Loyal Subject or 'Alien of Dangerous Description': Race, Gender and Citizenship in Colonial Jamaica, 1798-1825

In 1798, Charlotte Lecesne fled from revolutionary Haiti to Jamaica with her family. Shortly after her arrival, she gave birth to a son, Lewis Lecesne. Over two decades later, in 1824, Jamaican authorities labeled Lecesne an “alien of dangerous description,” charged him with arming slaves and conspiring to foment rebellion in the colony, and sought to deport him based of his alleged foreign nativity. In response to the expulsion order, Lewis asserted his birth in Jamaica through legal channels. Authorities recorded depositions from his mother, sister, caregivers, passengers from the time of his family’s arrival, local neighbors, merchants, and planters. While the majority of the testimonies supported Lecesne’s birth in Jamaica to Haitian parents, officials repeatedly cast doubt on the women’s depositions, and in some cases extracted false information through coercion. Analyzing records from the British Parliamentary Papers and records from the British National Archives, this paper examines the racial and gender dynamics of legal depositions presented by free men and women of color regarding citizenship in colonial Jamaica.