Settler Jamaica in the 1750s: A Social Portrait by Jack P. Greene (review)

Once in a while a study comes along that forces us to rethink everything that we previously knew about a particular subject. Jack P. Greene's Settler Jamaica in the 1750s is one of those studies. Although labeled "a social portrait," Greene's book is really more a meticulous quantitative analysis of the settler class in Jamaica during the 1750s. While that class had previously been defined as exclusively white, Greene expands the perimeters in order to include free people of color, thus providing a more thorough consideration of Jamaica's property owners and free residents. He admits that this approach is a provocative one meant to modernize Jamaican scholarship (8). This should be your first clue that this book is on a mission to reassess the stereotypical characterizations of Jamaica that are so prevalent in the current historiography. While past scholarship has traditionally regarded the island solely as a sugar monoculture built upon patriarchal absenteeism and African enslaved labor, Greene's study provides the reader with a refreshing perspective "less noticed by historians" (198). As he explains in his Prologue, Settler Jamaica is an attempt to amplify what we already know through fresh insight, by offering a "more refined and detailed portrait of a society at a crucial point in its formation" (7). As a result, Greene not only reconsiders the sources but also the lenses through which we often examine them.

At its core, Settler Jamaica challenges the principle tenet that Jamaica's economy was built upon a lasting tradition of sugar monoculture by showing that the island's economy was much more complex and diversified than previously understood. Yes, there were parishes that only grew sugar, but they were in the minority. The typical settler was not an absentee sugar planter who owned numerous properties; instead, two thirds to three quarters of the island's economic settlements were devoted to the production of a diverse set of commodities: provisions, livestock, and certain staple crops such as ginger, cotton, pimento, and coffee (69). Furthermore, contrary to popular belief, there were large amounts of unused land on the island. That isn't to say that eighteenth century Jamaica wasn't the sugar powerhouse that we have largely understood it to be. In fact, Greene agrees that Jamaica's prosperity depended upon the profits it gained from the production of sugar and its by-products. Sugar dominated the island's export economy, and over 9/10 of those exports went to the metropole (198). Furthermore, Greene agrees that the vast majority of the enslaved population labored within that industry, and the high mortality rates endemic within that industry created a dependency upon the trans-Atlantic trade. Lastly, land and slave ownership was a true oligarchy controlled largely by 159 individuals, most of whom were men (198).

Moreover, Greene's approach allows for more focus to be put on underemphasized points in the historiography. Through his focus on the island's vibrant and expanding economic diversity during the 1750s, we learn that there was a place for women and families within this society. While sugar plantations were predominantly owned by white men, more women were the proprietors of pens and urban dwellings than men. Women of color are especially visible among the lists of those owning the rents and taxed properties in Spanish Town and Kingston. In fact, Greene's discussions of Kingston and Spanish Town, as well as his larger examinations of the parishes of St. Andrew and St. Catherine, offer an interesting discussion of urban centers that are largely missing from studies of the colonial Caribbean.

Furthermore, while more traditional histories of Jamaica have painted the picture of temporary residents only interested in making their fortunes and returning to England, Greene reveals a substantial number of rural settler families in the outlying parishes who intended to create families and estates meant to be passed down to future generations. Considering the colony through the lenses of...