the complex relationship and interconnectedness of Colonialism, Slavery, Capitalism, and Race.

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CHAPTER 6

More Enslaved Africans Arrive in the Caribbean—Along with More Revolts

London was now masticating and digesting New Netherland and Jamaica, but that seemed only to whet the colonial and enslaving appetite for more conquests. Just as New Englanders began to flock to Jamaica, Barbadian settlers began to flock to what became South Carolina, where in an absence of mind they were to create a daunting Black Majority. However, with Spain still ensconced in Florida and Cuba, London then had to try to control the intervening territory that became Georgia, particularly when Africans from what became the Palmetto State began to find succor in St. Augustine.1 South Carolina was a “colony’s colony.” Ultimately, the successor regime in what became Washington then had to try to control Florida, then Cuba,2 because of the enchanting call of slavery.

This influence of Barbados upon the fortunes of Carolina is also reflected in one of the founders of this mainland project, Anthony Ashley Cooper, the first Earl of Shaftesbury, was not only a major investor in slave trading enterprises but was also sufficiently nimble—or unprincipled—to cycle among monarchism in London and its antipode in Cromwell, while developing a fortune grounded in the most horrendous slavery in Barbados.3 Sadly, this often morally blind “pragmatism,” doing “what works,” principle set aside, so evident in today’s United States, has deep roots.

In brief, the apparently unquenchable thirst for the seemingly limitless land of indigenes and the free labor of Africa was creating a human rights fiasco. In North America racial privilege and the militarized identity politics that was “whiteness” was forming the sinews of the emerging system that was capitalism.

These new acquisitions came at an opportune moment for Charles II, given the debts that had piled up in recent decades, given wars, including civil wars, military buildup, and the like. In fact, debt helped to impel these conquests.4 Similarly, the eighteenth-century writer John Oldmixon argued that the civil wars “put discoveries out of men’s heads” as the “bold had other work cut out for them and hear no more of adventure” until later.5 Richard Blome thought that the taking of Jamaica was particularly important in this context. Not only was it convenient for undermining “Madrid’s Pearl” of the Antilles, Cuba, but since Virginia was “subject to gusts of wind” it made it problematic for “ships laden with good and passengers” to reach key locales—“They could not ply to any of the outward [Caribbean] islands.” “Now Jamaica being so far forward,” he insisted in 1672, “is a convenient harbor for all vessels thus distressed and did some few years save three Virginia ships full of passengers and good.”6

By 1667, as the ink was barely dry on pacts intending to relax relations with European rivals, freelance merchants were hungering to elbow aside the Company of Royal Adventurers

Horne, Gerald. The Apocalypse of Settler Colonialism : The Roots of Slavery, White Supremacy, and Capitalism in 17th Century North America and the Caribbean, Monthly Review Press, 2018. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/templeuniv-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4844848. Created from templeuniv-ebooks on 2019-01-18 08:23:09.

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and descend upon Africa with renewed fervor. Unctuously, they claimed that “His Majesties Plantations” were “brought to the perfection” that supposedly obtained and “principally subsist[ed] by the labour of Negro Servants and a plentiful supply of them.” Previously, it was said, there “had always been a freedom of trade for all His Majesties Subjects for Negroes on the whole coast of Guine[a],” but now the CRA had interrupted their succulent reverie and “totally obstructed the former free Trade” in Africans. Worse, these organized freebooters were simultaneously supplying “the Spanish Plantations with Negroes,” leaving London in the lurch. Madrid’s settlements produced the “same commodities” as London’s, leaving the latter “either ill supplied” or hamstrung by “excessive prices” of Africans “or not at all supplied.” This meant His Majesty’s plantations were “much decayed,” and “unless a timely remedy” arrived, these sites would be “brought to inevitable destruction.”

