Episode 236: Daniel Livesay, Mixed-Race Britons & the Atlantic Family

Who do we count as family?

If a relative was born in a foreign place and one of their parents was of a different race? Would they count as family?

Eighteenth-century Britons asked themselves these questions. As we might suspect, their answers varied by time and whether they lived in Great Britain, North America, or the Caribbean.

Daniel Livesay, an Associate Professor of History at Claremont McKenna College in California, helps us explore the evolution of British ideas about race with details from his book Children of Uncertain Fortune: Mixed-Race Jamaicans in Britain and the Atlantic Family, 1733-1833.

About the Show

Ben Franklin’s World is a podcast about early American history.

It is a show for people who love history and for those who want to know more about the historical people and events that have impacted and shaped our present-day world.

Each episode features a conversation with a historian who helps us shed light on important people and events in early American history.

Ben Franklin’s World is a production of the Omohundro Institute.

Episode Summary

Daniel Livesay, an Associate Professor of History at Claremont McKenna College in California, helps us explore the evolution of British ideas about race with details from his book Children of Uncertain Fortune: Mixed-Race Jamaicans in Britain and the Atlantic Family, 1733-1833.

As we investigate eighteenth-century British notion of race and family, Dan reveals details about Jamaica, where it fit within the British Empire, and why it’s an ideal place to study ideas about race; How we can see ideas about race evolve by studying the lives of colonial Jamaica’s elite, mixed-race population; And, why and how studying the Caribbean can help us better understand early American history.

What You’ll Discover

  • Jamaica and the British Empire
  • Demographics of colonial Jamaica
  • Interracial relationships in eighteenth-century Jamaica
  • Colonial Jamaican views on mixed-race people and relationships
  • British legislators’ concern over Jamaica’s slave-majority demographics
  • Colonial Jamaica’s 3-generations law on whiteness
  • British law versus colonial Jamaican law
  • Opportunities for mixed-race Jamaicans
  • Navigating the British world as a mixed-race Briton
  • The English abolition movement
  • The American Revolution and taking stock of mixed-race people
  • Jamaican ideas on the North American mainland
  • How the Caribbean can help us better understand early America

 

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Time Warp PlainTime Warp Question

In your opinion, what might have happened if the American Revolution had never happened? If the Revolution had not sent black loyalists out into the broader British Atlantic World, how would British conceptions of race and identity have evolved differently?

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