ABSTRACT
In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the mulatto was, among other things, a legal entity. Acts of Assembly Passed in the Island of Jamaica (1769) cites an ‘An Act to secure the Freedom of Elections, and directing the Proceedings in the Choice of Members to serve in Assemblies in this Island; to qualify Persons elected to serve in future Assemblies in this Island; and to ascertain who shall be deemed Mulattoes for the future’ (Acts, 1769: 1.179). Enfranchisement was partly a matter of descent-which we would probably now refer to as ‘race’—and the various levels of descent were determined by statute. For this reason perhaps, the tenth clause of this Act is quite clear on the matter:
. . . for the better ascertaining who shall be deemed Mulattoes within the Intent and Meaning of this Act, be it further enacted by the Authority aforesaid, That no Person who is not above Three Degrees removed in a lineal Descent from the Negroe Ancestor exclusive, shall be allowed to vote or poll in Elections; and no one shall be deemed a Mulatto after the Third Generation, as aforesaid, but that they shall have all the Privileges and Immunities of his Majesty’s white Subjects of this Island, provided they are brought up in the Christian Religion. (Acts, 1769: I.179)
Clearly, there is nothing self-evident or ‘natural’ about ‘who shall be deemed Mulattoes.’ The point at which one passes from brown into white seems arbitrary-why three degrees removed from the negro ancestor? Why not two, or four? So we may refer to ‘mulatto-ness’ and whiteness as allocations rather than identities, although they may well be identity-forming, since they govern who may vote, who may give evidence against whom, and who is entitled to the other privileges and immunities automatically granted to His Majesty’s (white) subjects. In this same volume of Acts, we fi nd that individuals may acquire racial status through the passage of private Acts granting mulattoes ‘the same Rights and Privileges with English Subjects born of white Parents.’1 So in 1738, Susanna Augier, ‘a Mullatto [sic] Woman, of the Parish of Kingston,’ must have appeared before the Jamaican House of Assembly, or (more likely) hired a lawyer to appear for her, in order that she and her two children might heretofore enjoy the rights and privileges of Englishmen, born of white ancestors (Acts, 1769: 1.15). If passed, such Private Acts released the petitioners from legal disabilities which were intended ‘to prevent the Inconveniences arising from the exhorbitant [sic] Grants and Devises, made by White Persons to Negroes, and the Issue of Negroes, and to restrain and limit such Grants and Devises’ (2.60). Such disabilities were intended to ensure that property remained in the control of white people, and was not passed down to members of a burgeoning class of increasingly indeterminate individuals termed ‘mulattoes’ or ‘people of colour’:
And whereas it is the Policy of every good Government to restrain Individuals from disposing of Property to the particular Prejudice and Detriment of their Heirs and Relations, and to the Injury and Damage of the Community in general; May it please your most Sacred Majesty that it may be enacted, be it therefore enacted . . . [that] no Lands, Negro, Mulattoes, or other Slaves, Cattle, Stock, Money or other real or personal Estate, in this Island whatsoever, shall be given, granted to, or declared to be in Trust for, or to the Use of, or devised by any white Person to any Negro whatever, or to any Mulatto or other Person not being their own Issue born in lawful Wedlock, and being the Issue of a Negro, and deemed [sic] a Mulatto, according to the true intent and Meaning of an Act, intitled An Act to Secure the Freedom of Elections . . . (2.60).
