“The Greatest Scoundrels in the Universe:” Haitian migrants, revolutionary contagion, and Jamaican migration law during the Haitian Revolution
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Date
2025-02
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University of New Brunswick
Abstract
In 1791, the enslaved people of French Saint-Domingue revolted, leading to a thirteen-year revolutionary war. In the neighbouring British colony of Jamaica, slaveowners feared that revolutionary ideology would spread and inspire Jamaican bondspeople to revolt. Between 1791 and 1799, Jamaican lawmakers, who were themselves slaveowners, responded to the threat of revolutionary contagion through a series of laws known as the Alien and Foreign Slave Acts. The creation and development of these laws was also shaped by a long-standing political dispute between Jamaica and Great Britain over their respective privileges and powers and over the future of slavery. The legislation sought to limit the entry of Saint-Domingue migrants, including white slaveowners, free people of colour, and the enslaved, restrict their movements within Jamaica, and surveil them. These laws, unprecedented in their scope and severity, demonstrate the ways that Jamaican slaveowners drafted legislation to navigate colonial politics and perpetuate slavery.