Bøger af Bridget Brereton

The Colonial Career of John Gorrie is a biographical study of Sir John Gorrie, a Scottish lawyer, who served as a judge and as chief justice in several multi-racial British colonies (Mauritius, Fiji, the Leeward Islands, Trinidad and Tobago) in the second half of the nineteenth century. Holding radical political and social views, especially a conviction that persons of all ethnic and class backgrounds should enjoy equal justice under the British crown, he was a controversial jurist who inspired both bitter opposition from colonial elites and intense admiration from the 'subject races' in each place he served...A maverick official of the British Crown, Gorrie tried to use his judicial office to secure justice and protection for ex-slaves, indentured labourers, indigenous peoples and other nonwhite groups in the empire. Law, Justice and Empire is an original contribution to the comparative history of the nineteenth century British empire, as well as to the history of the Caribbean, Mauritius and Fiji in that period. It extends our understanding of the empire and how it was administered.

In this study of the development of a colonial Caribbean territory in the late nineteenth century the diverse peoples of Trinidad - Europeans, white Creoles of French, Spanish and English descent, Africans, Creole blacks, Venezuelans, Chinese and Indian immigrants - occupy the centre stage. They formed a society deeply divided along lines of race, skin colour, economic position and educational level. Dr Brereton looks at how the white elite, both European and Creole, was able to control the society, largely unchecked by the Imperial power and its agents in Trinidad, and then investigates the emergence of a group which would challenge that control: the coloured and black middle class. This book makes an important contribution to the history of the West Indies, and especially to the history of Trinidad, still largely unresearched. It will interest historians and sociologists concerned with the development of post-emancipation Caribbean societies and with race relations in the Americas after slavery.