'The 18th century was the best time to be white, because in a society like this, white equalled power'

Black life in the Caribbean was shaped by slavery. Africans in vast numbers provided labour for the plantations as part of a system conceived in and maintained by violence.

For slave women however, the threats were different. White men in the plantation world viewed slave women as easy sexual pickings. From their earliest sexual encounters, it was an accepted custom that sexual favours were part of the benefits of owning slaves. Slave women could do little to resist the blandishments or the physical aggression. Slave captains did try to curtail their crews' sexual attacks on the chained Africans below decks, and sometimes planters defended slave women, but the dominant story was one of predatory sexual violence.

But equally unequivocal was the unacceptability of sexual relations between black men and white women. In every slave community, local law and customs were fiercely punitive against such relations. The fear of black sexuality was almost a general psychosis in the plantation world.

Even a hint of sexuality towards a white woman would bring abominable punishment and slaves who engaged in sex with a white woman were killed. Women who dared declare affection for black men were renounced and cast out from local society. Back in Britain there were growing numbers of permanent black-white relations and marriages – Equiano for example married a woman from Cambridgeshire – but in the Caribbean plantation culture even a hint of sexual relations was thought to be corrosive.