This book is a milestone achievement in the documentation of the newspapers of the British Caribbean islands, a field that, until now, has been neglected by many scholars. The existing and bygone papers, and several commonly unknown publications, listed in this work provide a wealth of information about these obscure times. No other work, before this one, has been as extensive in its documentation and coverage of the individual papers. Of special assistance is the index, which completes the work.
This book sheds light on the archipelagic relations of two African Caribbean newspapers in the early decades of the nineteenth century and analyzes their medium-specific interventions in the struggle for emancipation and on a white-dominated communication market.
Early African Caribbean Newspapers as Archipelagic Media in the Emancipation Age shows how two African Caribbean newspapers in the early decades of the nineteenth century worked towards emancipation across both material and immaterial lines through medium-specific interventions. More concretely, this book proposes an archipelagic framework for understanding the emancipatory struggles of the Antiguan Weekly Register in St. John’s and the Jamaica Watchman in Kingston. Complicating the prevalent narrative about the Register and the Watchman as organs of the free people of color, this book begins to explore the heterogeneity of Black newspaper print on the liberal spectrum. As such, Archipelagic Media and Early African Caribbean Newspapers makes the case that the Register and the Watchman participated in shaping the contemporary communication market in the Caribbean. To do so, this study engages deeply with the materiality of the newspaper and presents fresh visual material.