“’WEE ARE NOTT MEN OF ESTATES GOOD ENOUGH TO UNDERTAKE SUCH A BUISNESSE’: THE INFLUENCE OF THE ENGLISH EMPIRE ON SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY MARYLAND SLAVE LAWS”

Abstract

This dissertation explores the influence of the English Empire and the broader Atlantic World in the development of Maryland slavery in the seventeenth-century. Historians have largely explained the emergence of colonial laws as a result of elite planters reacting to economic conditions that made slavery profitable. However, that explanation makes little sense for the colony of Maryland, where few black or enslaved people existed when the legislature passed its most significant slave laws beginning in the early 1660s. The English Empire significantly influenced the timing and content of the Maryland slave laws. Maryland passed these laws just as Barbadians with experience in slavery migrated to Maryland and obtained key positions in government. Meanwhile, Maryland was under constant pressure due to conflicts with adversaries who viewed the colony as a threat to the religious and political order. Lord Baltimore remained in London and protected his colony by forging alliances with the Crown and powerful London interests, creating an avenue for London officials to influence events in Maryland. When Maryland passed its 1664 slave act, its leaders politely declined a request from Lord Baltimore to purchase slaves from the Crown sponsored slave trading company, the Royal Company of Adventurers, citing the fact that Maryland planters did not have the resources to commit to buying slaves. During the 1660s, Maryland sponsored tracts promoting immigration and indentured servitude, suggesting it still believed in the manorial system promoted by the Calvert family. When Lord Baltimore reported to the Lords of Trade more than a decade later, he cited indentured servitude, rather than slavery, as the economic foundation of the colony. In addition, Maryland courts continued to decide cases where black persons challenged their slave status on the basis of evidence about contracts, rather than on their race, both before and after its 1664 slave act establishing that black persons would be lifetime slaves. Such evidence suggests that Maryland’s slave laws were not passed in response to economic factors or the growth of slavery, but instead as part of Maryland's efforts to cooperate with Crown policies. After his 1660 Restoration, King Charles II and the English Empire moved to control and expand the Atlantic World slave trade. As part of these efforts, colonies throughout the English Atlantic World passed slave laws in the 1660s to set the stage for the Crown's expansion of race-based slavery. Thus, Maryland’s laws emerged as part of a sequence of such laws after 1660 in colonies such as Barbados, Virginia, Jamaica and Maryland, despite stark differences in the development of slavery, as part of a Crown effort to encourage Barbados’ model elsewhere.