Author Description

"Democracy After Slavery examines the reaction against Black political freedom and the unexpected retreat from democracy in two crucial Caribbean contexts, the Republic of Halti and the British colony of Jamaica (separated by only 100 miles and in far closer touch with one another in every respect than previously realized). Through a comparison of the peasant economic, political and civil organization that led up to Haiti's Piquet Rebellion of 1844 and Jamaica's Morant Bay Rebellion of 1865, we see how black publics in the Caribbean developed repertoires of political contention and radical democratic ideologies that surpassed and challenged elite liberalism.". "Concerned in the broadest sense with the origins of democracy and participatory institutions in countries with legacies of slavery (including, by extension, the United States of America), this book challenges the notions of tutelary democracy and peasant apathy. This new interpretation of popular politics in the Caribbean shows how those who struggled out of slavery in Haiti and Jamaica developed a powerful shared vision of freedom that has been passed down over generations and continues to inform grassroots democratic movements. In suppressing these post-emancipation peasant democratic movements, contemporary post-slavery societies have allowed militarized states to mock the real practice of democracy and to undermine the freedom of us all."--BOOK JACKET.