Project MUSE®: Journal of Caribbean History - Latest Articles
https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/746
Project MUSE®: Latest articles in Journal of Caribbean History.daily12026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00text/htmlen-USVol. 51 (2017) through current issueLatest Articles: Journal of Caribbean HistoryTWOProject MUSE®Journal of Caribbean History0799-59460047-2263Latest articles in Journal of Caribbean History. Feed provided by Project MUSE®The Settlement of the British Virgin Islands, 1672–1740
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/962865
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The territory officially known today as the “Virgin Islands” has, in recent decades, often been referred to as the “British Virgin Islands” or “BVI” in order to distinguish them from their nearby US (formerly Danish) counterparts. Over the period of focus here and since, the usage of “Virgin Islands” has varied to include or exclude different islands, and so for clarity the unofficial “BVI” will be generally used, although usage in primary documents will be retained. The group lies in the northeast corner of the Caribbean (figure 1), at the north end of the Lesser Antilles, which stretches from South America. Roughly, the northern half of the Lesser Antilles, from the French island of Guadeloupe, is known as the
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/746/image/coversmallThe Settlement of the British Virgin Islands, 1672–17402025-06-16text/htmlen-USThe Settlement of the British Virgin Islands, 1672–17402025-06-162025TWOProject MUSE®1071852026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002025-06-16The Quest for an “Independent Living”: Scottish Workers in the British West Indies 1750–1820
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/962866
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The British West Indies and its sugar industry emerge at the heart of wealth and power by the middle of the eighteenth century. When assessing this development and analysing how it connected Britain and the Americas there is the tendency to concentrate on those who made fortunes. This has shaped our understanding of the quality of life engendered and the nature of the societies that were created on both sides of the Atlantic. Less emphasis is placed on the full range of the experiences of those who migrated temporarily or permanently to the region in the quest to live better lives. The people involved included not just large and visible investors such as planters, merchants, bankers, manufacturers and members of
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/746/image/coversmallThe Quest for an “Independent Living”: Scottish Workers in the British West Indies 1750–18202025-06-16text/htmlen-USThe Quest for an “Independent Living”: Scottish Workers in the British West Indies 1750–18202025-06-162025TWOProject MUSE®1218992026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002025-06-16Black Resistance in Barbados after the Bussa Revolt, 1816–1838
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/962867
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In April 1816, Barbados witnessed its most intense enslaved rebellion when thousands of blacks in the eastern parishes of St Philip, Christ Church, St George and St John revolted against their enslavers in a bid for freedom. They engaged the parish militia, the imperial troops and the West India Regiment for three days before falling under the weight of the superior firepower of the armed forces. Twenty-two years later in 1838, these enslaved blacks finally received their freedom. But what about those twenty-two intervening years? What was the mood of those blacks whose bid for freedom was crushed by the military in 1816? Did heavy suppression blunt their objectives to seek and pursue an agenda for freedom? And
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/746/image/coversmallBlack Resistance in Barbados after the Bussa Revolt, 1816–18382025-06-16text/htmlen-USBlack Resistance in Barbados after the Bussa Revolt, 1816–18382025-06-162025TWOProject MUSE®1149272026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002025-06-16Colonial Prisoner Transfers from the Cayman Islands to Jamaica: Legacies of Colonialism from 1896 and throughout the Twentieth Century
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/962869
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The Cayman Islands were under English control from as early as 1670, administered from Jamaica, but with no formal constitutional underpinnings either with the United Kingdom or with Jamaica at that time. Despite grants of land being issued by the British Crown, the people who settled there were largely left to fend for themselves in what has been described as “isolation, neglect and a constitutional anomaly”.1 Therefore, an Assembly of Justices and Vestry was unilaterally established in the Cayman Islands in 1831 in order to make laws that were sensitive to local needs. This local form of governance was not cemented into the imperial structure whereby London, or indeed Jamaica, established their supremacy by
