Between Black and White: Race, Politics, and the Free Coloreds in Jamaica, 1792-1865

American scholars, used to the insidious tradition that a person with any African ancestors is lumped with the "colored" mass, had been predisposed to believe that British West Indian society too was essentially bifurcated. In this volume, a complex story of the rise and fall of the colored class in Jamaican politics, the author dismisses this historical tradition and focuses on the political activity of the "free coloreds" in Jamaica. The volume is divided into three main portions, the first of which shows how in slavery's last three decades the Jamaican free coloreds were changed from loyal petitioners to active supporters of abolitionism. The second part consists of some political biographies and an attempt by the author to make a general ideological analysis of political behavior on the grounds of race and class. The last part is a chronological account of the shifting electorate and of voting patterns in elections and in debates on significant issues in the Assembly between 1834 and 1865.