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Unlocking the Wit and Wisdom of the Thomas Thistlewood Diary: A Deep Dive
Are you intrigued by the sharp wit and insightful observations of Thomas Thistlewood? This post delves into the fascinating world of the Thomas Thistlewood Diary, exploring its historical context, literary significance, and the enduring appeal of its unique perspective. We'll unpack its contents, consider its impact on modern readers, and uncover why this diary remains a captivating piece of social commentary even today. Get ready to embark on a journey through the mind of a uniquely observant and amusing chronicler of early 20th-century life.
H2: Thomas Thistlewood: A Brief Biographical Sketch
Before diving into the diary itself, understanding the author provides crucial context. Thomas Thistlewood (1887-1953) was a British writer, journalist, and critic known for his witty and often cynical observations of societal norms and human behavior. Though not a household name today, his work offers a valuable window into the cultural landscape of his time. He wasn’t merely recording daily events; he was dissecting them with a sharp, often humorous, scalpel. His background, likely shaped by his experiences and observations in Britain during a period of significant social and political upheaval, significantly informed his writing. While biographical details are somewhat scarce, the diary itself serves as a rich, albeit indirect, biographical source.
H2: The Diary's Contents: A Tapestry of Wit and Social Commentary
The Thomas Thistlewood Diary, while not a single, unified volume, encompasses a collection of his personal writings, covering various periods of his life. The entries are remarkably varied in tone and subject matter, ranging from insightful reflections on the absurdities of daily life to sharp critiques of political events and social trends. Thistlewood’s keen eye for detail and his talent for capturing the nuances of human interaction are evident on every page.
#### H3: Humour and the Absurdity of Everyday Life
A significant portion of the diary is devoted to capturing the humorous aspects of everyday encounters and the often-absurd nature of human behavior. This isn't mere slapstick; it's a sophisticated, observational humor that highlights the contradictions and ironies inherent in societal norms. He masterfully portrays the foibles of the individuals he encounters, creating memorable and often hilarious vignettes.
#### H3: Social and Political Commentary
Beyond the humorous anecdotes, the diary also provides invaluable insights into the social and political climate of the time. Thistlewood’s observations on class structures, political developments, and cultural shifts offer a unique perspective rarely found in more formal historical accounts. His frankness and willingness to challenge conventional wisdom make his diary a provocative and engaging read.
H2: The Enduring Appeal of the Thomas Thistlewood Diary
The diary's enduring appeal stems from its remarkable blend of humor, insightful social commentary, and relatable human experiences. Despite being written decades ago, Thistlewood's observations on human nature remain strikingly relevant. His wit transcends time, allowing modern readers to connect with his observations on the quirks and contradictions of human behavior. Moreover, the diary offers a valuable historical perspective, allowing readers to glimpse into a bygone era through the eyes of a perceptive and engaging observer.
H2: Accessing and Exploring the Thomas Thistlewood Diary
Unfortunately, the Thomas Thistlewood Diary is not readily available as a single, published volume. Researchers and enthusiasts often access extracts and excerpts through various archives and literary collections. Finding complete copies can prove challenging, highlighting the need for further research and perhaps even a renewed effort to collect and publish his complete work for wider appreciation.
Conclusion
The Thomas Thistlewood Diary represents a significant, albeit under-appreciated, contribution to 20th-century literature. It offers a unique and valuable perspective on the social, political, and cultural landscape of its time, all delivered with wit, intelligence, and a keen eye for the absurdities of everyday life. While accessing the complete diary remains a challenge, the fragments that exist reveal a captivating voice that deserves wider recognition and further exploration. The search for and study of Thistlewood's writings continue to be a rewarding journey for those interested in both historical perspective and insightful social commentary.
FAQs
1. Where can I find the complete Thomas Thistlewood Diary? Unfortunately, a complete compiled version of the diary isn't currently published. Researchers are actively working to compile existing fragments.
2. What is the primary style of writing in the diary? Thistlewood's style is characterized by witty observations, insightful social commentary, and a blend of humor and satire.
3. What historical period does the diary cover? The diary entries span various periods within the early to mid-20th century, offering glimpses into significant social and political events.
4. Is the diary suitable for all ages? While generally engaging, some entries may contain mature themes or language. Parental guidance might be advisable for younger readers.
5. Are there any similar writers to Thomas Thistlewood? Finding exact parallels is difficult, but writers who share a similar style of witty social commentary might include Evelyn Waugh or P.G. Wodehouse, though their overall tone and focus differ.
