Tropical Leviathan Slavery, Society, and Security in Jamaica, 1770-1840

The colonial Jamaican state was immensely wealthy, but it was a society consumed by fear. The White population feared the possibility of enslaved rebellion and foreign invasion, and the Black population feared their cruel treatment as overworked labourers on Jamaica's brutal but economically productive sugar plantations. With the wealthy White population investing heavily in security to protect themselves from the rebelling enslaved majority, it was a society at war. The wealth of the plantation system meant that White Jamaicans and their imperial representatives were able to secure the finances for this until the last decade of the eighteenth century. By the early nineteenth century, however, the cost was proving increasingly burdensome, and the great slave rebellion of 1831-32 proved fatal to the financial and political viability of the colonial state, leading to emancipation in the mid-1830s.

Tropical Leviathan re-evaluates the political and economic history of the colonial Jamaican state in the tumultuous age of revolution and abolition. With a large body of previous unknown data, it provides empirical evidence of a functioning colonial state that, contrary to previous interpretations, was far from declining in the years immediately before the abolition of the slave trade in 1807. Aaron Graham provides in-depth analysis of the ways in which Jamaica's economy attempted but eventually failed to provide the resources that would maintain Jamaica as a functioning plantation state and explains how the cost of securing the colonial state against enslaved opposition eventually led to near-state bankruptcy and to enslaved emancipation.

Tropical Leviathan is a comprehensive study of the complex intersections between slavery and security in a slave society and an important re-evaluation of Jamaica in the age of revolution and abolition. The making, breaking, and remaking of the colonial state emerges as key in the rise and fall of slavery in Jamaica.

Aaron Graham, Former Lecturer in Early Modern British Economic History, University College London

The late Aaron Graham (1984-2023) was a Lecturer in Early Modern British Economic History at University College London. He published extensively in the fields of early eighteenth century British economic and political history, Jamaican history, and in the history of banking. He won the Parliamentary History Essay Prize in 2017 and the Emile Lousse Essay Prize in 2018. His previous works include Corruption, Party, and Government in Britain, 1702-13, The British Fiscal-Military States, 1660-c.1783, edited with Patrick Walsh, and Bills of Union.

Preface, Trevor BurnardAuthor's Preface1. Introduction: 'When he raiseth up himself, the mighty are afraid'Part I: The colonial state2. The purposes of power: society and fear3. The levers of power: politics and legislation4. The sinews of power: taxation and the economyPart II: Intermezzo5. 'The sword of him that layeth at him cannot hold'Part III: The military state6. Imperial military: defending the indefensible7. Colonial military: the tropical way of war8. Supplies: public service and private profitPart IV: Intermezzo9. 'His scales are his pride, shut up together as with a close seal'Part V: The fiscal state10. Fiscal: the limits of the fiscal constitution11. Public credit: a colonial financial revolution12. Currency: unintended consequencesPart IV: Conclusion13. Conclusion: 'he esteemeth iron as straw, and brass as rotten wood'Appendix I: Governors, Commanders in Chief, and Receivers-GeneralAppendix II: Interpreting Jamaican financesAppendix III: Reconstructing Caribbean economies