Slavery and Revolution

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Category Archives: Articles

Plantations and Homes

By Christer Petley |

This article is about the wealth and material culture of the Jamaican elite during the age of abolition. The planter class had a huge material investment in plantation slavery, and wealth derived from this allowed it to live ostentatiously and to consume conspicuously. Those who did not migrate away from Jamaica were drawn towards colonial […]

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The Material Cultures of Slavery and Abolition

By Christer Petley |

This is the introduction to a special issue of the journal Slavery and Abolition, which gathered together articles by historians and archaeologists seeking to shed new light on the system of slavery, and on the processes of abolition and emancipation, in the British Caribbean. This work, some of it based on archaeological field work, some of it […]

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The Fall of the Planter Class

By Christer Petley |

This is the introduction to a special issue of the journal Atlantic Studies, about the fall of the planters. It argues that the difficulties faced by the planter class in the British West Indies from the 1780s were an early episode in a wider drama of decline for New World plantation economies. The American historian Lowell Ragatz […]

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Gluttony, Excess, and the Fall of the Planter Class

By Christer Petley |

Food and rituals around eating are a fundamental part of human existence. They can also be heavily politicized and socially significant. In the British Caribbean, white slaveholders were renowned for their hospitality towards one another and towards white visitors. This was no simple quirk of local character. Hospitality and sociability played a crucial role in […]

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New Perspectives on Slavery and Emancipation

By Christer Petley |

New approaches to British imperial history and the rise of Atlantic history have had a strong influence on historians specializing in the history of the British-colonized Caribbean during the era of slavery. Caribbean scholars have always stressed the importance of transatlantic and colonial connections, but these new perspectives have encouraged historians to rethink the ways […]

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