave Trade
(London, 2003), 3:124.
57· Attempts by abolitionists at the time and by modern scholars to quantifY
and explain slave mortality have a long history. See especially Buxton,
The African Slave Trade and Its Remedy, chap. 2; Curtin, The Atlantic
Slave Trade, 279-286; Miller, Ultzy of Death; Stephen Behrendt, "The
Annual Volume and Regional Distribution of the British Slave Trade,
178o-1807," journal ofAfrican History 38 (1997): 187-2II; and Herbert S.
Klein and Stanley L. Engerman, "Long-Term Trends in African Mor-
tality," 36-48. For the period 1780-1799 Behrendt puts the mortality rate
for British ships much lower, between o.8 and 5.1 percent. Behrendt,
"The Annual Volume and Regional Distribution," 193; Richardson,
"Through a Looking Glass," 73; For general discussions of mortality
during the middle passage, see James Walvin, Black Ivory: A History of
British Slavery (Washington, D.C., 1994), 38-58; Herbert S. Klein, The
I l
282 ~ Notes to Pages 46-50
Middle Passage: Comparative Studies in the Atlantic Slave Trade (Princeton,

N.J., 1978); and Smallwood, Saltwater Slavery, 122-152.
58. Testimony of Alexander Falconbridge in Lambert, HCSP, 72:303. The
shipmate relationship wa.s fundamental to social organization among the ·
enslaved in widely scattered areas of the Americas. See Sidney Mintz and
Richard Prke, The Birth ofAfrican-American Culture;· An Anthropologi,cal
Perspectiv,e (Boston, 1992), 43-44·
59· Thomas Walker to James Rogers, 20 February 1792, PRO, C 107/ 14;
John K;ennedy to James Rogers, 22 March 1792, PRO, C 107/6; David
Richardson, ed., Bristol, Aftica, and the Eighteenth-Century Slave Trade to
America, vol. 4, The Final Years, 1770'-I8o7 (Bristol, 1996),. q6; John
Kennedy to James Rogers, 3 May 1792, PRO, C w7/6. On the practice
of selling "refuse slaves'' for discounted rates in an earlier period, s,ee
Smallwood,. Saltwater Slavery, 176-177.
6o. Kenneth Morgan, "James Rogers and the Bristol Slave Trade," Historical
Resear,ch 76, no . 92 (May 2003): 199; John Cunnmngh:llll to James Rogers,
20 April 1792, PRO, C 107/6.
61. Sales of One hundred and Twenty-nine Slaves imported in the Barque
Ruby, Montego Bay, n April 1792, PRO, C I07/I3. The mortality list was
drawn up in compliance with the 1788 Dolben Act regulating the slave
trade. See Montego Bay Customs House to James Rogers, Mortality List
of Ship Ruby, 2 May 1792, PRO,. C 107/6; Elds,. Behrendt, Richardson,
and Klein, The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade.
62. Equiano, The Interes.tin:g Narrf1.tive, 58.
63. Testimony of Alexander Falconbridge,. Lambert, HCSR 72:303.
64. Trevor Burnard and Kenneth Morgan, "The Dynamics of the Slave
M.arket and Slave Purchasing Pattems. in Jamaica, 1655-1788,'' William
,and Mary Quarterly, 3rd series, 58, no. 1 (January 2001): 205-228; Sales
of One hundred and Twenty~nine Slaves imported in the Barque Ruby,
Montego Bay, II April 1792., PRO, C 107/ 13; John Taylor to Simon
Taylor, ,6 January 1790, Taylor Family Papers, Institute for Common-
wealth Studi,es,. Taylor XIV, A, 51; Richardson, Bristol, Africa, 4:156.
6;. Deaths from smallpox: did decline mrer the course of the eighteenth cen-
tury. Though p,]antation docwrs in Jamaica began to inocubre slaves for
smallpox as ~early as the 176os, the Jamakan assembly approved establish-
ment of a public vaccine only in 1813. See Sheridan, Doctors and Slaves,
2'54-2'67; Major Gen. Robert Hunter,. Governor, to Lords of Trade and
Plantation, 4 July 1732, cited in David L. Chandler,. Health and Slavery
in Colonial Colombia (New York, 1981 b972]), 49-50; Edward Long,
quoted in Sheridan, Doctors and Slaves, 254; Simon Taylor to Chaloner
Notes to Pages so-p -!::! 283
Arcedeckne, 21 July 1787, Vanne·ck Papers, 3A/ ry8y/ 12; Simon Taylor to
Chaloner Arcedeckne, 26 January ry88, ibid., 3A/ 1788 I 1.
66. Burnard and Morgan, "The Dynamics of the Slave Market,'' 205-228.
6y. Leslie, A New and Exact Account of]amai,ca, 238; Mr. Stanley's IY9I tes-
timony befme Parliament, quoted in Buxton, The African Slave Trade
and Its Remedy, 195; testimony ofWiHiam Fitzmaurice, 9 March 1791, in
Lambert, HCS]J 82:232; Thomas Thisdewood quoted in Douglas Hall,
In Miserable Slavery: Thomas Thistle wood in jamaica, IJJ0-86 (Kingston,
1999 [1989]), 299'i Burnard, Mastery, Tjranny, and Desire, 56.
68. See for example, Simon Taylor's comments on seasoning new arrivals in
"The Letters of Simon Taylor," in Wood and Lynn, Travel Trade and
Power, 58, 8y; Michael Mullin, Aftica in America: Slave Acculturation and
Resistance in the American South and the British Caribbean, 1736-r8p
(Urbana, Ill., 1992), 130-131.
69. Higman, Slave Population and Economy in jamaica,. 121-123.
yo. Higman estimates that in 1832, no more than 50 percent of slaves were
settled on sugar estates and another 6.4 percent worked on jobbing gangs
that primarily serviced sugar plantations. Using the Jamaica poH tax roll
for 1768, Richard Sheridan concludes that at least 84 percent of slaves
were "involved either directly or indirectly in the sugar industry" by IYY3·
Though Higman suspects that the higher percentage is exaggerated, part
of the discrepancy can be attributed to the expansion of the coffee
industry in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Even in
Saint Andrew, which included Kingston, sugar plant·ers owned nearly 50
percent of the slaves in the parish, according to the Saint Andrew Census
of IY53· ]bid., 9-1y; Richard Sheridan, "The Wealth of Jamaica in the
Eighteenth Century," Economic History Review 18 (1965): 292-3n; and
David B.. Ryden, "'One of the fertilise pleasentest Spotts': An Analysis of
the Slave Economy in Jamaica's St. Andrew Parish, ry53," Slavery and
Abolition 21, no. 1 (April 2000): 32-55; Robert Dirks, The Bl11ck Satur-
nalia;· Conflict and Its Ritual Expression on British West Indian Slave Plan-
tations (Gainesville, Fla., 198y), 19.
yr. Richard S. Dunn, '"Dreadful Idlers' in the Cane Fields: The Slave Labor
Pattern on a Jamaican Sugar Estate, ry62-1831," in Barbara L. Solow and
Stanley L. Engerman, eds., British Capitalism and Caribbean Slavery: The
Legacy ofEric Williams (Cambridge, U.K., 198y), 163-190. Much of [he
time that women spent disabled-noted down as "invalids." in the
records-was during the late stages of pregnancy. Also see Dunn, "Sugar
Production and Slave Women in Jamaica,." in Ira BerHn and Philip D.
Morgan, eds., Cultivation and Culture: Labor and the Shaping of Slave
284 ~- Notes to Pages 53-56
Lift in the Americas (Charlott:esville, Va., 1993), 49-72; and "The Story
ofTwo Jamaica Slaves: Sarah Affir and Robert McAlpine of Mesopotamia
Estate," in Roderick A. McDonald, ed., West Indies Accounts: Essays on
the History of the British Caribbean and the Atlantic Economy (Kingston,
1996), 188-210.
72. Dirks, The Black Saturnalia, n; Marly, 164-165; Simon Taylor to
Chaloner Arcedeckne, 23 July I770, Vanneck Papers, 3AI 1770 I 9·
73· Simon Taylor to Chaloner Arcedeckne, 26 November q81, ibid., 3AI 1781 I
27; Simon Taylor t:o Chaloner Arcedeckne, 30 January q82, ibid., 3AI
1782l 2; Benjamin McMahon, jamaica Plantership (London, 1839), 58.
74· Dirks, The Black Saturnalia,. 67-68, 77, and see also 56-96; Sheridan,
Doctors and Slaves, 207-219; Kenneth F. Kiple and Virginia H. Kiple,
"Deficiency Diseases in the Caribbean,'' journal of Interdisciplinary His-
tory II, no. 2 (1980): 197-215.
75· Higman, Slave Population and Economy, 123; Dunn, "'Dreadful Idlers,"'
178-179·
76. Sheridan, Doctors and Slaves, 200; William Sells, Remarks on the Condition
of the Slaves in the Island ofjamaica (Shannon, U.K., 1972 [1823]), 18;
Orlando Patterson, Sociology ofSlavery: An Analysis of the Origins, Devel-
opment, and Structure of Negro Slave Society in jamaica (London, 1967),
IOI; Matthew Gregory Lewis, Esq., M.P., journal ofa "West India Proprietor,
Kept during a Residence in the Island ofjamaica (London, 1834), 97; Bett:y
Wood and T. R. Clayton, "Slave Birth, Death and Disease on Golden
Grove Plantation, Jamaica, 1765-1810," Slavery and Abolition 6, no. 2
(September 1985), 109; Sells, Remarks on the Condition of the Slaves, 18.
77· Lewis, journal of a West India Proprietor, 97; Hall, In Miserable Slavery,
184-185.
78. Wood and Clayton, "Slave Birth, Death and Disease on Golden Grove
Plantation," 108, n6; Dunn, '"Dreadful Idlers,"' 165; Journal of Radnor
Plantation, 1822-1826, Institute of Jamaica, MS 180, 242-243; Michael
Craton and Garry Greenland, Searching for the Invisible Man: Slaves and
Plantation Life in jamaica (Cambridge, Mass., 1978), 97; Michael Craton
and James Walvin, A jamaican Plantation: The History of Worthy Park,
r670-I970 (Toromo, 1970), 130. For the 1739-!787 decrease of 2.4 percent
see Patterson, Sociology of Slavery, 97; for the 1817-1832 decrease of 2.8
percent, see Higman, Slave Population and Economy in jamaica, 101-102.
79· Richard B. Sheridan, "The Crisis of Slave Subsistence in the British West
Indies during and after the American Revolution," William and Mary
Quarterly 33, no. 4 (October 1976): 615-641; Sheridan, Doctors and Slaves,
158-162; WiHiam Beckford, Remarks upon the Situation of the Negroes in
Notes to Pages 57 -6o ·~ 285
jamaica (London, 1788), II5-u6; Simon Taylor to Chaloner Arcedeckne,

13 August q86, Vanneck Papers, 3A/ 1786/15.
8o. Simon Taylor to Chaloner Arcedeckne, 27 January 1769, Vanneck Papers,
3A I 1769/2; B. W. Higman, Slave Populations of the British Caribbean,
I80J-I834 (Kingston, 1995 [1984]), 77·
81. Dunn, Sugar and Slaves, 334- Dunn's insight has been amplified by the
careful research of Trevor Burnard, ''A Failed Settler Society." First
Nugent quotation from Philip Wright, ed., Lady Nugent's Journal of Her
Residence in jamaica from r8or to r8o5 (Kingston, 2002), 18; Theodore
Foulks, Eighteen Months in jamaica; with Recollections of the Late Rebellion
(London, 1833), 68-69; second Nugent quotation from Wright,. Lady
Nugent's journal 184.
82. Wright, Lady Nugent's journal, 65. William Dodd, Reflections on Death
(London, 1796 [1763]), 5·
83. I borrow the term "space of death" from the anthropologist Michael
Taussig, Shamanism, Colonialism, and the Wild Man: A Study in Terror
and Healing (Chicago, 1987). Joseph Roach's explication of anthropo-
logical approaches to funerary practice is useful here: "In Arnold van
Gennep's seminal formulation of death as a rite of passage, the binary
distinction that creates two categories, dead and alive, simultaneously
creates in its interstices a threefold process of living, dying, and being
dead. The middle state (dying, or more expressively, "passing") is the
less stable stage of transition between more dearly defined conditions:
it is called the 'liminal' (literally, 'threshold') stage, and it tends to gen-
erate the most intense experiences of ritual expectancy, activity, and
meaning." See Joseph Roach, Cities of the Dead: Circum-Atlantic Per-
formance (New York, 1996), 37·
2. Last Rites and First Principles

1. Johnny New-come in the Island ofjamaica, printed by William Holland,
Oxford St., London, 18oo, Institute of Jamaica, PI 132 D.VI. The panel
refers to the story of the three living and the three dead, popularized in
England during the fourteenth century, in which three hunters meet
three dead men, who tell them, "What you are, we were, and what we
are, you will be." On memento mori icons, see Peter C. Jupp and Clare
Gittings, Death in England· An Illustrated History (New Brunswick, N.J.,
2000), 93-94, 151-152; James A. Hijaya, "American Gravestones and Atti-
tudes toward Death: A Brief History," Proceedings of the American Philo-
sophical Society 127, no. 5 (14 October 1983): 343-346.
286 !'i- Notes to Pages 62 -65
2. Peter Brown, The Cult of the Saints: Its Rise and Function in Latin Chris-
tianity (Chicago, I98I), 24; Thomas W Laqueur, "Bodies, Death, and Pauper
Funerals,'' Representations I, no. I (February 1983): I09-I3I.
3· Trevor Burnard, "A Failed Settler Society: Marriage and Demographic
Failure in Early Jamaica," journal ofSocial History 28, no. I (Fall 1994): 63.
4· For a fascinating example of the political power of a funeral oration, see
the speech purportedly given in early eighteenth-century Guadeloupe at
the burial of an enslaved man kiHed by his master for taking a loaf of bread.
A Letter from a Merchant at Jamaica to a Member ofParliament in London,
Touching the African Trade; To which is added, a Speech made by a Black of
Guadaloupe at the Funeral ofa Fellow-Negro (London, 1709).
5. WilHam Beckford, A Descriptive Account of the Island ofjamaica (London,
1790), 2:388; Alexander Barday, A Practical View of the Present State of
Slavery in the West lndi.es (London, r826), 135-136.
6. Barclay, A Practical View, 135-136. For a comparison to nineteenth-century
Brazil see Joao Jose Reis, Death Is a Festival: Funeral Rites and Rebellion in
Nineteenth-Century Brazil (Chapel HiU, N.C.,. 2003 [1991]), esp. 66-152.
7· Olaudah Equiano, The Interesting Narrative and Other Writings, ed. Vin-
cent Carretta (New York, 1995 [1789]), 172; John Thornton, Africa and
Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, I400-I8oo, 2nd ed. (Cam-
bridge, U.K., 1998), I83-205; John Thornton, "The Coromantees: An
Mrican Cultural Group in Colonial North America and the Caribbean,"
journal of Caribbean History 32, nos. 1 and 2 (I998).: I6I-ry8; Alexander X.
Byrd, "Eboe, Country, Nation, and Gustavus Yassa's Interesting Narrative,"
William and Mary Quarterly 63, no. 1 Qanuary 2006): I23-148; Douglas B.
Chambers, "Ethnicity in the Diaspora: The Slave Trade and the Creation
of African 'Nations' in the Americas," Slavery and Abolition 22, no. 3
(December 2001): 25-39. For a sophisticated interpretation of this process,
see Joseph Roach, Cities of the Dead: Circum-Atlantic Performance (New
York, 1996), esp. 59-63.
8. Edna Greene Medford, ed., The New York African Burial Ground: History
Final Report (Washington, D.C.,. 2004), 175-179; Thornton, "The Coro-
mantees," 168-169; Chambers, "Ethnicity in the Diaspora," 26-28; Michael
Mullin, Africa in America: Slave Acculturation and Resistance in the Amer-
ican South and the British Caribbean, I736-I8p (Urbana, Ill., 1992), 62-74;
Stephan Palmie,. ''Ethnogenetic Processes and Cultural Transfer in Mro-
American Slave Populations," in Wolfgang Binder, ed., Slavery in the Amer-
icas (WUrzburg, Germany, 1993), 337-363.
9· MelviUe J. Herskovits, Trinidad Village (New York, 1947), 300. See also
Herskovits, The Myth of the Negro Past (Boston, 1990 [1941), 201-206;
R. Frey and Betty Wood, Come Shouting to Zion: African American Protes-
tantism in the American South and British Caribbean to I83o (Chapel Hi!],
N.C., 1998), 22-26, 51-56. For a comparison with North America, see
David R. Roediger, "And Die in Dixie: Funerals, Death, and Heaven in
the Slave Community, qoo-r865," Massachusetts Review 22, no. I (Spring
1981): 163-183.
10. Richard Price, "Commentary on Monica Schuler, ~ro-American Slave
Culture," in Michael Craton, ed., Roots and Branches: Current Directions
in Slave Studies (Toronto, 1979), 148.
rr. Thornton, Africa and Africans, 235-246; Thornton, "Religious and Cere-
monial Life in the Kongo and Mbundu Areas, 1500-qoo," in Linda M.
Heywood, ed., Central Africans and Cultural Transformation in the Amer-
ican Diaspora (Cambridge, U.K., 2002), 72-90; Thornton, "The Coro-
mantees," 166-168; C. G. A. Oldendorp, History of the Mission of the
Evangelical Brethren on the Caribbean Islands ofSt. Thomas, St. Croix, and
St. john, ed. Johann Jakob Bossard, trans. Arnold R. Highfield and
Vladimir Barac (Ann Arbor, Mich.,. 1987 [1770]), 198-199; Herskovits, The
Myth ofthe Negro Past, 206; Trevor Burnard, Mastery, TJrannJ> and Desire:
Thomas Thistlewood and His Slaves in the Anglo-jamaican World (Chapel
Hili, N.C., 2004), 4i F. G. Cassidy and R. B. LePage, eds., Dictionary of
Jamaican English, 2nd ed. (Kingston, 2002), 164-165. For an example from
the Gold Coast, see Thomas Thompson, An Account ofTwo Missionary
Voyages (London, 1937 [1758]), 44-47. See also JohnS. Mbiti, Introduction
to African Religion, 2nd ed. (London, 1991), n6-r3o; Mary Turner, "Reli-
gious Beliefs," in Franklin W Knight, ed., General History of the
Caribbean, vol. 3, The Slave Societies ofthe Caribbean (London, 1997), 287-
321; Thornton, Africa and Africans, 235-271; Philip D. Curtin, Two
Jamaicas: The Role of Ideas in a Tropical Colony, 183o-I86s (Cambridge,
Mass., 1955); Frey and Wood, Come Shouting to Zion, 30, 22-26, )I-54·
12. Charles Leslie, A New .and Exact Account ofjamaica (Edinburgh, 1740),
325; Edward Long, History of jamaica (London, 1970 [1774]), 2:421;
Mathew Gregory Lewis, Journal ofa West India Proprietor Kept during a
Residence in the Island ofjamaica (London, 1834), 97-98; Stewart, A View
of the Present State of the Island, 275-276; Barday, A Practical View, 135;
James M. Phillippo, jamaica: Its Past and Present State (London, 1843),
244-245·
288 ~ Notes to Pages 6J-JI
13. Leslie, A New and Exact Account .ofjamaica, 325.

