This dissertation conceives of Jamaica, the wealthiest and largest slave-holding colony in the Atlantic World, as emblematic of the extraordinarily lucrative, yet profoundly exploitative practices that forged colonial societies throughout the British Empire. By 1768, nearly 167,000 enslaved people lived on the island. I demonstrate that free women of European and African descent were crucial investors in the expansion of American slavery, from which they derived considerable financial, legal, and social benefits. In addition to inheriting slaves, women across the social spectrum actively bought, sold, managed, and punished slaves. As consumers and purveyors of enslaved people, they increased the demand for the forcible transport of more slaves to America, and helped to intensify the British slave trade. 

My study offers an alternative to the highly gendered commonplace assumption that free women were marginal to the growth of slavery. Using government papers, probated wills and inventories, personal correspondence, and court records, I analyze the crucial roles they played in shaping the contours of imperial settlement. This research suggests that patriarchal and paternalistic ideologies were less important to the formation of slaveholding societies in America than has commonly been understood. While colonists sustained the hierarchal power relations that were inherent in patriarchal organizations, they altered the character of these dynamics. Controlling a numerically dominant enslaved population took precedence over policing gender differences. More egalitarian relations between free men and women facilitated British colonialism and the propagation of chattel slavery in America