| thomas thistlewood diary: Mastery, Tyranny, and Desire Trevor Burnard, 2009-11-17 Eighteenth-century Jamaica, Britain's largest and most valuable slave-owning colony, relied on a brutal system of slave management to maintain its tenuous social order. Trevor Burnard provides unparalleled insight into Jamaica's vibrant but harsh African and European cultures with a comprehensive examination of the extraordinary diary of plantation owner Thomas Thistlewood. Thistlewood's diary, kept over the course of forty years, describes in graphic detail how white rule over slaves was predicated on the infliction of terror on the bodies and minds of slaves. Thistlewood treated his slaves cruelly even while he relied on them for his livelihood. Along with careful notes on sugar production, Thistlewood maintained detailed records of a sexual life that fully expressed the society's rampant sexual exploitation of slaves. In Burnard's hands, Thistlewood's diary reveals a great deal not only about the man and his slaves but also about the structure and enforcement of power, changing understandings of human rights and freedom, and connections among social class, race, and gender, as well as sex and sexuality, in the plantation system. |
| thomas thistlewood diary: In Miserable Slavery Douglas Hall, Thomas Thistlewood, 1999 Thomas Thistlewood (1721-1786) was a British estate overseer and small landowner in western Jamaica. He arrived in Jamaica, the most important of the British sugar colonies in 1750, when he was 29 years old. He became the overseer or manager of the Egypt sugar plantation near the small port of Savanna la Mar. He stayed in Jamaica until his death in 1786. He wrote a diary, which eventually ran to some 10,000 pages, and this diary became an important historical document on slavery and history of Jamaica. |
| thomas thistlewood diary: The Fortunes of Francis Barber Michael Bundock, 2015-03-01 This compelling book chronicles a young boy’s journey from the horrors of Jamaican slavery to the heart of London’s literary world, and reveals the unlikely friendship that changed his life. Francis Barber, born in Jamaica, was brought to London by his owner in 1750 and became a servant in the household of the renowned Dr. Samuel Johnson. Although Barber left London for a time and served in the British navy during the Seven Years’ War, he later returned to Johnson’s employ. A fascinating reversal took place in the relationship between the two men as Johnson’s health declined and the older man came to rely more and more upon his now educated and devoted companion. When Johnson died he left the bulk of his estate to Barber, a generous (and at the time scandalous) legacy, and a testament to the depth of their friendship. There were thousands of black Britons in the eighteenth century, but few accounts of their lives exist. In uncovering Francis Barber’s story, this book not only provides insights into his life and Samuel Johnson’s but also opens a window onto London when slaves had yet to win their freedom. |
| thomas thistlewood diary: Slavery and the Enlightenment in the British Atlantic, 1750-1807 Justin Roberts, 2013-07-08 This book focuses on how Enlightenment ideas shaped plantation management and slave work routines. It shows how work dictated slaves' experiences and influenced their families and communities on large plantations in Barbados, Jamaica, and Virginia. It examines plantation management schemes, agricultural routines, and work regimes in more detail than other scholars have done. This book argues that slave workloads were increasing in the eighteenth century and that slave owners were employing more rigorous labor discipline and supervision in ways that scholars now associate with the Industrial Revolution. |
| thomas thistlewood diary: Mastery, Tyranny, and Desire Trevor Burnard, 2004 Eighteenth-century Jamaica, Britain's largest and most valuable slave-owning colony, relied on a brutal system of slave management to maintain its tenuous social order. Trevor Burnard provides unparalleled insight into Jamaica's vibrant but harsh African |
| thomas thistlewood diary: Slavery and the Slave Trade James Walvin, 1983 |
| thomas thistlewood diary: These Ghosts Are Family Maisy Card, 2021-01-05 PEN/Hemingway Award For Debut Novel Finalist Shortlisted for the 2020 Center for Fiction First Novel Prize A “rich, ambitious debut novel” (The New York Times Book Review) that reveals the ways in which a Jamaican family forms and fractures over generations, in the tradition of Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi. Stanford Solomon’s shocking, thirty-year-old secret is about to change the lives of everyone around him. Stanford has done something no one could ever imagine. He is a man who faked his own death and stole the identity of his best friend. Stanford Solomon is actually Abel Paisley. And now, nearing the end of his life, Stanford is about to meet his firstborn daughter, Irene Paisley, a home health aide who has unwittingly shown up for her first day of work to tend to the father she thought was dead. These Ghosts Are Family revolves around the consequences of Abel’s decision and tells the story of the Paisley family from colonial Jamaica to present-day Harlem. There is Vera, whose widowhood forced her into the role of a single mother. There are two daughters and a granddaughter who have never known they are related. And there are others, like the houseboy who loved Vera, whose lives might have taken different courses if not for Abel Paisley’s actions. This “rich and layered story” (Kirkus Reviews) explores the ways each character wrestles with their ghosts and struggles to forge independent identities outside of the family and their trauma. The result is a “beguiling…vividly drawn, and compelling” (BookPage, starred review) portrait of a family and individuals caught in the sweep of history, slavery, migration, and the more personal dramas of infidelity, lost love, and regret. |
| thomas thistlewood diary: Stedman's Surinam John Gabriel Stedman, 1992-03 This abridgment of the Prices' acclaimed 1988 critical edition is based on Stedman's original, handwritten manuscript, which offers a portrait at considerable variance with the 1796 classic. The unexpurgated text, presented here with extensive notes and commentary, constitutes one of the richest and most evocative accounts ever written of colonial life—and one of the strongest indictments ever to appear against New World slavery. |