That was not all. Enslaved Africans had to be borne by ships, and the sugar they produced in the colonies traveled by sea, too. The settlements had to be defended by warships, meaning a shipbuilding industry at home, which meant wage workers with money to spend, boosting the entire economy. “Shoes, stockings, serges … beef, butter,” the list was endless, items that served to provide “employment and bread for many thousands of families,” and the colonies sent “sugars, cotton, ginger, indigo, tobacco” to the homeland. All rested on the “constant supply of Negroes … without which the said colonies must inevitably be reduced to ruin … and destruction.”7

As was their wont, merchants unleashed a steady fire of propaganda, portraying their unhindered entry into the slave trade as a matter of the nation’s life and death. “Formerly there hath always been a freedom of Trade for all His Majesties Subjects for Negroes,” it was announced ingratiatingly in 1667. And, as a consequence, “said plantations have been plentifully supplied with Negroes.” But now the aptly named Company of Royal Adventurers had “totally obstructed the former Free Trade of all Adventurers” and not just those duly authorized.8 The Adventurers were harming the interest of colonies, it was said, by not delivering enough Africans to the settlements.9 “Free Trade” in Africans was the parliamentary appeal that was to undergird the stunningly hypocritical cries for liberty that led directly to 1776.

What to do? Unleash the animal spirits of these merchants on Africa and then await eagerly the magic of the marketplace.

As they read the fine print, the remit of the Company of Royal Adventurers only extended to the Cape and the same held true—operationally, it was thought—for the successor, the Royal African Company (RAC). So merchants from New Amsterdam, now renamed after the Duke of York, simply sailed to Madagascar, the island that had been eyed covetously for years, and formed a bond with European pirates stationed there.10

As the need for bonded labor rose, the slave trade was reorganized by way of the Royal African Company in 1672. Like the Reich that it anticipated, its charter spoke overoptimistically of a “term of 1,000 years.”11 It was only the Crown, it was thought, that could devise the firepower needed to subjugate Africa, including construction of forts alone the Atlantic coastline.12

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Initially, John Jeffreys, heavily invested in Virginia tobacco and thus a major customer, welcomed the formation of what was by far the largest Crown-backed enterprise in the Atlantic.13 But this attempt to bridge the interests between the Crown and colonial planters and merchants, with royals at the controls, did not reflect adequately the true balance of forces. Thus, as early as 1674 Whitehall was forbidding any but the RAC from enchaining Africans, but this edict contradicted what came to be called “free enterprise” and “market forces” and thus had to retreat, which it did.14

But as of 1672 the controlling interest that the Duke of York took in the Royal African Company ensured that the city that took his name would be a major colonial market for buying and selling Africans.15 Responding to an outcry against taxes that would consume the mainland for centuries to come, property taxes on the enslaved were eliminated and tariffs on incoming enslaved Africans favored continental Africans over inter-colonial (Caribbean) importation: as early as the 1670s, merchants from the renamed New York began challenging the RAC’s monopoly. This created ripples spreading outward from Manhattan, as the Phillips family of New York also had substantial interests in Barbados and Madagascar. A family that was a founder of the Republic, the Jays, were also heavily invested in the slave trade. There emerged a Jamaica-New York pirate axis that extended to Madagascar, as piracy became central to the colonial enterprise, and central to the republicanism that emerged post-1776.16

By 1670, proving that the apple does not fall far from the tree, South Carolina, the devil spawn of Barbados, enacted a “Fundamental Constitution” declaring that “every freeman of [this province] shall have absolute power and authority over his Negro slaves, or what Opinion or Religion so ever.”17 This mainland province was, as noted previously, a “colony’s colony,” as Barbadian settlers expanded to the mainland, pulled by dreams of increased wealth and pushed by the fear of being victimized by rebellious Africans.18

It was not smooth cruising for London, however. The Dutch had not been sufficiently humbled by being ousted from Recife, West Africa, and New Netherland. There was yet another Anglo-Dutch war erupting in 1672, which delivered devastating raids in the Caribbean; it would coincide roughly with the incipiency of the profoundly transformative Bacon’s Rebellion (see chapter 7) in Virginia and King Philip’s war in New England. Though this war was an intra-Protestant conflict, the obtaining environment almost had to mean that anti-Catholicism would receive no surcease, either. This was the prism through which attendant slave revolts were viewed, where the hand of Spain, the Irish, and the French was often espied. After all, Irish revolts—to which Africans could not be indifferent— accompanied the French invasions of Antigua and Montserrat in the 1660s.19

THEN THERE WAS JAMAICA. Enslaved Africans were more disorderly there than anywhere else in London’s settlements. Deporting leaders to the mainland, a frequent ploy, only led to more disruptiveness there. Revolts on this sugar island were more frequent in the last third of the seventeenth century than at any time in the island’s history. Between 1673 and 1694 Jamaica experienced at least six major revolts of the enslaved, followed by eruptions in 1702 and 1704. The first two of this cycle occurred on the north side of the island, beginning in

