New Struggles and Old Ideas, 1813–1833

This chapter explores the immediate years leading up to the emancipation of Britain’s enslaved population in 1833 and that period’s effect on mixed-race migrants. It contends that Britain was an increasingly hostile place for Jamaican migrants of color, as family and class position no longer sufficiently modified racialized oppression. This is seen in both family correspondences as well as in the experiences of political radicals such as Robert Wedderburn, whose mixed ancestry and social marginalization informed his activist ideologies in London. In Jamaica, however, mixed-race migrants who had returned to the Caribbean made advancements. Not only did the assembly improve the legal position of free people of color, but it promoted British-trained individuals of color in anticipation of the emancipation of enslaved Jamaicans. In particular, emancipation appeared to spell the doom of a permanent, growing white population. A British-educated class of color was now seen as the proper replacement for a declining white cohort.

Imperial Pressures, 1800–1812

This chapter chronicles the institutional pressures put on mixed-race migrants in the first decade of the nineteenth century. Although families continued to assist relatives of color—which included helping get them into the East India Company to advance their social standing—constricting notions of kinship and political wariness of African-descended people made it challenging for Jamaicans of color to thrive in Britain. Their attempts to assimilate were made more difficult by the growing calls of abolitionists and pro-slavery supporters to curtail interracial relationships in order to create a demographic separation between blacks and whites in the Caribbean. Within this abolitionist debate, Trinidad’s governor Thomas Picton went to court for having tortured a mixed-race girl named Louisa Calderon. Her arrival in Britain prompted a flurry of accusations that she had become pregnant by a Scottish protector, escalating the general public’s concern about mixed-race migrants and their impact on British demography. This chapter contends that by the early nineteenth century, high class standing and genetic connections to prominent Britons were losing their social power for Jamaican migrants of color.

Tales of Two Families, 1793–1800

This chapter charts the experiences of mixed-race migrants competing with legitimate relatives in Britain. In particular, it examines a number of inheritance lawsuits between Jamaicans of color in Britain and their white relatives over a shared colonial estate. It contends that constrictions in the definition and legal standing of kinship at the turn to the nineteenth century suddenly made mixed-race Jamaicans improper members of extended, Atlantic families. Increasing discomfort with mixed-race family members is also demonstrated in sentimental fiction at the time. The chapter assesses a large number of novels and fictional tracts in the last decade of the eighteenth century that included migrants of color as key characters in their stories. The inclusion of such characters was employed to excoriate the illegitimacy, marginal position, and racial divergence of mixed-race people in Britain. Finally, the chapter traces the experiences of the mothers of color left in Jamaica and the ways they attempted to advocate for their children across the Atlantic.

Introduction

This chapter introduces the main ideas and themes of the book. It describes not only how and why mixed-race Jamaicans travelled to Britain, but it explains why their migration was so important. Because they were connected to such wealthy and influential individuals in the British Atlantic, and because family relationships complicated their racial status, mixed-race migrants were instrumental in deliberations on questions of race in the British Empire. The introduction also analyses the various sources and methodology that constitute the book’s research base.

Lineage and Litigation, 1783–1788

This chapter chronicles the personal and public disputes rankling the British Empire after the American Revolution. It includes a case study of a mixed-race Jamaican family who travelled to England, then to India, and back to England. When they finally settled in Britain, a white cousin sued them for their Jamaican inheritance and used their West and East Indian ties (including connections to Bengal’s discredited governor Warren Hastings) as a way of castigating them as both corrupt and racially impure. This lawsuit demonstrates the ways that family negotiation in Britain grew increasingly racialized in the wake of the imperial storm of the American Revolution and the beginning of popular protests against colonial slavery. At the same time, however, the chapter shows great divergences in mixed-race experiences in Britain as well as the continuation of interracial relationships in Jamaica despite increasing calls against the practice.

Conclusion

The conclusion reiterates the core argument of the book. It contends that mixed-race Jamaicans who left for Britain were critical to the debates around race and slavery in the Anglo-Atlantic world. In particular, their experiences show the ways family relationships influenced racial standing in the long eighteenth century. When definitions of family were loose, elites of color could successfully integrate in the British Empire. When definitions of family constricted, it became much more difficult to avoid being lumped into discriminated categories around Africanness. Overall, the conclusion reasserts that racial ideologies and prejudices were more complex than previously thought, both in the nakedly abusive society of Jamaica as well as the seemingly more tolerant location of Britain.

Abolition, Revolution, and Migration, 1788–1793

This chapter analyses the early years of the popular movement to abolish the slave trade and its effects on perceptions of mixed-race Jamaicans in Britain. It documents a number of cases of mixed-race migrants, including the responses of families to their arrival, the education they received in Britain, and their professional lives after leaving school. However, attitudes started turning against these migrants for two reasons. First, abolitionist reformers harangued interracial relationships in the colonies—and thus mixed-race people themselves—for undercutting the growth of both a stable white and black population that could obviate the need for more Africans transported across the Atlantic. Yet, some of the principal pro- and antislavery supporters, including William Wilberforce, were personally connected to the families of mixed-race migrants. Second, the outbreak of the Haitian Revolution in 1791 led many observers to believe that French-educated colonists of color had inspired the uprising, making the prospect of Jamaican students in England a much more politically threatening one.

Inheritance, Family, and Mixed-Race Jamaicans, 1700–1761

This chapter evaluates the evolving legal and cultural standing of elite mixed-race Jamaicans in the first half of the eighteenth century. It describes why so many interracial families formed on the island as well as the legal restrictions imposed on mixed-race people by the colony’s legislature, the Jamaican assembly. In particular, it considers how concerns over the balance between a small white and large enslaved population in Jamaica created security fears as well as demographic anxieties about mixed-race families. However, the chapter shows that elite free people of color carved out legal privileges for themselves by petitioning directly to the assembly. Moreover, the assembly experimented early on with allowing family connections, wealth, and ancestry to put certain mixed-race people into the legal category of “white.” A series of enslaved rebellions in the middle of the eighteenth century named Tacky’s Revolt, along with growing concerns about improper households across the British Empire, resulted in more restrictions against mixed-race Jamaicans generally by 1761. Yet, island rulers still held onto a demographic hope that certain elites of color—namely those who had spent time in Britain—could become the seedbed on which to grow a strong white population.

Early Abolitionism and Mixed-Race Migration into Britain, 1762–1778

This chapter examines how the demographic debates over interracial relationships in Jamaica, outlined in Chapter 1, became relevant in Britain in the 1760s and 1770s. The arrival into Britain of enslaved servants from the colonies aroused panic about British family formation, especially after the Somerset decision of 1772, which gave habeas corpus rights to enslaved people in England. But, while British observers grew nervous about the poor and enslaved people of color in their midst, they held relatively little reservations about elite mixed-race Jamaicans who were arriving. This chapter argues that the family standing and high-class position of these migrants of color made them more socially acceptable to Britons, despite a general rising tide of racism.