Race and Slavery: The Growth of "Customs of the Country" in Bermuda, 1616-1669

Clarence Maxwell

This paper examines how those laws and practices, called here “the customs of the country,” came to govern the lives of “Negroes” and “mulatto” colonists in Bermuda. It places these developments within a context of labor and plantation priorities, as well as changes in “English” colonial attitudes. From the early 1600s, race relations were phlegmatic. These relations, and connected laws, became less and less so as the century progressed. By 1669, there existed in Bermuda a system that both enslaved and socially subordinated people according to race. [WP# 98014]