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JAMAICAN LEGISLATION AND THE TRANSATLANTIC CONSTITUTION, 1664–1839

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 October 2017

AARON GRAHAM Open the ORCID record for AARON GRAHAM [Opens in a new window]
AARON GRAHAM*
Affiliation:
University College London
*
University College London, Gower Street, London, wc1e 6btaaron.graham@ucl.ac.uk
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Abstract

Between its first meeting in January 1664 and the final session held under unfree labour in December 1838, the volume of legislation passed by the house of assembly in Jamaica increased exponentially. As in Britain and Ireland, this reflected the growing administrative capacity and political power of the legislature and also the enormous demand for laws and law-making among local interest groups. The rise and fall of slavery and the slave society in the island was therefore underpinned in a large part by the power of its colonial legislature, which also operated within the broader transatlantic constitution structured by imperial politics and law. There was very little though to distinguish the house of assembly from others in British North America, at least in legislative terms, and even after the traumatic imperial disjuncture of 1783 the reformed transatlantic constitution continued to provide a supportive environment for the expansion of legislation within the island of Jamaica.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 61 , Issue 2 , June 2018 , pp. 327 - 355
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2017 

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Footnotes

I am very grateful to Trevor Burnard, David Hayton, Julian Hoppit, Joanna Innes, James Robertson, and the reviewers for the Historical Journal for their comments and advice on this article. Much of the research on which it is based was funded by a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship and a Junior Research Fellowship at Jesus College, Oxford, with additional support from a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship and University College London.

References

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37 Hoppit, ‘Patterns’, pp. 116–18; Innes, ‘Local acts’, pp. 78–108.

38 Journals of the House of Assembly of Jamaica (14 vols., Kingston, Jamaica, 1808–26), iii, p. 40, vi, p. 39. For America, see Olson, ‘Colonial legislatures’, pp. 559–60.

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48 Metcalf, Royal government, pp. 139–52; Greene, ‘“Of liberty and the colonies”’, pp. 82–102.

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51 They were Sir Adam Williamson (1791–5); the earl of Balcarres (1795–1801); Sir George Nugent (1801–6); Sir Eyre Coote (1806–8); and the duke of Manchester (1808–27).

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58 Manning, British colonial government, pp. 76–82, 488–509; Swinfen, Imperial control, pp. 20–31, 122–45. The British privy council was likewise a moderating influence over the Irish parliament and its anti-Catholic legislation: see below n. 77.

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69 The National Archives, CO137/101, Balcarres to Portland, 9 Feb. 1799, in Hall, ‘Political developments’, p. 53.

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72 See above n. 52.

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86 Hoppit, ‘Patterns’, pp. 121–3; Julian Hoppit, ‘The landed interest and the national interest, 1660–1800’, in Hoppit, ed., Parliaments, nations and identities, pp. 88–95.

87 Hoppit, ‘Patterns’, pp. 119, 121; Innes, ‘Social policy’, pp. 21–47; Innes, ‘Local acts’, pp. 90–101; Magennis, ‘Regulatory impulse’, pp. 54–72. For the culture, society, and economy of Jamaica in this period, see Brathwaite, Creole society, pp. 80–94, 266–95; Petley, Slaveholders in Jamaica, pp. 53–68.

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92 Burnard, Trevor G., ‘“A matron in rank, a prostitute in manners…”: the Manning divorce of 1741 and class, race, gender and the law in eighteenth-century Jamaica’, in Shepherd, Verene, ed., Working out slavery, pricing freedom: perspectives from the Caribbean, Africa and the African diaspora (London, 2002), pp. 133–52Google Scholar. The bill was later disallowed by the privy council in Britain because it was deemed ultra vires.

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95 Olson, ‘Colonial legislatures’, p. 566.