Managing “Property”

Abstract Probate inventories helped to support the established social and economic order in colonial Jamaica. These documents were part of legal process winding up an estate after a death presented account personal possessions that had belonged decedent. They facilitated transfer property heirs identified those parts available for repayment debts. The contain lists enslaved people, representing them as type “property,” so these form major archive Jamaican slavery. This article explores practices, aims, assumptions people who produced inventories, developing our understanding slaveholder culture British Caribbean bureaucratic accounting techniques slave management.