1791-July: Officials in Montego Bay arrested a man known as “Hosa, a Spanish Negro” after taking him off a Spanish sloop.

1791-July: Officials in Montego Bay arrested a man known as “Hosa, a Spanish Negro” after taking him off a Spanish sloop. Despite his protestations that he was a free man, he was placed in the local workhouse as a suspected runaway slave. This incident exemplified the heightened suspicion urban authorities felt toward foreign blacks and browns during the revolutionary period. Such actions were increasingly common as colonial powers sought to discourage the immigration of mobile, non-naturalized people of color.