14. PhHHppo, jamaica, 244-245.
15. Oldendorp,. History of the Mission, 183-184; Roger Bast:ide also traces the
practice from French and Dutch Guiana to ''Fanti-Ashanrm culture," in
Roger Bastide,. A.ftican Civilisations in the New World, trans. by Peter Green
(London, 1971), 58. Father Giovanni Anwnio CavatZzi described the inter-
rogation of a corpse at a burial ceremony mn West-Central Africa. See
James H. Sweet, Recreating Africa: Cultur.e, Kinship, and Religion in the
African-Portuguese World, 1441-IJJO (Chapel HiU, N.C., 2003), 176-179;
John Matthews, A voyage to the River Sierra-Leone (London, 1788),
reprinted in Kenneth Morgan, Robin Law, John Oldfield, and David
Ryden, eds., The British Atlantic Slave Trade, vol. I,. The Operation of the
Slave Trade in Africa, ed . Robin Law (London, 2003),. 163-167; Equiano,
The Interesting Narrative, 41-43··
16. Vic:tor Turner applied the term ''communitas," a sense of oomity consid-
ered by participants in a ritual as "a timeless condition,. an eternal now,
as 'a moment in and our of time,.' or as a state to which the structural
view of time is nor applicable.'' Victor Turner, Dramas, Fields,. and
Metaphors.: Symbolic Action in Human Society (Ithaca,. N.Y., 1974), 238.
17· Stewart, A View ofthe Present State of the Island, 27).
18 . Thornton, "The Coromantees," 168-170; W. J. Gardner, A History of
jam,aica .from Its Discov:ery by Christopher Columbus to .the Year I8J2
(London, 1971 [1873]), 385-386; diary of Thomas Thistlewood, 5 June
17·67, cited in Douglass HaU, In Miserable Slavery: Thomas Thistlewood
in jamaica, IJ5o-IJ86 (London, 1989), 145; LesHe, A New an.d Exact
Account ofjamaica, 326.
19. Diary of Thomas Thistlewood, 21 March 1758, quoted in Hall, In Mis-
erable Slavery, 83, 145.
2.0. Long, The His.tory ofjamaica, 2:421; ·Barclay, A Practical View. 132-133. I
am grateful to ]ngrid Monson, Quincy Jones Professor of Music at Har-
vard University,. for sharing her interpretation of Barclay's musical notation.
11. Leslie, A New and Exa,ct Account ofjama.ica,. 325-326; Beckford, A Descrip-
tive Account,. 3.90. For a penetrating account of seventeenth-century
African music in Jamaica, see Richard Cullen Rath,. '~rican .Music in Sev-
enteenth Century Jamaica: Cultural Transit and Transition," William .and
Mary Quarterly, 3rd series, 50, no. 4 (October 1993): 700-726. For a com-
parison with anteheHum North America, see Shane White and Graham
White, The Sounds ofSlavery;· Discovering African American History through
Songs, Sermons, and Speech (Boston, 2005),. II-19, 162.-164.
Notes to Pages 72 -79 -lil 289
22. W. Stanford to Bishop Porteus, 22 July 1788, Fulham Papers, Lambeth

Palace Library, vol. r8, f. 66; diary of Thomas Thistl,ewood, 7 August
1767, quoted mn Hall, In Miserable Slavery, 145; Mullin, Africa in America,
64; Beckford, A Descriptive Account, 388; Leslie, A New and Exact Account
ofjamaica, 325; Long, History ofJamaica, 2:421. For a comparison with
twentieth-century Africa, s,ee J. H. Kwabena Nketia, Funeral Dirges ofthe
Akan People (London, 1955).
23. Burnard, Mastery, Tjranny, and Desire, 4; James Stewart, A View of the
Present State of the Island of jamaica (Edinburgh, 1823), 270, 274-276;
Leslie, A New and Exact Account ofjamaica, 326.
24. Dirks, The Black Saturnalia,. r48; Leslie, A New and Exact Account of
jamaica, 325; PhiUippo, jamaica, 246; Edwards, History of the British
Colonies, 4:66-67.
25. Thornton, "The Coromantees," r69; Long, History of jamaica, 2:416;
Edwards, History of the British Colonies, 4:77.
26. Burnard, Mastery, Tjranny, and Desire, :128.
27. Long, History ofjamaica, 2:421-422; David Hackett Fischer, Albion's Se,ed:
Four British Folkways in America (New York, 1989), 700, 702.
28. Lewis, Journal ofa "West India Proprietor,. 98; Stewart, A View ofthe Present
State ofthe Island, 276.
29. On the relation between compensation claims and slave resistance in
another British Caribbean slave society, see David Barry Gaspar, '"To
Bring Their Offending Slaves to Justice': Compensation and Slave Resis-
tance in Antigua, 1669-1763," Caribbean Quarterly 30, nos. 3-4 (1984):
45-59. See also the explanation of a nineteenth-century apologist for
Jamaican slavery in Barday;. A Practical View, 205-207; Saint Thomas-
in-the-Vale Vestry Minutes, 16 April 1791, Jamaica Archives, Local Gov-
ernment, 2/ I, 56.
30. IGngston Vestry Minutes, 8 July 1745, Jamaica Archives, Local Govern-
ment, 2/6,. 27; foumals of the Assembly ofjamaica (St. Jago de la Vega,
IGngston, r663.-1826), vols . 4, 15; Diana Paton, "Punishment, Crime, and
the Bodies of Slaves in Eighteenth-Century Jamaica," Journal of Social
History 34, no. 4 (zom): 935; Journals of the Assembly ofjamaica,. 4:491,
493, 502; Lesli.,e, A New and Exact Account ofJamaica, 232.
31. See Burnard, Mastery IJranny, and Desire, zr; Christer Pedey, "Slavery,
Emancipation and the Creole Worldview of Jamaican Colonists, r8oo~
1834,'' Slavery .and Aboli.tion 26, no. I (April 2005): 98-100.
32. 'M Act for Seeding the Proceedings and Fees of the Coroners of This
Island," 19 December 1770, The Laws ofjamaica: Comprehending all the
290 10!- Notes to Pages 79-82
Acts in Force, passed between the First Year of the Reign of King George the
Third, and the Thirty-Second Year of the Reign of George the Third (St. Jago
de Ia Vega, Jamaica, 1792-1799), 2:97-98; Michael MacDonald, "The Sec-
ularization of Suicide in England, r66o-r8oo," Past and Present, no. III
(May 1986): 50-100; and R. F. Hunnisett, "The Importance of Eighteenth-
Century Coroners' Bills," in E. W. lves and A. H. Manchester, eds., Law,
Litigants and the Legal Profession (London, 1983), 126-139; ''An Act for Reg-
ulating Fees," 1711, The Laws ofjamaica, 1:106.
33· journals ofthe Assembly ofjamaica, entry of 4 November 1758, 5:95; ibid.,
6:304, 306, 314, 329; vaL 7:34, 42, 99, 104, 123, 127, 274, 338, 340, 348,
407, 424, 436, 550, 562, 631, 641; ibid., 8:302, 212, 317, 353· 451, 474; ibid.,
10:529, 556; ''An Act for Settling the Proceedings and Fees of the Coroners
of This Island," The Laws ofjamaica, 2:97-98.
34· "Extract from the Supplement w the Cornwall Chronicle," 29 December
1787, Fulham Papers, val. 18, ff n-14; For inquest rates, see, for example,
Saint Thomas-in-the-Vale Vestry Minutes, 1792-1795, Jamaica Archives,
Local Government:, 2/1, I. The principle of differentiating t:he value of
state services performed upon bodies was established in the I7II Act for
Regulating Fees, which stipulated that provost-marshals be paid five
pounds for the execution of white persons and one pound for the exe-
cution of slaves. The Laws of jamaica, 1:104-105. The principle was
upheld in the lesser rate paid to parish rectors to perform burials for free
people of color. See Saim Ann Vestry Minutes, 28 May 1796,. Jamaica
Archives, Local Government, 2/9, r6r. The Assembly of Jamaica raised
the fees for coroners islandwide to five pounds in 1801, following another
petition from several coroners for the county of Cornwall. See journals
of the Assembly ofjamaica, 10:529, 556; John Lunan, ed., An Abstract of
the Laws ofjamaica Relating to Slaves (St . Jago de la Vega, Jamaica, 1819),
145-147·
35· Benjamin McMahon, jamaica Plantership (London, 1839), 24-26.
36. Ibid.
37· A]fred Spencer, ed., Memoirs ofWil!iam Hickey (London, 1918), 2:19-20.
The expectant undertaker became a stock figure in white folklore, on
down to the twentieth century: "The author's maternal grandfather,"
writes J. W Fortesque, "served as a subaltern at Jamaica in the first years
of the nineteenth century, and used to tell a story that when he landed
he saw a mysterious individual with a long wand, who looked at him up
and down with extreme attention and seemed particularly interested in
his height and build. He discovered that this was an undertaker, who was
resolved not to be taken unawares, for burial of course must follow death
Notes to Pages 82-89 ~ 29I
very speedily in the tropics." J. W Fortesque, History of the British Army,

val. n, r8rs-r838 (London, 1923), 38n.
38. journals ofthe Assembly ofjamaica, 4:202, 241, 263, 265-266; Kingston Vestry
Minutes, r6 March 1747, Jamaica Archives, Local Government, 2/6, 100.
39· ''Act for Marriages, Christenings, Churchings & Burialls," r662, PRO,
CO 139/ r, f. 51; Peter Mardsen, An Account of the Island ofJamaica; with
Reflections on the Treatment, Occupation, and Provisions ofthe Slaves (New-
castle, 1788), 41; According to John Stewart, who spent the first two
decades of the nineteenth century in Jamaica, the fixed stipend accounted
for less than a quarter of a rector's income. Stewart maintained that rec-
tors could collect between fifteen hundred and three thousand pounds
annually in fees for baptisms, marriages, and funerals. All values listed are
in Jamaican currency unless otherwise noted. John Stewart, A View of the
Past and Present State ofthe Island ofjamaica (Edinburgh, 1823), 149-150;
R. A. Minter, Episcopacy without Episcopate: The Church of England in
jamaica before r824 (Worcester, U.K., 1990), II9-121.
40. "State of the Church in Jamaica," Fulham Papers, Lambeth Palace Library,
vol. 18, ff 45-52; Kingston Vestry Minutes, 12 January 1747, Jamaica
Archives, Local Government, 2/6, 94, and 22 January 1746, 2/6, 55, 96.
41. Saint Ann Parish Vestry Minutes, 28 May 1796, Jamaica Archives, Local
Government, 2/9, r6r; Kingston Vestry Minutes, 24 March 1746, Jamaica
Archives, Local Government, 2/6, 57; Royal Gazette, 8-15 May 1813, post-
script to the Royal Gazette, vol. 35, no. 20, r813, PRO, CO 141 /2, 24.
42. Long, History ofjamaica, 2:238-239.
43· John Barton to Lord Bishop Porteus of London, 21 May 1796, Fulham
Papers, Lambeth Palace Library, val. 18, f£ 78-81.
44· Ibid.
45· "State of the Church in Jamaica," ibid., ff. 51, 151-152; Marly; or, a
Planter's Life in jamaica (Glasgow, r828), 205.
46. Kingston Vestry Minutes, 19 July 1745, Jamaica Archives, Local Govern-
mem, 2 I 6, 28; David Cressy, Birth, Marriage, and Death: Ritual, Religion,
and the Life Cycle in Tudor and Stuart England (Oxford, 1997), 425; jour-
nals of the Assembly ofJamaica, 8: 555; Journals of the Assembly ofjamaica,
9:24-25, 29, 32, 58; Saint Ann Vestry Minutes, 16 May 1795, Jamaica
Archives, Local Government, 2/9, 143; Westmoreland Vestry Minutes,
20 January 1817, Jamaica Archives, Local Government 2/7, 13.
47· See, for example, the description of the r82o funera] for Henry Gratran
in the jamaica Courant, Saturday, 26 August 1820, 15, no. 205; Sir Hans
S]oane, A Voyage to the Islands Madera, Barbados, Niev.es, S. Christophers
and jamaica (London, qo7), xlviii.
292 !ii-· Notes to Pages 89-95
48. Funeral biB ofThomas Hall, 10 November 1772, Barnett-Hall Collection,

Mandeville Special Collections Library, University of California, San
Diego, MSS 220, box 3, folder 40.
49· Hall, In Miserable Slavery, 257; Vere Langford Oliver, ed., Caribbeana,
being Miscellaneous Papers Relating to the History, Topography, and Antiq-
uities of the British West Indies (London, 1916), 4:95; Philip Wright, ed.,
Monumental inscriptions ofJamaica (London, 1966), 18, q6-177.
50. Diary ofThomas Thistlewood, 17 June 1778, quoted in Hall, In Miserable
Slavery, 256-257; Cressy, Birth, Marriage and Death, 435-438.
3. Expectations of the Dead
I.Raymond T. Smith, Kinship and Class in the 'West Indies: A Genealogical

Study ofjamaica and Guyana (Chicago, 1988); B. W Higman, "The Slave
Family Household in the British West Indies, r8oo-r834,'' journal of
Interdisciplinary History 6, no. 2 (Fall 1975): 261-287; Orlando Patterson,
"Persistence, Continuity, and Change in the Jamaican Working-Class
Family," journal of Family History 7, no. 2 (Summer 1982): 135-16I.
2. johnny New-come in the Island ofjamaica, published by William HoUand,
Oxford St., 18oo, Institute of Jamaica, PI 132 D.VI.
3· Trevor Burnard, "Female Continuity and Female Independence in
Jamaica, I665-1734,.'' Continuity and Change 7, no. 2 (1992): 181-198;
Burnard, Creole Gentlemen: The Maryland Elite, I69I-I776 (New York,
2002), 139-166;. Jonathan E. Crowley, "The Importance of Kinship: Tes-
tamentary Evidence from South Carolina," journal of Interdisciplinary
History 16, no. 4 (Spring 1986): 559-577; Carole Shammas, "English
Inheritance Law and Its Transfer to the Colonies," American journal of
Legal History 31, no. 2 (April 1987): 145-163; Lee J. Alston and Morton
Owen Schapiro, "Inheritance Laws across Colonies: Causes and Conse-
quences," journal of Economic History 44, no. 2 (June 1984): 277-287;
HoHy Brewer, "Entailing Aristocracy in Colonial Virginia: 'Ancient
Feudal Restraints' and Revolutionary Reform," William and Mary Quar-
terly 54, no. 2 (April 1997): 307-346. For an examination of the way in
which enslaved women's reproductive labor figured in testators' expecta-
tions in seventeenth-century Barbados and South Carolina, see Jennifer
L. Morgan, Laboring Women: Reproduction and Gender in New World
Slavery (Philadelphia, 2004), 69-106.
4· Trevor Burnard, "Inheritance and Independence: Women's Status in Early
Colonial Jamaica," William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd series, 48 (1991): 97;
Edward Long, cited .in R. A. Minter, Episcopacy without Episcopate: The
Notes to Pages 95-100 'i'l 293
Church of England in jamaica before 1824 (Worcester, U.K., 1990), I26-

