Caribbean Exchanges: Slavery and the Transformation of English Society, 1640-1700. By Susan Dwyer Amussen. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007. xiv, 302 pp. Cloth, $59.95, ISBN 978-0-8078-3165-6. Paper, $22.50, ISBN 978-0-8078-5854-7.)

Abstract

In this fine book, Susan Dwyer Amussen adds to the familiar picture of the economic impact of plantation slavery in England's West Indian colonies by exploring the social, cultural, and political impact of that slave system. While entering into the wide variety of debates that are the staple of slavery and Atlantic historiography, this English historian emphasizes “the English character of this story” (p. 11). As such, Caribbean Exchanges possesses the considerable strengths of that imperial approach, as well as some weaknesses. While attending to important differences between Barbados and Jamaica, Amussen demonstrates the conflicting goals that actuated the rising planter class on both islands. The planters yearned for the paternalist hierarchy of English society while building an exploitative society centered on sugar profits. Because of that tension, “the harsh treatment of servants and the entire institution of slavery made the English uncomfortable,” if not enough to change their behavior (p. 67). Because slavery was so foreign to seventeenth-century Englishmen, they only awkwardly and slowly rationalized the slave societies on these islands. Their discomfort became evident in a phenomenon familiar to Americanists: the planters were squeamish about using words such as “slavery” even in slave codes.