Pursuing Her Profits: Women in Jamaica, Atlantic Slavery and a Globalising Market, 1700–60

Abstract

This article addresses the double erasure of both women and the slaves they owned from the conjoined histories of slavery and empire. It shows how the economic practices of free women of European and African descent helped to make Jamaica the wealthiest and largest slaveholding colony in the early modern Anglo-Atlantic world. The growth of Britain's American colonies created novel financial and social opportunities for women. They acted as vigorous participants in a high-risk marketplace that was being made global by European imperial activities. As merchants, women strengthened the economic ties between Britain and the Caribbean, and helped to make Jamaica an important commercial hub. Financial pragmatism rather than nationalist sentiments drove them to pursue trade in Spanish territories, while also profiting from the frequent military conflicts between European powers. Women's abilities to pursue entrepreneurial ventures were deeply intertwined with slave ownership. They had a vested interest in maintaining and advancing the severe labour regime in Jamaica and elsewhere in British America. Slave ownership reconfigured women's financial, legal and social positions. In the colony, the status of being free came to matter more than any other signifier of identity, including gender.