Political culture in Jamaica before anticolonial nationalism

Richards, Jake Subryan Richard (2017) Political culture in Jamaica before anticolonial nationalism. History Compass, 15 (2). ISSN 1478-0542

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Abstract

This paper considers scholarship on political culture in Jamaica in 1865, the year of the Morant Bay rebellion. It situates the historiography of political culture in relation to three trends: first, an older historiography that envisaged the rebellion as indicative of nationalist consciousness; second, a more recent focus on the local politics of protest in the period 1838–1900; and third, another recent approach of explaining political culture through the dynamic relationship between metropole and colony. The paper then goes on to suggest that the latter two approaches are congenial to analysing the Underhill Meetings, a set of key political discussions prior to the rebellion which nevertheless have been underutilized in the historiography. The paper concludes by considering the possible linkages between the Underhill Meetings and the reform initiatives of the post‐rebellion colonial state. Overall, it argues for the possibility of island‐wide political consciousness without the need for ethno‐nationalism or “imagined communities”

Item Type:	Article
Official URL:	https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/14780542
Additional Information:	© 2017 The Author
Divisions:	International History
Subjects:	F History United States, Canada, Latin America J Political Science > JV Colonies and colonization. Emigration and immigration. International migration J Political Science > JL Political institutions (America except United States)
Date Deposited:	16 Oct 2020 12:06
Last Modified:	19 Dec 2023 19:06
URI:	http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/107006

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