This dissertation examines the causes of the rebelliousness of African bondmen in early colonial Jamaica. Specifically, this project explores the expectations that slaves who arrived in Jamaica had of slavery and it discusses how their understanding of what it meant to be a slave collided with the notions of white planters on the island. Although the African population in Jamaica was extremely heterogeneous, this study focuses specifically on the forced migrants from the Gold Coast of West Africa, which comprised portions of present day Ghana and Ivory Coast. “Expectations of Slavery” establishes a dialogue between scholars of slavery in Africa and scholars of slave resistance in the Americas whose work is mutually informative. Utilizing a variety of archival material in combination with comprehensive studies of Gold Coast communities, the dissertation details an array of experiences Gold Coast captives may have had on the West African coast during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century with slavery and white agents involved in the Atlantic slave trade. Using this discussion as a launching point, I argue that the African migrants who left the Gold Coast during this period had a fundamentally unique understanding what it meant to be a slave. Engaging scholarly debates regarding the rebelliousness of the early population of Africans in Jamaica, I suggest that this collision of expectations between Gold Coast captives and white planters was as important a factor in stimulating slave resistance as the topography of the island, international conflicts, and the low ratio of whites to blacks on the island.

Chapter 1 of “Expectations of Slavery” focuses on slavery and the slave trade on the Gold Coast and its immediate hinterland. Chapter 2 of the dissertation moves to Jamaica and explores the goals and expectations of white planters on the island. My purpose here is to set up a model for comparison with the first chapter. Chapter 3 discusses how the expectations of slavery of Gold Coast captives collided with the reality of slavery on Jamaican sugar plantations. The basic argument is that these unfulfilled expectations were an important factor in motivating collective slave resistance. Chapter 4 of this project explores the goals of the planter class in early colonial Jamaica and suggests that the ambitions of the planter elite stifled the social development of the island. The deficiencies that resulted from the actions of the planters had important repercussions on slave resistance that are explored in chapter 5 of the dissertation. When explored within the framework of the shortcomings of the island, it becomes clear that the methods of slave resistance Africans employed during the early colonial period were both appropriate and successful.