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Jamaica was considered to be exceptionally rich in the 18th century. Modern historians have tended to perpetuate this idea. This column uses novel methods to shed new light on living standards and inequality in colonial Jamaica. While the country was one of the most expensive places on the planet at the time, this wealth rested in the hands a very small white, slave-owning elite. The rest of the populace, many in slavery, lived at the very edge of subsistence.