Black and British: A Forgotten History, from the acclaimed historian and star of 'Celebrity Traitors'

by David Olusoga

the Slave Code divided Barbados society along the lines of race. All white men of all classes were accorded rights that were systematically denied to black people. The planters, who had long held the white poor in deep disdain, especially Irish indentured servants and the convict labourers, understood that white racial unity was an insurance policy that might protect them in the event of a slave rebellion. They were therefore willing to deliberately blur the distinctions of classes in order to bring racial differences into sharper relief. The Atlantic slave trade had taken Africans from numerous and widely differing cultures and ethnic groups and defined them en masse as ‘negroes’. Now the pioneers of English plantation slavery, driven by their desperate desire for security, ushered all Europeans, irrespective of their ethnic or social backgrounds, into the new category of ‘white’; a term that had to be explained to newly arriving Europeans who were unfamiliar with the workings of the new slave society. The model quickly spread to other islands.