'Prodigious riches': The wealth of Jamaica before the American Revolution

Burnard, T. G.

Abstract

When eighteenth-century Britons contemplated their possessions in the West Indies what struck them most was the wealth of these small tropical islands. This chapter reports new estimates about how much wealth Europeans possessed in Jamaica on the eve of the American Revolution. It assumes that slaves owned no property, partly because that is close to the truth and partly because the theoretical problems in assessing the wealth of people who have already been included in wealth estimates as property are intractable. The chapter follows eighteenth-century rather than modern conventions in assuming that all Jamaican wealth accrued to its small white population—contemporary marvelling about the wealth of Jamaica was predicated on Whites being the only people of importance in the island.

Citation

Burnard, T. G. (2022). 'Prodigious riches': The wealth of Jamaica before the American Revolution. In J. Black (Ed.), The Atlantic Slave Trade : Volume III : Eighteenth Century (265-283). London: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003362494

• Online Publication Date: Dec 30, 2022
• Publication Date: Dec 30, 2022
• Deposit Date: Dec 24, 2022
• Publisher: Routledge
• Pages: 265-283
• Series Title: The Atlantic Slave Trade
• Book Title: The Atlantic Slave Trade : Volume III : Eighteenth Century
• Chapter Number: 12
• ISBN: 9781032423678
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003362494
• Public URL: https://hull-repository.worktribe.com/output/4161602