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Victorian Jamaica

edited by Tim Barringer and Wayne Modest

Duke University Press, 2018
Paper: 978-0-8223-6068-1 | Cloth: 978-0-8223-6053-7 | eISBN: 978-0-8223-7462-6
Library of Congress Classification F1886.V53 2018

ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC | REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE

ABOUT THIS BOOK

Victorian Jamaica explores the extraordinary surviving archive of visual representation and material objects to provide a comprehensive account of Jamaican society during Queen Victoria's reign over the British Empire, from 1837 to 1901. In their analyses of material ranging from photographs of plantation laborers and landscape paintings to cricket team photographs, furniture, and architecture, as well as a wide range of texts, the contributors trace the relationship between black Jamaicans and colonial institutions; contextualize race within ritual and performance; and outline how material and visual culture helped shape the complex politics of colonial society. By narrating Victorian history from a Caribbean perspective, this richly illustrated volume—featuring 270 full-color images—offers a complex and nuanced portrait of Jamaica that expands our understanding of the wider history of the British Empire and Atlantic world during this period.

Contributors. Anna Arabindan-Kesson, Tim Barringer, Anthony Bogues, David Boxer, Patrick Bryan, Steeve O. Buckridge, Julian Cresser, John M. Cross, Petrina Dacres, Belinda Edmondson, Nadia Ellis, Gillian Forrester, Catherine Hall, Gad Heuman, Rivke Jaffe, O'Neil Lawrence, Erica Moiah James, Jan Marsh, Wayne Modest, Daniel T. Neely, Mark Nesbitt, Diana Paton, Elizabeth Pigou-Dennis, Veerle Poupeye, Jennifer Raab, James Robertson, Shani Roper, Faith Smith, Nicole Smythe-Johnson, Dianne M. Stewart, Krista A. Thompson

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Tim Barringer is Paul Mellon Professor and Chair of the Department of the History of Art at Yale University.

Wayne Modest is Head of the Research Center for Material Culture at the Stichting Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen and Professor of Material Culture and Critical Heritage Studies at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.

REVIEWS

"The many contributors give a detail and depth unachievable in a single-authored book, and one thing that makes Victorian Jamaica special is the picture it begins to make visible of Jamaican life as a whole."

-- William Ghosh TLS

"The volume illustrates in graphic and rigorous detail how visuality and material objects helped embody rapidly transforming racial and gendered subjectivities."

-- Utathya Chattopadhyaya Victorian Literature and Culture

"Victorian Jamaica is a striking achievement. This hefty tome goes a long way toward filling a significant historiographical gap on the nineteenth century history of this Caribbean island."

-- Stephen G. Hague Itinerario

"Victorian Jamaica is a must-read for anyone interested in the complex negotiations over freedom, citizenship, economic agency, and cultural production in the period that followed the legal abolition of slavery in Jamaica."

-- Sasha Turner Social History

"With its emphasis on material culture, Victorian Jamaica extends significantly the conventional archive of sources for studying nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Jamaica and its transnational contexts, and serves to counteract many of the silences of the written archive. . . . This superb collection, emphasizing constraint, accommodation, and transformation, contributes significantly to postcolonial studies and to rethinking pasts and presents on both sides of the Atlantic."

-- Charles V. Carnegie New West Indian Guide

"The contributors to this volume weave a complex and multitextured picture of Victorian Jamaica, and it must be said that the book is much more coherent than many such collections. It makes an extremely important contribution to our understanding of Jamaica—both in and of itself and within the wider contexts of the British empire and Atlantic region. . . . Victorian Jamaica provides a visually compelling engagement with the period, evoking a manysided portrait of this unique Caribbean colony in a time of social conflict, political upheaval, and economic transformation."

-- Christer Petley History

"Barringer and Modest’s Victorian Jamaica is a big, brilliant, beautiful attempt to render Jamaican history outside of the big, empire-scaling events that courted and court the attention of observers elsewhere. . . . It renders the ordinary rhythms of this full world in elegant, beautifully reproduced detail. Victorian Jamaica should become an important resource for researchers in, and teachers of, Caribbean history and culture, visual culture and race, and global Victorian studies."

-- Chris Taylor Nineteenth-Century Contexts

"Bursting with gorgeous, high-quality images throughout its many pages, Victorian Jamaica is itself a stunning repository of nineteenth-century sources on the island. It documents the many facets of daily life, and it produces a rich sense of the colonial experience. . . . Perhaps more than any other book on the subject, Victorian Jamaica reveals the messiness of categories in a colonized space, at all levels of society."