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/746/image/coversmallColonial Prisoner Transfers from the Cayman Islands to Jamaica: Legacies of Colonialism from 1896 and throughout the Twentieth Century2025-06-16text/htmlen-USColonial Prisoner Transfers from the Cayman Islands to Jamaica: Legacies of Colonialism from 1896 and throughout the Twentieth Century2025-06-162025TWOProject MUSE®757912026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002025-06-16Dominican Crossroads. H.C.C. Astwood and the Moral Politics of Race-Making in the Age of Emancipation by Christina Cecelia Davidson (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/962870
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The time is the late nineteenth century, the place the Dominican Republic and the main protagonist is Henry C.C. Astwood in this deeply researched exploration of the activities of a black American consul to Santo Domingo at a time of transition for both the United States and the Dominican Republic. But this, as the author makes clear, is not a conventional biography. It is so much more. Despite this not being a full-blown biography, Davidson, however, provides us with a comprehensive analysis of Astwood’s early life on Salt Cay, Turks & Caicos Islands where he was born in 1844, ten years after Britain emancipated the enslaved in her West Indian colonies. Astwood was the son of a white merchant and a mixed-race
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/746/image/coversmallDominican Crossroads. H.C.C. Astwood and the Moral Politics of Race-Making in the Age of Emancipation by Christina Cecelia Davidson (review)2025-06-16text/htmlen-USDominican Crossroads. H.C.C. Astwood and the Moral Politics of Race-Making in the Age of Emancipation by Christina Cecelia Davidson (review)2025-06-162025TWOProject MUSE®123432026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002025-06-16The First and Last King of Haiti. The Rise and Fall of Henry Christophe by Marlene L. Daut (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/962871
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Unlike his mentor and fellow revolutionary Toussaint Louverture, King Henry Christophe has not been kindly treated by historians. Much of what was written about him in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was the work of his enemies and detractors, who demonized him as a brutal killer and as a traitor driven by personal ambition rather than revolutionary principle. That image has proved hard to shift, and only recently have we begun to see some reappraisal of Christophe, first in Paul Crammer’s Black Crown in 2023 and now in Marlene Daut’s masterful biography of The First and Last King of Haiti. Daut makes excellent use of such archives as have survived — and it goes without saying, in such a destructive
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/746/image/coversmallThe First and Last King of Haiti. The Rise and Fall of Henry Christophe by Marlene L. Daut (review)2025-06-16text/htmlen-USThe First and Last King of Haiti. The Rise and Fall of Henry Christophe by Marlene L. Daut (review)2025-06-162025TWOProject MUSE®77522026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002025-06-16Daaga’s War: West African Soldiers, the Yoruba Diaspora, and a British Army “Mutiny” in Trinidad
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/962874
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Around 8:00, on the morning of 16 August 1837, three African soldiers of Britain’s 1st West India Regiment lined up for execution by firing squad near the Saint Joseph garrison in northwestern Trinidad. Various colonial and military officials gathered to watch. The whole of the 1st West India at the station stood by, too, forced to witness the grotesque retribution that followed violent insubordination. The white 89th Regiment, out from Port of Spain a few miles west, kept order. About nine weeks before, in mid-June, the three convicted men and dozens of co-conspirators had set their huts ablaze in the middle of the night, raided the weapons stores, opened fire on their officers and fled town. Throughout the
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/746/image/coversmallDaaga’s War: West African Soldiers, the Yoruba Diaspora, and a British Army “Mutiny” in Trinidad2025-06-16text/htmlen-USDaaga’s War: West African Soldiers, the Yoruba Diaspora, and a British Army “Mutiny” in Trinidad2025-06-162025TWOProject MUSE®1321682026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002025-06-16Notes on Contributors
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/962972
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Richard J. M. Blackett is Emeritus Professor of History, Vanderbilt University, USA.Michael Bromby is Senior Lecturer in Law, Truman Bodden Law School of the Cayman Islands.Henderson Carter is Senior Lecturer in History, University of the West Indies, Cave Hill campus.Heather Cateau is Senior Lecturer in History, University of the West Indies, St Augustine campus.John M. Chenoweth is Associate Professor in Anthropology, University of Michigan-Dearborn, USA.Alan Forrest is Emeritus Professor of Modern History, University of York, UK.Kyle Prochnow is Assistant Professor in History, Ursinus College, Collegeville, PA
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/746/image/coversmallNotes on Contributors2025-06-16text/htmlen-USNotes on Contributors2025-06-162025TWOProject MUSE®19972026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002025-06-16