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  1. Home
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  3. A Caribbean Enlightenment
Publisher:
Cambridge University Press
Online publication date:
September 2023
Print publication year:
2023
Online ISBN:
9781009360821
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009360821
Subjects:
History of Ideas, History, History of Ideas and Intellectual History
Series:
Ideas in Context (150)
Information

Book description

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.

Awards

Winner, 2024 Louis Gottschalk Prize, American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies

Winner, 2024 Kenshur Prize for best book in Eighteenth-Century Studies, Indiana University

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Contents

Page 1 of 2

Contents
  • Chapter 1 - What Is a Caribbean Enlightenment?
    pp 1-18
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