James Knight, Jack P. Greene (EDT) Natural, Moral, and Political History of Jamaica, and the Territories thereon Depending

Annotation

<p>Between 1737 and 1746, James Knighta merchant, planter, and sometime Crown official and legislator in Jamaicawrote a massive two-volume history of the island. The first volume provided a narrative of the colonys development up to the mid-1740s, while the second offered a broad survey of most aspects of Jamaican life as it had developed by the third and fourth decades of the eighteenth century. Completed not long before his death in the winter of 174647 and held in the British Library, this work is now published for the first time. Well researched and intelligently critical, Knights work is not only the most comprehensive account of Jamaicas ninety years as an English colony ever written; it is also one of the best representations of the provincial mentality as it had emerged in colonial British America between the founding of Virginia and 1750. Expertly edited and introduced by renowned scholar Jack Greene, this volume represents a colonial Caribbean history unique in its contemporary perspective, detail, and scope.</p>