In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

• “Wi Lickle but Wi Tallawah”: Writing Jamaica into the Atlantic World, 1655–1834
• Trevor Burnard (bio)

We are in the middle of a rich flowering of scholarship on the history of Jamaica during the era of slavery. In this article, I survey 34 books published between 2014 and 2020, works that make a substantial contribution to Jamaican history. These books cover a period of time that ranges from 1655 and the English conquest of Jamaica until the 1831/2 Christmas rebellion that precipitated the end of slavery in the island in 1834. Two books, both of which view Jamaica in a comparative aspect, cover the entire period, with another book looking comparatively at Jamaica before the American Revolution. Three books examine Jamaica in the seventeenth century, while seven mainly deal with Jamaica after the end of the slave trade in 1807. Most—23 of the 34—are concentrated in the eighteenth century, 13 before Tacky’s Revolt of 1760–61, which seems to be for many historians a significant marker that divides Jamaican history, and 10 within the years of revolution and abolitionism in the late eighteenth century.

This outpouring of literature on Jamaica shows that the study of the island during the time when it was a vital part of a developing world-capitalist economy and when it practiced perhaps the most brutal form of slavery ever seen in the Atlantic World is testament to historians’ discovery or rediscovery of the importance of Jamaica in a regional and global context. That Jamaica is part of world history in this period in ways that it was not later on is one reason why so much academic attention and attention of a particular kind has suddenly resulted in an avalanche of books and specialist journal literature.¹

The books under review are various in subject matter, time period, and themes, but they have much in common. What most distinguishes them is that their authors are concerned with showing how important seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Jamaica was in the making of the modern world, locating Jamaica either within the new conceptual framework of Atlantic history or within the traditional area of imperialism. The island did not have had a praiseworthy history—indeed most writers take pains to demonstrate how dysfunctional, brutal, and exploitative the history of Jamaica has been. James [End Page 168] Delbourgo in Collecting the World: Hans Sloane and the Origins of the British Museum (2017) exemplifies the trend when he describes early eighteenth-century Jamaica as experienced and depicted by the naturalist physician and wealthy collector, Hans Sloane, as an island “full of English debauchery” which was a “hybrid of profit and savagery designed simultaneously to enlighten and beguile.” It was a place of contradictions which, Delbourgo insists, needs to be seen as “part of the militarized expansion of European capitalism in which naval empires fought rapaciously to seize natural resources from indigenous peoples through violent means such as slavery” (p. 86).

_______

The tone evident in recent historiography is often ironic and sometimes tragic. Eighteenth-century Jamaica was an island whose importance was built upon an institution that no one could defend and ruled by a white culture that was founded upon violence against an enslaved majority that struggled, often without success, to attain cultural autonomy. This history depicts great and malign power declining after the abolition of the slave trade and then, after emancipation, slipping into global irrelevance. Louis Nelson in Architecture and Empire in Jamaica (2016) argues that settler Jamaica peaked in 1750, when Jamaica’s “wealthiest planters and merchants were all still working to build Jamaica into the tropical front of the British Empire.” By 1800, however, “the island was governed by a white West Indian Creole elite, less committed to refinement than to personal leisure and hospitality to other whites.” Their personal derelictions meant that Jamaica by the end of the eighteenth century had “faded in the British imagination, abandoned by the wealthiest, mocked by the motherland, and overtaken in evocative power by India” (p. 9).

There is a clear timeline in the recent literature that depicts Jamaica reaching a peak of sorts around the Seven Years’ War, with the next half-century seeing...

中文翻译：

---

“ Wi Lickle但Wi Tallawah”：将牙买加写成大西洋世界，1655-1834年

代替摘要，这里是内容的简要摘录：

• “ Wi Lickle但Wi Tallawah”：将牙买加写成大西洋世界，1655-1834年
• 特雷弗·伯纳德（生物）

在奴隶制时代，我们正处于关于牙买加历史的大量学术研究的中间。在本文中，我调查了2014年至2020年之间出版的34本书，这些著作对牙买加的历史做出了重大贡献。这些书涵盖了一段时期，从1655年到英国对牙买加的征服，一直到1831/2年圣诞节叛乱导致1834年该岛的奴隶制终结。这两本书涵盖了比较方面，涵盖了牙买加整个时期，另一本书比较着眼于美国独立战争前的牙买加。三本书探讨了17世纪的牙买加，而七本书主要是在1807年奴隶贸易结束后与牙买加打交道的。其中34本书中的23本书大部分集中于18世纪，而在塔基1760-61年起义之前的13本书中，

关于牙买加的文献大量涌现表明，在该岛是发展中的世界资本主义经济的重要组成部分，并且实行了大西洋世界有史以来最残酷的奴隶制形式时，对该岛的研究证明了历史学家的正确性。在区域和全球背景下发现或重新发现牙买加的重要性。牙买加是这一时期世界历史的一部分，这种方式后来才出现，这是为什么如此之多的学术关注和某种特殊关注突然导致书籍和专业期刊文学雪崩的原因之一。^1个

所审查的书籍在主题，时间段和主题方面各不相同，但它们有很多共同点。他们最与众不同的地方在于，他们的作者关注的是展示17世纪和18世纪牙买加在现代世界的形成中的重要性，将牙买加置于大西洋历史的新概念框架内或帝国主义传统领域内。该岛没有令人赞叹的历史-的确，大多数作家都竭尽全力证明牙买加的历史是多么功能失调，残酷和剥削。詹姆斯[结束第168页] Delbourgo在《收集世界：汉斯·斯隆与大英博物馆的起源》中（2017）举例说明了这种趋势，他将18世纪早期的牙买加描述为博物学家和富有的收藏家汉斯·斯隆（Hans Sloane）经历并描绘为一个“充满英国放荡的小岛”，这是“旨在同时实现利润和野蛮的混合，开明和狡猾。” Delbourgo坚持认为，这是一个矛盾的地方，需要将其视为“欧洲资本主义军事扩张的一部分，在这个扩张中，海军帝国进行了疯狂的战斗，通过奴役等暴力手段从土著人民手中夺走了自然资源”（第86页） 。

_______

最近的史学中明显的基调常常具有讽刺意味，有时甚至是悲剧性的。十八世纪的牙买加是一个岛屿，其重要性是建立在任何人都无法捍卫和统治的白人文化制度之上的，白人文化是建立在暴力对待被奴役的多数民众的暴力基础之上的，而多数人往往没有成功，就难以实现文化自治。这段历史描绘了废除奴隶贸易之后强大而恶毒的权力在下降，然后在解放后陷入全球无关紧要的状态。路易斯·尼尔森（Louis Nelson）在牙买加的建筑与帝国（2016）认为，定居者牙买加在1750年达到顶峰，当时牙买加的“最富裕的种植园主和商人仍在努力将牙买加建设成大英帝国的热带地区”。但是，到1800年，“该岛由白人白人印第安克里奥尔族人统治，他们对精致的追求不亚于个人休闲和对其他白人的待客之道。” 他们的个人失职意味着，到18世纪末，牙买加“逐渐淡化了英国的想象力，被最富有的人抛弃，被祖国嘲笑，被印度超越了唤起的力量”（第9页）。

最近的文献中有一个明确的时间表，描述牙买加在七年战争前后达到了某种高峰，下半个世纪出现了……