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This is the first scholarly biography of Edward Philip George Seaga, retired prime minister of Jamaica (1980-1989) and former leader of the Jamaica Labour Party (1974-2005). Patrick Bryan examines Seaga in light of the twentieth-century history of Jamaica, which experienced the challenges of race, colour, economic dependence, the transition from the British colonial period to independence in 1962, and the challenges of creating a Jamaican national state and separate cultural identity. Although the study focuses on Edward Seaga, the historical forces that shaped Jamaica's history are central, in particular the way in which he confronted these forces. In placing Seaga in historical perspective, this work strikes a seasoned and balanced analysis of the man and is neither an apologia nor iconoclastic. Based on a variety of primary sources, government records, interviews and secondary sources, the author paints a compelling portrait of a complex man, a contradictory mixture of idealism and pragmatism, but, above all, a Jamaican nationalist who had a profound impact on Jamaican politics, tourism, culture and finance.

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This anthology of Caribbean feminist scholarships exposes gender relations as regimes of power and advances indigenous feminist theorizing. A particularly strong section of the book deconstructs marginality and masculinity in the Caribbean and provides ground-breaking research with policy implications. Of interest to scholars of feminist theory, gender studies, gender and development, post-colonial theory, and literary and cultural studies.

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The British Parliaments decision to abolish the slave trade in 1807 had disastrous implications for plantation societies, such as Jamaica, in regards to the health and the labour of the enslaved population. Many of the Jamaican sugar planters could not accept the fact that the 1807 Abolition Act was a watershed moment which demanded a more conciliatory form of management and a willingness to implement critical labour reforms, such as task work. The failure to introduce these necessary internal reforms resulted in the continuing decline in the plantations crude production figures and in their productivity levels, despite the introduction of steam engines on many estates. The numerical strength of the enslaved population was also decreasing, and most important the health of the enslaved Africans was seriously declining. The planters failure to also eliminate their ambiguous management structure further hastened their own demise and the profitability of slavery in Jamaica.

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Using a range of primary sources from imperial, colonial and local government records, Rockefeller Foundation Archives, memoirs and reports, this study provides the most comprehensive account to date of public health in Jamaica in the post-emancipation colonial period to the onset of the Second World War. The account is framed by two pivotal Jamaican experiences that were vital in precipitating significant policy changes at the imperial centre. An examination of the development of the part-time colonial medical service reveals it to be underresourced and inadequate. Most Jamaicans accessed Western medical aid through the Poor Law, a distinguishing feature of the British West Indian colonies, and the issues around the intermeshing of medical and Poor Law aid is a vital contextual question. Chapters on the epidemic and endemic diseases of smallpox and malaria expose the attitudes and the nature of the responses of government, elites and the medical services to such threats. The International Health Division of the Rockefeller Foundation was active in Jamaica from 1919 until 1950. A detailed analysis of their hookworm campaign, public health education programme and tuberculosis work contributes to a critical understanding of this philanthropic endeavour.

The contribution of Jamaica to a new imperial development policy, as exemplified in the 1940 Colonial Development and Welfare Act, is also assessed. A story of government and elite reluctance to finance public health services emerges in which Jamaicans were frequently blamed for their own ill health. Socio-economic causation was sidestepped as class and race perceptions, underpinned by the legacy of slavery, held sway.