7 - Colonizing the State

Summary

A slave society needed different laws from those of the ‘mother country’ and from the earliest days legal systems demarcated between the free and the enslaved. The Whig hegemony based on consent that Long had grown up with could not be practiced in Jamaica: only dominance and coercion were possible. An almost absolute authority for the slave-owner over ‘his property’ was required, but with the additional support, when necessary, of the colonial state. Two years after Long had settled on the island, a major rebellion, Tacky’s rebellion, broke out and was only defeated with the aid of the British army and navy and the Maroons. This hardened Long’s understanding of racial difference and the security needs of a slave society. An active member of the House of Assembly, his representation of it in the History was designed to clear the slave-owners of all blame and he named a particular group of Africans, Coromantees, as the villains. At the same time he struggled with metropolitan authority, believing in the rights of ‘free-born Englishmen’. What autonomy could be secured for the colonial state in its mission to defend white planter power?