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1673, where Maroons were known to be active, and the next occurred on a large plantation near the appropriately named Spanish Town. The most serious revolt occurred in 1685–86, involving scores of Africans on the north side. The enraged Africans burned and rampaged for months before heavy fire subdued them. Understandably, the settler population, and the indentured group too, began to decline, which only elevated the crisis, with many making the great trek to the mainland. In 1662 the total population was 4,207: 3,653 Europeans and 554 Africans. By 1673—indicative of the manic energy of slave traders—the African population had grown to 7,768, loosely equal to the number of Europeans. But then the proportions began to shift dramatically in favor of Africans, adding to their zesty brio. Imports of Africans jumped from 14, 383 in the 1670s to 33,458 in the 1680s. Arriving as well in Jamaican ports were uncontrollable displays of fury and dynamism. There was a similar trend on the mainland: the decline of indentured labor and the ascendancy of enslaved labor, and with that came less blurring of racial lines.20

Anguished cries from settlers were the hallmark of Jamaica. As in other settlements, there was an attempt, by 1661, to restrain a “servant” that “shall lay violent hands on his or her master or mistress or overseer.”21 By 1663 there were measures adopted concerning the “enormities done and committed … by Negroes” and “for the prevention of all mutinies and insurrections or other mischiefs.”22 That same year an act to make sure that boats were sufficiently chained and fastened so that they could not become vessels for absconding was passed.23 By 1664, “certain runaway Blacks from Barbadoes” had arrived aiming to commit “insolences on the planters,” including “felonies” and “murther [murder]” and “burglaries.” What if Africans resisted capture? “Slay” or “kill the said slaves” was the reply.24

“Carmahaly Negroes,” thought to be tied to Maroons, “are still in this island,” it was announced tremblingly in 1665 “and have again begun to rob and kill,” and thus the “island” should “be put in a posture of war.”25 By 1670 they were called the “Vermahaly Negroes,” and this lack of clarity was a reflection of an uninspiring attempt to corral them. They were killing and plundering, per usual. “Many more Negroes have run away from their masters,” it was reported anxiously. “The number of Indians, Mulattoes and Negroes to whom the oath of allegiance is never tendered, much exceeds that of those who call themselves Christian and daily increases.”26

“Divers[e] murders, robberies and other outrages” were among the complaints in 1670,27 with revanchist Spaniards with “designs to invade us” as a dismaying complement.28 One of the temporary peaces with Madrid led to a demand to “release” all Spanish prisoners, but this could only contribute to the chaos and already had led to an “abundance of suits and disputes” about “freeing Indians, Negroes and Mulattoes.”29

Adding to the confusion were mainland arrivals with questionable claims. This included a Virginia man who demanded “4,000 acres” from a settler in the “parish of St. Elisabeth” that would include “all the Negroes and appurtenances thereto,” but this could contribute to intra- settler disputatiousness complicating the unity that was necessary to confront the Maroons and Spaniards alike.30 This was the southwest of the island.

By 1670 “the outlying Negroes commonly called Carmahaly Negroes” were again accused

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of perpetrating “divers[e] Murders, Robberies and other outrages.” Settlers were advised to keep a pistol nearby as a direct result.31

It was the north side, said the authorities in 1672, that was “not well settled” and “found to be a certain retreat for all runaway servants and slaves,” with unforeseeable consequences for regional colonialism.32 There was a “design” of the “Spaniards” to “invade us,” said the authorities in late 1671.33 Months later, there was a “horrid murther [murder]” by “certain of the Negroes who after the fact [fled to] the woods.”34 Again in 1672 there was “danger of being suddenly identified,” leading to the cry: “fortify Port Royal.”35

In 1673, it was repeated that there was rising anxiety about “designs” of the “Dutch and Spaniards” to “attack and invade this island,” and the adverse appropriation of 1655 where Africans proved to be unwed to the wishes of His Catholic Majesty had yet to be forgotten. There was a “danger,” and the authorities were unsure when it would be over.36

By 1675 a frightful rebellion of the enslaved in Barbados caused nervousness about spillover effects in Jamaica. None of the accused on the smaller island should be transported to Jamaica, it was advised, but smugglers for decades to come were to defy the most adroit regulations.37

