The Historical Background

Abstract

During periods of acute social and economic crisis that result in the restructuring of relations between the dominant and the dominated, some factions among the ruling class of a given stratified society will strive to maintain or reestablish the legitimacy of their elevated place within the social order. A key element within the greater process of legitimation is the negotiation of the meaning of material culture (Leone and Potter, 1988; Miller and Tilley, 1984; Shanks and Tilley, 1987); a crucial part of such recurring negotiation is the constant redefinition of space (Lefebvre, 1991:349). In the chapters to follow, I will consider how space was manipulated in nineteenth-century Jamaica, particularly by analyzing manifestations of the three elements of space outlined in Chapter 2. As this is inherently a historical study of plantation life in Jamaica, I will also discuss the historical processes that resulted in the spatial restructuring of nineteenth-century Jamaica. The historical review presented in this chapter considers how contemporary observers perceived the historical crisis gripping Jamaica.

The present times bear a most gloomy aspect truly discouraging to us West Indians. Numbers in this country must be ruined, many are already so; however those who are able to bear up through the impending difficulties will reap the benefits thereafter. The present crisis is past all human calculation. When and what will be the end must be wrapt up in the womb of time, for to hazard conjectures would nowadays be idle in the extreme.

— John Mackeson, Jamaican coffee planter, in a letter to his brother, 1808