Americans view the Caribbean as a place apart, ideal for a beach vacation, but I see it as a region settled by the English in the same era and for the same reasons as the “Thirteen Colonies,” and separated less by physical distance than by the fact that the West Indies chose not to enter the American Revolution. Questions about racial identity and the effects of slavery play out there in ways both comparable to and distinct from these processes in the U.S. I have studied the English Caribbean for 25 years, and am especially interested in how its histories connect with those of colonial America and Georgian Britain.
I wrote
Settler Society in the English Leeward Islands, 1670-1776
This book remains a classic almost a century after its publication. Written by a black Oxford-educated scholar who would lead Trinidad to independence and become its first black prime minister, it shows readers how slaveholders in Britain’s West Indian colonies reaped immense fortunes, and how this wealth, invested in Britain’s infrastructure, helped create the Industrial Revolution and make Britain a global economic powerhouse. Lucidly written, it continues to inspire debate about the connections between slavery in the sugar fields of the Caribbean and the rise of the factory in England’s industrial heartlands.
Slavery helped finance the Industrial Revolution in England. Plantation owners, shipbuilders, and merchants connected with the slave trade accumulated vast fortunes that established banks and heavy industry in Europe and expanded the reach of capitalism worldwide. Eric Williams advanced these powerful ideas in Capitalism and Slavery, published in 1944. Years ahead of its time, his profound critique became the foundation for studies of imperialism and economic development. Binding an economic view of history with strong moral argument, Williams's study of the role of slavery in financing the Industrial Revolution refuted traditional ideas of economic and moral progress and firmly established…
Kincaid is best known as a writer of novels and short stories, but this brief and piercing account of her experiences growing up in Antigua towards the end of the era of British rule illuminates the ways in which slavery and colonialism continued to affect Afro-Caribbean people well into the twentieth century. This memoir describes ugly experiences in beautiful prose, and offers a meditation on how individuals are shaped by history, but also how they can liberate themselves from it.
From the author of AT THE BOTTOM OF THE RIVER and ANNIE JOHN, a novel set in Antigua, where the idyllic tourist facade hides a colonial legacy of corruption, remedial social investment, and disenfranchised local culture. First published in 1988.
Tacky’s Revolt, a slave uprising in Jamaica in 1760-1, is not widely known outside the Caribbean, but Brown’s book should change that situation. Written with great attention to the significance of physical spaces as well as historical sources, Tacky’s Revolt provides insights into the lived experiences of enslaved people, and in particular how some drew upon their experiences as warriors in west African societies to stage a rebellion that aimed to overthrow plantation society. It depicts both the terrifying power and the surprising fragility of white authority in an island in which at this time 9 of 10 residents were of African descent, and nearly all of those were enslaved.
Winner of the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award Winner of the Frederick Douglass Book Prize Winner of the Elsa Goveia Book Prize Winner of the James A. Rawley Prize in the History of Race Relations Winner of the P. Sterling Stuckey Book Prize Winner of the Harriet Tubman Prize Winner of the Phillis Wheatley Book Award Finalist for the Cundill Prize
A gripping account of the largest slave revolt in the eighteenth-century British Atlantic world, an uprising that laid bare the interconnectedness of Europe, Africa, and America, shook the foundations of empire, and reshaped ideas of race and popular belonging.
A refugee from the English Civil War, Ligon arrived in Barbados in 1647 and purchased a share of a sugar plantation there. In this surprisingly readable account of his experiences, he provides a vivid picture of a society newly colonized by the English but already deeply committed to plantation agriculture and an enslaved labor force. Perhaps the most fascinating aspect of the book is Ligon’s various interactions with Africans, whom he is able to see as individuals, and by whose personalities, appearance, and talents he sometimes finds himself captivated, yet whom he has few moral scruples about buying or selling.
Ligon's True and Exact History of the Island of Barbados is the most significant book-length English text written about the Caribbean in the seventeenth century. [It] allows one to see the contested process behind the making of the Caribbean sugar/African slavery complex. Kupperman is one of the leading scholars of the early modern Atlantic world. . . . I cannot think of any scholar better prepared to write an Introduction that places Ligon, his text, and Barbados in an Atlantic historical context. The Introduction is quite thorough, readable, and accurate; the notes [are] exemplary! --Susan Parrish, University of Michigan
This prize-winning novel does for Jamaica from the 1960s through the 1990s what Dickens did for Victorian London, exploring the structure of society, from political elites to slum residents, through dozens of vividly drawn characters: politicians and music promoters, gangsters and CIA agents. Centering on a real 1976 attempt to murder the reggae star Bob Marley, A Brief History depicts both the richness and resilience of Jamaican culture and the nation’s struggles to gain its independence and to create peace and prosperity for its people.
*WINNER OF THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2015* JAMAICA, 1976 Seven gunmen storm Bob Marley's house, machine guns blazing. The reggae superstar survives, but the gunmen are never caught. From the acclaimed author of The Book of Night Women comes a dazzling display of masterful storytelling exploring this near-mythic event. Spanning three decades and crossing continents, A Brief History of Seven Killings chronicles the lives of a host of unforgettable characters - slum kids, drug lords, journalists, prostitutes, gunmen, and even the CIA. Gripping and inventive, ambitious and mesmerising, A Brief History of Seven Killings is one of the most remarkable…
Settler Society is the first study of the history of the federated colony of the Leeward Islands – Antigua, Montserrat, Nevis, and St. Kitts – that covers all four islands in the period from their independence from Barbados in 1670 up to the outbreak of the American Revolution, which reshaped the Caribbean as well as the mainland American colonies.
Natalie A. Zacek emphasizes the extent to which the planters of these islands attempted to establish recognizably English societies in tropical islands based on plantation agriculture and African slavery. By examining conflicts relating to ethnicity and religion, controversies regarding sex and social order, and a series of virulent battles over the limits of local and imperial authority, this book depicts these West Indian colonists as skilled improvisers who adapted to an unfamiliar environment, and as individuals as committed as other American colonists to the norms and values of English society, politics, and culture.
I’m an OB/GYN, passionate about adventuring beyond what’s expected. This has led me to pivot multiple times in my career, now focusing on writing. I’ve written a play, The Post-Roe Monologues, to elevate women’s stories. I cherish the curiosity that drives outer and inner exploration, and I love memoirs that skillfully weave the two. The books on this list feature extraordinary women who took risks, left comfort and safety, and battled vulnerability to step into the unknown. These authors moved beyond the stories they’d believed about themselves–or that others told about them. They invite you to think about living fuller and bigger lives.
Tap Dancing on Everest, part coming-of-age memoir, part true-survival adventure story, is about a young medical student, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor raised in N.Y.C., who battles self-doubt to serve as the doctor—and only woman—on a remote Everest climb in Tibet.
The team attempts a new route up the East Face without the use of supplemental oxygen, Sherpa support, or chance for rescue. When three climbers disappear during their summit attempt, Zieman reaches the knife edge of her limits and digs deeply to fight for the climbers’ lives and to find her voice.
The plan was outrageous: A small team of four climbers would attempt a new route on the East Face of Mt. Everest, considered the most remote and dangerous side of the mountain, which had only been successfully climbed once before. Unlike the first large team, Mimi Zieman and her team would climb without using supplemental oxygen or porter support. While the unpredictable weather and high altitude of 29,035 feet make climbing Everest perilous in any condition, attempting a new route, with no idea of what obstacles lay ahead, was especially audacious. Team members were expected to push themselves to their…
