The unsettled Atlantic World of James Pinnock: The dynamics of race and class on the physical, social, and occupation mobilities of an eighteenth-century Jamaican houseful

Abstract

ABSTRACT Using the 1758–1794 diary of James Pinnock, an Anglo-Jamaican lawyer, we can examine the Pinnock houseful: himself, his wife and daughters, enslaved domestic servants, and enslaved plantation laborers. I argue that the Atlantic World offered unique opportunities for physical, social, and occupational mobility of both white AND black members of the colonial houseful. James had privileged mobility via his race and profession, evidenced in his movements between the colony and metropole, and eventually his Grand Tour of France and Italy. For some of Pinnock’s slaves, skilled occupations granted some physical mobility, and they deployed that mobility into opportunities for escape. But for domestic slaves, physical mobility was a curse as they were repeatedly forced by James and his family on voyages around the Atlantic World. Yet even in this forced movement escape was possible, and Europe offered at least one man a unique chance at freedom.