The white community in the British Caribbean was riven by conflicts and scandals in the late seventeenth century and early eighteenth century, a transformational period in both Caribbean colonial history and British imperial history. Examining the themes of colonial taxation, financial conflicts, factional politics, constitutional disputes, piracy, illegal trade and colonial violence, this thesis is an attempt to identify the tensions and structural problems in Caribbean colonial society, together with the accompanying political scandals. It also aims at providing a Caribbean perspective for understanding the British empire through tracing the extension of fiscal-military state and constitutional legacies in the colonies.

In order to examine interrelated themes in the Caribbean colonies, this thesis combines thematic analysis with case studies of three Caribbean colonies: Barbados, the Leeward Islands, and Jamaica. Each case centres on the story of governors and the political elites which either supported or fought against them. A main argument of this dissertation is that the instability in the Caribbean white society was caused by ambiguous metropolitan policies, deep structural problems in the nature of metropolitan rule in the region, and the changing power of, and relations between, planter and merchant elites. Conflict and scandal enable us to understand not only the divisions but also the unity of Caribbean society. The many tensions in the colonies were testament to the existence of opposed forces, and how those forces counterbalanced one another. Last but not least, whilst inheriting old problems of constitutional tensions and financial disorders from the mother country, the Caribbean white community also developed some new ones during the process of colonisation, and the tensions between English and Creolean culture shaped colonial society in the spheres of politics, economy and social ideology.