Slave Codes:
The
Legalisation
of Racialised
Violence
Mrs. Magana
Objectives
The students will be able to examine the causes and effect of slave
codes in the British Caribbean
Slave Codes: The Legalisation of
Racialised Violence
• Fearing a potential uprising or revolt by a Black majority, the planter
class needed to ensure social control of the slave community that was
overwhelmingly hostile and unwilling to accept their subordinate
status.
• British planters influenced the construction of laws, known as ‘slave
codes,’ based on sixteenth-century English common laws that dealt
with English felons, vagrants, vagabonds, and servants that absconded
from their duties.
Slave Codes: The Legalisation of
Racialised Violence
Note:
Alongside the judicial laws for social control, were unwritten laws and
customs that further brutalized the living conditions of Black
communities.
In conjunction with legal statutes, these traditions and customs were
created to convince Blacks to accept the European perception that
Blacks were inferior or else be punished.
As seen in the Spanish, French, Dutch, and Danish colonial islands,
these laws quickly came to define the nature of slavery, the position of
the enslaved, and the extent of power of slaveholders.
The Barbados slave code
• One of the earliest
established
colonial laws in the
Atlantic was for the
island of Barbados
in 1661, known
as An Act for
Better Ordering
and Governing of
Negroes. The
Barbados slave
code established
that enslaved
Africans be treated
as chattel.
The Barbados Slave Code
• The need for control and subjugation of Blacks was supported by
notions of white supremacy and ultimately, any act of violence (as
self-defense or otherwise) and legal rights for representation were in
the hands of the slaveholders:
• [N}egroes [are] an heathenish brutish and an uncertain dangerous
kind of people…
The Barbados Slave Code
• Slave codes gave slaveholders the legal right to torture and murder
Black subjects of colonial society without negative consequence:
• If any Negro or slave whatsoever shall offer any violence to any
Christian by striking or the like, such Negro or slave shall for his and
her first offence be severely whipped by the Constable. For his second
offence of that nature he shall be severely whipped his nose slit, and
be burned in some part of his face with a hot iron.
The Barbados Slave Code
• And being brutish slaves, [they] deserve not, for the baseness
of their condition, to be tried by the legal trial of twelve men of
their peers, as the subjects of England are.
• And it is further enacted and ordained that if any Negro or other
slave under punishment by his master unfortunately shall suffer
in life or member, which seldom happens, no person
whatsoever shall be liable to any fine therefore.”*
The Barbados Slave
Code
• *In this case, ‘Christian’
means any white
(European) person,
regardless of class status.
What is also important to
note is that sanctioned
violence included all social
aspects of blackness in
colonial society, whether
free (i.e., ‘Negro’) or
enslaved.
The Barbados Slave
Code
• Ultimately, these codes
initiated a set of government
sanctioned racial
discrimination and more
importantly, racialised
violence that not only
affected enslaved Africans
but all Blacks, including
those born free or legally
manumitted (released from
enslavement) for nearly two
centuries.
The Barbados Slave
Code
• The Barbados Slave Code
was adapted to Jamaica
and other British colonies
in the Caribbean and even
to the South Carolina
colony as the legal basis
for treating enslaved
people in many parts of
the North American
thirteen colonies.
The Barbados Slave
Code
• Throughout the late seventeenth into much of the eighteenth
century, changes to the slave codes were only enacted to further
restrict the few liberties of the slave community and make their
lives worse. However, due to the extreme work conditions and
unregulated murders of enslaved Africans that made for a high
Black mortality rate, it wasn’t until the 1780s when some islands
implemented some reforms intended to improve the material
conditions of the enslaved, reduce the mortality and promote a
natural increase in population.
The Barbados Slave
Code
• The modifications were never consistently applied and thus, the
conditions of Blacks did not notably change or improve until after
well after slavery ended.
Note:
• The British Islands prohibited marriages;
• In most of the Islands, slaves were not allowed to be taught
how to read and write;
• In the British Islands, slaves were with no doubt forbidden from
becoming Christians because the planters felt that Christianity would
lead to emancipation or deprive the owner of full rights over his
slaves.
Note:
Punishments:
• All punishments that slaves had to deal with were very severe,
despite who it came from.
• The death penalty was awarded just by a click of a finger, for some
very minor offences. For instance, one of the laws of Barbados in
1688 made slave thefts of more than shilling punishable by death.
Note:
The death penalty was not only given in the form of hanging, but also
by breaking slaves into pieces, and even burning them, which occurred
in Montserrat in 1699. These forms of punishment were also applied to
runaway slaves.
In Jamaica in 1740, if a slave so happen to strike a white
man, he was put death by burning. Another common
punishment for this act, was the cutting off of the hand.
Note:
These barbarous methods of punishing slaves were chiefly applied to
slaves that rebelled in some way or those that ran away. With respect
to punishment for runaway slaves, there was a scale for the severity of
the punishment depending on how long the slaved absented himself
from work.
For instance, in 1717 The Barbados Legislature prescribed cutting off of
the foot for one month’s absence, which rose to death for a year’s
absence.
Note:
Penalties for harboring runaways were also sever. In St. Vincent by a
law of 1767, 50 lashes were given for the first offence, rising to 150
for the third offence.
They were even punishments for revolting, or even plotting revolt.
The maximum penalty for this action was death by hanging. One of
the earliest slave revolts was in Barbados in 1649. Eighteen (18) of the
rebels were executed.
Note:
Despite burning, hanging etc., whipping was still the main form of
inflicting punishment upon a slave.
If a slave did not step aside for a white man in the street he was
whipped.
Usually had to be whipped 39 times, however this was rarely abide
by, which therefore lead to the mutilation or death of that slave.
The act of fining or imprisonment were not applicable punishments
for slaves, due to obvious reasons.