British Caribbean, c.1600-c.1730

During the long seventeenth century, colonial adventurers carved out a frontier in the tropics of the American Atlantic. The British Caribbean collects, presents and analyses the hand-written, unfiltered record of English-speaking colonial actors and empire-builders, exposed in letters, accounts, journals and logs. The manuscripts provide a one-sided account: exclusively white; overwhelmingly male. However, manuscripts survive in greater volume than print, provide us with a broader regional picture and greater insight into ruthless individual licence on the part of the colonisers and of the interest of the state in turning their enterprises to Britain’s imperial advantage. Printed material was often published retrospectively, for a domestic British audience and often romanticised or instrumental, whereas manuscripts present difficult material which must be faced: their candour best exposes dislocation, enslavement and the denial of humanity; seizure, constraint and exploitation. To navigate this one-sided but fragmentary and dispersed record, an extended commentary on each chapter introduces the historical frameworks which underpin the texts. This collection extends from Bermuda to Panama, the equator to Carolina, to reveal colonial practice and the birth of the British Empire in the Americas.