*The Barbados Slave Code was enacted on this date in 1661. Officially titled as An Act for the better ordering and governing of Negroes, it was a law passed by the Parliament of Barbados to provide a legal basis for slavery in the English colony of Barbados.
Throughout British North America, slavery evolved in practice before it was codified into law. This slave code of 1661 marked the beginning of the legal systematization of slavery. The Barbados slave code allegedly protected slaves from cruel masters ("the Negroes and other Slaves be well provided for and guarded against the Cruelties and Insolences of themselves or other ill-tempered People or Owners") and masters (and "any Christian") from unruly slaves; in practice, it provided extensive protections for masters, but not for slaves.
The Barbados Assembly reenacted the slave code, with minor modifications, in 1676 titled "A Supplemental Act to a Former Act for the Better Ordering and Governing of Negroes", 1682, and 1688 titled "An Act for the Governing of Negroes".
Historian Russell Menard said, "Since Barbados was the first English colony to write a comprehensive slave code, its code was especially influential." It is the first comprehensive Slave Act. The code's preamble, which stated that the law's purpose was to "protect them [slaves] as we do men's other goods and Chattels," established that Black slaves were chattel property in the island's court. The slave code described Black people as heathenish, brutish, and uncertain, dangerous kind of people.
In 2021, the British Library digitized and made public 19th-century newspapers of Barbados (the originals remaining on the island), hoping that the public would help to find information about individual slaves on the island; names and descriptions were only made known for slaves whose revolted or escaped and are lost to history unless recorded in newspapers.
