Review of 'Children of Uncertain Fortune: Mixed-Race Jamaicans in Britain and the Atlantic Family, 1733-1833'

Abstract

Daniel Livesay's first monograph comes at an opportune moment. With the recent release of digital projects such as the University of Glasgow's Runaway Slaves in Britain database, historical attention has focused in on the lives of people of colour in early modern Britain. Children of Uncertain Fortune explores the movement of mixed-race Jamaicans to and from the British Isles during the long 18th century and how they fundamentally challenged ideas about kinship and family membership. As if in response to earlier calls for the wider study of Atlantic families, Livesay's work breathes new life into our understanding of race, kinship and family in the Atlantic world. Livesay identifies four phases of mixed-race Jamaicans' involvement in Jamaican society and the British Atlantic empire. Beginning in 1733, the first phase was characterised by the Jamaican assembly's attempts to augment the island's white population by privileging the status of mixed-race individuals. After Tacky's Revolt in 1760, Jamaican leadership's attitudes toward free people of colour shifted during a second phase which coincided with the growth of abolitionist movements and new concerns over family formation in Britain and the Atlantic empire. The third phase, occurring in the 1780s, saw the vilification of migrants of colour in Britain and the condemnation of inheritance practices. Finally, the early nineteenth century brought the social and familial exclusion of mixed-race Jamaicans in the British Atlantic world. What began as a society that exhibited fluidity in racial status and kinship in the early 1730s ultimately led to the hardening of differentiation in race and familial membership by the early 19th century.