The Journal of Caribbean history最新文献

{"title":"\"The High and Conspicuous Ground\": The Logic of Immediate Emancipation and the Politics of the Decision of 1834","authors":"N. Sesepkekiu","doi":"10.1353/JCH.2018.0000","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/JCH.2018.0000","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:On 1 August 1834, slavery came to its permanent and quite uneventful end in the colony of Antigua. Antigua's planter-dominated Assembly was compelled by a series of self-miscalculations to grant immediate freedom to the colony's enslaved population rather than adopt the proposed the Apprenticeship scheme. The uniqueness of Antigua's decision lay in the fact of Antigua being the only \"sugar colony\" to take the action. The Antigua Assembly's decision was a landmark decision, a fact not lost on many contemporary observers including other regional assemblies and politicians, pro-slavery and abolitionists within the empire. Despite the importance of the decision to understanding regional history, academic historical examination and discussion on the decision has relegated it to a mere footnote in most histories, including histories of the territory. This article seeks to re-establish the importance of the Assembly's decision to understanding planter and slave-owner attitudes about slavery and freedom, as well as what self-interests affected each slave-owning group's attitude toward British mandated slave emancipation. The article begins with an examination of the historiography of the decision, offering an insight into the two main perspectives—economic determinism and humanitarianism. The main theme of the paper is the role and nature of economic determinism in compelling the final decision. The article also establishes, in line with Douglas Hall in his Five of the Leewards, that the decision was not a unanimous one, having passed by the single vote of the Assembly's speaker. The objective is to establish that the decision of the Assembly was not based on choice and consensus, and that the economic considerations were inextricably tied to political and legislative considerations, which the planters voting for the decision appeared to view as equally important. Finally, the author seeks to place the history of the decision in its proper posture, not as a footnote or peripheral event but one which establishes that the history of the region is complex and nuanced and based in large part in colliding personal self-interests, notwithstanding the groups into which historians and some contemporaries placed these actors. The decision of the Antigua Assembly to grant freedom to its then enslaved population requires greater interrogation, debate and understanding on par with the historical discussion that have surrounded the British Parliament's 1833 decision.","PeriodicalId":83090,"journal":{"name":"The Journal of Caribbean history","volume":"13 1","pages":"1 - 29"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-03-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85920022","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Insanity and Society in 1870s Barbados","authors":"Leonard Smith","doi":"10.1353/JCH.2018.0010","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/JCH.2018.0010","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This article considers manifestations of mental disorder during a particularly troubled period in Barbadian history, utilizing case material from the former lunatic asylum. The inadequate, overcrowded institution, which operated between 1846 and 1893, provided barely minimum standards of care and treatment to its numerous patients, who originated from across the island’s racial and social spectrum. The patient case histories illustrate the diverse circumstances that led individuals to be committed to the asylum. They also provide cameo insights regarding aspects of Barbadian society, based on glimpses into ordinary people’s experiences of economic conditions, material deprivation, class relationships and social change.","PeriodicalId":83090,"journal":{"name":"The Journal of Caribbean history","volume":"1 1","pages":"175 - 197"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-03-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"88302266","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Association of Caribbean Historians Elsa Goveia Memorial Book Prize in Caribbean History Winner for 2018/19","authors":"","doi":"10.1353/jch.2019.0009","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/jch.2019.0009","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":83090,"journal":{"name":"The Journal of Caribbean history","volume":"74 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"77384288","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"St Joseph Roman Catholic Church, Trinidad: A West Indian Church Building in Its Local and Imperial Contexts, 1815–1967","authors":"G. Taitt, Everard Johnston","doi":"10.1353/JCH.2018.0008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/JCH.2018.0008","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This study traces the history of the St Joseph Roman Catholic Church in Trinidad, the island’s oldest existing Christian place of worship. From 1815 to 1967, political, social, cultural and religious factors inside and outside Trinidad have shaped its appearance and form. The architectural history of this church building has therefore been intertwined with the history of Trinidad, the British Empire of which Trinidad became a part in 1797, and particularly the place of Roman Catholics within that empire, the island’s Roman Catholic Church, and Catholicism directed from Rome.","PeriodicalId":83090,"journal":{"name":"The Journal of Caribbean history","volume":"98 1","pages":"135 - 157"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86174003","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Race, Reality, and Realpolitik: U.S.