A “late rebellion” in November 1675 produced taut unease.38 “We have had lately several insurrections and rebellions of our Negroes to the great disturbance of the peace and planting,” it was said tremulously in December 1675. The remedy? Assign “one white servant for every ten Negroes” laboring.39 Thus the pressure from Africans led to a profoundly material alteration of indentured status to a kind of overseer that was accompanied by referring to these poorer Europeans in racial terms. In the companion settlement that was Virginia, between 1670 and 1680 a growing number of indentured servants were managing to acquire land and move up the class (and racial) ladder.40

Pessimism reigned as the colonial elite could not untie the Gordian knot of bringing in more Africans to produce immense wealth while preventing them from rebelling and taking power—which finally occurred in 1791 in what became Haiti. The governor of Antigua remarked during this fraught seventeenth-century moment that his island, like others, was beset by “great supplies of Negroes and no whites.” (Note the term “white” that was rapidly supplanting Christian to describe Europeans.) Thus, “if once the blacks get ahead they will make the colony theirs,” and “that will be the end of it.”41 However, profit-making did not seem to allow an exit, for in nearby Nevis the worry was that the island was “not half planted for want of Negroes.”42 And then there were the lurking French ready to pounce.

The organizing of the RAC at a time when there was concern about massive slave revolts exposed the frailty of the colonial project. By 1672, its year of origin, the RAC was moving aggressively into Angola: “The slaves are sent to all His Majesty’s American Plantations”— islands and mainland both—“which cannot subsist without them.”43 One scholar has suggested that the destruction of Angola and the construction of Brazil were two sides of the same coin.44 The only problem with this apt characterization is that it is too limited, for London’s settlements too were heavily dependent upon the destruction of Angola, providing Luanda today with a sound rationale for a dedicated program of reparations from the coffers of her

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past tormentors. In the companion settlement of Jamaica, even before the turning point in 1676, the route

was taken of pitting the interests of “Christian indented servants or hired freemen” against those of “Negroes,” in order to “secure the island from danger.” Sir William Morrice was told that “everyone that has six Negroes should keep one Christian servant and one hired freeman and so on” available for suppressive tactics. This would also address the pressing problem of servant and freeman abandonment of the island, since there were “not 300 Christians upon the whole island who would not be glad to be gone upon easy terms,” and compromising security further as a result. “The dangers of settlements being so far distant from the other” also required urgent expediency. In portentous words it was concluded that “the settlement of Jamaica will never be in a better condition without a speedy supply from England of Christian planters, not merchants, as well as servants and bringing up Negro children in the Christian religion.”45 The Christian religion could instruct in the duty to submit to the master—and God —but raised knotty questions about whether purported coreligionists should be in bondage. Privileging planters over merchants made sense, but it was the latter who benefited from the tailwinds of history.

In 1670, an account accurately reported that “nothing can now hinder the future thriving of [Jamaica] but want of inhabitants and slaves” (note the distinction between the two). Purportedly, there were then 8,200 residents, 2,500 of whom were enslaved.46

Hence, with disquiet sloping upward, a “bill for the encouragement and speedier settling” of Jamaica was demanded. However, a European would have to be awfully ignorant or terribly desperate to heed this call.47 The elite had not fully considered this call, for what was to prevent a Spaniard or Dutchman or Frenchman from appearing to be a loyal settler, then covertly spreading sedition? It would be a “felony without benefit of clergy,” warned the authorities flintily, “for any person to serve under any foreign power.”48

Planters were desperate, scrambling for remedies without the aid of think tanks and relaxed contemplation. As New England and Virginia were to be rocked by revolt in 1676, the authorities pleaded not to “sell or deliver any arms, powder, bullets or other ammunition unto any Negro slave unless he brings a ticket from his Master”49—a reasonable pro-slavery measure that adept forgery could defeat.