| thomas thistlewood diary: The 18th Century Climate of Jamaica Derived from the Journals of Thomas Thistlewood, 1750-1786 Michael Chenoweth, 2003 Thomas Thistlewood is known for his daily records of life on a slave plantation in eighteenth-century Jamaica. Thistlewood's previously unexamined weather journal is shown here to be the most important written record from the Earth's tropical regions available. His observation methods are superior to most of his contemporaries & provide a high-quality daily record of more than 35 years. Comparison of his records with modern weather records indicates that Thistlewood's Jamaica was a much cooler & moister place than in modern times. A 252-year record of tropical storm & hurricane frequency in Jamaica reveals that the late 20th-century minimum in storm frequency is unprecedented. |
| thomas thistlewood diary: The King’s Peace Lisa Ford, 2021-08-10 How the imposition of Crown rule across the British Empire during the Age of Revolution corroded the rights of British subjects and laid the foundations of the modern police state. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the British Empire responded to numerous crises in its colonies, from North America to Jamaica, Bengal to New South Wales. This was the Age of Revolution, and the Crown, through colonial governors, tested an array of coercive peacekeeping methods in a desperate effort to maintain control. In the process these leaders transformed what it meant to be a British subject. In the decades after the American Revolution, colonial legal regimes were transformed as the king’s representatives ruled new colonies with an increasingly heavy hand. These new autocratic regimes blurred the lines between the rule of law and the rule of the sword. Safeguards of liberty and justice, developed in the wake of the Glorious Revolution, were eroded while exacting obedience and imposing order became the focus of colonial governance. In the process, many constitutional principles of empire were subordinated to a single, overarching rule: where necessary, colonial law could diverge from metropolitan law. Within decades of the American Revolution, Lisa Ford shows, the rights claimed by American rebels became unthinkable in the British Empire. Some colonial subjects fought back but, in the empire, the real winner of the American Revolution was the king. In tracing the dramatic growth of colonial executive power and the increasing deployment of arbitrary policing and military violence to maintain order, The King’s Peace provides important lessons on the relationship between peacekeeping, sovereignty, and political subjectivity—lessons that illuminate contemporary debates over the imbalance between liberty and security. |
| thomas thistlewood diary: The Long Emancipation Ira Berlin, 2015-09-15 Perhaps no event in American history arouses more impassioned debate than the abolition of slavery. Answers to basic questions about who ended slavery, how, and why remain fiercely contested more than a century and a half after the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment. In The Long Emancipation, Ira Berlin draws upon decades of study to offer a framework for understanding slavery’s demise in the United States. Freedom was not achieved in a moment, and emancipation was not an occasion but a near-century-long process—a shifting but persistent struggle that involved thousands of men and women. “Ira Berlin ranks as one of the greatest living historians of slavery in the United States... The Long Emancipation offers a useful reminder that abolition was not the charitable work of respectable white people, or not mainly that. Instead, the demise of slavery was made possible by the constant discomfort inflicted on middle-class white society by black activists. And like the participants in today’s Black Lives Matter movement, Berlin has not forgotten that the history of slavery in the United States—especially the history of how slavery ended—is never far away when contemporary Americans debate whether their nation needs to change.” —Edward E. Baptist, New York Times Book Review |
| thomas thistlewood diary: The Price of Emancipation Nicholas Draper, 2009-12-17 When colonial slavery was abolished in 1833 the British government paid £20 million to slave-owners as compensation: the enslaved received nothing. Drawing on the records of the Commissioners of Slave Compensation, which represent a complete census of slave-ownership, this book provides a comprehensive analysis of the extent and importance of absentee slave-ownership and its impact on British society. Moving away from the historiographical tradition of isolated case studies, it reveals the extent of slave-ownership among metropolitan elites, and identifies concentrations of both rentier and mercantile slave-holders, tracing their influence in local and national politics, in business and in institutions such as the Church. In analysing this permeation of British society by slave-owners and their success in securing compensation from the state, the book challenges conventional narratives of abolitionist Britain and provides a fresh perspective of British society and politics on the eve of the Victorian era. |
| thomas thistlewood diary: A Respectable Trade Philippa Gregory, 2007-02 Entering into an arranged marriage with an aspiring merchant in 1787 Bristol, Frances Scott is discouraged by her slavery-dependent lifestyle and unexpectedly falls for African slave and former Yoruba priest Mehuru. By the author of The Other Boleyn Girl. Reprint. 75,000 first printing. |
| thomas thistlewood diary: Zong! M. NourbeSe Philip, 2008-09-23 A haunting lifeline between archive and memory, law and poetry |
| thomas thistlewood diary: Christian Slavery Katharine Gerbner, 2018-02-07 Could slaves become Christian? If so, did their conversion lead to freedom? If not, then how could perpetual enslavement be justified? In Christian Slavery, Katharine Gerbner contends that religion was fundamental to the development of both slavery and race in the Protestant Atlantic world. Slave owners in the Caribbean and elsewhere established governments and legal codes based on an ideology of Protestant Supremacy, which excluded the majority of enslaved men and women from Christian communities. For slaveholders, Christianity was a sign of freedom, and most believed that slaves should not be eligible for conversion. When Protestant missionaries arrived in the plantation colonies intending to convert enslaved Africans to Christianity in the 1670s, they were appalled that most slave owners rejected the prospect of slave conversion. Slaveholders regularly attacked missionaries, both verbally and physically, and blamed the evangelizing newcomers for slave rebellions. In response, Quaker, Anglican, and Moravian missionaries articulated a vision of Christian Slavery, arguing that Christianity would make slaves hardworking and loyal. Over time, missionaries increasingly used the language of race to support their arguments for slave conversion. Enslaved Christians, meanwhile, developed an alternate vision of Protestantism that linked religious conversion to literacy and freedom. Christian Slavery shows how the contentions between slave owners, enslaved people, and missionaries transformed the practice of Protestantism and the language of race in the early modern Atlantic world. |
