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On 1 January 1804, the revolutionary slaves of Saint Domingue established the first independent black state in the Americas and proclaimed their break with the French Republic. After more than a decade of protracted bloody battles, the only successful slave revolution in world history ended. The richest sugar colony of the New World was reduced to ashes, and of the troops Napoleon had sent with genocidal intent only very few made it back home. But while the bicentennial of the French Revolution in 1989 and quincentennial of the ""discovery"" of America in 1992 were lavishly celebrated with acts of State, monuments, conferences, and polemics, the Haitian Revolution's anniversary is bound to be passed over in silence in both the halls of power and metropolitan academies. Although few would doubt the profound effect the slave revolution had on the Western Hemisphere, there has until now been no extended study of it, and some describe Haiti as unrelated to any of the worlds' major civilizations. Modernity Disavowed tells a very different story: the Haitian Revolution is at the core of Western modernity in the Age of Revolution, and one of the reasons for subsequent denial or silencing is that Haiti forced the recognition of this fact on slaveholders and imperial powers. At a time when racial taxonomies were beginning to mutate into scientific racism and racist biology, the Haitian revolutionaries recognized the question of colour and race as a political one and placed claims of racial equality squarely on the agenda. Yet, as the cultural records of neighboring Cuba and the Dominican Republic show, the story of the Haitian Revolution has been framed in terms of barbarism unspeakable violence, outside civilization, outside politics, and beyond human language. From the time of the revolution onwards the story has been relegated to the margins of history; to rumors, oral histories confidential letters and secret trials. Focusing on Cuba, the Dominican Republic and Haiti itself in the context of the African Diaspora, Modernity Disavowed argues that we cannot even begin to understand Creole cultures in the Americas unless we understand how they took shape around various forms of denial of the Haitian Revolution.

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The book presents a representative selection of the papers presented at the second Conference on Caribbean Culture in honour of Kamau Brathwaite. It offers an interdisciplinary range of studies that range from analyses of Braithwaithe's creative and critical work to interventions in the fields of social history, cultural studies, gender studies, linguistics and sociology, that have been either directly or indirectly influenced by Braithwaite's own pioneering work in Caribbean social history and cultural studies. The manuscript offers the most current critical commentary on the work and ideas of Kamau Brathwaite, and it also provides an extremely useful range of analyses of contemporary Caribbean culture and social history. The primary target audience is academics and students working in the field of Caribbean and cultural studies, while the secondary audience includes researchers working on Kamau Brathwaite's creative and critical work.

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An examination of the cultural evolution of the Jamaican people after the explosive uprising at Morant Bay in 1865. For the first time, the specific methods used by British imperial legislators to inculcate order, control and identity in the local society are described and analysed. The authors compellingly and convincingly demontrate that Great Britain deliberately built a ""new society in Jamaica founded on principles of Victorian Christian morality and British Imperial ideology"". This resulted in a sustained attack on everything that was perceived to be of African origin and the glorification of Christian piety, Victorian mores, and a Eurocentric ""idealized"" family life and social hierarchies. This well-written and meticulously researched book will be invaluable for students of the period and those interested in Jamaican history and/or imperial history