But the integration of Jamaica with the region was a hindrance to tranquility as well. As a 1676 rebellion in New England was being quelled, the nerves of the Jamaican elite were frazzled when “several Indian inhabitants” from there were “imported to this island,” with their enslavement as the prospect, presenting a “great hazard and danger” on top of what was already being confronted.50

Foreigners continued to be an irritant, as when in 1677 a captain arrived from Cartagena with “near two hundred Negroes aboard … belonging to the subjects of the States General of the Provinces.” Apparently these slaves were taken “piratically” from “subjects” of Holland, a “very foul piracy” indeed. But who was to say? A ship innocently arriving in conspicuously rebellious Jamaica with hundreds of Africans aboard? Understandably, the authorities were suspicious. If nothing else, it was an indicator of the tumultuous neighborhood in which they

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resided.51 Finally, Sir Henry Morgan—a Jamaican leader of affluent Welsh origins and,

appropriately, a leading pirate52—knew a thing or two about raiding settlements, and averred that “considering the strength and position of our neighbors” and the corresponding “safety and defence” of Jamaica, that the “tenth Negro of all the Negroes in this island be employed to work at the fortifications” near the pirates’ nest known as Port Royal. “A third part of all the Negroes, men and women, Indians and mulattoes and free Negroes” should be tasked to “do work every day” to “fortify Port Morant.”53 The record does not reveal if Sir Henry considered the impact of compelling these groups to labor when they were similarly the target of foreign invaders, nor does it seem that the authorities considered the implications of exempting Europeans, in the march toward a synthetic “whiteness,” a stubbornly persistent identity politics that was similarly unfolding on the mainland.

Sir Henry was well aware of the martial ability of Africans. When he and his fellow brigands sacked Panama City in the 1670s, about 80 percent of the population was comprised of free and enslaved Africans who did not greet him with hosannas of praise; the same held true for neighboring Cartagena. During this century the free African population of Havana, a perpetual target of Sir Henry and his predecessors, was growing faster than other sectors. As early as the 1500s, Africans in Panama had pledged allegiance to Madrid in exchange for autonomy. It was apparent that more innovative remedies would have to be devised to overcome what was becoming an all too real Black Scare.54 The nightmare scenario for settlers was avoiding precisely what befell them in Hispaniola in 1791: that is, an uprising where they were liquidated or forced to migrate and the Africans seized power. The problem was that settlers were so drunk on the incomparable riches delivered by the African Slave Trade that they found it hard to avoid the deliverance of more gravediggers determined to prepare their indecent burial, in the Caribbean most notably. The great trek to the mainland was one method of avoiding this dire destiny, along with providing more benefits—“combat pay”— to poorer settlers. This approach “worked” in fueling the revolt against London in 1776 and constructing a state founded on solemn principles of white supremacy, often disguised in deceptive “non-racial” words.

It should also not be lost that colonial enslavement was heavily dependent on the ministrations of pirates. Not only was there Sir Henry, there was also Charles-François d’Angennes, Marquis de Maintenon, by 1680 the largest sugar magnate in Martinique—and a notorious freebooter. Saint-Pierre, a regional capital of the French Caribbean, contained some 2,000 corsairs among a population of a few thousand.55 At its root, capitalism not only meant slavery and white supremacy but also the ethos of the gangster.

A SIMILAR PROCESS WAS UNFOLDING in Barbados. Difficulty remained in integrating the recently arrived Iberian Jewish community. As early as the 1660s, they were accused of bribing ship captains to effectuate the release of their coreligionists being transported from nearby Spanish colonies under the orders of the Inquisition and this, it was believed, was complicating relations further with Madrid. As in Jamaica, Jews were limited in purchasing

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slaves in considerable numbers until 1786, which was hampering capital formation and hindering the forging of a synthetic “whiteness” besides. They were suspected routinely of treasonous behavior, and before 1675 courts were reluctant to accept their testimony. This bar too fell in the 1780s as the waves of republicanism and “whiteness” from the mainland spread to the region. Both the vestry and the Assembly, two major centers of power, conspired against them, nonetheless. Napthall Hart was a Jewish man who had migrated from Newport to Barbados, but most of the traffic in that regard was moving in the opposite direction. Christian merchants coveted his overseas contacts still, despite his commitment to the island, and their jealousy extended to resentment of the role of Jewish merchants as chief dealers in coin.

Yet this discrimination did not negate the fact that Jews were firmly in the middle and upper stratum of society, moving from anti-Semitic Iberian societies to societies with anti- Semitism under the flag of the rising power in London. This distinction—based on the absence of an organized Inquisition as in Madrid—did not prevent the repetitive accusation that they encouraged slaves to steal and then acted as middlemen in fencing, or that they negotiated with these forced laborers at Sunday markets for the sale of smuggled goods while the Christian settlers reposed in church. Ominously for London, this persecution and their exclusion from certain areas of legitimate trade tended to facilitate the development of some shared interests between persecuted Jews and enslaved Africans.56

This bigotry was not limited to Barbados. In Jamaica in 1671, in the context of concern about a Spanish invasion, a strange “petition of divers merchants against the Jews” was drawn up, with discussion of whether they should be “expelled” since a number were “without patents or naturalization.” Competitors were eyeing their wealth invidiously, since they possessed “great stocks”; yet they were “not numerous enough to supplant us, or is it to their interest to betray us,”57 perhaps by reigniting their old alliance with the Dutch.

