A Caribbean enlightenment : intellectual life in the British and French colonial worlds, 1750-1792 / April G. Shelford, American University.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Shelford, April, author.

Series:

Ideas in context

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Caribbean Area--Intellectual life--18th century.

Caribbean Area.

Enlightenment--Caribbean area.

Enlightenment.

Colonists--Caribbean area--Intellectual life--18th century.

Colonists.

Great Britain--Colonies--America--Intellectual life--18th century.

Great Britain.

France--Colonies--America--Intellectual life--18th century.

France.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xvii, 386 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, United Kingdom ; New York, NY : Cambridge University Press, 2023.

Summary:

Exploring the intersection of Enlightenment ideas and colonial realities amongst White, male colonists in the eighteenth-century French and British Caribbean, A Caribbean Enlightenment recovers a neglected aspect of the region's history. Physicians to planters, merchants to publishing entrepreneurs were as inspired by ideologies of utility and improvement as their metropolitan counterparts, and they adapted 'enlightened' ideas and social practices to understand their place in the Atlantic World. Colonists collected botanical specimens for visiting naturalists and books for their personal libraries. They founded periodicals that created arenas for the discussion and debate of current problems. They picked up the pen to complain about their relationship with the home country. And they read to make sense of everything from parenting to personal salvation, to their new societies and the enslaved Africans on whom their prosperity depended. Ultimately, becoming 'enlightened' was a colonial identity that rejected metropolitan stereotypes of Caribbean degeneracy while validating the power to enslave on a cultural basis.

Contents:

What is a Caribbean enlightenment?

Jamaica's Patrick Browne

Birds of a feather

Making the Affiches, making Americans

American exceptionalism, political economy and the postwar order in the Journal de Saint-Domingue

A slave named Voltaire : or, gender and the making of American taste

Whence, whither, and which books?

"Truth hard to be discovered" : the commonplace books of Thomas Thistlewood

Containing the overflowing fountain of his brain : Robert Long's "Reflections"

Je s cais par une longue experience..."

Agricultural enlightenment in the Saint-Domingue press

The enlightened planter

Concluding reflections.

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 14 Sep 2023).

Other Format:

Print version:

ISBN:

9781009360821 (ebook)

Access Restriction:

Restricted for use by site license.