Historians of the British Caribbean now appreciate the formidable transformations that the Haitian Revolution made to the British islands in the terminal years of slavery. A complex historiography on the events in the former French colony has illuminated linking threads to resistance, empire, and ideas of racial equality in the Atlantic world. The connections are much greater, though less discussed, between Haiti and its closest neighbours.
This presentation will address those connections with Jamaica, the largest of the British islands, from the final years of slavery in Jamaica through to the post-slavery years up to the 1865 Morant Bay Rebellion, a period that witnessed considerable transformations in both places.
Speaker: Matthew J. Smith is Professor of History and Director of the Centre for the Study of the Legacies of British Slavery. Previously he taught at the University of the West Indies, Mona in Jamaica where he was Professor of Caribbean History. His research is pan-Caribbean with special interest in Haiti and Jamaica. Among his publications is Liberty, Fraternity, Exile: Haiti and Jamaica After Emancipation (2014) and, Red and Black in Haiti: Radicalism, Conflict and Political Change, 1934-1957 (2009). He is also director of a 2018 documentary film on Walter Rodney, The Past is Not Our Future: Walter Rodney’s Student Years.
This event is a Zoom webinar on: Thursday 16 September 2021 at 6.00 p.m. London time.
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