70 CECILY JONES

the profits from slave-produced sugar that observers soon proclaimed
Barbados one of the richest spots in the world. By the close of the seventeenth
century, unfree African labour formed the backbone of the Barbadian plantation
labour policy. Observing the phenomenal success of the Barbadian plantocracy,
planters on neighboring islands tried to follow suit.2
 Slave societies throughout the Americas enacted comprehensive Slave
Codes governing the master-slave relationship. Enslaved Africans were
legally defined as a species of property. As property, they were denied
judicial rights accorded to humans. The Codes further established slave-
owners' absolute right of ownership in their human property, denied the
enslaved freedom of will, movement or expression, ensured the absolute
submission of the enslaved to the authority of their owner, and functioned
as powerful mechanisms through which slave-owners could exert control
over virtually every single aspect of the enslaved's existence. Slaves could
be bought, sold, mortgaged or leased according to their owner's will,
without regard for their familial bonds and obligations. Masters could inflict
violent punishment or torture against male and female slaves alike, without
fear of judicial intervention, and even the murder of a slave might attract a
mere monetary fine. Slave Codes compelled owners to provide their
enslaved labour force with shelter, food and clothing allowances, but
beyond these basic provisions, imposed few other requirements on the
master. Plantation labour regimes were harsh, and enslaved field workers -
men, women and children alike were forced to toil for long hours, from
can'tt see to can't see;' leisure time was limited and entirely at the owner's
dispensation.3
 Slave Codes gave owners legal mastery over the enslaved, but that
authority was always coloured with fear of resistance. Resistance originated
in the hinterlands of Africa, continued on the long and terrifying Middle
Passage, and persisted wherever slavery existed. Resistance assumed
diverse forms, ranging from mundane acts of defiance to outright violence,
such as the successful 1792 slave revolution in the French colony of Santo
Dominga.4 Powerful campaigns in England and America by anti-slavery
societies forced intense parliamentary debates on the issue, and despite
vigorous opposition by the Caribbean planters and their Westminster allies,
Wilberforce's Abolition of the Slave Trade Bill, was passed in 1807, sounding
the death-knell of one of the most horrendous and sustained acts of genocide

2 See Dunn (1973) and Beckles (1990).
3 For a comprehensive overview of the Slave Codes of the Caribbean, see Goveia
(1970) and Higginbotham (1978). The personal writings of slave owners also provide
insight into the nature of the master-enslaved relationship. See, for instance, Hall
(1989).
4 See Genovese (1979). On the nature of gendered resistance to slavery in the
Caribbean, see Mathurin Mair (1975); and Beckles (1989).