I27i journals of the Assembly ofJamaica, 10:63-64.
5· R. B. Sheridan, "Simon Taylor, Sugar Tycoon of Jamaica, 174o-r8r3,"
Agricultural History 45 (1971): 288; Simon Taylor to Chaloner Arcedeckne,
25 January 1773, in Betty Wood, ed., "The Letters of Simon Taylor of
Jamaica to Chaloner Arcedeckne, 1765-1775,'' in Betty Wood and Martin
Lynn, eds., Travel, Trade and Power in the Atlantic, q6s-z884 (Cambridge,
U.K., 2002), n1-112; B. W Higman, Plantation jamaica, IJSO-z8so: Cap-
ital and Control in a Colonial Economy (Kingston, 2005), 173-176.
6. Simon Taylor to Sir John Taylor, 27 January 1783, Taylor Family Papers,
ICS, I I AI 27.
7· Ibid.
8. Ibid.; Simon Taylor to Robert Taylor, r8 June r804, ibid., ICS, II F I 56.
9· Philip Wright, ed., Lady Nugent's journal ofHer Residence in jamaica from
z8oi to 1805 (Kingston, 2002), 68.
ro. Ibid., 65; Simon Taylor to Chaloner Arcedeckne, Kingston, I June q86,
Vanneck-Arcedeckne Papers, 3AI 1786/ ro. For a penetrating analysis of
the correspondence between Simon Taylor and Sir Simon Richard
Brisset Taylor, see Sarah M. S. Pearsall, '"After All These Revolutions':
Epistolary Identities in an Atlantic World, 1760-1815" (Ph.D. diss., Har-
vard University, 2001), 182-209; quotations from Simon Taylor, r86 and
188-189.
n. Simon Taylor to Robert Taylor, 14 January r8o6, Taylor Family Papers,
ICS, I I G I 40; Simon Taylor to Robert Taylor, 23 December, 18n, ibid.,
I I J I 49; Pearsall, "'After All These Revolutions,"' 205; John Shand to Sir
Simon Richard Brissett Taylor, 25 November r812, ibid., VI I C I 8; John
Shand to Sir Simon Richard Brissett Taylor, 21 April 1813, ibid., VI I C I 9;
Sir Simon Richard Brissett Taylor to Andrew Bogle, 7 July 1813, ibid., VI
I C In; Pearsall, "'After All These Revolutions,"' 205, 208-209. Will of
Simon Taylor, proved r813, Island Record Office, Spanish Town, Jamaica.
12. Journals of the Assembly ofjamaica, 6:303.
13. Mary Ricketts to William Henry Ricketts, Esq., 23 June 1757, Correspon-
dence of rhe Families of Rickeus and Jervis, vol. r: Letters Relating to
Jamaica, 1757-1799, British Library Add. MS 30001, f. 6. For an inter-
esting discussion of Mary Ricketts's dislike of Jamaica see Pearsall, "'After
AH These Revolutions,"' 30!-306.
14. Edward Long, His.tory ofjamaica (London, 1970 [1774]), 2:286; Trevor
Burnard, "'A Matron in Rank, A Prostitute in Manners': The Manning
Divorce of 1741 and Class, Gender, Race and the Law in Eighteenth-
Century Jamaica," in Verene A Shepherd, ed., Working Slavery, Pricing
294 ~ Notes to Pages roo-1o4
Freedom: Perspectives from the Ca~ibbean, Africa, and the Afiican Diaspora
(New York,. 2002), 133-15I; Hilary McD. Beckles, "White Women and
Slavery in the Caribbean," History Workshop journal36 (Autumn 1993):
66~82. For PhiHips's story, see Clinton V. Black, Tales of Old jamaica
(London, 1966), 89-99; and Kathleen Wilson, The Island Race: English-
ness, Empire and Gender in the Eighteen.th Century (New York, 2003),
129-11I68.
15. Bumard, ''Inheritance and Independence," 97, 104, ro6;. Burnard,
"Female Continuity and Female Independence," r8r-198; journals of the
Assembly ofjamaica, 6:589.
16. journals .oftheAssembly of]ama.ica, 6:303, 307, 312, 314, 329; W. H. Ricketts
to Polly, 18 December, 1770, British Library, Add. MS 30001, f. 44·
17. S. Jervis to Mrs. Ricketts [n . d., c. 1790s], British Library, Add. MS JOOOI,
ff. 85-86; George Ricketts to Mrs. Rickens, 30 October, 1798, British
Library Add. MS JOOOI,. f. So; George Ricketts to Mrs. Ricketts, Will of
Anne Ricketts endosed, 1799, British Library Add. MS 3.0001, ff. So-81.
18. Trevor Burnard, Creole Gentlemen, 11I40; Crowley, ''The Importance of
Kinship," )68;. Burnard, ''Inheritance and Independence," ror.
19. Simon Taylor to Chaloner Arcedeckne, 25 January 17J3., mn Wood, "Lerrers
of Simon Taylor," uo-nr. See also Higman, Plantation jamaica, 175-176.
20. Charles Kelsal~ to Simon Taylor, :2.5 June 1777, Vanneck-Aroedeckne
P'apers, 3G /2;. Frances Harris, Simon Taylor, and John Kelly to Charles
Kelsall, 26 June 1777, ibid. ; The Narration ·of Charles Kelsall, 27 June
III777• ibid; Simon Taylor to Chaloner Ar·cededme,. 8 April 1781,. Vanneck-
Arcedeckne Papers, 3A/ 1781/4.
21. The Laws ofjamaica,. val. 1, Comprehending all the Acts in Force, passed
,between the Thirty~Second Year ofth,e Reign ofKing Charles the Second. and
the Thirty~third Year of the Reign of George the Third (St. Jago de la Vega,
Jamaica, 1792), 278-280. The inventories required by the law have pro~
·vided historians with valuable records of eighteenth-century Jamaican
wealth and estate management. See especially Richard Pares, Merchants
and Planters (Cambridge, U.K.,. 1960);. R. B. Sheridan, "The Wealth of
Jamaica in the Eighteenth Century," Economic History Review, series 2, 18
(19·65): 292-311; and B. W. Higman, Slave Population and Economy in
jamaica, I807-I834 (Kingston, 1995 [1976]); Journals of the Assembly of
jamaica, 4:443, 446;. and The Laws ofjamaica, vaL 2, Comprehending all
the Acts in Force, passed between the First Year ofthe Reign of King George
the Third and .the Thirty-Second Year ofthe Reign of George the Third (St.
Jago de la Vega, 1792-179'9), 184-185.
22. Benjamin McMahon, jamaica Plantership (London, ]839), 224; Marly, or,
a Planter's Life in jamaica (G~asgow, 1828), 205-207.
Notes to Pages IOJ-I08 ~ 295
23. McMahon,. jamaica Pl4ntership, 222-231.

24. "Testimony of Hercules Ross, Esq.,." r6 Mar·ch 1791, in Sheila Lambert,
ed., HCSP, 2:257; Long, History ofjamaica, 1:399.
25. Long, History ofjamaica, 1:499-502; journals of the Assembly ofjamaica,
6:551, 62o; The Laws ofjamaica, 2:185.
26. Long,. History ofjamaica, 1:502; Lowell Joseph Ragatz, The Fall of the
Planter Class in the British Caribbean, I763-1833 (New York, 1963 [1928]),
9; Gilbert Mathison, Esq., Notices Respecting jamaica in r8o8, 1809, r8Io
(London, 18n), 15; "Return of the Provost Marshal General of Jamaica,
of the Number of Slaves Sold under Execution for Debt,. r8o8-r827" (no.
524), r828, British Parliamentary Papers (Shannon, 1968), 26:26-29. Not
until the end of 1826 did the assembly pass a law to prevent separation
of families by writ and seizure. See ''An Act to Alter and Amend t:o the
Slave Laws of this Island," 22 December 1826, clause 5, The Laws of
jamaica, Passed in the Seventh Year of the Reign ofKing George the Fourth
(Kingston, 1827), 198.
27. See Orlando Patterson, Sociology of Slavery: An Analysis of the Origins,.
Development and Structure of Negro Slave Society in jamaica (London,
1967), 90-92; Barbara Bush, Slave Women in Caribbean Society, J.65o-I838
(Bloomington, Ind., 1990), 31-32.
z8. Bush, Slave WOmen in Caribbean Society, no-n9; Hilary McD. Beckles,
Centering WOmen: Gender Discourses in Caribbean Slave Society (Princeton,
N.J., 19·99), 22-37; Trevor Burnard, "The Sexual Life of an Eighteenth-
Century Jamaican Slave Overseer," in Merril D. Smith,. ed., Sex and Sex-
uality in Early America (New York, 1998), 163-189.
29. Douglas Hall, ed., 1n .Miserable Slavery: Thomas Thistlewood in jamai.ca,
I750-I786 (Kingston, 1999 [1989]), 313-314; Trevor Burnard, Mastery,
Ijranny,. and Desire: Thomas Thislewood and His Slaves in the Anglo-
jamaican World (Chapeill HiU, N.C., 2004), 228-240; Trevor Burnard,
'"Do Thou in Gentle Phibba Smile': Scenes from an Interracial Marriage,
Jamaica, 1754-1786," in Darlene Clark Hine and David Barry Gaspar,
eds.,. Beyond Bondage: Free Women of Color in the Americas (Urbana, Hl.,
2004), 82-105; Beckles, Centering Women, 38-58.
30. Patterson,. Sociology ofSlavery, 90-91; John Lunan, ed., An Abstract of the
Laws of]amaica Relating to Slaves (St. Jago de Ia Vega, Jamaica, 1819),
120-121; Minutes of Evidence taken before t:he Select Committee of the
House of Lords appointed to inquire into the Laws and Usages of the
several West India Colonies in rdation to the Slave Population, &c. &c.
&c., House of Lords Record Office, London, session of 1832, 970-971;
The Laws ofjamaica, Passed in the Fifty-Seventh Year of the Reign ofKing
George the Third Qamaica, 1817), 510.
29'0 ~ Notes to Pages I09-II4
31. Some slaveholders did free their children. Thomas Thisdewood arranged
to fr·e·e John, the son he had by Phibba, at two years of age. Burnard,
Mastery, 1Jranny, and Desire, 235: Richard S. Dunn, "The Demographic
Structure of American Slavery: Jamaica versus Virginia,'' unpublished
paper presented to the Boston Area Early America Seminar, n May 2006,
qn29; John Soott to Thomas Hall, 13 May q68, Barnett-Han Collection,
Mandeville Special Collections Library, University of California, San
Diego, MSS 220, box 2,. folder 9·
32. Simon Taylor to Chaloner Ar.cedeckne,. 3 December 1771, in Wood, Let-
ters of Simon Taylor. 107-108.
33· Timothy Penny to Ch~oner Arcedeckne, enclosing the will of Jacob
Gutteres, 6 f,ebruary 1783,. Vanneck-Arcedeckne Papers,. 3A/ 1783/4.
34· Matmew Gregory Lewis, Esq.,. M.P., journal ofa ~:rt India Proprietor. Kept
during a Residence in the Island ofjamaica (London, 1834), 76, 399-403.
35· Extracts from Messrs. Forsyth & Co. to Messrs. Pitcairn & Amos,
Kingston, 9 July 1832 and 10 October 1832, Chiswick Plantation Papers,
Jamaica, voL 2: 1832-1835• Bodleian Library,. Rhodes House, Oxford,
MSS. W. Indies, 18, ff. 37, 43·
3,6. Edward Brathwaite, The Development of Cr.eole Society in jamaica, I770"'-
I82o (Oxford, 1971), 168; Higman,. Slave Population and Economy, q6,
178; Long, History ofjamaica, 1:327-328.
37· journals of the Assembly ofjamaica,. 5:JIO-J12, 315-3I6, 322, 372, 376-377;
Long, History ofjamaica; 1:323-327.
38. Long, History ofjam.aica, 1:327; journals ofthe Ass,embly ofjamaica, 8:586,
592.
39· Gad J. Heuman, Between Black and White: Ra.ce, Politics, and the Free
Coloreds in jamaica, IJ92-I86J (Westport, Conn., 1981), 7, 13-32; Douglas
Hall, "Jamaica," in David W. Cohen and Jack P. Greene, eds., Neither
Slave Nor Free: The Freedmen ofAfrican Descent in th.e Slav:e Societies of
the .New World (Baltimme, Md., 1972), 193-213; Brathwaite, The Devel-
opment of Creole Society, 172.
40. Higman,. Slave Population and Economy, 142; Benjamin McMahon,
jamaica Plantership, 226; Sheila Duncker, "The Free Colored and the
Fight for Civil Rights in Jamaica, I8oo-I8Jo'' (M.A. thesis,. University of
Londo,n, 1960),. cited in Brathwaite, The Development ofCreole Society, 174.
41. Roderick A. McDonald,. The Economy and Material Culture of Slaves:
Goods and Chattels on the Sugar Plantations of jamaica and Louisiana
(Baton Rouge, La., 1993),. 16-49; Ira Berlin and Philip D. Morgan, eds.,,
''Introduction: The Slaves' Economy-Independent Production by Slaves
in the Americas,'' Slavery and Abolition 12 (1991): 1-27; Sidney W. Mintz,.
Notes to Pages II4 -II9 ~ 297
''The Origins of the Jamaican Market System," in Caribbean Transforma-

tions (New York, 1974), 1r80-213; Sidney W. Mintz and Douglas Hall,
"The Origins of the Jamaican Marketing System," Yale University Publi-
cations in Anthropology, no. 57 (1960): 1-26.
42. McDonald, Economy and Material Cultur:e, 31-32, 49; Long, History of
Jamaica, 2:410~4n; Patterson, Sociology ofSlavery, 229.
43· Simon Taylor to David Reid, ro March 1801, Taylor Papers, ICS, ] I D I 53;.
David Barry Gaspar, "Working the System: Antigua Slaves and Their
Struggle to Live," Slavery and Abolition 13, no. 3 (December 1992): 131-155.
44· Minutes of Evidence taken before ... the House of Lords, session of
1832, 156-157; Bryan Edwards, The History, Civil and Commercial, of the
British Colonies in the ~st Indies (London, 1793),. 2:133; Cynric R.
Williams, A Tour through the Island ofJamaica, from the Western to the
Eastern End, in the Year r823 (London, r826), 17-18; For comparisons to
the U.S. South, see Dylan Penningroth, "Slavery, Freedom, and Social
Claims to Property among African Americans in Liberty County,
Georgia, 1850-188o," journal ofAmerican History 84, no. 2 (September
1997): 405-435; and Penningroth, The Claims of Kinfolk: African Amer-
ican Property and Community in tbe Nineteenth-Century South (Chapel
Hill, N.C., 2003), 89-91.
45· Born in London in 1796, De la Beche lived briefly on his famay estate in
Jamaica as a young child and visited again for one year in 1823-24, when
he prepared his notes on Jamaican slavery. T. Sharpe and P. J. McCartney,
The Papers of H. T. De Ia Beebe (IJ96-I8Js) in the National Museum of
'W"illes (Cardiff, 1998), 7-10; H. T. De la Beche, Notes on the Present Con-
dition of the Negroes in jamaica (London, 1825), 48-49, 62-63.
46. On British ideas for reform, see Christopher L. Brown, "From Slaves to
Subjects: Envisioning an Empire without Slavery, 1772-1834,'' in Philip
D. Morgan and Sean Hawkins, eds., Black Experience and the Empire
(New York, 2004), II1-140.
47· De la Beche, Notes on the Present Condition of the Negroes, 49·
48. Thistlewood, as quoted in Hall, In Miserable Slavery, 83.
49· Jean Besson, "The CreoHzadon of Mrican-American Slave Kinship in
Jamaican Free Village and Maroon Communities," in Stephan Palmie,.
ed., Slave Cultures and the Cultures of Slavery (Knoxville, 1995), 190;
Williams, A Tour through the Island ofjamaica,. 18.
50. Long, History ofjamaica, 2:410; William Beckford, A Descriptive Account
of the Island ofJamaica (London, 1790), 2:32.3-324; Besson, "The Cre-
oHzation of Mrican-American Slave Kinship," 193-194;, Hector McNemll,
Observations on the Treatment of the Negroes in the Island of jamaica,
298 ~;to Notes to Pages I20-I24
including some account of their Temper and Character (London, 1788), 9;

