Re: Mortgage Deed re Jamaican Plantation, dated 1769:RE.SLAVES

karl h schwerin (schwerin@UNM.EDU)
Mon, 11 Dec 1995 14:11:02 -0700

On Mon, 4 Dec 1995, George Bankes wrote:

> I have been lent a mortage deed dated 1769 for a Jamaican Plantation
> which includes a list of some 200 slaves. These include Angus Powell
> and John Nixon. The parishes to which this deed refers are Middleton
> Pike and St Thomas's Parish. Does anyone know of any archive research
> or other research which is being done in the U.S.A. or the Caribbean
> about slavery in Jamaica in the 18th century? I have been asked by a
> local Afro-Caribbean, Les Braine, in Manchester to try and find out
> more about this mortgage document? If anyone does have any
> information I would be most grateful to haer about it.
>
>
> Best wishes,
>
>
> George Bankes
> ______________________________________________________________________
> >From : George Bankes, Keeper of Ethnology, Manchester Museum,
> M13 9PL, England
>
> Tel:(+44)0161-275-2637.
> Fax:(+44)0161-275-2676

There's a lot of literature on Jamaican (and West Indian) slavery, but
most of it deals with the early 19th century. I could provide references
if you like. Here are a few sources that may prove useful:

Bush, Barbara. 1989. Slave women in Caribbean society, 1650-1832.
Bloomington, IN: Univ. of Indiana Press

Campbell, Mavis C. 1988. The Maroons of Jamaica. A history of
resistance, collaboration and betrayal. South Hadley, MA: Bergin &
Garvey (deals with 18th century) (rev. by Kenneth M. Bilby. 1989.
American Ethnologist 16(4):802-804)

n.d.(ca. 1923). A check-list of House of Commons
sessional papers relating to the British West Indies and to the West
Indian slave trade and slavery, 1763-1834. London: Bryan Edwards Press

Craton, Michael M. 1978. Searching for the invisible man. Slaves and
plantation life in Jamaica. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press

Dirks, Robert. 1987. The Black Saturnalia: Conflict and its ritual
expression on British West Indian slave plantations. Gainesville, FL:
Univ. Presses of Florida (includes discussion of John Canoe Christmas
celebration on Jamaica)

Dunn, Richard S. 1972. Sugar and slaves: The rise of the planter class
in the English West Indies, 1624-1713. Chapel Hill, NC: Univ. of North
Carolina Press

Engerman, Stanley L. & Solow. Caribbean slavery and British
capitalism. New York: Cambridge Univ. Press

Foot, Jesse. 1792. A defence of the planters in the West-indies:
Comprised in Four Arguments. I. On Comparative Humanity. II. On
Comparative Slavery. III. On the African Slave Trade. IV. On the
Condition of the Negroes in the West Indies. 2nd led. London:
(reprinted, Greenwood Press, Wesport, CT)

Kiple, Kenneth F. 1984. The Caribbean slave. A biological history. New
York: Cambridge Univ. Press (rev. by Rebecca Huss-Ashmore. 1986.
American Anthropologist 88(4):997-998)

Knight, Franklin W. 1983. The Caribbean Sugar Industry and Slavery.
Latin American Research Reveiw 18(2):219-229





Karl Schwerin SnailMail: Dept. of Anthropology
Univ. of New Mexico Albuquerque, NM 87131
e-mail: schwerin@unm.edu

Much charitable endeavor is motivated by an unconscious
desire to peer into lives that one is glad to be unable
to share. . . . . Edward Sapir