Although the abolition of slavery across the Caribbean was a significant step, the societies that emerged were far from free. Political, economic and military power remained in the hands of the plantocracies and they used this to attempt to maintain their dominance over the formerly enslaved, who, in turn, continued to resist. Most of the region also remained in the grip of European imperial powers.

Lecture reading

Adamson, A., Sugar Without Slaves: The Political Economy of British Guiana, 1838-1904 (New Haven, 1972).

Bereton, Bridget, ‘Society and Culture in the Caribbean’, in Franklin W. Knight and Colin Palmer (eds), The Modern Caribbean (Chapel Hill, 1989), pp. 84-110.

Besson, Jean, Martha Brae's Two Histories: European Expansion and Caribbean Culture-Building in Jamaica (Chapel Hill, 2002).

Bolland, O. N., ‘Systems of Domination after Slavery: The Control of Land and Labour in the British West Indies after 1838’ in Hilary Beckles and Verene Shepherd (eds), Caribbean Freedom: Economy and Society from Emancipation to the Present: A Student Reader (London, 1993), pp. 107-124.

Blouet, O. M., 'Education and emancipation in Barbados, 1833-1846: A study of cultural transference', Ethnic and Racial Studies, 4 (1981), pp. 222-235.

Brereton, Bridget, Race Relations in Colonial Trinidad, 1870-1900 (Cambridge, 1979).

Curtin, Philip D., Two Jamaicas: The Role of Ideas in a Tropical Colony, 1830-1865 (Cambridge, MA, originally published 1955).

Green, William, British Slave Emancipation: The Sugar Colonies and the Great Experiment, 1830-1865 (Oxford, 1976).

Hall, C., ‘White visions, black lives: The free villages of Jamaica’, History Workshop Journal 36 (1993), 100-132.

Hall, Douglas, ‘The Flight from the Estates Reconsidered: The British West Indies, 1838-1842’ in Hilary Beckles and Verene Shepherd (eds), Caribbean Freedom: Economy and Society from Emancipation to the Present: A Student Reader (London, 1993), pp. 55-63.

Hall, Douglas, Five of the Leewards (London, 1971).

Hall, Douglas, Free Jamaica, 1830-1865: An Economic History (New Haven, 1959).

Heuman, Gad, ‘Peasants, Immigrants, and Workers’ in Stephan Palmié and Francisco A. Scarano (eds), The Caribbean: A History of the Region and its Peoples (Chicago, 2011), pp. 347-360.

Heuman, Gad, The Caribbean (London, 2006), chapters 10 and 11.

Holt, Thomas C., The Problem of Freedom: Race, Labor, and Politics in Jamaica and Britain, 1832-1938 (Baltimore, 1992).

Levy, Claude, Emancipation, Sugar and Federalism: Barbados and the West Indies, 1833-1876 (Gainesville, 1980).

McGlynn, Frank and Seymour Drescher (eds), The Meaning of Freedom: Economics, Politics, and Culture After Slavery (Pittsburgh, 1992).

Moore, Brian L., Race, Power and Social Segmentation in a Colonial Society: Guyana after Slavery, 1838-1891 (New York, 1987).

Moya Pons, Frank, History of the Caribbean: Plantations, Trade, and War in the Atlantic World (London, 2007), chapters 14 and 15.

Paton, Diana, No Bond but the Law: Punishment, Race, and Gender in Jamaican State Formation, 1780-1870 (Durham, NC, 2004).

Renard, Rosamunde A., ‘Labour Relations in Post-Slavery Martinique and Guadeloupe, 1848-1870’ in Hilary Beckles and Verene Shepherd (eds), Caribbean Freedom: Economy and Society from Emancipation to the Present: A Student Reader (London, 1993), pp.80-92.

Scarano, Francisco A., ‘Labor and Society in the Nineteenth Century’, in Franklin W. Knight and Colin Palmer (eds), The Modern Caribbean (Chapel Hill, 1989), pp. 21-50.

Schmidt-Nowara, ‘A Second Slavery?’ in Stephan Palmié and Francisco A. Scarano (eds), The Caribbean: A History of the Region and its Peoples (Chicago, 2011), pp. 333-345.

Scott, Rebecca J., Slave Emancipation in Cuba: The Transition to Free Labor, 1860-1899 (Princeton, 1985).

Stewart, Robert J., Religion and Society in Post- Emancipation Jamaica (Knoxville, 1992).

Tomich, Dale W. (ed.), The Politics of the Second Slavery (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2016).

Wilmot, Swithin, ‘Emancipation in Action: Workers and Wage Conflict in Jamaica, 1838-1840’ in Hilary Beckles and Verene Shepherd (eds), Caribbean Freedom: Economy and Society from Emancipation to the Present: A Student Reader (London, 1993), pp. 48-54.