Jamaica Ladies: Female Slaveholders and the Creation of Britain’s Atlantic Empire

by Christine Walker
@dr_cmwalker

2020 Best Book Award, Society for the Study of Early Modern Women and Gender

Jamaica Ladies is the first systematic study of the free and freed women of European, Euro-African, and African descent who perpetuated chattel slavery and reaped its profits in the British Empire. Their actions helped transform Jamaica into the wealthiest slaveholding colony in the Anglo-Atlantic world. Starting in the 1670s, a surprisingly large and diverse group of women helped secure English control of Jamaica and, crucially, aided its developing and expanding slave labor regime by acquiring enslaved men, women, and children to protect their own tenuous claims to status and independence.

Interview with the Author

New Books Network
Christine Walker, “Jamaica Ladies: Female Slaveholders and the Creation of Britain’s Atlantic Empire” (UNC Press. 2020)
5/21/21         80 min

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Ben Franklin’s World
293 Christine Walker, Jamaica Ladies: Female Slaveholding in Jamaica
1/19/21          65 min

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