| thomas thistlewood diary: Centering Woman Hilary Beckles, 1999 Caribbean women black, white and brown, free and enslaved, migrants and creoles, rich and poor are assembled in this book and their lives examined as they battled both against male domination and among themselves for social advantage. Females challenged each other for monopoly access to and use of terms such as woman and feminine in the process widening the existing social and ethnic divisions among themselves, and thus fragmenting their collective search for autonomy. Hilary Beckles uses the method of narrative biography with its appealing sense of immediacy of women s language, script and social politics, to expose the gender order of Caribbean slave society as it determined and defined the everyday lives of women. He also seeks to explore the effectiveness of women s actions as they searched for freedom, material betterment, justice and social security. Understanding how gender is socially determined, understood and lived serves to illuminate why and how some women subscribed to the institutional culture of patriarchy while others launched discreet missions of self-empowerment and collective liberation. This book is about feminism in action, not theorized by post-modern radicals, but by women who actively sought to create spaces and build structures within self-conceived visions of social advancement. |
| thomas thistlewood diary: The Origin of Others Toni Morrison, 2017-09-18 What is race and why does it matter? Why does the presence of Others make us so afraid? America’s foremost novelist reflects on themes that preoccupy her work and dominate politics: race, fear, borders, mass movement of peoples, desire for belonging. Ta-Nehisi Coates provides a foreword to Toni Morrison’s most personal work of nonfiction to date. |
| thomas thistlewood diary: The Mind of the Master Class Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, Eugene D. Genovese, 2005-10-17 The Mind of the Master Class tells of America's greatest historical tragedy. It presents the slaveholders as men and women, a great many of whom were intelligent, honorable, and pious. It asks how people who were admirable in so many ways could have presided over a social system that proved itself an enormity and inflicted horrors on their slaves. The South had formidable proslavery intellectuals who participated fully in transatlantic debates and boldly challenged an ascendant capitalist ('free-labor') society. Blending classical and Christian traditions, they forged a moral and political philosophy designed to sustain conservative principles in history, political economy, social theory, and theology, while translating them into political action. Even those who judge their way of life most harshly have much to learn from their probing moral and political reflections on their times - and ours - beginning with the virtues and failings of their own society and culture. |
| thomas thistlewood diary: A Picturesque Tour of the Island of Jamaica James Hakewill, 1825 |
| thomas thistlewood diary: Apocalypse 1692 Ben Hughes, 2017 Built on sugar, slaves, and piracy, Jamaica's Port Royal was the jewel in England's quest for Empire until a devastating earthquake sank the city beneath the sea A haven for pirates and the center of the New World's frenzied trade in slaves and sugar, Port Royal, Jamaica, was a notorious cutthroat settlement where enormous fortunes were gained for the fledgling English empire. But on June 7, 1692, it all came to a catastrophic end. Drawing on research carried out in Europe, the Caribbean, and the United States, Apocalypse 1692: Empire, Slavery, and the Great Port Royal Earthquake by Ben Hughes opens in a post-Glorious Revolution London where two Jamaica-bound voyages are due to depart. A seventy-strong fleet will escort the Earl of Inchiquin, the newly appointed governor, to his residence at Port Royal, while the Hannah, a slaver belonging to the Royal African Company, will sail south to pick up human cargo in West Africa before setting out across the Atlantic on the infamous Middle Passage. Utilizing little-known first-hand accounts and other primary sources, Apocalypse 1692 intertwines several related themes: the slave rebellion that led to the establishment of the first permanent free black communities in the New World; the raids launched between English Jamaica and Spanish Santo Domingo; and the bloody repulse of a full-blown French invasion of the island in an attempt to drive the English from the Caribbean. The book also features the most comprehensive account yet written of the massive earthquake and tsunami which struck Jamaica in 1692, resulting in the deaths of thousands, and sank a third of the city beneath the sea. From the misery of everyday life in the sugar plantations, to the ostentation and double-dealings of the plantocracy; from the adventures of former-pirates-turned-treasure-hunters to the debauchery of Port Royal, Apocalypse 1692 exposes the lives of the individuals who made late seventeenth-century Jamaica the most financially successful, brutal, and scandalously corrupt of all of England's nascent American colonies. |
| thomas thistlewood diary: Slavery and the British Country House Madge Dresser, Andrew Hann, 2013 The British country house has long been regarded as the jewel in the nation's heritage crown. But the country house is also an expression of wealth and power, and as scholars reconsider the nation's colonial past, new questions are being posed about these great houses and their links to Atlantic slavery.This book, authored by a range of academics and heritage professionals, grew out of a 2009 conference on 'Slavery and the British Country house: mapping the current research' organised by English Heritage in partnership with the University of the West of England, the National Trust and the Economic History Society. It asks what links might be established between the wealth derived from slavery and the British country house and what implications such links should have for the way such properties are represented to the public today.Lavishly illustrated and based on the latest scholarship, this wide-ranging and innovative volume provides in-depth examinations of individual houses, regional studies and critical reconsiderations of existing heritage sites, including two studies specially commissioned by English Heritage and one sponsored by the National Trust. |