Minutes of Evidence taken before ... the House of Lmds, 156.
51. Williams, A Tour through the Island ofjamaica, ro3; Lewis, journal of a
West India Proprietor, 390.
52· Lewis, journal of a West India Proprietor, 349·
53· Long, History ofjamaica, 2:4ro; Sidney W. Mintz and Richard Price, The
Birth ofAfrican-American Culture: An Anthropological Perspective (Boston,
1992 [1976]), 66; John Thornton, Africa and Africans in the Making ofthe
Atlantic World, I400-18oo, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, U.K., 1998 [1992]), 74-
79; Michael Mullin, Africa in America: Slave Acculturation and Resistance
in the American South and the British Caribbean, I736-I8]I (Urbana, Ill.,
1992), r6o; Long, History of jamaica, 2:4n; William Beckford, Remarks
upon the Situation of the Negroes in jamaica (London, 1788), 53; Lewis,
journal of a \Vtost India Proprietor, 6:L For a perspective on slavery and
landed inheritance in the late nineteenth-century Gold Coast, see Pen-
ningroth, The Claims of Kinfolk, 20-21; for a comparison with property
and inheritance among a twentieth-century Mrican population, see Jack
Goody, Death, Property, and the Ancestors: A Study of Mortuary Customs
among the LoDagaa ofWest Africa (Stanford, Calif, 1962), esp. 273-357.
54· Minutes of Evidence taken before . . . the House of Lords, 338;
McDonald, Economy and Material Culture of Slaves, no; Besson, "The
Creolization of African-American Slave Kinship," 194.
55· Simon Taylor to Chaloner Arcedeckne, 7 October 1769, in Wood, "Let-
ters of Simon Taylor," 84; Simon Taylor to Chaloner Arcedeckne, 16 Jan-
uary 1783, Vanneck manuscripts, Cambridge University Library, bundle
2 In; Beckford, A Descriptive Account, 323; Mintz, "The Origins of the
Jamaican Market System,." 209. For the most thorough treatment of the
issue of family land in Jamaica, see Jean Besson, Martha Brae's Two His-
tories: European Expansion and Caribbean Culture-Building in jamaica
(Chapel Hill, N.C., 2002).
56. Edmund Burke, Select Works of Edmund Burke, Miscellaneous Writings
(Indianapolis, 1999 [r874]), 4:153-170; Christopher Leslie Brown, Moral
Capital· Foundations of British Abolitionism (Chapel Hill, N.C., 2006),
228-240.
57· Edwards, History ofthe British Colonies (London, I793), 2:133.
58. The defense of slaves' property rights against the incursions of other slaves
and against the instability brought by revolts could at times encourage a
conservative approach to struggle against slavery. See Burnard, Mastery,
7Jranny, and Desire, 173-I74; Long, History ofjamaica, 2:410; McNeill,
Observations on the Treatment of the Negroes, 9·
Notes to Pages I25-IJI ~ 299
59· Williams, A Tour through the Island ofjamaica, I02-IOJ; Minutes of Evi-
dence taken before ... the House of Lords, I 57·
6o. Williams, A Tour through the Island ofjamaica, 18.
61. The Laws ofjamaica, Passed in [1826], 201; "An Act for the Government
of Slaves," 19 February 1831, clause 15, The Laws ofjamaica, Passed in the
First Year of the Reign of King William the Fourth (Kingston, 1831), 47;
Journals of the Assembly ofjamaica, 14:667, 717-718; Minutes of Evidence
taken before ... the House of Lords, 974; To examine a similar struggle
over land described outside the context of metropolitan scrutiny, see the
correspondence between John Shand and George Watson Taylor about
attempts to move some families from their grounds during an outbreak
of whooping cough. George Watson Taylor to John Shand, 7 December
1815, Taylor Papers, ICS, VIII I AI 6; John Shand to George Watson
Taylor, 7 October r8r5, ibid., VIII I B I 3; George Watson Taylor to John
Shand, 7 December r8r5, ibid., VIII I B /6; John Shand to George Watson
Taylor, 30 December 1815, ibid., VIII/ B /6.
62. Minutes of Evidence taken before ... the House of Lords, 574, 787.
63. Lewis, journal ofa West India Proprietor, 405-406.
64. Orlando Patterson, Slavery and Social Death: A Comparative Study (Cam-
bridge, Mass., 1982), 5-6, emphasis mine. For two recent examples of
important scholarship on slavery that incorporates Patterson's thesis, see
Saidiya V. Hartman, Scenes ofSubjection: Terror, Slavery, and Self-Making
in Nineteenth-Century America (New York, 1997), 94, 231n; Burnard, Mas-
tery, Yj;ranny, and Desire, 195. The "social death" thesis has been circulated
widely outside the historiography of slavery and now operates as a general
description of slavery's most fundamental impact on black subjectivity.
See, for example, Sharon Patricia Holland, Raising the Dead: Readings of
Death and Black Subjectivity (Durham, N.C., 2000).
4· Icons, Shamans, and Martyrs

1. Hugh Crow, Memoirs of the Late Captain Hugh Crow (London, 1830),
n8; David Eltis, Stephen D. Behrendt, David Richardson, and Herbert
S. Klein, The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade: A Database on CD-ROM (Cam-
bridge, U.K., 1999).
2. My use of the term "necromancy" is inspired by, but differs somewhat
from, that of the historian Walter Johnson, who uses it to describe the
"magic of the [slave] market," which "could steal a person and inhabit
their body with the soul of another-the forcible incorporation of a slave
with the spirit of the slaveholder's fantasy." See Johnson, Soul by Soul:
300 * Notes to Pages IJI -IJ4
Life inside the Antebellum Slave Market (Cambridge, Mass., 1999), II7-u8,
134·
3· Bryan Edwards, The HistorY" Civil and Commercial, of the British Colonies
in the "West Indies (London, r8m), 3:36; Katherine Verdery, The Political
Lives of Dead Bodies: Reburial and Postsocialist Change (New York, 1999),
27-28.
4· I have borrowed the term "government magic" from Fela Anikulapo ("he
who carries death in his pouch") Kuti, "Unknown Soldier," Coffin for Head
of State (Lagos, 1981); Michad Taussig, Colonialism, Shamanism, and the
Wild Man: A Study in Terror and Healing (Chicago, 1987), 374· For a
provocative take on such practices, see Achille Mbembe, "Necropolitics,"
Public Culture 1$, no. I (2003): II-40.
5· Testimony of Henry Coor, r6 February 1791, in Sheila Lambert, ed., HCSE
82:74; testimony of Dr. Harrison, I2 February 1791, ibid., 50; testimony of
William Fitzmaurice, 9 March 1791, ibid., 82:230-23I.
6. Testimony of Mr. Thomas Clappeson, 8 March 1791, ibid., 82:213; William
D. Piersen, "White Cannibals, Black Martyrs: Fear, Depression, and Reli-
gious Faith as Causes of Suicide among New Slaves," journal ofNegro His-
tory 62, no. 2 (April 1977): 151, 154-155; Michael Gomez, Exchanging Our
Country Marks: The Transformation ofAfrican Identities in the Colonial and
Antebellum South (Chapel HiH, N.C., 1998), II4-134; Philip D. Morgan,
Slave Counterpoint: Black Culture in the Eighteenth-Century Chesapeake &
Lowcountry (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1998), 641-642; testimony of Mr. Mark
Cook, 5 March 1791, in Lambert, HCSE 82:197; testimony of Lt. Baker
Davidson, 25 February 1791, ibid., 82:185.
7· Richard Ligon, A True and Exact History of the Island of Barbadoes, I647-
I650 (London, 1976 [1657]), 17.
8. C. G. A. Oldendorp, History of the Mission of the Evangelical Brethren on
the Caribbean Islands of St. Thomas, St. Croix, and St. John, ed. Johann
Jakob Bossard, trans. Arnold R. Highfield and Vladimir Barac (Ann Arbor,
1987 (1770]), 246; Moreau de St. Mery, cited in Piersen, "White Cannibals,
Black Martyrs," 154; Also see Joan Dayan, Haiti, History, and the Gods
(Berkeley, Cali£, 1995), 247-248; Gwendolyn Midlo Hall, Social Control
in Slave Plantation Societies: A Comparison of St. Domingue and Cuba
(Baton Rouge, La., 1971), 21. •
9· Anonymous planter, cited in Orlando Patterson, Sociology of Slavery: An

Analysis of the Origins, Development and Structure ofNegro Slave Society in
jamaica (Rutherford, N.J.,. 1969 [1967]), 196; John Venn to Bishop
Sherlock, 15 June 1751, Fulham Papers, vol. 8, 174o-undated, f. 47, Lambeth
Palace Library, London; John Stewart, A View of the Past and Present State
Notes to Pages IJ5-I37 ~ JOI
ofthe Island ofjamaica, with Remarks on the Moral and Physical Condition
of the Slaves, and on the Abolition of Slavery in the Colonies (Edinburgh,
1823), 281.
ro. Fear of mutilation after death terrorized London commoners as much as,
or more than, than the gallows itself. See Peter Linebaugh, The London
Hanged: Crime and Civil Society in the Eighteenth Century (London, 2003
[1991]), and ''The Tyburn Riots against the Surgeons," in Douglass Hay,
Peter Linebaugh, John G. Rule, E. P. Thompson, and Cal Winslow, eds.,
Albion's Fatal Tree: Crime and Society in Eighteenth-Century Enghnd (New
York, 1975); Frank McLynn, Crime and Punishment in Eighteenth-Century
England (New York, 1989), 229; and Piersen, "White Cannibals, Black
Martyrs," 154-155. See also Robin Law, "'My Head Belongs to the King':
On the Political and Ritual Significance of Decapitation in Pre-Colonial
Dahomey," journal of African History 30 (1989): 399-416; "Letters of
Philip Quaque," in Philip D. Curtin, ed., Africa Remembered: Narratives
by West Africans from the Era of the Slave Trade (Madison, Wise., 1967),
128-129; and the diary of Antera Duke, a slave-trading chief in the Bight
of Biafra during the eighteenth century, in Daryll C. Forde, ed., Efik
Traders of Old Calabar (New York, 1956).
n. For the impact of punishment as spectacle on slave "self-making" in ante-
bellum North American slavery, see Saidiya V Hartman, Scenes of Sub-
jection: Terror, Slavery, and Self-Making in Nineteenth-Century America
(New York, 1997); Sir Hans Sloane, A Voyage to the Islands Madera, Bar-
bados, Nieves, S. Christophers .and Jamaica (London, 1707), 1:lvii; diary of
Thomas Thisdewood, 18 May 1750, quoted in Michael Craton, Testing
the Chains: Resistance to Slavery in the British West Indies (Ithaca, N.Y.,
1982), 39; and diary ofThomas Thistlewood, 9 October 1752, quoted in
Douglas Hall, In Miserable Slavery: Thomas Thistlewood in Jamaica, 1750-
I786 (London, 1989), 30.
12. Philip Wright, ed., Lady Nugent's Journal ofHer Residence in jamaica from
r8oi to 1Bo5 (Kingsron, 2002 [1966]), r65; Matthew Gregory Lewis,
Journal of a West India Proprietor Kept during a Residence in the Island of
jamaica (London, r834), r8r-r83; Verdery, The Political Lives of Dead
Bodies, 27; Returns of Slave Trials, Saint Elizabeth, 16 March 1816, PRO,
co 1371147· f. 55·
13. Falke Strom, On the Sacral Origins of the Germanic Death Penalties
(Lund, Sweden, 1942);. Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth
of the Prison, trans. Alan Sheridan (New York, 1979 [1977 1), 32-69;
Graeme Newman, The Punishment Response (Philadelphia, 1978), 27-51;
Pieter Spierenburg, The Spectacle ofSujfering(New York, 1984), 57; Leon
302 ~ Notes to Pages IJ8-I42
Radzinowicz, A History ofEnglish Criminal Law and Its Administration

.from I750, val. I, The Movement for Reform, qso-r833 (New York, 1948),
213-214.
14. Douglass Hay, "Property, Authority and the Criminal Law," in Hay,
Linebaugh, Rule, Thomson, and Winslow, Albion's Fatal Tree, 27-29, 40-
49; Radzinowicz, A History of English Criminal Law, q8-r8r; V. A C.
Gatrdl, The Hanging Tree: Execution and the English People, I770-r868
(New York, 1994), So; Spierenburg, The Spectacle of Suffering, 57·
15. Gatrdl, The Hanging Tree, 83; Hay, "Property, Authority and the Crim-
inal Law,." 63.
r6. David Eltis, The Rise ofAfrican Slavery in the Americas (Cambridge, U.K.,
2000); Edward Long, cited in David Barry Gaspar, "With a Rod of Iron:
Barbados Slave Laws as a Model for Jamaica, South Carolina,. and
Antigua, 1661-1697,'' in Crossing Boundaries: Comparative History ofBlack
People in Diaspora (Bloomington,. 200! [1999]), 346; Gaspar, '"Rigid and
Inclement': Origins of the Jamaica Slave Laws of the Seventeenth Cen-
tury," in Christopher L. Tomlins and Bruce H. Mann, eds., The Many
Legalities of Early America (Chapel Hill, N.C., 2om), 78-96. For the
classic analysis of Caribbean slave law, see Elsa V. Goveia, "The West
Indian Slave Laws of the Eighteenth Century," in Hilary Beckles and
Verene Shepherd, eds., Caribbean Slave Society and Economy (New York,
1991), 346-362.
17. Edward Long, quoted in Gaspar, "Rigid and Inclement," 95·
18. Diana Paton,. "Punishment, Crime, and the Bodies of Slaves in Eighteenth-
Century Jamaica," journal ofSocial Histo.ry 34, no, 4 (2001): 923-954; quo-
tations, 923, 927, 950n; Saint Thomas-in-the-Vale Vestry Minutes,.
1789-1802, Jamaica Archi¥es, Local Government 2 I I, 1; William Beckford,
Remarks upon the Situation of the Negroes in jamaica (London, q88), 93·
19. Paton, "Punishment, Crime, and the Bodies of Slaves," 931, 939-940.
20. Diary ofThistlewood, ro October q66 and 20 August 1774, as quoted
in Hall, In Miserable Slavery, 142, 235; Testimony of Capt. Thomas Lloyd,
25 February 1791, in Lambert, HCSP, 82:147.
21. Saint Thomas-in-the-Vale Vestry Minutes, q89-1802, Jamaica Archives,
Local Government 2/1, I, 168; Roger Norman Buckley, The British Army
in the West Indies: Society and the Military in the Revolutionary Age
(Gainesville, Filla., 1998), 203-247.
22. "Petition from the Carpenter's Mountains," 14 May 1731, journals of the
Assembly ofjamaica, 3:8. Thomas Murray to WMMS, Montego Bay, 3
April 1832, WMMS, West Indies General Correspondence, box 131, FBN
9, no. 446.
Notes to Pages I43-146 ~ 303
23. Paron, "Punishment,. Crime, and rhe Bodies of Slaves," 940, 942.
24. Thomas Thompson, An Account ofTwo Missionary Voyages (London, 1937
[1758]), 44-45; John K. Thornton, "Religious and Ceremonial Life in the
Kongo and Mbundu Areas, 1500-qoo," in Linda M. Heywood, ed.,
Central Africans and Cultural Transformation in the American Diaspora
(Cambridge, U.K., 2002), 8o-8r; Robert Farris Thompson and Joseph
Cornet, The Four Moments of the Sun: Kongo Art in Two Worlds (Wash-
ington, D.C., 1981), 37i Lewis, journal of a West India Proprietor, 98-99.
25. Nicholas Beasley, '"Death is more busy in this Place': Mortuary Ritual in
the British Plantation Colonies, r64o-q8o," International Seminar on
the History of rhe Atlantic World, Harvard University, August 2006,
p. 17; Lewis, journal of a West India Proprietor, r82.
26. John Newton,. The journal of a Slave Trader, I750-I754, with Newton's
Thoughts upon the African Slave Trade, ed. Bernard Martin and Mark
Spurrell (London, 1962), 55-56; Thomas Walduck, as quoted in Jerome
5. Handler, "Slave Medicine and Obeah in Barbados, circa 1650 to 1834,"
New West Indian Guide 74, nos. I and 2 (2ooo): 59·
27. Diary ofThomas Thisrlewood, 25 April 1753, 6 January 1754, quoted in
Hall, In Miserable Slavery, 56, 6r.
28. For insightful discussions of African and American spiritual warfare in
slavery, see James H. Sweet, Recreating Africa: Culture, Kinship, and Reli-
gion in the African-Portuguese World, I44I-I770 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 2004);
Stephan Palmie, Wizards and Scientists: Explorations in Afro-Cuban Moder-
nity and Tradition (Durham, N.C., 2002), 176-I8r; Wyatt MacGaffey, Reli-
gion and Society in Central Africa (Chicago, 1986), esp. 156-164- For an
introduction to witchcraft as social sanction in Africa, see Ralph A. Austen,
"The Moral Economy of Witchcraft: An Essay in Comparative History,"
in Jean Comaroff and John Comaroff, eds.,. Modernity and Its Malcontents:
Ritual and Power in Postcolonial Africa (Chicago, 1993), 89-no.
29. The term probably originated among Ibo-speaking peoples transported
from the Bight of Biafra. There, the closest semantic and phonological
analogue of "obeah," dbia, refers to an "adept," or "master" of knowledge
and wisdom. Thus, the anglophone Caribbean term "obeah man" prob-
ably similarly designated a "master of knowledge and wisdom" in the
sacred arts." See Jerome S. Handler and Kenneth M. Bilby, "Obeah:
Healing and Protection in West Indian Slave Life," Journal of Caribbean
History 38, no. 2 (2004): 153-183; and Handler and Bilby, "On the Early
Use and Origin of the Term 'Obeah' in Barbados and the Anglophone
Caribbean," Slavery and Abolition 22, no. 2 (August 2001): 87-100. See
also Douglas Chambers, '"My Own Nation': Igbo Exiles in the Diaspora,"
304 ~ No.te:t to Pages I46-I48
Slat/iery and Abolition 18, no. I (1997): 72-97; Lambert,. HCSE 69::n6-2q;.
and R. R. Madden, A Twelv;emonth's Residence in the 1-Vt>st Indies (P'hiladel-
phia, 1835), 2:69. The materials used in obeah are reminiscent of those
Robert Faris Thompson mentions in his description of the Kongo minkis.i
in West~Centra] Africa. Believers held that minkisi worked through "two
basic classes of medicine within the charm, spirit-embedding medicine
(earths,. often from a grave site, for cemetery earth is considered at one
with the spirit of the dead), and spirit-admonishing objects (seeds, claws,
miniarur,e knives, stones, crystals, and so forth." See Thompson and
Cornet, The Four Moments of the Sun, 37· On minkisi and their role in
manifesting sacred authority in Mrican and American contexts, see also
MacGaffey, Religion and Society in Central Africa; and Palmie, Wizards
and Scien.tists, 159-200.
30. Robert Dirks, The Black Saturnalia: Conflict .and Its Ritual Expression on
British Wiest Indian Slave Plantations (GainesviUe, Filla., 1987), 152-153; St.
Ann Slave Court, 1787-!814, 3 March I794 and 5 May 1799, Institute of
Jamaica, MS 273; Alexander Barclay, A Practicallliew of the Present State
ofSlavery in the 'West Indies (London, 1826), 190-191.
31. Long, History ofjamaica, 2:416-417; diary of Thomas Thistlewood, 22
March 1769 and 16 April 1769, cited in Hall, In Miserable Slavery, zq;
Monica Schuler,. "Myalism and the African Religious Tradition in
Jamaica," mn Margaret E. Craha.n and Franklin W: Knight, eds.,. Aftica
and the Caribbean: The Legacies of a Link (Baltimore, Md., 1979'), 65-
79'; Mervyn Alleyne, Africa: Roots ofjamaican Culture (Chicago, 1996),
76-103; Joseph M . Murphy, Working the Spirit: Ceremonies ofthe African
Diasp.o·ra (Boston,, 1994),. 114-121; Joseph J. WiBiams, Voodoos and
Obeahs.: Phases of "West India Witchcraft (New York, 1932), 142-208;
Edward Kamau Brathwaite, The Folk Culture of the Slaves in jamaica
(London, 1981), u-16.
32. See espeda.J~y Mindie Lazarus-Black, Legitimate Acts and Illegal Encoun-
ters: Law a.nd Society in Antigua and Barbados (Washington, D.C., 1994);.
and Schuler, "Myalism and the African Religious Tradition." Myal was
often us,ed to coumer the power of obeah,. especially in the nineteenth
century, and both were generally focused inward, directed more often at
malefactors among the enslaved than between masters and siaves. How-
ev.er, as Burton has suggested, "it may be that Obeah and Myalism con-
front each other less as absolute opposites than as private and public
manifesrations of the same magjcospirituail power. ,& power and coun-
terpower neither is inherently political, but given the appropriate context,
borh can be redirected from the 'enemy within' to the common 'enemy
without.'" Richard D. E. Burton, Afro-Creole: Power, Opposition, and Play

