Punishing the Black Body

Dawn P. Harris examines how corporal punishment in the pre- and post-emancipation British Caribbean had a devastating impact on the bodies and lives of Africans and people of African descent. Her central argument is that white elites in Jamaica and Barbados meted out harsh punishments on Black bodies in an attempt to preserve their dominant socio-economic, political and racial position long after the end of slavery. Adopting a comparative and interdisciplinary approach, Harris draws on the tools of critical race scholars, theorists of the body and feminist scholars to assess historical evidence relating to the disciplinary and punitive climates in nineteenth-century Jamaica and Barbados, two of Britain’s most important colonial possessions. Her sources include Colonial Office correspondence, official British government reports, travel narratives and colonial histories, and personal accounts. Harris seeks to analyse the Black body as ‘both a discursive and material artifact’ that influenced how colonial officials treated men

Criminology · Sociology · Caribbean history, culture, and politics · Demography · History · Migration, Ethnicity, and Economy