Author Instructions

Version 1.0: last updated 28 Oct. 2026

Overview

The Jamaican Historical Review is the scholarly journal of the Jamaican Historical Society. First published in 1945, the Review aims to be the leading journal for scholarship on Jamaican history. The journal publishes peer-reviewed research articles, alongside non-refereed notes and documents, review essays, and book reviews.

The Review welcomes submissions on Jamaica and its diaspora, the Cayman Islands and the Turks and Caicos Islands (both formerly administered as dependencies of Jamaica), as well as comparative and regional studies relevant to Jamaican history.

The journal also welcomes interdisciplinary contributions from related fields where the historical significance to Jamaica is clear. These may include, but are not limited to, anthropology, archaeology, architecture, archival science, cultural studies, English literature, geography, Jewish studies, law, sociology, and theology.

We accept the following types of submission, of which more detail will be provided below:

• Research articles
• Notes and documents
• Review essays
• Book reviews

The Review does not charge any fees (see Article Processing Charge) for submitting or publishing material in our journal. We are a Diamond Open Access journal, and are grateful that our partnership with JAMS/MDPI makes this possible.

Submission Process

All submissions are made through this website, using the 'SUBMIT ARTICLE' button in the top right hand corner.

Generative AI Policy

The Jamaican Historical Review will not publish any submissions which have been written or researched with the use of generative AI. Authors must agree to a declaration to this effect when submitting their manuscript.

Simultaneous Submission

The Jamaican Historical Review will not consider for publication any material that is already under consideration by another scholarly journal or publisher, unless it has been withdrawn from that journal prior to submission to the Review.

Types of Submission

Research articles should be between 6,000–10,000 words in length, excluding footnotes and bibliography. You should include a 200-300 word abstract. Research articles should aim to make an original contribution to our understanding of some aspect of Jamaican history or a related subject, in accordance with the journal's scope (see 'Overview', above). Research articles are subject to double-blind peer review. On our submission system, this is an "Article".

Notes and documents come in several varieties; those we will consider publishing include research notes (providing an overview of ongoing research or perhaps posing a difficult question the author has struggled to answer so far), documents (transcriptions of original primary sources), and interviews (transcripts of interviews with notable historians of Jamaica, or individuals who otherwise have had an important impact on the historiography). Documents may also be submitted as research articles if they contain significant commentary and contextualisation. All notes and documents should be between 1,000–5,000 words in length, excluding any footnotes or bibliography. Documents can be foreign language documents, but they should be accompanied by an English translation. Notes and documents are not subject to peer review. Prior to submitting any Notes and Documents, please consult with the Editor so that its suitability for the journal can be confirmed. On our submission system, this should be submitted under the "Other" article type.

Review essays provide a historiographical survey of a topic related to Jamaican history, and can be either standalone reviews or can be structured as a longer book review of one or more recent works, or an older work and a recent work. A review essay should be 1,000–3,000 words in length, excluding footnotes and bibliography. Review essays may be subject to peer review, at the discretion of the Editors. If you are interested in writing a review essay, please contact the Assistant Editor (Book Reviews) in advance of submission. On our submission system, this is under the "Essay" article type.

Book reviews should be 600–1,000 words in length. They should be thoughtful and engaging critiques of a published work, that explain its basic argument, assess its strengths and weaknesses, and place it in historiographical context. Exceptionally, do not use footnotes in book reviews, instead provide bibliographic information in the text. Book reviews are not subject to peer review. If you are interested in writing a book review, please contact the Assistant Editor (Book Reviews). We welcome unsolicited enquiries about book reviews. On our submission system, this is under the "Review" article type.

House Style

The Review generally defers to the Chicago Manual of Style, 18th edition, besides the exceptions noted below.

We do not explicitly prescribe how you should format your submission, however please be mindful of your readers and consider using sub-headings, for example, if it would make your paper and your argument clearer to understand.

Footnotes and bibliography style

We use a modified footnote-bibliography citation system, which means that all submission types (except book reviews) should contain both footnotes (which may also be content notes) as well as a bibliography at the end of the manuscript. Unusually, we ask that authors use the shortened note style throughout their footnotes, rather than the first reference to a work containing all the bibliographic details.

Book

Footnote

• Bryan, Jamaican People, 50.
• Burnard and Garrigus, Plantation Machine, 150.

Bibliography

• Bryan, Patrick. The Jamaican People 1880–1902: Race, Class and Social Control. University of the West Indies Press, 2002.
• Burnard, Trevor, and John Garrigus. The Plantation Machine: Atlantic Capitalism in French Saint-Domingue and British Jamaica. The Early Modern Americas. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016.

Chapter in an edited volume

Note: unlike the current Chicago guidance, provide the page span in the bibliographic entry.

Footnote

• Robertson, ‘Jamaica’s Victorian Architectures,’ 450.

Bibliography

• Robertson, James. ‘Jamaica’s Victorian Architectures, 1834–1907.’ In Victorian Jamaica, edited by Tim Barringer and Wayne Modest, 439–73. Duke University Press, 2018.

Edited volume as a whole

Footnote

• Luengo and Smith, A Fortified Sea.

Bibliography

• Luengo, Pedro, and Gene Allen Smith, eds. A Fortified Sea: The Defense of the Caribbean in the Eighteenth Century. Maritime Currents: History and Archaeology. University of Alabama Press, 2024.

Translated book

Footnote

• Padrón, Spanish Jamaica, 35.

Bibliography

• Padrón, Francisco Morales. Spanish Jamaica. Translated by Patrick E. Bryan. Ian Randle Publishers, 2003.

Journal article

Note: for articles that have only been published online include the DOI or another stable link. Omit ‘The’ from journal titles in the bibliography.

