Slaveholding shaped colonial society and culture in Jamaica. The experience of being part of a small and privileged minority outnumbered by enslaved black people created distinctive white Jamaican creole attitudes that differentiated settlers on the island from the inhabitants of the metropole. These characteristics were seized upon by the author Bryan Edwards in his History Civil and Commercial of the British Colonies in the West Indies. Edwards had lived as a planter in Jamaica, and his History, first published in 1793, was as much an analysis of the contemporary British Caribbean as a history of the region. Edwards described the ‘marked and predominant character common to all the White residents’ of these colonies, explaining:

Edwards remarked that it was ‘not difficult to trace the origin of this principle’ of independence and equality. It arose, ‘without doubt’, he thought, ‘from the pre-eminence and distinction which are necessarily attached even to the complexion of a White Man, in a country where the complexion, generally speaking, distinguishes freedom from slavery’. White men were doubly advantaged in Jamaica by virtue of their gender and colour, and only they enjoyed full access to the privileges of freedom. By emphasizing these things, Edwards reflected basic social and cultural facts that shaped life in Jamaica: slavery guaranteed and enhanced the freedoms of white men, and white men were prepared to defend their freedoms.

Slavery provided even poor white men with an elevated place in society, and wealthier men were willing to accept this, as well as the assertiveness of ordinary colonists, because of the importance of maintaining solidarity between whites.