Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Jamaica in 1850

Jamaica in 1850

Bigelow, John

Paperback

Caribbean HistoryGeneral Racism & Ethnic StudiesGeneral United States History

ISBN10: 142551961X
ISBN13: 9781425519612
Publisher: University of Michigan Library
Published: Sep 13 2006
Pages: 228
Weight: 0.72
Height: 0.48 Width: 6.14 Depth: 9.21
Language: English
After Jamaican slaves were fully emancipated in 1838, the local economy collapsed. Driven by a belief in the innate inferiority of the black race and bolstered by this apparently disastrous Jamaican example, Americans who defended slavery convinced many that emancipation at home would lead to economic and social chaos. Collecting John Bigelow's vivid firsthand reporting, Jamaica in 1850 challenges that widely held view and demonstrates that Jamaica's troubles were caused not by lazy blacks but by the incompetence of absentee white planters operating within an obsolete colonial system. Bigelow also shows that although large plantations languished, many former slaves worked tirelessly and became successful small-scale landowners. The power of these arguments made John Bigelow's Jamaica in 1850 a crucially important document in the American antislavery struggle both in American and Britain. Robert J. Scholnick's introduction places the book within transnational debates about Emancipation, slavery, colonialism, and economic development in the antebellum period and considers its powerful impact in furthering the anti-slavery cause.

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