ABSTRACT
The years between 1838 and 1865 were transitional in the process of class formation in Jamaica. More than 300,000 ex-slaves were free to seek and engage in new forms of productive activity. After 1838 planters, in an effort to hold laborers nearby, were often willing to sell idle lands to ex-slaves. Other freedmen staked out unused sites to plant gardens and graze livestock. By 1850 a geographically mobile urban subproletariat was distinguishable in Jamaica. Divorced from either agriculture or industry and concentrated in an urban space, many were willing to move from the island-bound labor market to an external site of capital construction and expansion. Released from their role in agricultural production, Jamaicans had been rendered geographically mobile, and barriers imposed by state boundaries were ignored as laborers exercised their right to negotiate the sale of their labor in the market they chose.
