Chapter 5 analyzes slave societies in the Leeward Islands by focusing on slave law and communities of free people of color. Within the microregion, slave laws and free communities brought together different colonies in different ways. New trans-imperial networks formed on the basis of the growing population of free people of color traversing the region, forming connections across colonial and imperial borders and strengthening the integration and communication between nonwhite communities. At the institutional level, legal codes became a crucial arena for contesting authority between imperial capitals and colonial territories. Such laws were also prime examples of the adaptation and translation of codes and practices taking place across different colonies, ultimately creating a number of legal norms that spanned imperial borders. Colonial legal codes functioned both as a force of institutional oppression and, with time, as an arena for pushing back against such oppression. The chapter also analyzes the practice of maritime marronage, as enslaved individuals threw off their shackles and fled across the water to freedom or greater autonomy within a different imperial jurisdiction.