Lucky Valley: Edward Long and the History of Racial Capitalism
Catherine Hall
#3759 of 3,809 books · #1167 in History
Longlisted for the Cundill History Prize (2024).
Why does Edward Long's History of Jamaica matter? Written in 1774, Long's History, that most 'civilised' of documents, attempted to define White and Black as essentially different and unequal. Long deployed natural history and social theory, carefully mapping the island, and drawing on poetry and engravings, in his efforts to establish a clear and fixed racialized hierarchy. His White family sat at the heart of Jamaican planter society and the West India trade in sugar, which provided the economic bedrock of this eighteenth-century system of racial capitalism. Catherine Hall tells the story behind the History of a slave-owning family that prospered across generations together with the destruction of such possibilities for enslaved people. She unpicks the many contradictions in Long's thinking, exposing the insidious myths and stereotypes that have poisoned social relations over generations and allowed reconfigured forms of racial difference and racial capitalism to live on in contemporary societies.
- Publisher
- Cambridge University Press
- ISBN-13
- 9781009116480
- Genre
- Topics
- Racial capitalismSlavery and colonialism in JamaicaHistory of racism
Awards
- Cundill History PrizeLonglisted(2024)
Other awarded books from Catherine Hall
Catherine Hall has no other awarded or shortlisted books yet.
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