Sources Of Jamaican History 1655 1838

"Jamaica's rich history has been the subject of many books, articles and papers. This collection of eighteen original essays considers aspects of Jamaican history not covered in more general histories of the island, and illluminates more recent developments in Jamaican and West Indian history." "Unique in its interdisciplinary approach, the collection emphasizes the relevance of history to everyday life and the development of a national identity, culture and economy. The essays are organized in three sections: Historiography and Sources; Society, Culture and Heritage; and Economy, Labour and Politics, with contributions from scholars in the Departments of History, Literatures in English and Political Sciences and from the Main Library, University of the West Indies, Mona, Jamaica." -- Book Jacket.

This is a lively and richly illustrated history of the island of Jamaica from its discovery (1494) to the abolition of slavery (1838). Find more about the arrival of Columbus, the Spanish dominion, the English (Cromwell) capture in 1655 and the birth of the dreadful buccaneers of Port Royal (Henry Morgan)! Slaves are at the heart of the history of Jamaica: some fled from the plantations to become the feared Maroons (they almost ruined the entire colony), others like Tacky rebelled against the Whites. In the 18th century, Jamaica became a giant cane field as sugar represented the true wealth of the island. But everything stopped in 1838. The author has given priority to ancient testimonies to make it more exciting and lively.

Between 1737 and 1746, James Knight—a merchant, planter, and sometime Crown official and legislator in Jamaica—wrote a massive two-volume history of the island. The first volume provided a narrative of the colony’s development up to the mid-1740s, while the second offered a broad survey of most aspects of Jamaican life as it had developed by the third and fourth decades of the eighteenth century. Completed not long before his death in the winter of 1746–47 and held in the British Library, this work is now published for the first time. Well researched and intelligently critical, Knight’s work is not only the most comprehensive account of Jamaica’s ninety years as an English colony ever written; it is also one of the best representations of the provincial mentality as it had emerged in colonial British America between the founding of Virginia and 1750. Expertly edited and introduced by renowned scholar Jack Greene, this volume represents a colonial Caribbean history unique in its contemporary perspective, detail, and scope.

By the mid-eighteenth century, observers of the emerging overseas British Empire thought that Jamaica—in addition to being the largest British colony in the West Indies—was the most valuable of the American colonies. Based on a unique set of historical lists and maps, along with a variety of other contemporary materials, Jack Greene’s study provides unparalleled detail about the character of Jamaica’s settler society during the decade of the 1750s, as the first century of British settlement drew to a close. Greene’s sources facilitate a close examination of many aspects of the island’s development at a particularly critical point in its history. Analysis of the data generated from this material permits a fine-grained account of patterns of landholding, economic activity, land use, social organization, and wealth distribution among Jamaica’s free population during a period of sustained demographic, economic, social, and cultural expansion. Calling attention to local variations, the study puts special emphasis on the complexity and vitality of Jamaica’s settler population, the island’s economic and social diversity, the ubiquity and adaptability of slavery, the character and size of settler households, the range of urban professions, the value of urban housing, and the gender and racial dimensions of wealth holding. Greene’s detailed analyses amplify and enrich these subjects, offering the most refined portrait to date of Jamaican society at a crucial juncture in its formation and providing scholars a quantitative base for analyzing Jamaica’s political economy in the second half of the eighteenth century.

Written by one of the leading authorities on trade and finance in the early modern Atlantic world, these fourteen essays, revised and integrated for this volume, share as their common theme the development of the Atlantic economy, especially British America and the Caribbean. Topics treated range from early attempts in medieval England to measure the carrying capacity of ships, through the advent in Renaissance Italy and England of business newspapers that reported on the traffic of ships, cargoes and market prices, to the state of the economy of France over the two hundred years before the French Revolution and of the British West Indies between 1760 and 1790. Included is the story of Thomas Irving who challenged and thwarted the likes of John Hancock, Samuel Adams, Alexander Hamilton, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson.

Designed with both the novice and the professional researcher in mind, this text provides reference resources and introduces a methodology specific to investigating African-American genealogy. In the second edition, information has been reorganized by state. Within each state are listings for resources such as state archives, census records, military records, newspapers, and manuscript collections.

This book is ideal for anyone who reaserching their Caribbean family history The National Archives and beyond. The National Archives holds records for many people who lived in British West Indian colonies such as emigrants, plantation owners, slaves, soldiers, sailors and transported criminals. The Archives also hold the colonial office records for the British West Indies. This includes state correspondence to and from the colonies and passenger lists. Tracing Your Caribbean Ancestors also shows readers how to use family history sources and genealogy websites and indexes beyond The National Archives. Fully updated and revised, this new edition covers recent developments in Caribbean archives, including details of newly released information and archives that are now available online. This book outlines the primary research sources for those tracing their Caribbean ancestry and describes details of access to archives, further reading, useful websites and how to find and accurately search family history sources. As Britain does not hold locally created records of its dependencies such as church records, this book doubles as a gateway to the local history sources throughout the Caribbean that remain in each country's archives and register office. This book will be of use to anyone researching family history in British Caribbean countries of Anguilla, Antigua, Bahamas, Barbados, British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Dominica, Grenada, Jamaica, Montserrat, St Kitts and Nevis, St Lucia, St Vincent, Trinidad and Tobago and the Turks and Caicos Islands as well as Guyana, Belize and Bermuda.