The Story of the Jamaican People

In this highly acclaimed general history of Jamaica, Philip sherlock and Hazel Bennett succeed in using history, told from below, as a vehicle to bury colonial stereotypes by placing African-Jamaicans as the makers of their history and not the victims. Beginning with the first Jamaicans, the indigenous Tainos, the authors provide a sweeping survey of struggles of the Jamaican people through Spanish and British colonial domination, their resistance to slavery, emancipation, economic empowerment and finally political independence. The book is illustrated with drawings, maps, photographs, prints and copies of offical documents and newspaper material. The general reader will enjoy the evocative style in which the book is written and in which the images of creative writers and artists are blended with quotations from anthropological, sociological and historical sources.