1792-May: The Jamaican Assembly passed a restrictive law governing the employment of “foreign” enslaved people who had arrived on the island since the outbre…

1792-May: The Jamaican Assembly passed a restrictive law governing the employment of “foreign” enslaved people who had arrived on the island since the outbreak of the Haitian Revolution. The act effectively prohibited the purchase or hire of any enslaved person brought from Saint-Domingue after August 23, 1791. Refugees were permitted to keep their servants only in “sea-port towns,” with a strict ban on allowing them to enter the rural interior. Authorities feared that these French-speaking arrivals would contaminate the local enslaved population with radical notions of liberty. This geographic containment strategy illustrates the plantocracy’s recognition that urban environments were already dangerous “cauldrons of insurrection.”