The origins and legacies of the Barbadian Comprehensive Slavery Code

• Department of History

This session as a part of a workshop series organised by the African History Working Group features a discussion by Justine K Collins (SOAS).

The Caribbean region owns the dubious distinction of being the first in the Americas to give rise to the sugar revolution, which in turn rested on slavery. Furthermore, it helped promulgate American colonial slavery. Caribbean slavery was distinctive, in that, nowhere did the influence of the unholy trinity of slavery, sugarcane and the plantation system more systematically and intensely felt. Slavery therefore became synonymous with the history of the region as it simultaneously birthed a new ‘hybrid’ ethnic group. This presentation examines the origins and legacies of the Comprehensive Slave Codes of the British West Indies. It delves into pre-colonial English society to identify various laws and regulations adopted and adapted in the colonies. The discussion contends that transplantation was central to development within colonial legislation. This stands not just for the legal transplants from England to the colonies but within and throughout the colonies themselves. What these inter and intra connectivity of laws meant for the region’s development is the significance of this discussion particularly in illustrating the legacies/influences of the Barbadian slavery code.

Justine K Collins is Postdoctoral Fellow and Lecturer at SOAS, University of London, Law School. She is a researcher of Atlantic history and the history of laws related to colonial slavery and plantation societies. Currently she is writing a manuscript on the Indigenous Caribbean, Slavery and the Law.

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