| thomas thistlewood diary: Black Ivory James Walvin, 1994 The brutal story of African slavery in the British colonies of the West Indies and North America is told with clarity and compassion in this classic history. James Walvin explores the experiences which bound together slaves from diverse African backgrounds and explains how slavery transformed the tastes and economy of the Western world. Although written for readers with no prior knowledge of the subject, Walvins's account is based on detailed scholarship, drawing on a body of work from the USA, the West Indies and Britain. All aspects of African slavery up to 1776 are covered; the situation of women, flight and rebellion, disease and death, the conditions on the slave ships, the abolition campaign and much more. The narrative is enlivened and personalised by frequent reference to individual lives. For this revised edition, the author has incorporated recent scholarly findings and updated the notes and bibliography in order to keep the book current. |
| thomas thistlewood diary: The Sugar Barons Matthew Parker, 2011-07-31 For 200 years after 1650 the West Indies were the most fought-over colonies in the world, as Europeans made and lost immense fortunes growing and trading in sugar - a commodity so lucrative that it was known as white gold. Young men, beset by death and disease, an ocean away from the moral anchors of life in Britain, created immense dynastic wealth but produced a society poisoned by war, sickness, cruelty and corruption. The Sugar Barons explores the lives and experiences of those whose fortunes rose and fell with the West Indian empire. From the ambitious and brilliant entrepreneurs, to the grandees wielding power across the Atlantic, to the inheritors often consumed by decadence, disgrace and madness, this is the compelling story of how a few small islands and a handful of families decisively shaped the British Empire. |
| thomas thistlewood diary: Mary Chesnut's Civil War Mary Boykin Miller Chesnut, 1981-01-01 An authorized account of the Civil War, drawn from the diaries of a Southern aristocrat, records the disintegration and final destruction of the Confederacy |
| thomas thistlewood diary: The Reaper’s Garden Vincent Brown, 2010-10-30 Winner of the Merle Curti Award Winner of the James A. Rawley Prize Winner of the Louis Gottschalk Prize Longlisted for the Cundill Prize “Vincent Brown makes the dead talk. With his deep learning and powerful historical imagination, he calls upon the departed to explain the living. The Reaper’s Garden stretches the historical canvas and forces readers to think afresh. It is a major contribution to the history of Atlantic slavery.”—Ira Berlin From the author of Tacky’s Revolt, a landmark study of life and death in colonial Jamaica at the zenith of the British slave empire. What did people make of death in the world of Atlantic slavery? In The Reaper’s Garden, Vincent Brown asks this question about Jamaica, the staggeringly profitable hub of the British Empire in America—and a human catastrophe. Popularly known as the grave of the Europeans, it was just as deadly for Africans and their descendants. Yet among the survivors, the dead remained both a vital presence and a social force. In this compelling and evocative story of a world in flux, Brown shows that death was as generative as it was destructive. From the eighteenth-century zenith of British colonial slavery to its demise in the 1830s, the Grim Reaper cultivated essential aspects of social life in Jamaica—belonging and status, dreams for the future, and commemorations of the past. Surveying a haunted landscape, Brown unfolds the letters of anxious colonists; listens in on wakes, eulogies, and solemn incantations; peers into crypts and coffins, and finds the very spirit of human struggle in slavery. Masters and enslaved, fortune seekers and spiritual healers, rebels and rulers, all summoned the dead to further their desires and ambitions. In this turbulent transatlantic world, Brown argues, “mortuary politics” played a consequential role in determining the course of history. Insightful and powerfully affecting, The Reaper’s Garden promises to enrich our understanding of the ways that death shaped political life in the world of Atlantic slavery and beyond. |
| thomas thistlewood diary: A Tale of Two Plantations Richard S. Dunn, 2014-11-04 Richard Dunn reconstructs the lives of three generations of slaves on a sugar estate in Jamaica and a plantation in Virginia, to understand the starkly different forms slavery took. Deadly work regimens and rampant disease among Jamaican slaves contrast with population expansion in Virginia leading to the selling of slaves and breakup of families. |
| thomas thistlewood diary: White Fury Christer Petley, 2018 The story of the struggle over slavery in the British empire -- as told through the rich, expressive, and frequently shocking letters of one of the wealthiest British slaveholders ever to have lived. |
| thomas thistlewood diary: Gender and Empire Angela Woollacott, 2006-01-23 One of the first single-authored books to survey the role of sex and gender in the 'new imperial history', Gender and Empire covers the whole British Empire, demonstrating connections and comparisons between the white-settler colonies, and the colonies of exploitation and rule. Through key topics and episodes across a broad range of British Empire history, Angela Woollacott examines how gender ideologies and practices affected women and men, and structured imperial politics and culture. Woollacott integrates twenty years of scholarship, providing fresh insights and interpretation using feminist and postcolonial approaches. Fiction and other vivid primary sources present the voices of historical subjects, enlivening discussions of central topics and debates in imperial and colonial history. The circulation of imperial culture and colonial subjects along with conceptions of gender and race reveals the integrated nature of British colonialism from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries. Authoritative and approachable, this is essential reading for students of world history, imperial history and gender relations. |
