Managing “Property”

The Colonial Order of Things within Jamaican Probate Inventories

Datos Bibliográficos

ID13112263
AutoresChrister Petley (0000-0002-0616-1871, University of Southampton, autor de correspondencia)
Año2021
Volumen6
Número1
Páginas81-107
Fecha de publicación2021-01-29
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaJournal of Global Slavery (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 2405-8351 • E-ISSN: 2405-836X
EditorialBrill (PUBLISHER • NL)
DOI10.1163/2405836x-00601004
OpenAlexW3126560965
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas1
Referencias citadas36

Probate inventories helped to support the established social and economic order in colonial Jamaica. These documents were part of the legal process of winding up an estate after a death and presented an account of personal possessions that had belonged to a decedent. They facilitated the transfer of property to heirs and identified those parts of an estate that were available for the repayment of debts. The inventories contain lists of enslaved people, representing them as a type of “property,” and so these documents form a major part of the archive of Jamaican slavery. This article explores the practices, aims, and assumptions of the people who produced the inventories, developing our understanding of slaveholder culture in the British Caribbean and of the bureaucratic and accounting techniques that facilitated slave management

Bureaucracy · Business · Colonialism · Debt · Estate · Estate planning · Genealogy · Inheritance (genetic algorithm · Order (exchange · Personal property · Political science · Probate · Property (philosophy · Sociology · Caribbean history, culture, and politics · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · Cuban History and Society · History · Law · Finance