-Haiti Relations in the Lead Up to the 1915 Occupation","authors":"M. Smith","doi":"10.1163/2468-1733_shafr_sim270020178","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/2468-1733_shafr_sim270020178","url":null,"abstract":"Jeffrey Sommers with contributions from Patrick Delices, Race, Reality, and Realpolitik: U.S.-Haiti Relations in the Lead Up to the 1915 Occupation, Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2016, xvi + 141 ppThe United States occupation of Haiti ended in July 1934, nineteen years after it began. Over its course it transformed from a grudgingly welcome intervention into an anarchic political climate to a bitterly despised neocolonialism. Since the 1970s, scholars of Haiti have presented the occupation in all its messiness, magnifying its more deplorable aspects of which there were many: violence, slash and burn raids in the countryside, forced peasant labour, naked racism, suppression of Haitian autonomy, and interference in all arms of government were part of daily life under the command of US marines. Notwithstanding the value of the structural outcomes, a hotly debated topic, the means of marine rule were too brutal for the USA to claim victory. This narrative of brilliant failure has all but eclipsed the arcane interpretation of US control in Haiti as a laudable exercise in democratic institution building.Duplicitous US foreign policy imperatives in our own time have validated the findings of historians of Haiti's relationship with its northern empire early in the twentieth century. In Race, Reality, and Realpolitik Jeffrey Sommers (and contributor Patrick Delices) concisely remind us of this fact. The book is premised on the argument that US intervention before and after 1915 should be seen as part of \"deadly\" imperial abuse and punishment of long independent Haiti (xii).The politics of occupation were systematically crafted in Progressiveera USA by a cabal of political and economic powerbrokers. The author avers forcefully that the occupation was \"staged almost exclusively for the financial gain of a very wealthy and powerful few\" in the United States of America (xi). This elite had voice in chambers of power, the realpolitik in the title.The strength of this point is only understood when the occupation is placed in the hemispheric context of US empire. Logically, then, the book's chapters proceed chronologically, each detailing the emergence of US imperial intentions and its relations with Haiti. The main arguments are discussed in chapters 3-5 which address how US business elites pursued offshore investments in Haiti. Sommers insists that this constituency, every bit a part of the state apparatus, is given too little regard in analyses of empire. The \"'imperial' dominance [of the state] in scholarship has prevented us from seeing how forces both smaller and larger than the nation have driven state policy.\" (75)Sommer substantiates the importance of Haiti to US business interests with research from the Bulletin of the Pan American Union, an outlet for \"elite activism\" of US expansion (57). The author decodes rhetorical claims of \"uplift\" and \"progress\" to expose real intentions for Haiti at the turn of the century. As Haitian politics spun out of contr","PeriodicalId":83090,"journal":{"name":"The Journal of Caribbean history","volume":"13 1","pages":"222"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"64432535","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Ties That Bind: The Black Family in Post-Slavery Jamaica, 1834-1882","authors":"B. Brereton","doi":"10.5860/choice.192078","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5860/choice.192078","url":null,"abstract":"Jemmott, Jenny M. Ties That Bind: The Black Family in Post-Slavery Jamaica, 1834-1882. Kingston: University of the West Indies Press, 2015, x + 263 pp.Jemmott's study of the family life of African-Jamaicans from the formal end of slavery to 1882 is a lightly revised version of her 2005 University of the West Indies, Mona, doctoral dissertation. (Her bibliography has not been updated: nothing appears that was published after 2005.)At the outset, Jemmott takes note of the long history of ideas about dysfunctional and \"broken\" black Jamaican family forms, but insists that she is less interested in such forms as defined both by nineteenthcentury commentators and by modern scholars; her focus is on \"black familial values and interrelationships rather than on family structure\" (p. 4). Her aim is \"an in-depth historical investigation of the black family, with its rich and diverse tapestry of challenges and advocacy on behalf of kin\" (p. 5). And she sees the major historiographical contribution of her book as resting on \"its focus on the agency of