Reproducing the British Caribbean: Sex, Gender, and Population Politics after Slavery

This comparative study examines the emancipation process in the British Caribbean, particularly Jamaica, during the 1830s and in the United States, particularly South Carolina, during the 1860s. Analyzing the intellectual and ideological foundations of postslavery Anglo-America, Demetrius Eudell explores how former slaves, former slaveholders, and their societies' central governments understood and discussed slavery, emancipation, and the transition between the two. Eudell investigates the public policies--which addressed issues of labor control, access to land, and the general social behaviors of former slaves--used to execute emancipation. In both regions, government-appointed officials (special magistrates in Jamaica and agents of the Freedmen's Bureau in South Carolina) were crucial in implementing these policies. While many former slaves were fighting for the right to be paid for their labor and to own land, many officials came to view their role as part of a new civilizing mission whose goal was to eradicate the psychic damage supposedly caused by slavery. Eudell concludes by examining the 1865 Morant Bay rebellion in Jamaica and the retreat from Reconstruction in South Carolina, part of the larger movement of Redemption that occurred in 1877. Both of these occurrences represented the incomplete victory of emancipation, Eudell argues, and should provoke scholarly questions regarding the persistent thesis of U.S. exceptionalism.

Freedom's Children: The 1938 Labor Rebellion and the Birth of Modern Jamaica

Provides a valuable transnational history of the African Diaspora through examination of British Afro-Caribbeans in Cuba.

The various manifestations of coerced labour between the opening up of the Atlantic world and the formal creation of Haiti.

This thesis is a labour history of Trinidad and Tobago, concentrating on the period from 1937 to 1990. The study attempts to show that there is not a unified or homogenous working class, and for this reason both traditional Marxist and industrial relations theories are rejected. Instead, the history of labour focuses on how the working classes have been divided by factors such as race, gender, class structure and politics. These divisions are used as an explanation for the absence of a popular socialist party in the country. It concludes that the economic recession of the 1980s has led to the worst crisis in the history of the labour movement, but at the same time, this has laid the framework for a new strategy of social movement unionism, which attempts to constructively engage with, rather than ignore, divisions within the working classes. The main sources of data were documentary and archival material, and in particular, reports made by the British TUC and Colonial Office, industrial relations legislation, and trade union and political party documents and manifestoes. For the contemporary period, these sources of data were supplemented by fifteen interviews with leading figures in trade union and labour politics. The work is based on a macro approach to the study of labour, and as such constitutes a new and original approach to the study of labour in Trinidad and Tobago. In addition, more contemporary trade union documents and interviews provided the researcher with new and original material.

The proceedings of a conference on Caribbean slavery and British capitalism are recorded in this volume. Convened in 1984, the conference considered the scholarship of Eric Williams & his legacy in this field of historical research.

"Holt greatly extends and deepens our understanding of the emancipation experience when, for just over a century, the people of Jamaica struggled to achieve their own vision of freedom and autonomy against powerful conservative forces."-David Barry Gaspar.