in the Caribbean (Ithaca, N.Y., 1997), 101; Long, History ofjamaica, 2:416;
Edward Long, quoted in The Proceedings of the Governor .and Assembly of
jamaica, in regard to the Maroon Negroes (London, 1796), xxvii.
33· For contemporaneous accounts of the war and its aftermath, see Long,
History ofjamaica, 2:447-472; quotation, 462; and Edwards, History of
the West Indies, 2:75-79; see al.so Michael Craton, Testing the Chains:
Resistance to Slavery in the British West Indies (Ithaca, N.Y., 1982),. 125-139;
Richard Hart, Slaves Who Abolished Slavery: Blacks in Rebellion (Kingston,
2002 [1985]), 130-156; and Monica Schuler, "Akan Slave Rebellions in the
British Caribbean," in Beckles and Shepherd, Caribbean Slave Society and
Economy, 373,-386.
34· Long, History of]amaica, 2:457; Edwards, History ofthe British West Indies,
2:270-271; Hall, In Miserable Slavery, 107.
35· On grave dirt and oath taking among Africans and t:heir descendants,
see Charles Leslie, A New and Exact Account of jamaica (Edinburgh,
1740), 324; Long, History of jamaica, 2:422-423; Kenneth Bilby,
"Swearing by t:he Past, Swearing to the Future: Sacred Oaths., Alliances,
and Treaties among the Guianese and Jamaican Maroons," Ethnohistory
44, no. 4 (Fall 1997): 655-689; Lambert, HCSR 69:219, contains perhaps
history's first reference to the use of electricity for purposes of torture.
"Copies of the Several Acts for the Regulation of Slaves, Passed in the
West India Islands,'' in Lambert, HCSP, 67:111; Vincent Brown, "Spiri-
tual Terror and Sacred Authormt:y.: The Power of the Supernatural in-
Jamaican Slave Society," in Edward E. Baptist and Stephanie Camp,
eds., New Studies in the History ofAmerican Slavery (Athens, Ga., 2006),
194-196; diary of Thomas Thistlewood, 22 July q68, cited in Han, In
Miserable Slavery, 161.
36. Helen Tunnicliff Caterall, ed., judicial Cases concerning American Slavery
and the Negro, val. 5, Cases from the Courts ofStates North ofthe Ohio and
'West of the Mississippi Rivers, Canada, and jamaica (Washington D.C.,.
1937), 356. The 1823 law is quoted in "First Report of the Commissioners
of Enquiry into the Administration of Criminal and Civil Justice in the
West Indies, dated 29th June 1827,'' in Irish University Press Series of
British Parliamentary Papers: Colonies, 'West Indies (Shannon, 1968), 3:381.
37. Srinivas Aravamudan, "Introduction'' to WiUiam Earle, Obi; Or, The His-
tory of Three-Fingered jack, ed. Aravamudan (Toronto, 2005), 7-51; "The
Examination of a Negro named Frank, Belonging to Orange Vale, in the
Parish of Saint George, Taken before William BuHock Esquire, one of t:he
Magistrates for the Parish of Saint Catherine," 8 Mar·ch 1807, PRO, CO
l
I
306 f;it- Notes to Pages If2 -158
137/ uS,. ff. 115-nS; John Shipman, "Thoughts upon the Present State of
ReHgion among the Negroes of Jamaica,." 1820, WMMS Archive Special
Se.ries, Biographical, West ]ndies, box s88, FBN 2, nos. 27-JI, 12-IJ.
38. Verdery, The Political Lives of Dead Bodies, 37·
39· Bryan Edwards, "Stanzas, Occasioned by the Death of Alico, an African
Slave, Condemned for Rebellion in Jamaica, 1760," Poems Written Chiefly
in the 'West Indies (Kingston, 1792), 38; James G. Basker, Amazing Grace:
An Anthology of Poems about Slavery, r66o-I8IO' (New Haven, Conn.,
2002), 131-132.
40. Pennsylvania Gazette, 24 July 1q6o; ibid., 9 June 1763.
41. Gentleman's Magazine and Historical Chronicle 30 (April 1760): 179-181;
ibid., June 1760, 294; ibid., July 1760, 307-308; ibid., August ry6o,. 393;
ibid., 31 Quly 1761), 321; ibid., August 1761, 377·
42. Christopher L. Brown, ''From Slaves to Subjects: Envisioning Empire
without Slavery, 177:2.~1834," in Philip D . Morgan and Sean Hawkins,
eds., Black Experience and the Empire (Oxford, 2004), n6-rzo; Linda
Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation, 1707-1837 (New Haven, Conn., 1992),
2s-:z8; Brad S. Gregory, Salvation at Stake: Christian Martyrdom in Barry
Modern Europe (Cambridge, Mass., 1999).
43· Thomas Day and John Bicknell, The Dying Negro, A Poetical Epistle,
Pepdnted in Debbie Lee, ed., Slavery, Abolition,. and Emancipation: Writ-
ings in the British Romanti,c Pe.riod (London, 1999), 4:13.
44· Edwards, "Stanzas Occasioned by the Death of Alico,'' 37-39; Basker,
Amazing Grace~ 131-132; James G. Basker, ''"The Next Insurrectiod:
Johnson, Ra.ce, and Rebellion,." Age of johnson: A Scholarly Annual n
(:2.000): 37-)I.
45· Simon Taylor to Chaloner Ar·ced·eckne, 9 Deoember I765, in Betty Wood,
ed., ''The Letters of Simon Taylor,." 29-30; Simon Taylor to Robert
Taylor, 24 October 1807,. ICS, Taylor Papers, I I I /44; Simon Taylor to
George Hibbert, 31 October 1807, ICS, ibid., III/43· For comparison's
sake, see James Sidbury, Ploughshares into Swords: Ra.ce, Rebellion, and
Identity in Gabriel's Virginia, I730-I8Io (Cambridge, U.K.,. 1997),
esp . 256-276; and Richard Price, First- Time: The Historical Vt'sion of an
Aftican American People (Chicago, 2002 [1983]) .
5. The Soul of the British Empire

I. Davi,d Eltis, Stephen D. Behrendt, David Richardson, and Herbert S.
Klein, The T-ram-Atlantic Slave Trade.~ A Database on CD-ROM (Cam-
bridge,. U.K., 1999); Jerome Bernard Weaves to Committee of the Com-
Notes to Pages IS8 -I62 ~ 307
pany of Merchants Trading to Mrica, 27 July 1781, PRO, T 70 /33; Robert

Stubbs to Committee of the Company of Merchants Trading to Africa,
30 January 1781, PRO,. BT 6 I 6. The narrative of the voyage of the Zong
is drawn from the foUowing sources: Ian Baucom, Specters ofthe Atlantic:
Finance Capita~ Slav,ery, and the Philosophy of History (Durham, N.C.,
2005), 10, 14-15, 129-130, 195-202; Robert Weisborcl, "The Case of the
Slave-Ship Zong, 1783," History Today 19, no. 8 (August 1969): 561-567;
Granville Sharp,·~ Account of the Murder of One Hundred and thirty-
two Negro Slaves on Board the Ship Zong, or Zung, with some Remarks
on the Arguments of an eminent Lawyer in Defence of that inhuman
Transactiton, enclosed in the Letter of the 2d July, 1783 to the Lords of
the Admiralty," in Granville Sharp, Memoirs of Granville Sharp, Esq.,
Composed from His Own Manuscripts and Other Authentic Documents in
the Possession ofHis Family and ofthe African Institution by Prince Hoare
(London, 1828), appendix 8, :xxvi-xxxiii; and Henry Roscoe, Reports of
Cases Argued and Determined in the Court of King's Bench, I782-q85
(London, 1831), 232-235.
2. Sharp, ''An Account of the Murder/' xxvii.
3· John Weskett, A Complete Digest of the Theory, Laws, and Practice of
Insurance (London, 1781),. as cited in Baucom, Specters of the Atlantic,
107, 137-138.
4· Certainly, Collingwood was not the only captain in the trade to do what
he did. A decade before the Zong massacre,. the Moravian missionary
C. G. A. Oldendorp remarked upon certain occasions when "the captain
[was] faced with the painful necessity of sacrificing a part of his sbves in
order to keep the rest of them alive on the scanty provisions that remain . "
Oldendorp, A Caribbean Mission, ed. Johann Jakob Bossard (Ann Arbor,
Mich.,. 1987), 216.
5· Supplement to the Royal Gazette, 28 December 1781, 818.
6. For the most compe!Hng recent explanation of the origins of the British
antislavery movement, see Christopher Leslie Brown, Moral Capital:
Foundations of British Abolitionism (Chapel Hill, N.C., 2006). See also
Seymour Drescher, The Mighty Experiment: Free Labor versus Slavery in
British Emancipation (New York, 2002); David Brion Davis, Inhuman
Bondage: The Rise and Fall ofSlavery in the New World(New York, 2oo6),
2-31-249; and Adam Hochschild, Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in
the Fight to Free an Empire's Slaves (Boston, 2005).
7· Ralph Houlbrooke, "The Age of Decency: 1660-I76o," in Peter C. Jupp
and Clare Gictings, eds., Death in England: An Illustrated History (New
Brunswick, N.J., 2ooo), 174.
308 IS!- Notes to Pages !63-168
8. Rev. John Brown, An Estima.te of the Manners and Principles of the

Times (London, 1757), qumed in D. V. Glass, Numbering the People:
The Eighteenth-Century Population Controversy and the Development of
Census and Vital Statistics in Britain (London, 1973), 26; Glass, Num-
bering the People, 17-21.
9· See Philip C. Almond, Heaven and Hell in Enlightenment England (Cam~
bridge, U.K., 1994),. 68-69, no; David Cressy, Birth Marriage~ and
Death: Religion, Ritual and the Lifo-Cycle in Tudor and Stuart England
(Oxford, 1997), 379~420; WiUiam Sherlock, quoted in Houlbrooke, "The
Age of Decenc;y,, 178..
ro. Julie Rugg, "From Reason to Regulation: 176o--r8Jo," in]upp and Gittings,
Death in England, 204; Roy Porter, "Death and the Doctors.," in Ralph
Houlbrooke, ed., Death, Ritual and Bereavement (New York, 1989),. 84~86.
II. D . W. Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain: A History from the
I730s to the I!)8os (London, 1988), 2~7 4; john WaJsh, "'Methodism' and
the Origins ofEnglish~Speaking Evangeliealism," in Mark A. NoU, David
W. Bebhington, and George A. Rawlyk, eds., Evangelicalism: Comparative
Studies of Popular Protestantism in North Am.erica, the British Isles, and
Beyond, IJOO-I900 (New York, 1994), 19'-34·
12.. See Roger Anstey,. The Atlantic Slave Tr:ade and British Abolition, IJ60-
I8ro (London, 1975), 157-183, 198.
13. Jo·hn F·oxe, Foxe's Book ofMartyrs.: A History ofthe Lives, Sujfering.r, and Tri-
umphant Death ofthe Early Christian and the Protestant Martyrs, ed. WilHam
Byron Forbush (Peabody, Mass . , 2004); Linda Colley, Britons: Forging the
Nation, IJOJ-I837 (New Haven,. Conn.,. 1992), 25~28; quotation, 27.
14. Robert N. Essick and Morton D. Paley, Robert Blair's The Grave, Illus-
trated by William Blake (London, ll982), 3.; Stephen Cornford, ed.,
Edward Young.· Night Thoughts (Cambridge, U.K., 1989), 134; Haul-
brooke, "The Age of Decency," 179; William Dodd, Reflections on Death
(London, 179'·6 (1763]), 6.
15. Essick and Paley, Robert Blair's The Grave,. 9-10; Cornford, Edward
l'Oung: Night Thoughts, 8;. Houlbrooke, "The Age of Decency,." 179.
16. Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry in.to the Origin of Our Ideas of
the Sublime and Beautiful and other Pre-Revolutionary Writings, ed. David
Womersl.ey (New York,. 1998 [1757]), 91; Adam Smith, Theory of Moral
Sentiments, ed. Knud Haakonssen (Cambridge, U.K., 2002 [1759]),. 16,
82-83; Baucom, Specters of the Atlantic, 242-264; Cornford, Edward
Young: Night Thoughts, I7.
][7. Thomas W.. Laqueur, "Bodies, Details, and the Humanitarian Narrative,"
in Lynn Hunt, ed., The New Cultural History (Berkeley, Cali£, 19·89), 177;
Notes to Pages r68-I73 -!a 309
Markman EHis, The Politics ofSensibility: Race, Gender and Commerce in