black families in the maintenance of freedom on their terms, a vision which for many was closely linked to the protection of familial rights and well-being\" (p. 11).In addition to contributing to the historiography of post-slavery Jamaica and, by extension, the Caribbean, Jemmot wants her work to resonate with present-day discourses on the black family. In particular, like Erna Brodber in her 2003 Standing Tall: Affirmations of the Jamaican Male, she wants to engage the trope of black male \"marginalization\" and general absence from the family setting. She does this by providing \"important evidence of black male activism on behalf of family\" between 1834 and 1882, showing the African-Jamaican man as \"a sig- nificant and central\" figure \"both in terms of his image of self and in the activation of these familial roles\" (p. 7).Since Jemmott wants to probe deeply inside the post-slavery Jamaican family, and understand its members' interrelationships and worldviews, she must confront the usual problem of sources: how to hear the voices of the excluded, the weak and the oppressed, in a premodern society where literacy was not widespread? Like many others, she searches for black testimonies (petitions, affidavits, depositions, interviews, evidence in courts or to commissions or magistrates, public speeches), and she also considers what black people actually did. While she accepts the well-known problems of such testimonies, such as the copious evidence given by ordinary Jamaicans to the Jamaica Royal Commission (JRC) in 1866, she believes that to dismiss such testimony as merely whites engaged in \"ventriloquizing\" blacks is to deny them the power of self-articulation in different media. But of course Jemmott has no choice but to rely heavily on the writings of white men, governors, clergy, abolitionists, newspaper reporters or editors and, above all, the Special/Stipendiary Magistrates (SMs), whose voluminous reports r","PeriodicalId":83090,"journal":{"name":"The Journal of Caribbean history","volume":"49 1","pages":"215"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"71028554","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Freedom's Mirror: Cuba and Haiti in the Age of Revolution","authors":"P. Girard","doi":"10.5860/choice.190132","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5860/choice.190132","url":null,"abstract":"Ferrer, Ada. Freedom's Mirror: Cuba and Haiti in the Age of Revolution. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014, 384 pp.More than ten years in the making, Ada Ferrer's Freedom's Mirror examines the interplay between the Haitian Revolution and Cuba from the time of the Revolution's outbreak in 1791 to the aftermath of Haiti's 1804 independence. Though detailed descriptions and analyses of sources occasionally weigh down the narrative (the description of a single document occupies 25 pages, 299-324), Ferrer's work is based on impressive multi-archival work in Cuba, Spain, and France and it will prove invaluable to specialists of abolitionism and colonialism in the Caribbean and beyond. Her conclusions are nuanced: though the Haitian slave revolt provided a powerful counter-example to the dominant slave-holding paradigm of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the period also saw the economic take-off of a Cuban sugar economy based on slave labour.The traditional view that the Haitian Revolution left every white planter in the Americas shivering in fear of a second Haiti seems well on its way to being debunked. Ashli White has shown in Encountering Revolution (2010) that many US slave owners were confident that no similar outbreak could take place in the United States of America. Ferrer adds that Cuban planters viewed the 1791 slave revolt in French SaintDomingue (Haiti) not only as a threat but also a business opportunity. Eager to replace the beleaguered French colony as the Caribbean's leading exporter of sugar, they hoped \"to emulate Saint-Domingue but to contain Haiti\" (p. 38). The Cuban booster Francisco Arango y Parreno was in Spain negotiating for looser slave-trading rules when the 1791 slave revolt occurred. News of the event, far from scaring him, prompted him to double-down on his plan to replace Saint-Domingue as the Caribbean's sugar juggernaut. \"The hour of our happiness has arrived,\" he exclaimed (p. 4).Ferrer also spends much time discussing the ways in which news of the Haitian Revolution was disseminated among Cuban slaves, whether in print, orally, or through commercial exchanges. Some historians have debated whether slaves knew much about the Haitian Revolution because of widespread illiteracy and official censorship, but Ferrer convincingly argues that the black population was well aware of events in Saint-Domingue, though not always accurately because wild rumours circulated as freely as truthful ones. Because Cuba continued to import slaves from Saint-Domingue throughout the 1790s despite official bans and the obvious security risk, many \"negros franceses\" (French blacks) who had personally experienced the great slave revolt in SaintDomingue lived and toiled in Cuba, where they could inform their brethren of the momentous events that had taken place in SaintDomingue.The middle part of the book is equally well researched but less informative because other scholars covered similar