Description
Edward Long’s three-volume work marks a big turning point within the historiography of Jamaica, as the primary attempt at a comprehensive description of the colony, its history, government, folks, economy and geography. The son of a prominent Jamaican plantation owner, Long (1734-1813) spent twelve years running his father’s property, an revel in which permeates his vision of the island’s past, present and long term. Right through his book, Long defends slavery as ‘inevitably essential’ in Jamaica, suggesting the institution to be implicit within the ‘possession of British freedom’. Volume 2 presents a survey of the counties of Jamaica, information on religion, education and health, descriptions and racial classifications of the population, a history of the slave rebellions and main points of the legal code governing slavery. This necessary 1774 book provides fascinating insights into eighteenth-century colonial Jamaica and the ideology of its commercial and administrative elite.