2011 (Jerome Handler) Anti-Obeah Laws of the Anglophone Caribbean, 1760s to 2010. 35th Annual Conference, Society for Caribbean Studies, International Slavery Museum, Liverpool. July 2011.
Starting in Jamaica in 1760 and continuing to the present, scores of laws criminalizing obeah have been enacted in the 17 jurisdictions of the Anglophone Caribbean, the former British West Indies. These laws include laws solely concerned with obeah — so-called “Obeah Acts” or “Obeah Ordinances” — as well as anti-obeah provisions in sections of Penal Codes, Criminal Codes, Police Acts, Vagrancy Acts, and Summary Jurisdiction Acts. This paper gives a comparative summary of the main features of anti-obeah laws from the period of slavery to the present.