The Jamaican Historical Review doi: 10.68027/742405

Authors: Andrew Williams

The eight years since the publication of the last volume of The Jamaican Historical Review constitute the longest hiatus in the journal's history…

The Jamaican Historical Review doi: 10.68027/742901

Authors: Aaron Graham

This article offers a comparative and historiographical examination of the penal laws in eighteenth-century Ireland and the slave codes of Jamaica and the British West Indies. Although these systems differed fundamentally in their treatment of Catholic Irish and enslaved Black populations, both developed as mechanisms of social control employed by relatively small Protestant elites facing perceived threats to their political and social authority. Drawing on the parallel development of scholarship on Ireland and the West Indies, the article identifies four areas in which direct comparison is particularly illuminating: the experiences and agency of subaltern populations; the identities, insecurities and practices of ruling elites; the role of liminal and intermediary groups; and the institutional structures through which these systems were enforced. It argues that neither the penal laws nor the slave codes operated as consistently or comprehensively as their formal provisions suggest. Uneven enforcement created opportunities for economic, social and cultural autonomy, while elite divisions, intermediary groups and limitations within state structures further constrained their effectiveness. The comparison also demonstrates how both historiographies have moved from nationalist and teleological interpretations towards more nuanced social and cultural histories. Bringing these previously separate literatures together therefore reveals distinctive parallels in British systems of social control while identifying productive directions for further comparative research.

The Jamaican Historical Review doi: 10.68027/742902

Authors: Dalea Bean Nicole Plummer

This article presents an oral history interview with the late Professor Sir Roy Augier, tracing his intellectual development and his contributions to the emergence and institutionalisation of Caribbean history as a field of study. Augier describes an education initially shaped by imperial approaches to history, before his studies at the University of St Andrews introduced him to African and Caribbean history through W. M. Macmillan. The interview explores his subsequent academic career at the University College of the West Indies, where he worked with scholars including Elsa Goveia, Douglas Hall, and Shirley Gordon to develop Caribbean history curricula and teaching materials. Particular attention is given to the production of The Making of the West Indies, his involvement with the Cambridge examinations, and his later role in the Caribbean Examinations Council and the development of Caribbean Advanced Proficiency Examinations (CAPE). Augier also reflects on his research in Jamaican political and constitutional history, his interdisciplinary engagement with the social sciences, his work on Rastafari, and his advocacy of the West Indian Federation. His account offers insight into the intellectual and institutional processes through which Caribbean scholars challenged inherited colonial curricula and established regional perspectives within historical scholarship. The interview provides a valuable first-hand perspective on the development of Caribbean historical education and the wider project of Caribbean intellectual decolonisation.

The Jamaican Historical Review doi: 10.68027/742903

Authors: Heidi Kaufman

Despite the expansive list of published work on Victorian imperialism or Jamaican history and culture, Victorian Jamaica, a new volume of essays edited by Tim Barringer and Wayne Modest, deserves our attention…

The Jamaican Historical Review doi: 10.68027/742904

Authors: Michelle Dionne Thompson

Jean Besson’s latest work is an ethnographic portrayal of the effects of creolization, globalization, and land ownership in northwest Jamaica that are often referred to as the Cockpits…

The Jamaican Historical Review doi: 10.68027/742905

Authors: Bridget Brereton

Institutional history is not as a rule the sexiest genre of the discipline; as the then Registrar of the Caribbean Examinations Council (CXC) put it in his foreword, ‘ordinarily the history of an examination board would be a boring story’…

The Jamaican Historical Review doi: 10.68027/742906

Authors: Carl Campbell

This book is the autobiography of David Buisseret, an academic, but it is not an academic book…

The Jamaican Historical Review doi: 10.68027/742907

Authors: David Buisseret

Explicitly comparative works like this one (or like Gwendolyn Hall’s Social Control in Slave Plantation Societies: A Comparison of Saint-Domingue and Cuba) often succeed in setting historical developments into a new light…

The Jamaican Historical Review doi: 10.68027/742908

Authors: Patrick E. Bryan

This book comes on the heels of three recent works on twentieth century Jamaica…