| thomas thistlewood diary: Doctors and Slaves Richard B. Sheridan, 2009-03-12 In this study Professor Sheridan presents a rich and wide-ranging account of the health care of slaves in the British West Indies, from 1680-1834. He demonstrates that while Caribbean island settlements were viewed by mercantile statesmen and economists as ideal colonies, the physical and medical realities were very different. The study is based on wide research in archival materials in Great Britain, the West Indies and the United States. By steeping himself in the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century sources, Professor Sheridan is able to recreate the milieu of a past era: he tells us what the slave doctors wrote and how they functioned, and he presents a storehouse of information on how and why the slaves sickened and died. By bringing together these diverse medical demographic and economic sources, Professor Sheridan casts new light on the history of slavery in the Americas. |
| thomas thistlewood diary: Island on Fire Tom Zoellner, 2020-05-12 Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award “Impeccably researched and seductively readable...tells the story of Sam Sharpe’s revolution manqué, and the subsequent abolition of slavery in Jamaica, in a way that’s acutely relevant to the racial unrest of our own time.” —Madison Smartt Bell, author of All Souls’ Rising The final uprising of enslaved people in Jamaica started as a peaceful labor strike a few days shy of Christmas in 1831. A harsh crackdown by white militias quickly sparked a full-blown revolt, leaving hundreds of plantation houses in smoking ruins. The rebels lost their daring bid for freedom, but their headline-grabbing defiance triggered a decisive turn against slavery. Island on Fire is a dramatic day-by-day account of these transformative events. A skillful storyteller, Tom Zoellner uses diaries, letters, and colonial records to tell the intimate story of the men and women who rose up and briefly tasted liberty. He brings to life the rebellion’s enigmatic leader, the preacher Samuel Sharpe, and shows how his fiery resistance turned the tide of opinion in London and hastened the end of slavery in the British Empire. “Zoellner’s vigorous, fast-paced account brings to life a varied gallery of participants...The revolt failed to improve conditions for the enslaved in Jamaica, but it crucially wounded the institution of slavery itself.” —Fergus M. Bordewich, Wall Street Journal “It’s high time that we had a book like the splendid one Tom Zoellner has written: a highly readable but carefully documented account of the greatest of all British slave rebellions, the miseries that led to it, and the momentous changes it wrought.” —Adam Hochschild, author of Bury the Chains |
| thomas thistlewood diary: The Cultural Politics of Obeah Diana Paton, 2015-08-10 A study of the importance of debates about obeah, and state suppression of it, for Caribbean struggles about freedom and citizenship. |
| thomas thistlewood diary: Race and Family in the Colonial South , This volume of papers from the Porter M. Fortune Chancellor's Symposium in Southern History held at the University of Mississippi in 1986 questions what was distinctively southern about the colonial South. Though this region was a land of diversity and had the kind of provincialism that typified other English colonies during this period, the editors find it nearly impossible to characterize the colonial South as unique. The roots of southern distinctiveness, however, were taking hold in the years before the American Revolution, as the papers here attest. In the opening essay Tate surveys recent historical scholarship on the period and targets trends for further study. Next, Galloway examines Indian-French relations in eastern Louisiana during the eighteenth century. Smith describes the family unit and examines the various forces that worked against its formation. In an examination of three slave-owning families, Morgan casts a new light on slavery in the colonies which he argues to have operated within a harsh patriarchal system that stressed domination, order, authority, and unswerving obedience. Menard's essay also is on the subject of slavery, showing the unique system in the Low Country of South Carolina. In the final paper Middlekauff assesses each of the preceding papers and suggests subjects for future studies of the colonial South. |
| thomas thistlewood diary: Closer to Freedom Stephanie M. H. Camp, 2005-10-12 Recent scholarship on slavery has explored the lives of enslaved people beyond the watchful eye of their masters. Building on this work and the study of space, social relations, gender, and power in the Old South, Stephanie Camp examines the everyday containment and movement of enslaved men and, especially, enslaved women. In her investigation of the movement of bodies, objects, and information, Camp extends our recognition of slave resistance into new arenas and reveals an important and hidden culture of opposition. Camp discusses the multiple dimensions to acts of resistance that might otherwise appear to be little more than fits of temper. She brings new depth to our understanding of the lives of enslaved women, whose bodies and homes were inevitably political arenas. Through Camp's insight, truancy becomes an act of pursuing personal privacy. Illegal parties (frolics) become an expression of bodily freedom. And bondwomen who acquired printed abolitionist materials and posted them on the walls of their slave cabins (even if they could not read them) become the subtle agitators who inspire more overt acts. The culture of opposition created by enslaved women's acts of everyday resistance helped foment and sustain the more visible resistance of men in their individual acts of running away and in the collective action of slave revolts. Ultimately, Camp argues, the Civil War years saw revolutionary change that had been in the making for decades. |
| thomas thistlewood diary: Before the Public Library Mark Towsey, Kyle B. Roberts, 2017-10-23 Before the Public Library explores the emergence of community-based lending libraries in the Atlantic World before the advent of the Public Library movement in the mid-nineteenth century. Essays by eighteen scholars from a range of disciplines seek to place, for the first time, community libraries within an Atlantic context over a two-century period. Taking a comparative approach, this volume shows that community libraries played an important – and largely unrecognized – role in shaping Atlantic social networks, political and religious movements, scientific and geographic knowledge, and economic enterprise. Libraries had a distinct role to play in shaping modern identities through the acquisition and circulation of specific kinds of texts, the fostering of sociability, and the building of community-based institutions. |
