Mastery, Tyranny, and Desire - by Trevor Burnard Paperback

About the Book

Book Synopsis

Eighteenth-century Jamaica, Britain's largest and most valuable slave-owning colony, relied on a brutal system of slave management to maintain its tenuous social order. Trevor Burnard provides unparalleled insight into Jamaica's vibrant but harsh African and European cultures with a comprehensive examination of the extraordinary diary of plantation owner Thomas Thistlewood.

Thistlewood's diary, kept over the course of forty years, describes in graphic detail how white rule over slaves was predicated on the infliction of terror on the bodies and minds of slaves. Thistlewood treated his slaves cruelly even while he relied on them for his livelihood. Along with careful notes on sugar production, Thistlewood maintained detailed records of a sexual life that fully expressed the society's rampant sexual exploitation of slaves. In Burnard's hands, Thistlewood's diary reveals a great deal not only about the man and his slaves but also about the structure and enforcement of power, changing understandings of human rights and freedom, and connections among social class, race, and gender, as well as sex and sexuality, in the plantation system.

Review Quotes

"A brilliant and devastating work, and invaluable in developing my understanding of the brutal history of slavery in the Caribbean."--Zadie Smith, New York Review of Books

"A careful study of the social, intellectual, and cultural worlds of a brutal slave owner. . . . A vivid and penetrating portrait of late eighteenth-century Jamaica."--American Historical Review

"A chilling and fascinating picture of the richest British colony in the New World. . . . Essential reading for anyone interested in early American history and culture."--Early American Literature

"As intimate a picture of African slavery in British America as we are ever likely to get. . . . An important moment in our efforts to understand the character of slavery in the British colonial world. . . . A remarkably rich and full picture of white-slave relations."--Zadie Smith, New York Review of Books

"Compelling. . . . Burnard skillfully explores Jamaican slave society at its zenith."--Caribbean Studies

"Lest scholars grow too complacent about what slavery entailed, Mastery, Tyranny, and Desire remains a remorseless reminder of the savagery needed to maintain the unholy alliance of slavery and empire."--William and Mary Quarterly

"Offers fresh insights into the character of the plantocracy and its evolution. . . . Burnard's extraordinarily thoughtful rendering of Thomas Thistlewood suggest[s] how much more is to be learned about those who ruled the universe in the age of the plantation."--The Nation

"Trevor Burnard's Mastery, Tyranny, and Desire is a detailed study based on a rather unusual and exhaustive diary of an English migrant who becomes a small slaveholder in eighteenth-century Jamaica. It probably contains more information than any single source on Jamaican society and on slaves and slavery, and provides many important insights into the lives of slaves and of whites. Given the subject and the materials, this book will be of interest to all concerned with the study of slavery as well as scholars of the Caribbean and of British Caribbean history."--Stanley L. Engerman, University of Rochester