ground in the time it took for","PeriodicalId":83090,"journal":{"name":"The Journal of Caribbean history","volume":"49 1","pages":"116"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"71027833","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Caribbean: A History of the Region and Its Peoples","authors":"Stephan Lenik","doi":"10.5860/choice.49-5230","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5860/choice.49-5230","url":null,"abstract":"Stephan Palmie and Francisco A. Scarano (editors), The Caribbean: A History of the Region and Its Peoples, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011, xv + 660 pp.The Caribbean: A History of the Region and Its Peoples edited by anthropologist Stephan Palmie, and historian Francisco A. Scarano, offers an overview of Caribbean history in forty chapters written by an impressive array of experts including historians, sociologists, political scientists, archaeologists, anthropologists, and geographers. Attempting to compile a comprehensive overview of a region as diverse as the Caribbean risks becoming mired in the \"myriad backwaters, eddies and obstacles along the way\" (p. 1). Yet the editors of this volume have successfully assembled a survey of historical and contemporary issues which serves as an excellent introductory text for newcomers to the region, as well as a resource for more experienced researchers searching for a concise reference to any historical period.The volume's editors have divided the chapters into seven parts. Each of these parts is united thematically and chronologically. This thematic approach is admirable and the contributors have indeed delivered works that are very thorough in details, and adequately discussed without losing sight of the big picture. In addition the writing style is accessible, as the editors restrict the contributors to \"a minimum of scholarly clutter\" (p. 3). To further acquaint the reader with the region, there are five pages of maps preceding the chapters and an introductory chapter by the co-authors.Part 1 of the work, \"The Caribbean Stage\", depicts the physical and cultural background in four chapters written by specialists in geography, ecology, prehistoric archaeology, and history. Much of this material is descriptive, as a necessary preamble to the subsequent parts. Only Antonio Curet's chapter on the region's prehistory considers future archaeological findings and analyses. The five chapters in part 2, \"The Making of a Colonial Sphere\", cover the \"Old World\" and Atlantic antecedents which shaped the \"encounter\" during the Columbus voyages and the Spanish colonial project that followed. The authors in this part have attempted a restoration of the agency of indigenous peoples, which can be obscured in the chronicles and secondary sources. Notable in this section is Jalil Sued Badillo's critique of the misuse of the chronicles and early histories which have characterized previous interpretations, as he reminds readers that the documents cannot always be taken at face value. The six chapters that make up part 3, \"Colonial Designs in Flux\", cover the entry of competing European nation-states (England, France and the Netherlands) to the region as colonial powers during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and the resultant decline of Spanish hegemony. The myriad and multiscalar transitions with the development of the slave/sugar plantation system as the region's dominant socioeconomic institution are ","PeriodicalId":83090,"journal":{"name":"The Journal of Caribbean history","volume":"11 7 1","pages":"233"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2012-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"71137404","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Caribbean Religious History: An Introduction","authors":"Garth Minott","doi":"10.5860/choice.48-2006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5860/choice.48-2006","url":null,"abstract":"Ennis B. Edmonds and Michelle A. Gonzalez, Caribbean Religious History: An Introduction, New York: New York University Press, 2010, xiv + 264 pp.In the book History of Religions in the Caribbean, Dale Bisnauth argues that \"historical developments have in large measure influenced the make-up of the multi-religious mosaic of the Caribbean\".1 For Bisnauth, the multi-religious mosaic is testimony to the stamp of European colonization on the Caribbean. The diverse religious experience of the colonial masters - Spain, France, the Netherlands, Britain and, latterly, North America - have, over time, influenced the religious landscape of the Caribbean. To this mix must be added those who came from Africa and Asia to supply the labour demands of the plantations established by the colonial masters.However, while the arrival of Christopher Columbus marks an impor- tant period in the social process of the peoples in the region, the Caribbean was occupied by indigenous peoples who had well-developed socio-economic and political structures long before the coming of all the foregoing groups. Thus, of necessity, chronicling the story of the peoples of the Caribbean should take into account the socio-historical and reli- gious experiences of all the groups, including the indigenous peoples of the region. Ennis B. Edmonds and Michelle A. Gonzalez, the authors of the work under review, are