As in Jamaica, there was reason why Barbadian settlers were so apprehensive. Laws had to be passed for the “good governing of servants,” that is, to punish those who chose to “lay violent hands upon his or her Master, Mistress or Overseer” or steal from same. There was an attempt to limit arrival of vessels, which could only harm commerce,58 and to ban the “selling of brandy and rum” to “Servants and Negroes” who traded alcohol for “stolen goods.”59

By 1667, officials in Barbados were in a familiar posture: moaning about the growing number of Africans. They were not “above 6,400” in 1643 but in “1666 above 50,000.” Indentured Irish were “derided by the Negroes as white slaves.” Perhaps upgrading the status of Irish would foil the Negroes’ psychological warfare? Settlers were busily fleeing to the mainland in fear. “There are many thousands of slaves that speak English,” it was warned, “and if there are many leading men slaves in a Plantation, they may be easily wrought upon to betray it, especially on the promise of freedom.” Then there were “the Jews who not having like liberty as in the Dutch and French islands, have been very treacherous.” Perhaps an upgrade would work here, too?60

By 1670 there was debate over “an act to prevent spiriting people off this island,” while “promising … great quantities of land,”61 an unrealistic remedy on this small island, now in a losing competition with Jamaica and particularly the mainland. As the proportion of Europeans

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shrank, anxiety grew. When a bill was passed “concerning persons intended to depart this island” in 1672,62 it was apparent that the island was losing the battle for a valuable presence: those who would be defined as “white.” A reminder of this danger came when in 1671 “an act for the prevention of firing of Sugar Canes,”63 a repetitive problem, was passed. Policymakers might have recalled that even innocent “firing of Sugar Cane” could be a mask for arson, in light of the firestorm that wracked the island in 1668.64

The Barbadian elite had to agonize over the decline of the settler population. By 1673 it was found that the “militia consists of two regiments,” and “the utmost number of white men capable of military service” was “so small.” Besides, of those many were “infirm by age, sickness and personal defects” including those of the “mental” variety. Then there were the unreliable Quakers, resulting in the compulsion to “arm” Africans, meaning the cure was worse than the illness.65

However, despite this dearth of Europeans, suspicion of what were called “Hebrews” was common.66 As if there were not enough problems, there was also an attempt to restrain Quakers suspected of “bringing Negroes to their Meetings,” which meant the “safety of this island may be much hazarded.” Any Africans found in violation would be “forfeited.”67 That measure apparently did not work since in 1678 a strengthened bill was legislated, which gave incentives to informers to squeal on Quakers who consorted with Africans. Then, as if bars against the Jewish and Quaker communities were insufficient to halt the emergence of a synthetic “whiteness,” the assembly sought measures against “Popish Recusants.”68

This was a shortsighted, even suicidal, policy, which should have been evident in 1676. For it was in that decisive year when a revolt by the indigenes rocked New England and rebellious Europeans sought to overthrow the Virginia regime that Africans in Barbados took matters into their own hands. There was a “Grand Conspiracy,” said one Londoner with fury, targeting settlers. The result: captured Africans were “burned alive, beheaded and otherwise executed for their horrid crimes” perpetrated by the “Cormantee or Gold Coast Negroes.”69 One Londoner was staggered by the “bloody tragedy intended against His Majesties subjects,” this “by the Heathen, the Negroes.” Their plot was “miraculously discovered eight days before the intended Murder should have been acted,” that is, “the Negroes belonging to each of several plantation[s], should in the dead time of the night [rise] on the sound of the alarm” and “kill their Master and Mistresses with their Overseers.”70

“I am sure the fewer white servants any planter has,” said John Wilmore a few years after Bacon’s rebellion had been vanquished, “the more it would be for his profit.” Instead, he insisted, because of “some disturbances by the Blacks and the Government finding it might be of dangerous consequence, therefore made an Act for the future,” ordering that “every plantation should have one white servant to every ten Blacks, being intended only for the security of the island,” meaning Jamaica, though the surveillance and monitoring role of poorer Europeans was not limited to this unstable colony. The job requirement of Europeans going forward was to “keep them in awe,” meaning Africans.71

The shedding of buckets of blood and militaristic monitoring, however, was a short-term fix for a long-term problem.