Footnote

• Young, ‘Who Planned Kingston?,’ 150.
• Pigou-Dennis, ‘Island Modernity,’ 4.
• Claypole and Buisseret, ‘Trade-Patterns,’ 15.
• Williams, ‘Enrolled Deeds,’ 5.

Bibliography

• Young, J. G. ‘Who Planned Kingston?’ Jamaican Historical Review 1, no. 2 (1946): 144–53.
• Pigou-Dennis, Elizabeth. ‘Island Modernity: Jamaican Urbanism and Architecture in Kingston, 1960–1980.’ Island Studies Journal 10, supplement, ‘Urban Island Studies 1–2’ (2017). https://doi.org/10.1086/725865.
• Claypole, W. A., and D. J. Buisseret. ‘Trade-Patterns in Early English Jamaica.’ Journal of Caribbean History 5 (1972): 1–19.
• Williams, Andrew. ‘Enrolled Deeds as Records and Archives in Jamaica.’ Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies 12 (2025): article 17. https://elischolar.library.yale.edu/jcas/vol12/iss1/17.

News or magazine article

Footnote

• Ono-George, ‘My Favourite Place.’

Bibliography

• Ono-George, Meleisa. ‘My Favourite Place: Jamaica.’ History Extra, 18 November 2018. https://www.historyextra.com/period/georgian/my-favourite-place-jamaica/.

Book review

Footnote

• Livesay, review of Boundaries of Belonging, 165.

Bibliography

• Livesay, Daniel. Review of Boundaries of Belonging: English Jamaica and the Spanish Caribbean, 1655–1715, by April Lee Hatfield. New West Indian Guide 99, nos. 1–2 (2025): 165–66.

Thesis

Footnote

• Rutledge, ‘Enemies Bound by Trade,’ 30.

Bibliography

• Rutledge, Andrew James. ‘Enemies Bound by Trade: Jamaica, Cuba, and the Shared World of Contraband in Atlantic Empire, 1710–1760.’ PhD thesis, University of Michigan, 2018.

Other Conventions

Spelling

We use British English rather than American English spellings. For example, -ise instead of -ize, -tre instead of -ter, ou instead of o.

Punctuation

We encourage authors to use the Oxford comma.

Quotations should be indicated by single quotation marks, and quotations within quotations by double quotation marks.

Italics

Please use italics for book titles, foreign words, and ship names.

Numbers and Dates

The numbers one hundred and below should be spelled out, as well as multiples of a hundred, a thousand, a hundred thousand, or a million. All other numbers, such as 751, 2,403, 220,000, should be spelled out in numerals. Numbers should be separated by commas, not full stops/periods. The exception applies in tables and charts.

Dates should be formatted as “day month year”, e.g. 16 April 1703. If the day of the week is included, it should be formatted as Monday, 16 April 1703. In footnotes, dates should be given in the abbreviated three-letter form, e.g. 16 Apr. 1703, or 25 Sep. 1955.

Citations of unpublished archival material

To ensure uniformity of references to archival manuscripts across our articles and to ensure that they are easily traceable and identifiable to readers, authors should abide by the following mode of citation. The archive should be indicated first, followed by the collection and/or inventory number of the manuscript, then the folio number in “fol.” format. This should be followed by a description of the material cited, for instance the correspondents and date of a letter, the date of a logbook or diary entry, or, if the document has a title, the full title in double quotation marks. If the manuscript does not have folio numbers, authors should indicate [unfoliated] at the end of the reference.

In case of repeated references to the same archive, indicate the full name upon first citation and provide an abbreviation for subsequent references in the format “(hereafter, …).” The Review uses common abbreviations such as “TNA” for The National Archives, UK, “NLJ” for the National Library of Jamaica, and “JA” for the Archives Unit, Jamaica Archives and Records Department, Spanish Town.

Examples:

NLJ, MS 230, fol. 7r, Thomas Mosley to Charles Vernon, 29 Mar. 1747.

Liverpool Record Office (hereafter, LRO), 352 CLE/REG/4/1, Apprentice Enrolment Book, 1707–57, entry of 17 Sep. 1713 [unfoliated].

TNA, WO 1/59, fol. 257, “Observations sur le massacre du Fort-Dauphin,” 7 Jul. 1794.

Manuscript Preparation and Submission

We prefer if you submit your manuscript in accordance with the following guidelines. Please note that we do not accept unsolicited submissions of Notes and Documents, Book Reviews, or Review Essays. Please consult with the appropriate Editor before submitting these types of submissions. If you have any questions at all about this process, do not hesitate to contact us.

• Prepare both a .pdf and a word processing file type (e.g. .docx or .odt) version of your manuscript.
• Prepare separate files for graphics. They should be submitted as a compressed .zip through the submission system. In your original manuscript, indicate where these are intended to appear (e.g. using square brackets, "[Figure 1 here]"). 
• Prepare an abstract and keywords to be submitted through the system.
• You do not need to upload a Graphical Abstract or include a Cover Letter, unless you wish to.
• In your manuscript, please use 11 or 12pt font size and a Serif font, such as Times New Roman. Ensure your lines (except in tables, captions, bibliography, footnotes, etc) are double spaced for ease of reading and making notes.
• Include a separate title page with the author/s names and affiliation, as well as any acknowledgements. Remove your own name and details from the rest of the manuscript. This helps us to facilitate double-blind peer review.

Once a manuscript has been submitted, see the 'Editorial Process' page to understand the next steps.

Contact Details

• Email for general enquiries: jhr@jamaicanhistoricalsociety.org.jm
• Editor: editor@jamaicanhistoricalsociety.org.jm
• Assistant Editor (Book Reviews): ajrutled@umich.edu