The planters and their slaves: attitudes toward Negro slaves in colonial South Carolina and Jamaica

The purpose of this thesis has been to study attitudes held toward Negro slaves in the British colonies of South Carolina and Jamaica. Slave populations greatly exceeded the number of whites in each colony and broadly similar views on race and slavery seem to have emerged. It is the prime purpose of this study to attempt a comparative analysis of attitudes towards slavery and slaves in these two colonies before the American Revolution.

The study focuses on the opinions of slaveholding planters in an effort to ascertain an answer to three question: what were the dominant or fundamental attitudes whites held toward blacks, how were these attitudes similar or different between the respective colonies, and how did these views affect the history of each colony?