under no illusion that European arrival was the only focal point in the history of the peoples of the Caribbean. As a result, they quite correctly include not only the Europeans in their analy- sis but also the indigenous populations, for example, the Garifunas in Belize and various Creole-speaking peoples. Thus, the area stretching from the Bahamas and the Greater Antilles in the north through Belize on the Central American mainland down to the Guianas in the south is covered in the work.The authors, contending that the history and collective identity of Caribbean peoples are inextricably linked to the practice of religion, have taken a socio-historical approach, drawing on the disciplines of sociology and anthropology in their analysis. This socio-historical approach undoubtedly enables us to have a better understanding of Caribbean peoples' life and religious practices. By emphasizing history as process, Edmonds and Gonzalez set out to tell the story of Caribbean peoples in ways that suggest formative influences in the evolution of the culture, religions, economies and other facets of the region. The advent of Christian denominations during the early era and the conflicts they generated among themselves, especially those between the Roman Catholic and Anglican (that is, the Church of England) Churches, are very well treated. The Caribbean, without doubt, has always been the victim of much untoward religious penetration from Europe. The authors also note that during the latter part of the nineteenth century a shift developed. The region, and also Latin America, began witnessing ","PeriodicalId":83090,"journal":{"name":"The Journal of Caribbean history","volume":"45 1","pages":"132"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2011-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"71131810","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The African Diaspora: A History through Culture","authors":"A. Dixon","doi":"10.5860/choice.47-3965","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5860/choice.47-3965","url":null,"abstract":"Patrick Manning, The African Diaspora: A History through Culture, New York: Columbia University Press, 2009, xxii + 394 pp.African diaspora studies should be considered as being divided into two genres. The first began as a way to counter the study of people of African descent by persons of non-African descent whose writings belittled the people, culture and accomplishments of Blacks. It evolved into a collection of intellectual works that provided a voice to those who had been lost in the homogenized research concerning early forced migration of Blacks, enslavement in the Americas, and the effects of slavery and oppression on Blacks in the African diaspora. Joseph E. Harris helped to lead the way by enlightening readers as to the scope of this diaspora through his examination of the various dimensions of the African experience.1 Through his work, readers have garnered a deeper understanding of various peoples within the African diaspora.During the first period, the cultural dynamics of displaced African descendants emerged only as an underlying theme in understanding the effects of slavery and oppression. In essence, African diaspora studies became dedicated to providing a voice to the voiceless. The second and more recent scholarly period is moving beyond providing a voice for the voiceless, and examining the cultural ties of peoples of African descent, regardless of differences in geographical location or cultural adaptation. The recent work, The New African Diaspora, which Isidore Okpewho and Nkiru Nzegwu edited, examines migration and social conditions as aids to understanding cultural changes in identity throughout the African diaspora.2Patrick Manning's book offers a compendium of the first period and exploratory evidence for an understanding and development of the second period. Manning is interested in examining the African diaspora through cultural history. As such, he contends that \"I present the history of black people as a history of community rather than race\" (p. 12). He quite correctly and accurately compiles scholarly information dedicated to African diaspora studies in a manner that provides a general understanding of this diaspora, while at the same time, demonstrating a need for further development in African diaspora studies by focusing on culture and community.Unfortunately, the generalization of prominent theories of freedom and equality that continues the homogenization of people and events typifies this work. In this sense, it is a textbook that chronologically outlines the experiences of people of African descent without evidence that would introduce new theories on relatively well-known topics or events, such as the Middle Passage or the Abolitionist Movement in North America. The African Diaspora, as a result, reads as if it were written for the interested novice, or perhaps a student beginning to focus on African diaspora studies, rather than someone who is more familiar with the historiography concerning the African ","PeriodicalId":83090,"journal":{"name":"The Journal of Caribbean history","volume":"44 1","pages":"259"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2010-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"71128111","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}