Verene A. Shepherd – författare

Written by two of the Caribbean's leading historians, Liberties Lost is an essential book for students engaged in following courses on the history of the Caribbean. It will also be of interest to general readers seeking information on the history of the region. Starting with indigenous societies, Liberties Lost covers Europe's Caribbean project, European settlement and rivalry, the Transatlantic trade in enslaved Africans; sugar and slavery; African culture and community life; revolt and resistance and, finally, Caribbean emancipation.

Following the abolition of slavery in the Caribbean, a concerted effort was made to replace enslaved labor with indentured Indian labor, and this book recounts the story of one woman's tragic experience in trying to immigrate to the Caribbean in the nineteenth century. The book combines documentary evidence with a surrounding narrative interpretation in order to highlight the experiences of the young Indian woman, Maharani, who was allegedly raped and died subsequently on board the ship Allanshaw that sailed from Calcutta to colonial Guyana in 1885. The work sheds light on the general history of bonded labor migration as well as "sexploitation." Maharani's death gave rise to an extraordinary nine-day investigation involving some twenty-two witnesses, including some of the emigrants themselves. By making use of the emigrants' depositions, the book projects the voice of the indentured servants from India on their long voyage to the Caribbean. The events on this passage from India provide further evidence that 19th-century labor "migration" replicated several aspects of the middle passage of enslaved Africans, although it never reached slavery's brutal limits.

In 1974 Lucille Mathurin Mair defended her dissertation, which has since become a classic work in Caribbean historiography and influenced generations of scholars. Through extensive archival work with estate records, legal records, family papers and private correspondence, she sought out the women of Jamaica's past during slavery, women of all classes, all colours, black, brown and white. The work stands as a convincing exposure of women as agents of history - a path-breaking achievement at a time when Caribbean historiography ignored women. From her meticulous research emerged a powerful statement that has shaped subsequent understandings of gendered and cultural relations in Jamaican society: the white woman consumed, the coloured woman served and the black woman laboured. Over three decades Mair's dissertation became the most sought after unpublished work among students and scholars of Caribbean history and culture. Now available as a published monograph, the work will be more widely available to a new generation of scholars concerned with Atlantic history, slavery, culture and gender.The editors have provided a useful and informative introduction and a bibliography, containing the original bibliography in the dissertation now supplemented by bibliographies detailing Mathurin Mair's subsequent publications, subsequent UWI theses on women or gender, and books, articles and papers on Caribbean gender issues since 1974. Co-published with the Centre for Gender and Development Studies, University of the West Indies, Jamaica.

No study of Caribbean history can becomplete without an examination and appreciation of the topic of reparation.The opposition to reparation by former colonial powers and others, though,means that the demand for it is an ongoing struggle. Reparation, however, isthe final link required to close the circle which began with two of the worstcrimes in human history (indigenous genocide and chattel slavery) and must endwith atonement and restitution by the perpetrators on the one hand, andredemption for the descendants of the victims on the other. Otherwise, therecan be no true peace. As reggae singer Peter Tosh declared, “Everyone is cryingout for peace, no one is crying out for justice. . . . I need equal rights andjustice.”

Since the 1990s, Gender-Based Violence (GBV) has been contextualized as one of the primary endemic developmental issues affecting the lives of Caribbean people. Physical, verbal, sexual, emotional and financial violence against persons as a result of prevailing harmful gender norms has been recognized by Caribbean feminist scholars as crippling, particularly to women and girls who face the brunt of GBV’s frontal assault. The contemporary situation is even more grim with rising cases of deadly violence against persons which are rooted in unequal power relations steeped in gender. However there exists no comprehensive academic text which delves deeply into the historical roots of these occurrences and frames them as a critical and deliberate part of the violent history of the region. European contact with the region was deliberately curated in violence. Mass slaughter of the Indigenous Peoples, vile atrocities under the system of chattel slavery that are yet to be fully acknowledged, indignities suffered by indentured immigrants and continued brutalities in the 21st century are well explored by numerous scholars. However, few are framed within the context of gendered analysis with the specific aim of tracing contemporary violence with their historic antecedents. A well needed intervention into the historiography of the region, the text will be organized thematically and chronologically and explore topics related to violence against women, men and children framed within discourses of gender, decoloniality, race, class, culture, disability studies and sexuality.