"C.L..R. James' 1938 seminal text, The Black Jacobins, and Eric Williams' 1944 tour de force, Capitalism and Slavery, constitute much more than foundational works in West Indian nationalist historiography. Both authors, born in colonial Trinidad and writing Caribbean history within its Atlantic context, made significant contributions to development discourse within the traditions of Enlightenment Idealism. As critical realists they considered popular historiography indispensable to any attempt to root philosophical ideals within recognizable terms of everyday living. In The Black Jacobins, James documents the struggles of the enslaved peoples of St. Dominique, the mercantile showpiece of French colonial capitalism in the West Indies for freedom and social justice. In addition, he details the transformation of this successful anti-slavery rebellion into something much more elaborate in terms of Atlantic history--the creation of Haiti, the Caribbean's first nation-state. In Capitalism and Slavery, Williams expands and develops the paradigm of African labor enslavement and European capital liberation, first outlined by James in The Black Jacobins, that became the basis of the revolutionary reorganization of productivity for European economic development." (author)
Tavistock, Devon, U.K; London: Northcote; British Council
Location:
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
153 p, Jean Rhys and her critics -- Feminist approaches to Jean Rhys -- The Caribbean question -- Writing in the margins -- Autobiography and ambivalence -- 'The day they burned the books' -- Fort Comme La Mort : the French Connection -- The politics of Good morning, midnight -- The huge machine of law, order and respectability -- Resisting the machine -- The enemy within -- Goodnight, day -- Intemperate and unchaste -- The other side -- The struggle for the sign.
The article focuses on the criticisms made by reviewers on Marika Sherwood's book After Abolition: Britain and the Slave Trade. Richard Drayton, Imperial History senior lecturer at the University of Cambridge in England, pointed out the book questions the triumphalist narrative of British abolition. Stephen Small of the University of California, Berkeley and University of Lagos, Nigeria's history professor Ayodeji Olukoju were among the other reviewers of the work.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
68 p, Traditional Caribbean history has been directed by and focused upon the conquerors who came to the region to colonize and seek profitable resources. Native Caribbean peoples and African slaves used to work the land have been silenced by traditional history so that it has become necessary for modern Caribbean thinkers to challenge that history and recreate it. Alejo Carpentier and Michelle Cliff challenge traditional Caribbean history in their texts, The Kingdom of This World and Abeng, respectively. Each of these texts rewrites traditional history to include the perspectives of natives and the slaves of Haiti and Jamaica. Traditional history is challenged by the inclusion of these perspectives, thus providing a rewritten, revised history.
