The Rise of Hypodescent in Seventeenth-Century English America

Abstract

The first chapter explores the seventeenth-century origins of hypodescent ideology within the English colonial context of the Tidewater Chesapeake of North America and islands in the Atlantic. The chapter examines the origins of mixed-race ideologies and people of blended ancestry, specifically those of mixed African, European, and Native American descent, or a combination thereof. European colonists commonly identified these mixed-heritage people as “Mulattoes” alongside other racial terms, such as “Negro” and “Indian.” This identification of mixed-heritage people in legislation presented their existence as a problem for the emerging colonial labor systems, namely slavery and indentured servitude. As more Africans and Europeans were brought into the colonies, mixed-heritage populations grew. The largest growth was in the Chesapeake provinces of Virginia and Maryland and in the island colonies of the Atlantic, including not only Barbados and Jamaica but also Bermuda and other islands in the Caribbean. The first anti-intermixture laws appear in the 1660s to regulate relationships between “Negroes,” “Indians,” and “whites” and attempted to keep certain groups enslaved or in prolonged bondage.