JENNY SHAW is an assistant professor of history at the University of Alabama.

Jenny Shaw’s nuanced study illuminates how divisions originating in Europe— especially those that distinguished Irish Catholic servants from their English Protestant masters—shaped colonial society and ultimately the hierarchies of race that came to be the most important markers of difference. Shaw profitably lingers over the early period, when the early English Caribbean was in the process of becoming, and as a result she demonstrates that race and colonialism were negotiated, not preordained.

JENNY SHAW is an assistant professor of history at the University of Alabama.

Jenny Shaw’s nuanced study illuminates how divisions originating in Europe— especially those that distinguished Irish Catholic servants from their English Protestant masters—shaped colonial society and ultimately the hierarchies of race that came to be the most important markers of difference. Shaw profitably lingers over the early period, when the early English Caribbean was in the process of becoming, and as a result she demonstrates that race and colonialism were negotiated, not preordained.

JENNY SHAW is an assistant professor of history at the University of Alabama.

Jenny Shaw’s nuanced study illuminates how divisions originating in Europe— especially those that distinguished Irish Catholic servants from their English Protestant masters—shaped colonial society and ultimately the hierarchies of race that came to be the most important markers of difference. Shaw profitably lingers over the early period, when the early English Caribbean was in the process of becoming, and as a result she demonstrates that race and colonialism were negotiated, not preordained.