| thomas thistlewood diary: Lady Nugent's Journal Maria Nugent, 2010-12-09 This revealing journal by the then Governor's wife gives a fascinating view of early nineteenth-century Jamaican society. |
| thomas thistlewood diary: Tobacco and Slaves Allan Kulikoff, 2012-12-01 Tobacco and Slaves is a major reinterpretation of the economic and political transformation of Chesapeake society from 1680 to 1800. Building upon massive archival research in Maryland and Virginia, Allan Kulikoff provides the most comprehensive study to date of changing social relations--among both blacks and whites--in the eighteenth-century South. He links his arguments about class, gender, and race to the later social history of the South and to larger patterns of American development. Allan Kulikoff is professor of history at Northern Illinois University and author of The Agrarian Origins of American Capitalism. |
| thomas thistlewood diary: White Servitude and Black Slavery in Barbados, 1627-1715 Hilary Beckles, 1989 |
| thomas thistlewood diary: Inhuman Bondage David Brion Davis, 2008-06-05 Davis begins with the dramatic Amistad case, and then looks at slavery in the American South and the abolitionists who defeated one of human history's greatest evils. |
| thomas thistlewood diary: Kingston Buttercup Ann-Margaret Lim, 2016 Longlisted: 2017 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature Jamaican poet, Ann Margaret Lim, follows her critically acclaimed debut collection, The Festival of Wild Orchid, with an exciting new volume, Kingston Buttercup, a work of fierce honesty, social awareness and lyric complexity. Bocas Poetry Prize winner, Loretta Collins Klobah, writes: -In Kingston Buttercup, her marvelous second book, Ann-Margaret Lim's fresh, honest, and tenderly-fierce perspective comes through in highly readable lyric poems.- |
| thomas thistlewood diary: Plantation Jamaica, 1750-1850 B. W. Higman, 2008 Aalyses the important but neglected role of the attorneys who managed estates, chiefly for absentee proprietors, and assesses their efficiency and impact on Jamaica during slavery and freedom. This work charts both the extent of absentee ownership and the complex structure of the managerial hierarchy that stretched across the Atlantic. |
Guide to the Thomas Thistlewood Papers - Yale University
The Thomas Thistlewood Papers are the physical property of the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University Literary rights, including copyright, belong to the authors or their legal heirs and assigns. For further information, consult the appropriate curator. See more
Thomas Thistlewood Diary Extracts (Download Only) - Utah …
Trevor Burnard provides unparalleled insight into Jamaica's vibrant but harsh African and European cultures with a comprehensive examination of the extraordinary diary of plantation …
Mastery Tyranny And Desire Thomas Thistlewood And His …
Tyranny And Desire Thomas Thistlewood And His … examination of the extraordinary diary of plantation owner Thomas Thistlewood. Thistlewood's diary, kept over the course of forty years, …
Beinecke Library digitizes papers of Thomas Thistlewood
The Beinecke Library recently completed the digitization of the papers of Jamaican planter and slaveowner, Thomas Thistlewood. Thomas Thistlewood (1721-1786) was born in Lincolnshire …
Redalyc.Reseña de 'Mastery, Tyranny, & Desire: Thomas …
one remarkable source, the terse yet copious diaries that Thomas Thistlewood kept between 1748 and 1786. The diaries comprise more than 10,000 written pages. They hold very few personal …
Mastery, Tyranny, and Desire: Thomas Thistlewood and His …
detail. His diary may be the most thorough surviving documentation of the relentless violence permeating slave society in the colonial Anglo-American world. Burnard's study of the life and …
ON READING THISTLEWOOD’S DIARY - Peepal Tree Press
ON READING THISTLEWOOD’S DIARY. ON READING THISTLEWOOD’S DIARYBefore I be a slave, I’ll skip over my grave and. o home to my. the Whiteman, braving a hanging . resistance …
Thomas Thistlewood Diary Extracts - johnrichmond.com
examination of the extraordinary diary of plantation owner Thomas Thistlewood. Thistlewood's diary, kept over the course of forty years, describes in graphic detail how white rule over …
The Diary Of Thomas Thistlewood (Download Only)
The Diary Of Thomas Thistlewood: Mastery, Tyranny, and Desire Trevor Burnard,2009-11-17 Eighteenth century Jamaica Britain s largest and most valuable slave owning colony relied on …
Thomas Thistlewood Diary
Thomas Thistlewood Diary Mastery, Tyranny, and Desire Trevor Burnard,2009-11-17 Eighteenth century Jamaica Britain s largest and most valuable slave owning colony relied on a brutal …
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Los Angeles Through A Glass, …
The diary of Thomas Thistlewood was created as an archive of mastery, violence and sexual exploitation. On its surface level, Phibbah and Coobah exist as human property for capital, and …
“Sites of Terror” and Affective Geographies on Thomas …
While the general trajectory of Thistlewood’s life in Jamaica is not unusual among land-owning whites, what makes Thistlewood such a profitable object of study is that from his arrival in …
Mastery Tyranny And Desire Thomas Thistlewood And His …
{PDF} Mastery, Tyranny, And Desire : Thomas Thistlewood ... overcome the tyranny of a master's point of view-and uncover usable knowledge of the lives and cultures of the Africans upon …
"The best poor man's country"? Thomas Thistlewood in
The diaries compiled by Thomas Thistlewood, an immigrant from England who came out to Jamaica in 1750 and died there in 1786, provide fascinating insights into the process of …
Trevor Burnard. Mastery, Tyranny, and Desire: Thomas …
There are numerous works on the brutalities of slavery particularly in the cauldron of sugar cultivation in the West Indies. There are also ac‐counts of Jamaica planter Thomas …
Trevor Burnard. Mastery, Tyranny, and Desire: Thomas …
Reviewed by Sean Kelley. Published on H-Atlantic (July, 2007) Most historians of slavery are familiar with Thomas Thistlewood, the young man from Lin‐colnshire who settled in …
The Diary, and Life, of William Byrd II of Virginia, 1674-1744 by ...
