‘Legitimacy’ and social boundaries: free people of colour and the social order in Jamaican slave society<sup>1</sup>

Petley, Christer

doi:10.1080/03071020500304627

Cited by 19 publications

(5 citation statements)

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“…This form of concubinage was widely accepted and seen as a crucial part of colonial life. 58 The relationship and the cohabitation were often terminated when the white man married. 59 Adrian's wife, Magdalen Astor, the daughter of the American millionaire Jacob Astor, moved in with him in 1807 and Henriette subsequently had to move out.…”

Section: Henriette Fransisca Coppy (1781-1858)mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…62 Since it was accepted for white men to live with free colored, but not accepted to formally marry them, it is likely that Henriette officially had to be registered on another address than Adrian while living with him. 63 In 1816, Adrian was promoted to general governor and it was decided that it was better for his status and esteem if he brought his wife back from New York to live with him instead of living with his free colored mistress. Adrian Benzton's good friend Hans Dahlerup, who lived a couple of years in Adrian's house in Christiansted, describes in his memoirs how Magdalen was sent for and Henriette again had to move out.…”

Section: Henriette Fransisca Coppy (1781-1858)mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Three Generations of Free Colored Women in St. Croix. 1750–1850

Sundsback

2023

Journal of Family History

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This paper explores the lives and agency of three generations free colored women on St. Croix, an island in the Danish-Norwegian West-Indies from the period 1760–1850. Different social strategies these women adopted in finding and defining their identities in a racially prejudiced society and how their social networks and family bonds affected their choices and lives have been studied. By applying a combination of prosopography and microhistory, new insights, and perspectives of free colored women's agency is gained. This paper suggests that free women of color were resourceful and independent and consciously employed complex social practices to climb the social ladder.

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Section: Henriette Fransisca Coppy (1781-1858)mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Henriette Fransisca Coppy (1781-1858)mentioning

confidence: 99%

Three Generations of Free Colored Women in St. Croix. 1750–1850

Sundsback

2023

Journal of Family History

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“…As shown already, although free and potentially propertied, these people had no rights to representation in the assembly or to government office. Indeed, their freedoms were increasingly restricted across the 18th‐century (Petley 2005). A 1717 act required those without sufficient property to carry a certificate signed by a JP and to wear a blue cross on their shoulder, so that it might be known who was enslaved and who free 39 .…”

Section: Giving Evidencementioning

confidence: 99%

“…As soon as there was public legislation enacting categorical distinctions based on ‘race’, then there were private acts shifting individuals between those categories and reallocating rights. There was the manumission of slaves, often in slave‐owners’ wills (Petley 2005). There was the declaration, in order to prevent the kidnapping of Indians from central America, ‘that all Indians brought to the island since 28 th December 1741 be declared to be Free People’ 46 .…”

Section: Giving Evidencementioning

confidence: 99%

The power of speech: orality, oaths and evidence in the British Atlantic world, 1650–1800

Ogborn

2010

Trans Inst British Geog

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Compared with the attention paid to written texts, geographers and others have neglected the spoken word in its many forms, particularly in investigations of the power relations of colonialism and imperialism. This paper argues that considering orality as a series of embodied, situated enunciations, declarations and conversations can provide a basis for historical geographies of the spoken word that engage with representation as practice. Using evidence from the domain of law within the context of Britain’s plantation colonies in the Caribbean – particularly Barbados and Jamaica – this paper argues for the significance of the oral culture of empire. This was evident in the ways in which the power of speech – through the rules on oath‐taking and evidence‐giving – was part of the making of imperial and colonial identities and relationships dividing white and non‐white, free and unfree, both within the spaces of plantation societies and in the broader British Atlantic world. The fragility of the identities and relationships made through the spoken word is also demonstrated through a series of moments when changes in the regulation of speech in courts of law were suggested and contested.

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“…Burnard 1991;Josephs 2015; Livesay 2018:20-232;Pearsall 2003;Petley 2005;Sturtz 1999; Walker 2020. 8 For earlier funds in Britain and North America, see below.…”

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confidence: 99%

Gender, Family, Race, and the Colonial State in Early Nineteenth-Century Jamaica

Graham

2021

New West Indian Guide

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Recent work has emphasized the role of colonial state structures in the construction and enforcement of race and gender in the British Empire from the seventeenth century onward, particularly among people of color. But work on the parallel phenomenon of “Whiteness” has focused on White men rather than White women and children, on elites rather than those below them, and on North America rather than the Caribbean. This article, using the records of a “Clergy Fund” established in Jamaica in 1797 as an insurance scheme for the (White) widows and orphans of clergymen, therefore addresses a gap in this literature by providing a case study of how a colonial state in the Caribbean tried—and failed—to construct and enforce race and gender among White women and children from outside the elite, during a period when White society in the region seemed under threat.

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‘Legitimacy’ and social boundaries: free people of colour and the social order in Jamaican slave society¹

Cited by 19 publications

References 0 publications

Three Generations of Free Colored Women in St. Croix. 1750–1850

Three Generations of Free Colored Women in St. Croix. 1750–1850

The power of speech: orality, oaths and evidence in the British Atlantic world, 1650–1800

Gender, Family, Race, and the Colonial State in Early Nineteenth-Century Jamaica

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‘Legitimacy’ and social boundaries: free people of colour and the social order in Jamaican slave society1

Cited by 19 publications

References 0 publications

Three Generations of Free Colored Women in St. Croix. 1750–1850

Three Generations of Free Colored Women in St. Croix. 1750–1850

The power of speech: orality, oaths and evidence in the British Atlantic world, 1650–1800

Gender, Family, Race, and the Colonial State in Early Nineteenth-Century Jamaica

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‘Legitimacy’ and social boundaries: free people of colour and the social order in Jamaican slave society¹