-- Daniel Livesay The Historian

“Victorian Jamaica is far more than a collection of essays; it is at once an encyclopedia and a box of delights, and like both objects it is likely to include in its contents something that will appeal...to anyone interested in the intertwined histories of Britain and the Caribbean in a politically volatile yet culturally rich era.”

-- Natalie Zacek Victorian Studies

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgments xxi
Introduction / Wayne Modest and Tim Barringer 1
Object Lessons
Introduction to Object Lessons Wayne Modest and Tim Barringer 51
1. The Cruickshank Lock, circa 1838 / Wayne Modest 55
2. Table, circa 1830–1840 / John Cross 59
3. A Tread-Mill Scene in Jamaica, 1837 / Diana Paton 61
4. Sligoville with Misson Premises, 1843 / Catherine Hall 63
5. A View of Coke Chapel from the Parade, circa 1846–1847 / James Robertson 67
6. The Ordinance of Baptism / Dianne M. Stewart 69
7. Kidd's New Plan of the City of Kingston, Jamaica, 1854 / Rivke Jaffe
8. Grave of Eighty Rebels near Morant Bay, Jamaica / Wayne Modest 77
9. Map Recording of Rebellion of 1865 / Gad Heuman 79
10. The Vale of St. Thomas, Jamaica, 1867 / Jennifer Raab 83
11. Newcastle, Jamaica, 1884 / Tim Barringer 85
12. Opening the Railway Line at Porus / James Robertson 89
13. Day School Children, Jamaica / Patrick Bryan 91
14. Wedding Group, Jamaica / Anthony Bogues 95
15. Child's Outdoor Cap. Lace-bark, circa 1850–1861 / Steeve O. Buckridge 97
16. Portrait of a Woman of Chinese Origin, circa 1895–1861 / Patrick Bryan 99
17. Mary Seacole, 1871 / Jan Marsh 103
18. Fatima, circa 1886 / Erica Moiah James 105
19. Selection of Jamaican Wood Samples Made for the 1891 Exhibition / Veerle Poupeye, Nicole Smythe-Johnson, and O'Neil Lawrence 109
20. Illustration of an Obeah Figure, 1893 / Diana Paton 111
21. Castleton Gardens / Krista A.Thompson 115
22. Queen Victoria, 1915 / Petrina Dacres 117
Part I. Making Victorian Subjects
1. State Formation in Victorian Jamaica / Diana Paton 125
2. Victorian Jamaica: The View from the Colonial Office / Gad Heuman 139
3. Liberalism, Colonial Power, Subjectivities, and the Technologies of Pastoral Coloniality: The Jamaican Case / Anthony Bogues 156
4. Dirt, Disease, and Difference in Victorian Jamaica: The Politics of Sanitary Reform n the Milroy Report of 1852 / Rivke Jaffe 174
5. Creating Good Colonial Citizens: Industrial Schools and Reformatories in Victorian Jamaica / Shani Roper 190
6. Botany in Victorian Jamaica / Mark Nesbitt 209
7. Victorian Sport in Jamaica, 1863–1909 / Julian Cresser 240
8. Rewriting the Past: Imperial Histories of Antislavery Nation / Catherine Hall 263
Part II. Visual and Material Cultures
9. Land, Labor, Landscape: Views of the Plantation in Victorian Jamaica / Tim Barringer 281
10. The Duperly Family and Photography in Victorian Jamaica / David Boxer 322
11. Noel B. Livingston's Gallery of Illustrious Jamaicans / Gillian Forrester 357
12. Picturing South Asians in Victorian Jamaica / Anna Arabindan-Kesson 395
13. Victorian Furniture in Jamaica / John M. Cross 420
14. Jamacia's Victorian Architectures: 1834–1907 / James Robertson 439
15. Creole Architecture in Victorian Jamaica / Elizabeth Pigou-Dennis 474
16. "Keeping Alive Before the People's Eyes This Great Event": Kingston's Queen Victoria Monument / Petrina Dacres 493
17. "A Period of Exhibitions": World's Fairs, Museums, and the Laboring Black Body in Jamaica / Wayne Modest 523
Part III. Race, Performance, Ritual
18. "Most Intensely Jamaican": The Rise of Brown Identity in Jamaica / Belinda Edmondson 553
19. "Black Skin, White Mask?": Race, Class, and the Politics of Dress in Victorian Jamaican Society, 1837–1901 / Steeve O. Buckridge 577
20. Kumina: A Spiritual Vocabulary of Nationhood in Victorian Jamaica / Dianne M. Stewart 602
21. Jamaican Performance in the Age of Emancipation / Nadia Ellis 622
22. Black Jamaica and the Victorian Musical Imaginary / Daniel T. Neely 641
23. "A Mysterious Murder": Considering Jamaican Victorianism / Faith Smith 658
Contributors 675
Index 685

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