Jamaican overseer Thomas Thistlewood, another diarist who frankly describes his sex life, fornicated almost daily with slaves in Jamaica but not at all with prostitutes during an extended …
Thomas Thistlewood Diary [PDF] - netsec.csuci.edu
The Thomas Thistlewood Diary represents a significant, albeit under-appreciated, contribution to 20th-century literature. It offers a unique and valuable perspective on the social, political, and …
The Diary Of Thomas Thistlewood (PDF)
The Diary Of Thomas Thistlewood: Mastery, Tyranny, and Desire Trevor Burnard,2009-11-17 Eighteenth century Jamaica Britain s largest and most valuable slave owning colony relied on …
Diary Of Thomas Thistlewood Pdf (Download Only)
This comprehensive guide delves into the infamous Diary of Thomas Thistlewood, a chilling firsthand account of a Jamaican slave owner’s life during the 18th century. We'll explore where …
Guide to the Thomas Thistlewood Papers - Yale University
Scope and Contents. The papers consist of diaries, weather journals, commonplace books, reading notes and other material documenting the life, work and intellectual interests of the …
Thomas Thistlewood Diary Extracts (Download Only) - Utah …
Trevor Burnard provides unparalleled insight into Jamaica's vibrant but harsh African and European cultures with a comprehensive examination of the extraordinary diary of plantation …
Mastery Tyranny And Desire Thomas Thistlewood And His …
Tyranny And Desire Thomas Thistlewood And His … examination of the extraordinary diary of plantation owner Thomas Thistlewood. Thistlewood's diary, kept over the course of forty years, …
Beinecke Library digitizes papers of Thomas Thistlewood
The Beinecke Library recently completed the digitization of the papers of Jamaican planter and slaveowner, Thomas Thistlewood. Thomas Thistlewood (1721-1786) was born in Lincolnshire …
Redalyc.Reseña de 'Mastery, Tyranny, & Desire: Thomas …
one remarkable source, the terse yet copious diaries that Thomas Thistlewood kept between 1748 and 1786. The diaries comprise more than 10,000 written pages. They hold very few personal …
Mastery, Tyranny, and Desire: Thomas Thistlewood and His …
detail. His diary may be the most thorough surviving documentation of the relentless violence permeating slave society in the colonial Anglo-American world. Burnard's study of the life and …
ON READING THISTLEWOOD’S DIARY - Peepal Tree Press
ON READING THISTLEWOOD’S DIARY. ON READING THISTLEWOOD’S DIARYBefore I be a slave, I’ll skip over my grave and. o home to my. the Whiteman, braving a hanging . resistance …
Thomas Thistlewood Diary Extracts - johnrichmond.com
examination of the extraordinary diary of plantation owner Thomas Thistlewood. Thistlewood's diary, kept over the course of forty years, describes in graphic detail how white rule over …
The Diary Of Thomas Thistlewood (Download Only)
The Diary Of Thomas Thistlewood: Mastery, Tyranny, and Desire Trevor Burnard,2009-11-17 Eighteenth century Jamaica Britain s largest and most valuable slave owning colony relied on …
Thomas Thistlewood Diary
Thomas Thistlewood Diary Mastery, Tyranny, and Desire Trevor Burnard,2009-11-17 Eighteenth century Jamaica Britain s largest and most valuable slave owning colony relied on a brutal …
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Los Angeles Through A …
The diary of Thomas Thistlewood was created as an archive of mastery, violence and sexual exploitation. On its surface level, Phibbah and Coobah exist as human property for capital, and …
“Sites of Terror” and Affective Geographies on Thomas …
While the general trajectory of Thistlewood’s life in Jamaica is not unusual among land-owning whites, what makes Thistlewood such a profitable object of study is that from his arrival in …
Mastery Tyranny And Desire Thomas Thistlewood And His …
{PDF} Mastery, Tyranny, And Desire : Thomas Thistlewood ... overcome the tyranny of a master's point of view-and uncover usable knowledge of the lives and cultures of the Africans upon …
"The best poor man's country"? Thomas Thistlewood in
The diaries compiled by Thomas Thistlewood, an immigrant from England who came out to Jamaica in 1750 and died there in 1786, provide fascinating insights into the process of …
Trevor Burnard. Mastery, Tyranny, and Desire: Thomas …
There are numerous works on the brutalities of slavery particularly in the cauldron of sugar cultivation in the West Indies. There are also ac‐counts of Jamaica planter Thomas …
Trevor Burnard. Mastery, Tyranny, and Desire: Thomas …
Reviewed by Sean Kelley. Published on H-Atlantic (July, 2007) Most historians of slavery are familiar with Thomas Thistlewood, the young man from Lin‐colnshire who settled in …
The Diary, and Life, of William Byrd II of Virginia, 1674-1744 …
Jamaican overseer Thomas Thistlewood, another diarist who frankly describes his sex life, fornicated almost daily with slaves in Jamaica but not at all with prostitutes during an extended …
Thomas Thistlewood Diary [PDF] - netsec.csuci.edu
The Thomas Thistlewood Diary represents a significant, albeit under-appreciated, contribution to 20th-century literature. It offers a unique and valuable perspective on the social, political, and …
The Diary Of Thomas Thistlewood (PDF)
The Diary Of Thomas Thistlewood: Mastery, Tyranny, and Desire Trevor Burnard,2009-11-17 Eighteenth century Jamaica Britain s largest and most valuable slave owning colony relied on …
Diary Of Thomas Thistlewood Pdf (Download Only)
This comprehensive guide delves into the infamous Diary of Thomas Thistlewood, a chilling firsthand account of a Jamaican slave owner’s life during the 18th century. We'll explore where …