the Sentimental Novel (Cambridge, U.K., 1996); Adam Lively, Masks:
Blackness, Race, .and the Imagination (Oxford, 2000), 83; Debbie Lee,.
Slavery and the Romantic Imagination (Philaddphia, 2002), 23-43; E. J.
Clery, The Rise of Supernatural Fiction, 1762-r8oo (Cambridge, U.K.,
1995); Steven Bruhm, Gothic Bodies: The Politics ofPain in Romantic Fic-
tion (Philadelphia, 1994), 23.
18. Robin Blackburn, The Overthrow ofColonial Slavery, I776-1848 (London,
1988), 59-60.
19. Edward Young, ''Night n," verses 127, I20-I2J.,'' in Cornford, Edward
Young: Night Thoughts, 54·
20. 0. E Christie, ed., The Diary of the Rev.d William jones, 1777-I82I
(London, 1929), )I; Bryan Edwards, Poems Written Chiefly in the West
Indies (Kingston, 1792), 46-47; James G. Basker, Amazing Grace: An
Anthology ofPoems about Slavery, J66o-I8J.o (New Haven, Conn., 2002),
131-136.
21. John Wesley, Thoughts upon Slavery (London, 1774), 46-53; Sharp,. Mem-
oirs of Granville Sharp, 352.
22. Anstey, The Atlantic Slave Trade, 244; David Brion Davis, The Problem
of Slavery in the Age of Revolution, 1770-1823 (New York, 1999 [1975]),
470-500. On the Somerset case, see Steven Wise, Though the Heavens
May Fall: The Landmark Trial That Led to the End of Human Slavery
(Cambridge, Mass., 2005).
23. Granville Sharp, "Just Limitation of Slavery in the Laws of God, Com-
pared with the Unbounded Claims of the Mrican Traders and British
American Slaveholders,'' in Sharp,. Tracts on Slavery (Westport~ Conn.,
1969 [1776]), 18,. 20-21, 67; Sharp, ''An Essay on Slavery, Proving from
Scripture Its Inconsistency with Humanity and Religion/' in Sharp,
Tracts on Slavery, 28; Philip Doddridge, quoted in Anstey, The Atlantic
Slave Trade, 165.
24. Sharp, "Just Limitation of Slavery''; quotation, 36 (emphasis in original);
see also 33, 50.
25. Roscoe, Reports of Cases Argued, 232;. Weisbord, "The Case of the Slave-
Ship Zong," 563..
26. John Lee, quoted in Roscoe, Reports of Cases Argued, 233 (emphasis in
original); Lord Mansfield, quoted in Weisbord,. "The Case of the Slave-
Ship Zong," 564; Roscoe, Reports ofCases Argued, 234; B·aucom, Specters
of the Atlantic, 169.
27. Sharp, Memoirs of Granville Sharp, 362-363, xxxii-xxxiii; Baucom,
Specters of the Atlantic, 8, 135.
po ~ Notes to Pages IJJ-I79
28. Sharp, Memoirs of Granville Sharp, 362, xxxiii.

29. Baucom, Specters of the Atlantic,. 123-128; Weishord, "The Case of the
Slave~Ship Zong," 5'66; Baucom, Specters of the Atlantic, 3·
;o. Sharp, Memoirs ofGranville Sharp,. 361.
31. Ibid.,, ;6;; "Dr. Hinchcliff to Granville Sharp,." 31 August 1783, and
''Dr. Pb,rteus to Granville Sharp" [n.d.], in Sharp, Memoirs ofGranville
Sharp, 367-368 ..
32. Davis, The Problem ofSlavery in the Age .ofRevolution,. 406.
33· James Ramsay, An Essay on the Treatment and Conversion ofAfiican Slaves
in British Sugar Colonies (London, 1784), 35; Folacin Shyllon, ]am:es
Ramsay.: The Unknown Abolitionist (Edinburgh, 1977); 'Quobna Onobah
Cugoano, Thoughts and Se.n.timents on the Evil ofSlavery and Other Writ~
ings, ed. Vincent Carretta (New York, 1999),. 85; John Newton, Thoughts
upon the Aftican Slave Trade (London, 1788), reprinted in Bernar;d Martin
and Mark Spurrell, eels., The journal ofa Slaue Trader {john Newton), I750-
IJJ4, with Newton's Thought upon the African Slave Trade (London, 1962),
ro;; Ellen Gibson Wilson, Thomas Clarkson: A Biography (London, 1989) .
34- See also Davis, The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution, 40,6;
Thomas Clarkson,. An Essay on the Slavery and Commerce of the Human
Species, Particularly the African, 2nd ed. (London, 1788), xiii, 98-99'·
35· Clarkson, An Essay on Slavery and Commerce, II4, 103.
36. Ibid.,. 103-104; Thomas Clarkson, quoted in Alan Bewell, Romanticism
and Colonial Disease (Baltimore, Md. , 1999), 102-103.
37· Clarkson, An Essay on Slavery and Commerce, 164-165, 112.
38. Ibid., 165-166; Cugoano, Thoughts and Sentiments, 84-85; Olaudah
Equiano, The Interesting Narrative and Other Writings, ed. Vincent Car-
retta (New York, 1995), 58.
39· Anstey, Th.e Atlantic Slave Trade, 249, 264-265.
40. Lively, Masks, ;8-59; Lee, Slavery and the Romantic Imagination, 25-26.
41. Anstey, The Atlantic Slav:e Ttade, 159; Equiano,. The Interesting Narrative.
;o, ;6, 62., 203, xix-xx:.
42. Bl.ackburn, The Overtht:ow ofColonial Slavery, 440-441, 139; Anstey, The
Atlantic Slave Trade, 265-266; J. R. Oldfield, Popular Politics and British
Anti-Slavery: The Mobilisation of Public Opinion against the Slave Trade,.
IJ8J-I80J (London, 1998), u;.
43,, Helen Thomas, Romanticism and Slave Na.rra.tives: Transatlantic Testi-
monies (C:nnbridge, U.K., 2000), H-36; Ernest Marshall Hows,e, The
Saints in Politics: The Clapham Sect and the Growth ofFreedom (London,
I9B), ro-64;; GranviUe Sharp,. quoted in Anst·ey, The Atlantic Slave
Tra.de, zs6.
r
i
Notes to Pages IJ9-I86 ~ JII
44· On John Newton's career as a slave trader turned evangelical abolitionist,

see D. Bruce Hindmarsh, john Newton and the English Evangelical Tradi-
tion between the Conversions ofWesley and Wilbeiforce (Oxford, 1996); Regi-
nald Coupland, Wilberforce,. a Narrative (Oxford, 1923), 37-38; Anstey,
The Atlantic Slave Trade, 250-251.
45· Anstey, The Atlantic Slave Trade, 267; "Debate on Mr. Wilberforce's
Motion for the Abolition of the Slave Trade," The Parliamentary History
ofEngland, from the Earliest Period to the Year z8o3, vol. 29, I79I-92 (New
York, 1966), cols. 250-359.
46. Simon Taylor to Chaloner Arcedeckne, 7 April 1788,. MMay 1788, 29 May
1788, 30 August 1788, and 6 November 1788, Vanneck Papers, 3A/ q88/
3, 3AII788/8, 3A/1788/w, 3A/z788/21, and 3A/1788/26, respectively,
Cambridge University Library.
4 7. Edward Long, The History ofjamaica, or General Survey ofthe Antient and
Modern State of that Island, (London, 1970 [1774]), 2:267, 270-271;
William Beckford, Remarks upon the Situation of the Negroes in jamaica
(London, 1788), 5, 49; Hector McNeill, Observations on the Treatment of
the Negroes in the Island of jamaica, including Some Account of Their
Temper and Character (London, 1788), 4-5.
48. Edward Long, quoted in Michael Craton, James Walvin, and David
Wright, eds., Slavery, Abolition, and Emancipation: Black Slaves and the
British Empire (London, 1975), 105; Beckford, Remarks upon ... the
Negroes, 73-74 (emphasis in original); Long, History ofjamaica, 2:499-
502; McNeill, Observations on the Treatment of the Negroes, 37-39.
49· Long, History ofjamaica, 2:398-399, 498.
50. Ibid.; also 435-436, 378,. 396.
51. Beckford, Remarks upon ... the Negroes, 79, 82.; James Pinnock, Barrister
of Jamaica, Brief Diary, 1758-1794• 22 October 1781, British Library, Add .
MS 3·3316, 10; WiHiam Wright, M.D., to Chaloner Arcedeckne, 1 March
1788, V:mneck Papers, 3G /3, i-ii.
52. "First Report of the Committee of the House of Assembly of the Island
of Jamaica," r6 October 1788, in Sheila Lambert, ed., HCSP, 69:266.
53· Simon Taylor to Chaloner Arcedeckne, 7 April 1788,. Vanneck Papers, 3A/
1788/3; "Second Report of the Committee of the House of Assembly of
the Island of Jamaica," 12 November 1788, in Lambert, HCSE 69:267-272;
quotation, 268.
54· An Abstract ofthe Evidence Delivered before a Select Committee ofthe House
of Commons in the Years 1790 and IJ9I; on the part ofthe petitioners for the
Abolition ofthe Slave Trade, second edition (London, 1791).
55· Abstract ofthe Evidence, v;. Lambert, HCSP, 82:68 (emphasis in original), 71.
312 l:i!- Notes to Pages I86-I94
56. Testimony of Dr. Jackson, 14 February, 1791, ibid., 56.

57· Testimony of Captain Robert Cross, 15-16 February 1791, ibid., 68.
58. Testimony of Henry Coor, 16 February 1791, ibid., 71.
59· Ibid.
6o. Ibid.; Abstract of the Evidence, III; Rugg, "From Reason to Regulation,"
212-213; Lee, Slavery and the Romantic Imagination, 30-31.
6r. Testimony of William Fitzmaurice, 9 March 1791, in Lambert, HCSP;
82:220; Testimony of William Fitzmaurice, 10 March 1791, ibid., 226,
232, 223.
62. Testimony ofWilliam Fitzmaurice, ro March 1791, ibid., 225-226; Testi-
mony of Dr. Harrison, 12 February 1791, ibid., 46; Cugoano, Thoughts
and Sentiments, 76; "Testimony of Capt. Thomas Lloyd," 25 February
1791, in Lambert, HCSP; 82:147.
63. Testimony of Hercules Ross, 17 March 1791, in Lambert, HCSP, 82:259;
Abstract of the Evidence, 44-45, 141.
64. Blackburn, The Overthrow of Colonial Slavery, 146.
65. Anstey, The Atlantic Slave Trade, 269; James W LoGerfo, "Sir William
Dolben and 'The Case of Humanity': The Passage of the Slave Trade Reg-
ulation Act of 1788," Eighteenth-Century Studies 6, no. 4 (Summer 1973):
431-451; Herbert S. Klein and Stanley L. Engerman, "Slave Mortality on
British Ships, 1791-1797,'' in Roger Anstey and P: E. H. Hair, eds., Liv-
erpool, the African Slave Trade, and Abolition: Essays to Illustrate Current
Knowledge and Research (Liverpool, 1976), 113-125; Weisbord, "The Case
of the Slave-Ship Zong," 567; Anstey, The Atlantic Slave Trade, 277-278.
66. Lively, Masks, 61, 68-69; Lee, Slavery and the Romantic Imagination, 28,
40-41.
67. Cornford, Edward Young: Night Thoughts, 13.
68. Richard Price and Sally Price, eds., Stedman's Surinam: Life in an
Eighteenth-Century Slave Society (Baltimore, Md., 1992); Anne Ruben-
stein and Camilla Townsend, "Revolted Negroes and the Devilish Prin-
ciple: William Blake and Conflicting Visions of Bani's Wars in Surinam,
1772-1796," in Jackie DiSalvo, G. A. Rosso, and Christopher Z.
Hobson, eds., Blake, Politics, and History (New York, 1998), 273-298;
memento mori images were often used by artists to signify the univer-
sality and inevitability of death. See Nigel LleweHyn, The Art of Death:
Visual Culture in the English Death Ritual, c. ISOO-I8oo (London, 1991),
9-14; and David V. Erdman, Blake, Prophet against Empire: A Poet's
Interpretation of the History of His Own Times (Princeton, N.J., 1969
[1954]), 228.
69. Essick and Paley, Robert Blairs The Grave, n-12, 18.
j
Notes to Pages I94 -I99 ·C3 3I3
70. Oldfield, Popular Politics and British Anti-Slavery, 172-179· See also
Marcus Wood, Blind Memory: Visual Representations of Slavery in England
and America, I78o-r86s (New York: Routledge, 2000).
71. For the history of the Brookes image, see Cheryl Finley, "Committed to
Memory: The Slave Ship Icon in the Black Atlantic" (Ph.D. diss., Yale
University, 2002); Oldfield, Popular Politics and British Anti-Slaver)" 51,
56, 99, 163-66.
72. Oldfield, Popular Politics and British Anti-Slavery, 165.
73- Thomas Clarkson, The History of the Rise, Progress, and Accomplishment
of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament
(London, r8o8), 2:nr; Cheryl Finley, "Commirred to Memory: The Slave-
Ship Icon in the Black-Atlantic Imagination," Chicago Art journal 9
(1999): 12; Ian Baucom, "Specters of the Atlantic," South Atlantic Quar-
terly wo, no. r (Winter 2om): 64. See Wilberforce's reference to the Zong
case as proof of a general practice of making Mricans "walk the plank,"
British House of Commons, Substance of the Debates on a Resolution for
Abolishing the Slave Trade (London, 1968 [r8o6]), 56-57.
7+ David Beck Ryden, "Does Decline Make Sense? The West Indian
Economy and the Abolition of the British Slave Trade," Journal ofInter-
disciplinary History 31, no. 3 (Winter 2001): 347-374; Blackburn, The
Overthrow of Colonial Slavery, 315.
75· James Stephen, Reasons for Establishing a Registry of Slaves in the British
Colonies: Being a Report ofa Committee ofthe African InstihJ.tion (London,
r8r5), 13-14; A West Indian, Notes in Defence of the Colonies: On the
Increase and Decrease of the Slave Population of the British West Indies
(Jamaica, r826); Jamaican assembly, quoted in B. W Higman, "Slavery
and the Development of Demographic Theory in the Age of the Indus-
trial Revolution," in James Walvin, ed., Slavery and British Society, 1776-
I846(Baton Rouge, La., 1982), r83; Blackburn, The Overthrow ofColonial
Slavery, 323; B. W. Higman, Slave Population and Economy in jamaica,
I807-I834 (Kingston, 1995 [1976]), 99-138.
76. For slaveholders' explanations of population decrease, see Alexander Bar-
day, A Practical View of the Present State of Slavery in the West Indies ...
Containing More Particularly an Account of the Actual Condition of the
Negroes in jamaica (London, r826), 336-346; Marly; or, A Planter's Life in
jamaica (Glasgow, r828), 98-ro3; Matthew Gregory Lewis, journal of a
West India Proprietor, kept during a Residence in the Island of Jamaica
(London, 1834), 388.
77· Higman, "Slavery and the Development of Demographic Theory," 181,
184, 182. For the most thorough analysis of the influence of popular
JI4 !?i- Notes to Pages 200-205
politics on antislavery legislation, see Seymour Drescher, Capitalism

and Antislavery: British Mobilization in Comparative Perspective (New
York, 1987) and Drescher, "Whose Abolition? Popular Pressure and the
Ending of the British Slave Trade," Past and Present, no. 143 (May 1994):
136-166.
78. Michael Gamer, Romanticism and the Gothic: Genre, Reception, and
Canon Formation (Cambridge, U.K., 2000).
79· British House of Commons, Substance ofthe Debates, 38; Thomas Cooper,
Facts Illustrative of the Condition of the Negro Slaves in Jamaica (London,
1824), 9-10; Mary Turner, Slaves and Missionaries: The Disintegration of
Jamaican Slave Society, I787-1834 (Kingston, 1998 [1982]), roz-ro8.
6. Holy Ghosts and Eternal Salvation