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THE 1670S WERE AN INFLECTION point for London’s settlements. The formation of the Royal African Company, as freelance traders remained undeterred by its presumed monopoly on slave trading, meant investors in Africans could envision black ink for some time to come. However, this meant more slave revolts, too. This would lead more settlers to flee to the mainland but that would only set in motion changes leading to 1776. Diminishing the number of indentured laborers from Europe was another approach, but that only led back to further reliance on enslaved labor in no mood to compromise. Poorer Europeans could secure more land grants on the mainland than in small Barbados or rebellious Jamaica. Port Royal would then feel compelled to stop supporting piracy, as this outlaw practice was creating too many problems for already tense relations with Spanish Cuba and Hispaniola, plus bringing parties to town that Africans could leverage. So these bandits simply sailed to the mainland, bringing their misbegotten gains and fungible skills to Newport and Charleston, which promptly welcomed them.72 This was not an abrupt change for pirates, whose mobility meant that they were not strangers on the mainland in any case.73 Ultimately, there were more opportunities on the land, particularly land taken from indigenes to dole out to poorer Europeans giving them a stake in the system of colonialism.

In 1676–77 a number of members from the Sephardic Jewish community of Barbados continued a trek that had stretched from the Iberian Peninsula to Amsterdam to Recife, and moved on to Newport, Rhode Island.74 They were not alone in seeking opportunity on the mainland. Samuel Carpenter, the most energetic merchant in early Pennsylvania, was a Quaker merchant in Barbados in 1673. This bachelor slave-owner then invested in milling and lumbering and speculated in land in New Jersey.75 One of the comrades of William Penn was Ralph Fretwell, a Barbadian sugar planter and Quaker who owned 166 of the enslaved and was mulling a move to the mainland as well, despite his wealth.76

Fretwell may have known that many of Philadelphia’s earliest residents had formerly been settlers in Barbados and had made a smart long-term investment as a result. Though not itself primarily a slave plantation colony, this future metropolis economy nevertheless depended heavily on the wealth generated by slaves, precisely because of Barbados’s central role. The now fabled William Penn did not outlaw slavery in his colony, and thus, rather quickly, 11 percent of its population was enslaved, as he and his comrades borrowed heavily from the slave code of Barbados for guidance. The Quakers, in sum—reputation aside—were complicit in the brutalization that inhered in slavery.77

Fretwell may have recognized that contraband trade was growing between New England and the French Lesser Antilles at that moment, which nicely complemented a growing commerce between Jamaica and merchants and planters in French Saint-Domingue78—soon to be one of the richest colonies ever—before the Haitian Revolution upset things. As South Carolina—a “colony of a colony,” the latter being Barbados—took off in the 1670s, the scale of selling indigenes into slavery leapt into the ionosphere. In the next few decades, more indigenes were exported from the region than Africans imported to the southeast quadrant of the continent. These profits lined the already bulging purses of merchants and planters, while clearing more land in a form of ethnic cleansing.79 Uncooperative Africans who balked at

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being enchained served to militarize settlers even more.80 Settlers on the mainland may have heard about the massacring endured by their counterparts in Tobago,81 as irruptions exploded in New England, Virginia, and Barbados. That the Dutch enemy was the major target was hardly consoling, for victories against settlers anywhere were victories for indigenes everywhere, especially in London’s settlements.

The mainland’s productive forces were advancing while those of the Caribbean had a foreseeable upper limit, though for seven more decades London would see the latter as more valuable. It took longer than that for London to realize that a 1776 was on the horizon.

A century earlier, tantalizingly enough, London had what has been described as a limited number of disciplined provinces, including the “Cromwellian garrison government of Jamaica,” which then provided the militarization and centralization that swept the mainland after this crucial year. Jamaica field-tested initiatives that were then applied in the city named after the Duke of York on the mainland. But then the colonial chain was buffeted at both ends— New England and Virginia—and disrupted the existing model of colonial rule, necessitating change.82

A precise century—1676 to 1776—marked the rise of the British Empire and the resultant hegemony of the United States of America.

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