 With almost no societal restraints, slave owners ruled their slaves with a degree of violence that left outside observers aghast.Historian Trevor Burnard refers to Thistlewood as "a brutal sociopath", but he suggests that Thistlewood's treatment of his slaves was not unusual.Unlike other British colonies such as the Colony of Virginia, where slave owners often developed a paternalistic (yet still cruel) attitude toward their slaves, most Jamaican slave owners were convinced that only the severe application of brute force could keep the more numerous African slaves under control.