r. Thomas Coke, History of the 'West Indies, Containing the Natural Civil,
and Ecclesiastical History of Each Island (Liverpool, 1808), 1:10; John
Shipman, "Thoughts upon the Present State of Religion among the
Negroes of Jamaica," WMMS Archive Special Series, Biographical, West
Indies, box 588, FBN 2, nos. 27-31, 71-72.
2. Philip Wright, Knibb "the Notorious" Slaves' Missionary, r8o]-1845
(London, 1973), n-12; Rev. Hope Masterton Waddell, Twenty-nine Years
in the West Indies and Central Africa: A Review of Missionary Work and
Adventure, r829-1858, 2nd ed. (London, 1970 [1863]), 22-23; copy of Mr.
Knibb's Journal of His First Voyage to Jamaica, January-February 1824,
William Knibb letrers,. BMS, WI I J.
J. Copy of Mr. Knibb's journal, 28 January 1824, BMS, WI I 3·
4· Knibb to Samuel Nichols, Kingston, March 1825, WiUiam Knibb letters,
BMS, WI I 3; to compare similar developments in North America, see
Sylvia R. Frey and Betty Wood, Come Shouting to Zion: Aftican-American
Protestantism in the American South and British Caribbean to r83o (Chapel
Hill, N.C., 1998); Mechal Sobel, Trabelin' On: The Slave Journey to an
Afro-Baptist Faith (Princeton, N.J., 1988); and Albert J. Raboteau, Slave
Religion: The '1nvisible Institution" in the Antebellum South (New York,
1978).
5. R. A. Minter, Episcopacy without Episcopate: The Church of England in
jamaica before I824 (Worcester, U.K., 1990), 289-291, 150-151.
6. Brian Stanley, The Bible and the Flag: Protestant Missions and British Impe-
rialism in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (Leicester, 1990), 59·
7· WiUiam Knibb to Thomas Knibb, Bristol, 6 May 1823, William Knibb
letters, BMS, WI I J. Knibb is here referring to Romans 6:3.-4: "Do you
Notes to Pages 205-208 ~ 3I5
not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were
baptized into his death? There we have been buried with him by baptism
into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory
of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life." Holy Bible: New
Revised Standard Version (New York, 1989), 162.
8. Gillian Lindt GoUin, Moravians in Two Worlds: A Study of Changing Com-
munities (New York, 1967), 13. On the Moravian mission in the
Caribbean, see Richard S. Dunn, Moravian Missionaries at Work in a
jamaican Slave Community, I754-I835 (Minneapolis, 1994); and John F.
Senshach, Rebecca's Revival: Creating Black Christianity in the Atlantic
World (Cambridge, Mass., 2005); Zinzendorf's Hymns Composed for the
Use of the Brethren, quoted in Richard Price, Alabi's World (Baltimore,
Md., 1990), 57, 59·
9· Quoted in ]. H. Buchner, The Moravians in jamaica: History of the Mis-
sion ofthe United Brethren's Church to the Negroes in the Island ofjamaica,
from the Year I754 to I8)4 (London, 1854), 29, 53; ''A Short Account of the
Endeavours of the Episcopal Church, known by the Name of Unitas
Fratrum, or United Brethren, for promoting true Christianity amongst
the Heathen, particularly amongst the Negroes in the West India
Islands," in Sheila Lamberr,. ed., HCSP, 69:469.
ro. Arnold Rattenbury, "Methodism and Tatterdemalions," in Eileen Yeo and
Stephen Yeo,. eds., Popular Culture and Class Conflict, I590-I9I4: Explo-
rations in the History of Labour and Leisure (Atlantic Highlands, N.J.,
1981), 32; Coke, History of the West Indies, 1:27. One of the earliest devo-
·t:ional texts mentioned in John Wesley's Oxford diary was Jeremy Taylor's
Holy Living and Holy Dying. Richard P. Heitzenrater, Weslq and the
People Called Methodists (Nashville, Tenn., 1995), 128; For an analysis of
deathbed scenes in colonial North America, see Erik R. Seeman,
"Reading Indians' Deathbed Scenes: Ethnohistorical and Representa-
tional Approaches," journal ofAmerican History 88, no. 1 (June 2om): 17-
47·
n. Rev. William Fish to Benson, Kingston, 26 April r8o4; Fish to Benson,
Kingston, 26 April r8o4; Fish to Benson, II May r8o4 (emphasis in orig-
inal)-all in WMMS, West Indies General Correspondence, box 1 u,
FBN 1, nos. 2, 4·
12. "Letter of Mr. Young, Kingston, 19 April 1824,'' in Missionary Notices,
relating principally to the Foreign Missions, no. 103, July 1824, vol. 4, r823-
r825 (London, 1825), 298.
13. Buchner, The Moravians in jamaica, 14-15; 1822 minutes of the WMMS,
WMMS synod minutes, r822-I8J8, box 148, FBN r, no. r; Catherine
p6 ~ Notes to Pages 208 -2II
Hall, Civilising Subjects: Metropole and Colony in the English Imagination,

I830-I867 (Chicago, 2002), 96.
14. G. Dusquesne to Newman, May 151728, Fulham Papers, vol. 17, Bermuda
and Jamaica, r661-1739, Lambeth Palace Library,. ff. 250, 252; de Bonneval
to Gibson, 24 November 1739, Fulham Papers, q:287-289.
15. John A. Vickers, ed., The Journals of Dr. Thomas Coke (Nashville, Tenn.,
2005), 148-149; Mary Turner, Slaves and Missionaries: The Disintegration
ofjamaican Slave Society, I787-I834 (Kingston, 1998 (r982)], r-37; Emilia
Viotti da Costa, Crowns of Glory, Tears of Blood· The Demerara Slave
Rebellion of I823 (New York, 1994), rr-r2, 303n; Frey and Wood, Come
Shouting to Zion, 136-137; Hall, Civilising Subjects,. 98-ro6.
r6. W Stanford to Bishop Porteus, Westmoreland, 22 July 1788, Fulham
Papers, Lambeth Palace Library, vol. 18, Jamaica, 1740-undated, f. 67.
17. W Stanford to Bishop Porteus,. Westmoreland, 22 July 1788, ff. 66-67.
The rector ofWestmoreland, W. Stanford, had ostensibly baptized eight
hundred slaves for free and was arguing with an acute sense of his lost
revenue. It is certainly possible that his assertion of a direct correlation
between price and spiritual value says more about his own assumptions
than about those of the slaves.
r8. Yaccine Daddi Addoun and Paul Lovejoy, "The Arabic Manuscript of
Muhammad Kaba Saghanughu of Jamaica, c. 1823,'' Studies in the His-
wry of the African Diaspora-Documents (SHADD), available online at
www. yorku.ca I nhp I shadd I kaba I index.asp; Yaccine Daddi Addoun and
Paul Lovejoy, "Muhammad Kaba Saghanughu and the Muslim Commu-
nity of Jamaica," in Lovejoy, ed., Slavery on the Frontiers of Islam
(Princeton, N.J., 2004), 199-218; Michael A. Gomez, Black Crescent: The
Experience and Legacy of African Muslims in the Americas (Cambridge,
U.K., 2005), 5o-56.
19. Coke, History of the West Indies, 1:31.
20. G. Dusquesne to Newman, 15 May 1728, Fulham Papers, Lambeth Palace
Library, vol. q, Bermuda and Jamaica, r66I-1739, £ 253.
21. Testimony of Dr. Jackson, M.D., of Stockton upon Tees, Monday, 14
February 179'1, in Lambert, HCSP, 82:57. One is tempted to read in this
comment an early articulation of liberation theology. Perhaps, if he was
African, whoever made this comment to Dr. Jackson had heard black
religious figures condemn the whites even before he arrived in Jamaica.
An itinerant African holy man toured the Gold Coast in the 1740s
warning people not to emulate the Europeans. "You shall not follow the
example of the Blankes [Whites], since, although they have God's pure
word before them, as you (the Blacks) do not, they are damned after
Notes to Pages 2I2 -219 7.1 3I7
death because of their evil ways." Quoted in Ludewig Ferdinand R0mer,

A Reliable Account of the Coast of Guinea (r76o), trans. and ed. Selena
Axelrod Winsnes (Oxford, 2ooo), 85-86.
22. Dusquesne to Newman, 15 May 1728, Fulharn Papers, 17:250; John Venn to
Bishop Sherlock, 15 June 1751, ibid., vnl. r8, Jamaica, 1740-undated, f. 47·
23. Diary ofThomas Thistlewood, 5 May 1764, quoted in Douglas Hall, In
Miserable Slavery: Thomas Thistlewood in jamaica, I750-86 (Kingston,
1999 [1989]), 133. Long spoke especially of the Coromantees from the
Gold Coast. Edward Long, History ofjamaica, or General Survey of the
Antient and Modern State of That Island (London, 1970 [1774]), 2:475;
Michael Mullin, Aftica in America: Slave Acculturation and Resistance in
the American South and the British Caribbean, 1736-I83I (Urbana, Ill.,
1992), 62-74·
24. journals of the Assembly ofjamaica, 12:127-128, 133-134.
25. Matthew Gregory Lewis, journal of a West India Proprietor (London,
1834), 224-225, 227-228, 234-236.
26. John Lunan, An Abstract ofthe Laws ofjamaica Relating to Slaves, .from 33
Charles II [r68r} to 59 George III inclusive [r8r8] (St. Jago de Ia Vega, 1819),
n8-n9.
27. James Ramsay, An Essay on the Trea.tment and Conversion ofAfrican Slaves
in the British Sugar Colonies (London, 1784), rp; Coke, A History of the
West Indies, 1:30. Coke founded the Wesleyan Methodist mission in rhe
West Indies .
28. James M. Phillippe, jamaica: Its Past and Present State (London, 1843), 244;
Hall, Civilising Subjects, 187-188; Buchner, The Moravians in jamaica, 30.
29. W Stanford to Bishop Porteus, 22 July 1788, Fulham Papers, r8:66.
30. Shipman, "Thoughts upon the Present State of Religion," 4-8.
31. Ibid., 6-7.
32· Ibid., iii, 5-7, n. Shipman derived his catechism for slaves from John
Wesley's Instructions for Children, adding special sections on obedience to
masters and an enhanced lesson on the eternal consequences of moral
deviance. See Turner, Slaves and Missionaries, 72.
33· Shipman, "Thoughts upon the Present State of Religion," q, 15, 48.
34· Ibid., 24, r8.
35· Ibid., 18-19, 23. In 1784 James Ramsay had suggested that "a burying
ground should be set apart for the decent interment of the dead, and it
should be allotted our according to their families. It would have an excel-
lent effect on them, if only tractable, well-disposed persons were buried
with their families, and every worthless fellow buried in a place apart."
Ramsay, An Essay on the Treatment and Conversion ofAfrican Slaves, ]84.
p8 *" Notes to Pages 219-223
36. Mary Turner, "The Colonial State, Religion and the Control of Labour:
Jamaica, 1760-!834,'' in Bridget Brereton and Kevin A. Yelvington, eds.,
The Colonial Caribbean in Transition: Essays on Postemancipation Social
and Cultural History (GainesviUe, Fla., 1999), 34-35, 38-39; Turner, Slaves
and Missionaries, 132-144; Gilbert Mathison, A Short Review ofthe Reports
of the African Institution, and of the Controversy with Dr. Thorpe, with
Some Reasons against the Registry of the Slaves in the British Colonies
(London, 1816), n; Waddell, Twenty-nine Years in the West Indies, 17.
37. Thomas Knibb to William Knibb, Kingston, II February 1823, William
Knibb letters, BMS, WI /3; Shipman, "Thoughts upon the Present State
of Religion," ix-x;. Matthew 22:21, Holy B£ble: New Rev£sed Standard Ver-
sion (New York, 1989).
38. Turner, Slaves and Missionaries, 10.
39· Edward Kamau Brathwaite, The Development of Creole Society in
jamaica, I770-I82o (London, 1971), 88-89; journals of the Assembly of
Jamaica, entry of 6 February 18oo, 10:453-454; Julius S. Scott, III, "The
Common Wind: Currents of Mro-American Communication in the Era
of the Haitian Revolution" (Ph.D. diss., Duke University, 1986), 213-
219; Sue Peabody, "'A Dangerous Zeal': Catholic Missions to Slaves in
rhe French Antilles, I635-18oo," French Historical Studies 25, no. I
(Winter 2002): 53-90; Long, The History of Jamaica, 2:430; John
Thornton, '"I Am the Subject of the King of Congo': African Political
Ideology and the Haitian Revolution," journal ofWorld History 4, no. 2
(FaH 1993): 181-214-
40. David Eltis, Stephen D. Behrendt, David Richardson, and Herbert S.
Klein, eds., The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade: A Database on CD-ROM
(Cambridge,. U.K., 1999). On Christianity in West-Central Mrica, see
John Thornton, "On the Trail ofVoodoo: African Christianity in Africa
and the Americas," Americas 44, no. 3 (1988): 2.61-278; Thornton, "The
Development of an African Catholic Church in the Kingdom of Kongo,
1491-1750,." journal ofAfrican History 25, no. 2. (1984): 147-167; Robert
Farris Thompson, The Four Moments of the Sun (New Haven, Conn.,
1981),. 45· Nkisi is the Kikongo term used for a material object that houses
spiritual forces. Objects that carried the adjective "holy" in European ter-
minology could usually be considered minkisi in Kikongo. See Thornton,
"The Development of an African Catholic Church," 155, 157; and
Thornton, "On the Trail of Voodoo," 266-267.
41. Peabody,. "'A Dangerous Zeal,"' 53-90; Thornton, "On the Trail of
Voodoo," 261-278; Saint Ann Slave Court, 1787-1814, 3 March 1794 and
5 Ma.y 1799, Insdtute of Jamaica, MS 273·
Notes to Pages 223-228 ·<'l JI9
42. B. W Higman, Slave Population and Economy in Jamaica, r8o7-1834

(Kingston, 1995 [1976]), 75-76.
43· Lewis, journal ofa West India Proprietor, wo; Dusquesne to Newman, 15
May 1728, Fulham Papers, 17=253; For similar developmenrs in North
America, see Sobel, Trabelin' On, 48; Cynric Williams, A Tour through the
Island ofJamaica in the Year 1823 (London, 1826), 87; "Folklore of the
Negroes of Jamaica," in Folk-Lore: A Quarterly Review ofMyth, Tradition,
Institution, and Custom 15 (London, 1904): 90.
44- On the Great Awakening, see especially Jon Buder, Awash in a Sea of
Faith: Christianizing the American People (Cambridge, Mass., 1990); John
W Pulis, "Bridging Troubled Waters: Moses Baker, George Liele, and the
Mrican American Diaspora to Jamaica," in Pulis, ed., Moving On: Black
Loyalists in the Afro-Atlantic World (New York, 1999), 191, 203; Turner,
Slaves and Missionaries, n; and Frey and Wood, Come Shouting to Zion,
13!-132.
45· John Thornton, Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World
1400-1800 (Cambridge, U.K., 1998 [1992]), 271; Frey and Wood, Come
Shouting to Zion.
46. W. F. Burchell, Memoir ofThomas BurcheLL, Twenty-two Years a Missionary
in jamaica, by his Brother William Fitz-er Burchell (London, 1849), 62;
Knibb to Samuel Nichols, Kingston, March 1825, William Knibb letters,
BMS, WI/3.
47· Waddell, Twenty-nine Years in the West Indies, 26; Williams, A Tour
through the Island of jamaica, vi; Mary Turner, "Religious Beliefs," in
Franklin W Knight, ed., General History of the Caribbean, vol. 3, The
Slave Societies of the Caribbean (London, 1997), 317.
48. Testimony of Sir Michael Clare, M.D., Minutes of Evidence taken before
the Select Committee of the House of Lords appointed to inquire into
the Laws and Usages of the several West India Colonies in relation ro the
Slave Population, &c. &c. &c., House of Lords Record Office, London,
280; Williams, A Tour through the Island ofjamaica, r8-19.
49· Thomas Cooper, Facts Illustrative of the Condition of the Negro Slaves in
jamaica (London, 1824), 15; Lewis, journal ofa West India Proprietm; 374;
Shipman, "Thoughts upon the Present State of Religion," 38; Saint Ann
Slave Court,. 1787-1814, Institute of Jamaica, MS 273, f. 163.
50. William Savage to Joseph Butterworth and Thomas Thompson, M.P's,
Kingston, 18 March 1818, WMMS Archive, Biographical, Special Series,
West Indies, r8r8, box 588, 97; testimony of Rev. Henry Beame, 1825,
British Sessional Papers, Commons, Accounts and Papers (London, 1826).
51. Williams, A Tour through the Island ofjamaica, 108-u3.
320 ~- Notes to Pages 229-232
52· Ibid., 106; Frey and Wood, Come Shouting to Zion, 173-174·
)3. For a slighdy different interpretation, see Turner, "The Colonial State," 36.
54· Dr. Stewart West, magistrate for Bath, Saint Thomas in the East, 15
March 1818, WMMS Archive, Biographical, Special Series, West Indies,
1818, box 588, 107-108; Lunan, An Abstract ofthe Laws ofjamaica Relating
to Slav.es, 123-124; Richard Dick to Joseph Butterworth and Thomas
Thompson, 8 May 1818, WMMS Archive, Biographical, Special Series,
West Indies, 1818,. box 588, 102.
55· J. Walters to WMMS, Port Antonio, 28 December 1831, WMMS
Archive, box 130, FBN 9, no. 437; Waddell, Twenty-nine Years in the West
Indies, 21.
7. Gardens of Remembrance
I. Kirk Savage, "The Politics of Memory: Black Emancipation and the Civil
War Monument," in John R. Gilles, ed., Commemorations: The Politics
of National Identity (Princeton, N.J., 1994), 143; Catherine Hall, Civil-
ising Subjects: Metropole and Colony in the English Imagination, I83o-r867
(Chicago, 2002), 107-n5; Laurence Brown, "Monuments to Freedom,
Monuments to Nation: The Politics of Emancipation and Remembrance
in the Eastern Caribbean," Slavery and Abolition 23, no. 3 (December
2002): 93-116.
2. Natalie Zeman Davis and Randolph Starn, "Introduction: Memory and
Counter-Memory," Representations, no. 26 (Spring 1989): 1-6; Pierre
Nora, "Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Memoire," Repre-
sentations,. no. 26 (Spring 1989): 7-24; John R. Gilles, "Memory and Iden-
tity: The History of a Relationship,'' in GiBes, Commemorations, 3-24;
Savage,. "The Politics of Memory: Black Emancipation and the Civiffi War
,
M onumenr, 127-149.
3· Henry Bleby, The Death Struggles ofSlavery: Being a Narrative ofFacts and
Incidents, which Occurred in a British Colony, during the Two Years Imme-
diately Preceding Negro Emancipation, 3td ed. (Coconut Grove, Fla., 1972
[1853]). See also Richard Hart, Slaves Who Abolished Slavery: Blacks in
Rebellion (Kingston, 2002 [1985]), 244-324; Mary Turner, Slaves and Mis-
sionaries: The Disintegration of jamaican Slave Society, I787-I834
(Kingston, 1998 [1982]), 148-173; Abigail Bakan, Ideology and Class Con-
flict in jamaica: The Politics of Rebellion (Montreal, 1990); Michael
Craton, Testing the Chains: Resistance to Slavery in the British West Indies
(Ithaca, N.Y., 1982), 291-321; Kamau Brathwaite, "Caliban, Ariel, and
Unprospero in the Conflict of Creolizarion: A Study of the Slave Revolt
I
Notes to Pages 233-238 ""' 321
in Jamaica in 1831-32," in Vera Rubin and Arthur Tuden, eds., Compar-

