The Royal Society and Slavery in Jamaica, 1660-1713

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The project will use the case of Jamaica to explore links between the Royal Society's production of natural knowledgeand the creation of a slave society. The project will be jointly supervised by Nuala Zahedieh, University of Cambridge andKeith Moore, the Royal Society. The PhD will investigate the role of the British state and its institutions in promoting theuse of enslaved labour in its overseas territories through an examination of the part played by the Royal Society and itsnatural philosophers in the development of early English Jamaica. The prime aim is to strengthen understanding of howRestoration imperial policy, with enslavement at its centre, shaped the production of new natural and medical knowledgeand how, in turn, science might have enhanced the profitability of Britain's imperial enterprise. The Society's relationshipwith Jamaica, the most valuable British colony in the eighteenth century, is little explored and by limiting this study ofscience and slavery to its locale a manageable but highly original student project should ensue. This will give context to,and inform, future Royal Society and Science Museum activity and is timely given rising public consciousness that abroader assessment of British history is overdue.