Urban Ambiguity—Slave or Free?

This chapter demonstrates that although urban slavery was exploitative to a high degree, it lacked the killing mechanism of the gang system peculiar to the rural sugar plantations. Nevertheless, death was the leitmotif in the two most deadly locations—sugar plantations, through excessive work, and Caribbean towns, through disease. The two largest urban centres Kingston, Jamaica and Bridgetown, Barbados, were anomalous and characterized by free majorities of whites and coloureds (taken together) who intermingled residentially with their slaves. Many of the slaves were able to negotiate their own wages, and pay rent for their accommodation away from the properties occupied by their owners/employers. The port towns were vital to the sugar economy, articulating the colonies politico-economically with Britain.