ative Perspectives on Slavery in the New World Plantation Societies (New
York, 1977); and Mary Reckford, ''The Jamaican Slave Rebellion of 1831,"
Past and Present 40 (July I968): 108-125.
4· Hope Masterton Waddell, Twenty-nine Years in the West Indies and Cen-
tral Africa: A Review of Missionary Work and Adventure, I829-I858, 2nd
ed. (London, I970 [1863]), 65-66; Craton, Testing the Chains, 313-321;
Henry Bleby quoted on 313, Sam Sharpe quoted on 321.
5· William Knibb quoted in Philip Wright, Knibb "the Notorious" Slaves'
Missionary, I80j~I845 (London, 1973), III; Waddell, Twenty-nine Years in
the Wfst Indies, 76; Turner, Slaves and Missionaries, 166-170.
6. Lord Goderich quoted in Thomas C. Holt, The Problem ofFreedom: Race,
Labor, and Politics in Jamaica and Britain, I832-1938 (Baltimore, Md.,
1992), 19-21. On the reverberations of the Baptist War in Great Britain,
see, for example, WiUiam Knibb, Facts and Documents Connected with the
Late Insurrection in jamaica, and the Violations of Civil and Religious Lib-
erty Arising out ofIt (London, 1832). See also Hall, Civilising Subjects, 107-
n5; James Williams, A Narrative ofEvents, since the First ofAugust, IB34,
by James Williams, an Apprenticed Labourer in jamaica, ed. Diana Paron
(Durham, N.C., 2om).
7· See Elizabeth Pigou, "Western Responses to Death in a Jamaican Coo-
text," Jamaica journal2o, no. 2 (May-July 1987): 12-16; Betty Bailey,
"Tombstones in the Jewish Cemetery and What They Tell," jamaica
journal2o, no. 2 (May-July 1987): 17-22; Frederick Burgess, English
Churchyard Memorials (London, I963).
8. "A Shorr Sketch of the Character of the late John Waugh, Esq.," Jamaica
Royal Gazette, Supplement to the Royal Gazette, 29 November 1794, PRO,
co 141 I I, 568.
9· Andrew Jackson O'Shaughnessy, An Empire Divided: The American Rev-
olution and the British Caribbean (Philadelphia, zooo), 16.
10. journals of the Assembly ofjamaica, entry of 23 October 1777, 7:5, 11, 13-
14; Craton, Testing the Chains, 172-179i Leslie Lewis, "English Com-
memorative Sculpture in Jamaica," jamaican Historical Review 9 (1972):
52-56.
II. Lewis, "English Commemorative Sculpture," 57-59; Frank Cundall, His-
toric jamaica (London, 1915), 95-98.
12. Sir Hans Sloane, A Voyage to the Islands Madera, Barbados, NielJCJ, S.
Christophers and jamaica (London, 1707), xlviii; Hall, In Miserable SLmJC1J1,
233; Matthew Gregory Lewis, Esq. M.P., journal ofa West India Proprietor,
Kept during a Residence in the Island ofjamaica (London, 1834), w2, 161.
322 t:!-- Notes to Pages 239-246
13. Marly; or, .a Planter's Life in Jamaica (Glasgow, 1828), 362-363; Pigou,
"Western Responses to Death," 13.
14. Cundall, Historic jamaica, 179-r8o, 265; Vere Langford Oliver, ed.,
Caribbeana (London, 1916),. 4-:193, 200; Philip Wright, ed., Monumental
Inscriptions ofjamaica (London, 1966), z8r.
15. James Hakewill, A Series of Views of the Neighborhood of Win.dsO'r,
including the Seats of the Nobility and Gentry (London, 182o); Ha:kewill,
A Picturesque Tour of Italy, from Drawings Made in I8r6-r8q (London,
r82o); Monument to the Late Thomas Hibbert, Esq., in Hakewill, A Pic-
turesque Tour of the Island ofjamaica, from Drawings Made in the Years
r82o and I82I (London, 1825).
16. Monument to the Late Thomas Hibbert, Esq.
!7· Wright, Monumental Inscriptions, 217, 203, 235.
r8. Ibid., 204-205, 218.
19. Ibid., 121, 191.
20. Turner, Slaves and Missionaries, 150.
21. W F. Burchell,. ed., Memoir ofThomas Burchell, Twenty-two Years a Mis-
sionary in jamaica (London, 1849), 228-229, 203.
22. Craton, Testing the Chains, 241-253; Turner, Slaves and Missionaries, 148-
173; Holt, The Problem of Freedom, 15-16; Richard D. E. Burton,. Afro-
Creole: Power, Opposition, and Play in the Caribbean (Ithaca, N.Y., 1997),
83-89.
23. Turner, Slaves and Missionaries, 157; Bleby, Death Struggles of Slavery, II.
24. The pioneer archaeological and ethnohistorical study ofWest Indian slave
burial practices is Jerome S. Handler and Frederick Lange, Plantation
Slavery in Barbados: An Archaeological and Historical Investigation (Cam~
bridge, Mass., 1978), 171-215.
25. Christopher R. DeCorse, "Culture Contact, Continuity, and Change on
the Gold Coast, AD 1400-1900," Aftican Archaeological Review 10 (1992):
183-184; Handler and Lange, Plantation Slavery in Barbados, 191-192;
Douglas V. Armstrong, ''Archaeology and Erhnohistory of the Caribbean
Plantation," in Theresa Singleton, ed., '1, too, am America':· Archaeological
Studies ofAftican-American Life (Charlottesville, Va., 1999), 180-181; Ross
W Jamieson, "Material Culture and Social Death: African-American
Burial Practices," Historical Archaeology 29, no. 4 (1995): 52-53; Jerome S.
Handler, "An African~Type Healer I Diviner and His Grave Goods: A
Burial from a Plantation Slave Cemetery in Barbados, West Indies," Inter~
national Journal of Historical Archaeology I, no. 2 (1997): nr.
26 . Jamieson, ''Material Culture and Social Death," 53· See also David R.
Watters, "Mortuary Patterns at the Harney Site Slave Cemetery, Mon-
Notes to Pages 247-249 .;1 323
serrat, in Caribbean Perspective," Historical Archaeology 28, no. 3 (1994):

56-73, esp. 63-64; Joao Jose Reis, Death Is a Festival: Funeral Rites and
Rebellion in Nineteenth-Century Brazil (Chapel Hill, N.C., 2003 [1991]),
132-135; Alexander Barclay, A Practical View of the Present State of Slavery
in the West Indies . . . Containing More Particularly an Account of the
Actual Condition of the Negroes in jamaica (London, 1826), 164; Eugene
D. Genovese, Roll, jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made (New York,
1974 [1972]), 202.
27. Barclay, A Practical View, r66; Moreton quoted in Roderick A McDonald,
The Economy and Material Culture of Slaves: Goods and Chattels on the
Sugar Plantations ofjamaica and Louisiana (Baron Rouge,. L1., 1993), uo;
Minutes of Evidence taken befme the Select Committee of the House of
Lords appointed ro inquire into the Laws and Usages of the several West
India Colonies in relation to the Slave Population, &c. &c. &c., House
of Lords Record Office, London, 59; Ludewig Ferdinand R0mer, A Reli-
able Account of the Coast of Guinea (1760), trans. and ed. Selena Axelrod
Winsnes (Oxford, 2000), 185. R0mer's observations have been cm·robo-
rated by the excavations conducted by DeCorse; see Christopher DeCorse,
"Culture Contact, Continuity, and Change," r83-184.
28. Douglas V. Armstrong, "Archaeology and Ethnohistory," r8I. For evi-
dence of household burials in Brazil, see Reis, Death Is a Festival, 34111 58;
Lewis, journal ofa West India Proprietor, 97; John Stewart, A View ofthe
Past and Present State of the Island ofjamaica; with Remarks on the Moral
and Physical Condition of the Slaves and on the Abolition of Slavery in the
Colonies (Edinburgh, 1823), 267; Barclay, A Practical View, r66.
29. Quoted in Michael Craton, James Walvin,. David Wright, eds., Slaz;elJ~
Abolition, and Emancipation: Black Slaves and the British Empire (London,
1975), 141-142.
30. James M. Phillippo, jamaica: Its Past and Present State (London, 1843),
283; Christopher R. DeCorse, An Archaeology of Elmina: Africans and
Europeans on the Gold Coast, I400-I9oo (Washington, D.C., 2om),
189-191, 25on; McDonald, The Economy and Material Culture ofSlaves,
no.
31. Edward Long, The History ofjamaica (London, 1970 [1774]), 1:399; Black-
burn quoted in McDonald, The Economy and Material Culture of Slaves,
no; Minutes of Evidence taken before ... the House of Lords, 338.
32· Lewis, journal of a West India Proprietor, 98-99.
33- Minutes of Evidence taken before ... the House of Lords, 196, r61-162.
34· R. R. Madden, Twelve Months' Residence in the West Indies, during the
Transition from Slavery to Apprenticeship (Philadelphia, 1835), 1:161.
324 ~· Notes to Pages 250-257
35· Quoted in Rev. F. A. Cox, History of the Baptist Missionary Society, .from
1792-1842 (London, 1842), 245-246.
36. Ibid., 250-252; Hall, Civilising Subjects, II7-n8.
37· Cox, History of the Baptist Missionary Society, 248.
38. John Shand to Simon Richard BrissettTaylor, 21Apri1 1813, ICS/VI/C/9;
Wright, Monumental Inscriptions, 299.
39· B. W. Higman, jamaica Surveyed: Plantation Maps and Plans of the Eigh-
teenth and Nineteenth Centuries (Kingston, 1988), 2.2.8-230; CundaH, His-
toric jamaica, 250-251. Following recenr practice, MiHer did not live in
Vale Royal, though it was stiU used for diplomatic state functions, cere-
monies, and entertaining.
40. Wright, Knibb "the Notorious," 128; Wright, Monumental Inscriptions,
252-253·
Epilogue
1. Laurent Dubois, Avengers of the New World: The Story ofthe Haitian Rev-
olution (Cambridge, Mass., 2004), 8-35; Joseph C. Miller, Wily ofDeath:
Merchant Capitalism and the Angolan Slave Trade, I7J0-18Jo (Madison,
Wise., 1988), 437-442., 537-538; Stuart B. Schwartz, Sugar Plantations in
the Formation of Brazilian Society: Bahia, 1550-I835 (Cambridge, U.K.,
1985), 338-378; Philip D. Morgan, Slave Counterpoint: Black Culture in the
Eighteenth-Century Chesapeake and Lowcountry (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1998),
79-101; Ira Berlin,. Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of
Slavery in North America (Cambridge, Mass., 1998); David Eltis, Stephen
D. Behrendt, David Richardson, and Herbert S. Klein, eds., The Trans-
Atlantic Slave Trade: A Database on CD-ROM (Cambridge,. U.K., 1999).
2. Colin A. Palmer, Slaves of the White God: Blacks in Mexico, 1570-1650
(Cambridge, Mass., 1976); Herman L. Bennett, Africans in Colonial
Mexico: Absolutism, Christianity, and Afro-Creole Consciousness, I570-I64o
(Bloomington, Ind., 2003); James H. Sweet, Recreating Africa: Culture,
Kinship, an.d Religion in the African-Portuguese World, 1441-1770 (Chapel
Hill, N.C., 2003); Joan Dayan, Haiti, History, and the Gods (Berkeley,
Calif., 1995);. Joao Jose Reis,. Death Is a Festival: Funeral Rites and Rebellion
in Nineteenth-Century Brazil(Chapel Hlll, N.C., 2003); Dubois, Avengers
of the New World, 99-102; Berlin, Many Thousands Gone, 62.
3· Drew Gilpin Faust, This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American
Civil ~r (New York, 2008); Karla F. C. Holloway, Passed On: African
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Families We Choose: Lesbians, Gays, Kinship (New York, 1991).
Notes to Pages 258-261 401 325
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7· Dayan, Haiti, History and the Gods, 187-267; quotation, 264.
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bridge, U.K., 1985), ro8; Stephan Palmie, Wizards and Scientists: Explo-
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Karl Marx, "The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte," i11 Robert C.
Tucker, ed., The Marx-Engels Reader, 2nd ed. (New York, 1978), quotation,
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Memoire," Representations, no. 26 (Spring 1989), 7-24; quotation, r6;
David William Cohen, The Combing of History (Chicago, 1994), 78-nr.

Brown - The Reaper's Garden

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What is the book about?

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What are some of the influences that shaped the author's perspective?

What are some of the influences that shaped the author's perspective?

THE REAP'ER'S GARDEN

Death and Power in th'e World

HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS

Copyright © :wo8 by Vincent Brown

First Harvard University Press paperback edition, 2010

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

OF ALL creative writers, historians should be the most skeptical of claims

Several valued friends and counselors helped me nurture this project

the Oceans Connect conference at Duke University in 2002, the New

Higginbotham, Waher Johnson, Jill Lepore, Susan E. O'Donovan, and

who have since become known to me as Laurent Dubois and James

PROLOGUE Death, Power, and Atlantic Slavery r

ONE Worlds of Wealth and Death IJ

THREE Expectations of the Dead 92

SEVEN Gardens of Remembrance 231

EPILOGUE Regeneration 255

Map r The Adamic Basin, drawn by Philip Schwartzberg x1v-xv

Map 2 The Caribbean, drawn by Philip Schwartzberg XVI

Map 3 Jamaica, drawn by Philip Schwartzberg xvUI

Map 4 Enslaved immigrants to Jamaica, by region, 174I-r807, drawn

Figure P.r View of Port Royal and Kingston Harbours, jamaica 2

Figure P.z "Nyame nwu na mawu, 5

Figure 1.2 The Torrid Zone 21

Figure 2.r Funeral of Johnny New-come 6r

Figure 2.2 Afro-Jamaican funeral procession 67

Figure 2.4 Dearh and burial preparations for Johnny New-come 84

Figure 3.1 "John sends for Mr. Codicil" 94

Figure 4-1 Executions of convicted rebels 130

Figure 5.2 Graveyard ethics r66

Figure 5·3 A Negro hung alive by the Ribs to a Gallows 193

Figure 7.1 Monument of the Late Thomas Hibbert 240

Figure A.I The Transatlantic Slave Trade to Jamaica, 1741-r8o7:

Figure A.2 The Transatlantic Slave Trade to Jamaica, 174I-1807: Volumes

Galapagos Is. :+;, ,·

Map]. The Atlantic Basin, drawn by Philip Schwartzberg

Map 2. The Caribbean, drawn by Philip Schwartzberg

The Reaper's Garden

Map 3· Jamaica, drawn by Philip Schwartzberg

Death, Power, and Atlantic Slavery

One, two, tree,

Figure P.2. "Nyame nwu na mawu" (God does not die, so I

"Nyame nwu na mawu" (loosely translated, "God does not die, so I

mediate social life. Mortuary practices may reflect historic changes, as

An explanation depends on the answers to four interrelated questions:

practices to fulfill a variety of pressing needs in difficult and dangerous cir-

present refined manner of living." Browne acknowledged that if one con-

a precarious and restless enslaved population with a transient white work-

inheritance practices-that helped make a society m the midst of a

Worlds of Wealth and Death

BY THE MID-EIGHTEENTH century, Jamaica was rhe vital hub of British

The Grave of the Europeans

When people with great ambition dreamed of America, they imagined

Their misfortunes were legion. The white population of}amaica during

that Jamaica remained overwhelmingly an immigrant society throughout I

the eighteenth century. In contrast to the plantation colonies of North

slightly more diverse group. Some 62 percent were English, r8 percent