Jamaica Ladies

“Far from the traditional story of oppression and disempowered women, . . . Walker’s study offers an alternative narrative that recognizes ‘women as powerful agents of slavery and colonialism’ whilst calling into question ‘normative European gender ideologies’. . . . Walker makes a significant contribution to scholarship by forcing us to reconsider old archive sources from the perspective of gender studies.”—Eighteenth Century Studies

“In exploring the gendering of late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century Jamaica and the lives of those who perpetuated and profited from chattel slavery Jamaica Ladies demonstrates unequivocally that we cannot understand the development of colonial society and the system of enslavement on which it depended without thinking about the role that free and freed women played in that process.”—Journal of British Studies

“Jamaica Ladies is an outstanding study of gender and power in early British Jamaica, original and frequently startling in its evidence and arguments. Focusing on free and freed 'handmaidens of empire,' it reveals a world in which women cemented slavery at the heart of colonial economies and societies.” — Ellen Hartigan-O'Connor, University of California, Davis

“Building on extensive archival research, Jamaica Ladies is a groundbreaking exploration of African-, British-, and Jamaica-born women who carved out lives for themselves and others at the center of Britain’s largest slave society. Christine Walker has adeptly shown that we cannot fully comprehend Jamaica unless we understand these free and freed women.” — Simon Newman, University of Glasgow

“As Christine Walker demonstrates, free and freed women — always reliant on enslaved labor for their commercial and agricultural pursuits and household services — enjoyed personal benefits while both entrenching slavery and challenging the binary distinction between black and white. Jamaica Ladies makes an impressive and innovative contribution to our understanding of the gendering of colonial society.” — Catherine Hall, University College London