Editing Barbados Slave Code (section)

==Details==
The slave code described black people as "an heathenish, brutish and an uncertaine, dangerous kind of people".<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Bernhard|first=Virginia|date=1996|title=Bids for freedom: Slave resistance and rebellion plots in Bermuda, 1656–1761|url=http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01440399608575192|journal=Slavery & Abolition|language=en|volume=17|issue=3|pages=185–208|doi=10.1080/01440399608575192|issn=0144-039X|url-access=subscription}}</ref> 

The Barbados slave code ostensibly sought to protect slaves from cruel masters ("the Negroes and other Slaves be well provided for, and guarded from the Cruelties and Insolences of themselves or other ill-tempered People or Owners"<ref name=rawlin/>) and masters (and "any Christian") from unruly slaves; in practice, it provided extensive protections for masters, but not for slaves. The law required masters to provide each slave with one set of clothing per year, but it set no standards for slaves' diet, housing, or working conditions. It denied slaves, as chattels, even basic [[human rights]] guaranteed{{Citation needed|date=April 2025}} under [[common law]], such as the right to life. It allowed the slaves' owners to do entirely as they wished to their slaves for anything considered a misdeed, including mutilating them and burning them alive, without fear of reprisal.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Nicholson|first=Bradley J.|date=1994|title=Legal Borrowing and the Origins of Slave Law in the British Colonies|url=https://heinonline.org/HOL/Page?handle=hein.journals/amhist38&id=48&div=&collection=|journal=American Journal of Legal History|volume=38|issue=1 |pages=38–54|doi=10.2307/845322 |jstor=845322 |url-access=subscription}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal|last=Brown|first=Vincent|date=2003|title=Spiritual Terror and Sacred Authority in Jamaican Slave Society|url=http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/714005263|journal=Slavery & Abolition|language=en|volume=24|issue=1|pages=24–53|doi=10.1080/714005263|s2cid=144362132 |issn=0144-039X|url-access=subscription}}</ref><ref name=":0">{{Cite journal|last=Handler|first=Jerome S.|date=2016-04-02|title=Custom and law: The status of enslaved Africans in seventeenth-century Barbados|url=https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0144039X.2015.1123436|journal=Slavery & Abolition|language=en|volume=37|issue=2|pages=233–255|doi=10.1080/0144039X.2015.1123436|s2cid=59506865 |issn=0144-039X|url-access=subscription}}</ref> For example, if a Black person was found guilty of inflicting violence against a white person, the code stipulated that they should be "severely whipped", have "his or her nose slit and shall be burnt in the face", while the next offence shall be "punished by death".<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Beckles|first=Hilary McD.|date=2017-01-02|title=King Cuffee's Stool, General Bussa's Horse and Barrow's Plane: The Struggle for a 'Just Society' in Barbados|url=https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00086495.2017.1302146|journal=Caribbean Quarterly|language=en|volume=63|issue=1|pages=7–28|doi=10.1080/00086495.2017.1302146|s2cid=164653863 |issn=0008-6495|url-access=subscription}}</ref> However, "if any Man shall of wantonness, or only of Bloody Mindedness, or Cruel Intention, willfully kill a Negro or other Slave of his own, he shall pay into the Publick Treasury ... if he shall so kill another Man's, He shall pay to the Owner of the Negro, double the Value, and into the Publick Treasury ... And he shall further by the next Justice of the Peace, be bound to the good Behaviour".<ref name=rawlin/>

The Barbados Assembly reenacted the slave code, with minor modifications, in 1676 titled as "A Supplemental Act to a Former Act for the Better Ordering and Governing of Negroes", 1682, and 1688 titled as "An Act for the Governing of Negroes".<ref>https://slaveryandfreedomlaws.lib.unb.ca/laws/barbados-1688</ref><ref>{{Cite journal|last=Fisher|first=Linford D.|date=2014|title='Dangerous Designes': The 1676 Barbados Act to Prohibit New England Indian Slave Importation|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5309/willmaryquar.71.1.0099|journal=The William and Mary Quarterly|volume=71|issue=1|pages=99–124|doi=10.5309/willmaryquar.71.1.0099|jstor=10.5309/willmaryquar.71.1.0099 |issn=0043-5597|url-access=subscription}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal|last=Rugemer|first=Edward B.|date=2013|title=The Development of Mastery and Race in the Comprehensive Slave Codes of the Greater Caribbean during the Seventeenth Century|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5309/willmaryquar.70.3.0429|journal=The William and Mary Quarterly|volume=70|issue=3|pages=429–458|doi=10.5309/willmaryquar.70.3.0429|jstor=10.5309/willmaryquar.70.3.0429 |issn=0043-5597|url-access=subscription}}</ref> The slave codes (not digitised) are available at [[The National Archives (United Kingdom)|The National Archives]].<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C9559595|title=Forwards with his comments manuscript copy of Act 'to repeal several Acts and Clauses of Acts respecting Slaves and for consolidating and bringing into one Act the several Laws relating thereto and for the better order and government of slaves and for giving them further protection and security; for altering the mode of trial of those charged with capital and other offences, and for other purposes. With other enclosures'|publisher=The National Archives|date=1826}}</ref> The laws of colonial Barbados to 1699, including those comprising the Slave Code, were collected in a book available online, ''The laws of Barbados collected in one volume by William Rawlin, of the Middle-Temple''. In particular No. 329 details the 1688 Act (the entry for the original 1661 Act, No. 57, reads only "Repealed by Act 330"—an error, actually 329). <ref name=rawlin>{{Cite book |title=The laws of Barbados collected in one volume by William Rawlin, of the Middle-Temple, London, Esquire, and now clerk of the Assembly of the said island |chapter=No. 329. An ACT for the Governing of Negroes (10 July 1688) |author=William Rawlin |via=University of Michigan Library, Early English Books Online Text Creation Partnership |date=1699 |url= https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebo2/A30866.0001.001/1:8.281?rgn=div2;view=fulltext}}</ref>

<blockquote>"No person of the Hebrew Nation residing in any Sea-Port Town of this Island, shall keep or employ any Negro or other Slave ... for any Use or Service whatsoever."<ref name=rawlin/></blockquote> 

In 2021 the [[British Library]] digitised and made public 19th-century newspapers of Barbados (the originals remaining on the island) hoping that the [[Crowdsourcing|public would help to find]] information about individual slaves on the island; names and descriptions were only made known for slaves who revolted or escaped, and are lost to history unless recorded in newspapers.<ref>{{Cite news |title=Secrets of rebel slaves in Barbados will finally be revealed |author=<!--not stated--> |work=The Observer |date=18 July 2021 |url= https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jul/18/secrets-of-rebel-slaves-in-barbados-will-finally-be-revealed}}</ref>