Intercolonial Exchanges: Slavery and the Environment in British Florida and Jamaica, 1763-1783

Dr Sami Pinarbasi, ECR Fellow 2022-23

The frontier colony of British Florida and the longer-settled island of Jamaica are rarely analysed in dialogue with one another, despite their entangled histories of slavery and Black freedom between the years 1763 and 1783. Slave traders trafficked countless enslaved people between these colonies, yet little is known about the environmental and spatial effects of this intercolonial economic system. Sami’s project will contribute significantly to debates on colonial slavery, the role of Black people (and Black slaves in particular) to imagine slave societies, and the relationships between notions of land, space, and the environment.

The project’s first objective is to uncover the importance of smaller-scale migration in the slave trade, alongside the transatlantic crossing, in shaping the geographies and cultures of the African diaspora in British Florida and Jamaica, while the project’s second objective is to explore how enslaved people connected to Florida and Jamaica’s unique ecology.

The project uses private journals, colonial travelogues, and sketches of British Florida and Jamaica located in the JRRI.