Abstract
Throughout the seventeenth and early eighteenth century, British West Indian colonies were as important to the expanding British Empire as those on the North American mainland. However, writing authored in the West Indies has been conspicuously absent from most anthologies of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century British and American literature. Thus, it may be argued that Caribbeana (1741), a collection of entries first printed by Samuel Keimer in the Barbados Gazette (1732–38), pioneers as the first English language anthology of West Indian poetry, essays, and letters – literary artifacts both written and published in the West Indies. In addition, the Barbados Gazette is historically important as Barbados’ first newspaper and the first bi-weekly newspaper in the Americas.
Enormously popular throughout the British West Indies, the Gazette served as the primary medium of literary exchange between Barbados, neighboring islands, the American colonies, and London. As creoles acquired an increased sense of community, their societies constituted a paradox of stability and menace within the British Empire. In response to this phenomenon, many of the early entries published in the Barbados Gazette reflected attempts to reinforce the colonists’ “Englishness” and equality within the empire; hence, early writings reveal a decidedly imperial perspective and literary style. However, as the newspaper gained popularity and creoles acquired the legal, political, and cultural means to act as agents for their own economic interests, the essays, poetry, and debates published reflected a changing tone and shifting viewpoints – viewpoints that frequently contested Parliamentary authority and the application of English laws.
This chapter looks at the role of colonial newspapers with Caribbeana and the Barbados Gazette as representative of an evolution in Anglophone West Indian writing. I argue that as creoles challenged imperial authority and responded to London’s metropolitan discourse, both the Barbados Gazette and Caribbeana reflected the genesis of a literary metamorphosis from imperial to creole.
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Notes
- 1.
Thomas, Isaiah. The History of Printing in America with a Biography of Printers, and an Account of Newspapers. Worcester: Isaiah Thomas 1810. There are no existing copies of this particular edition of the Gazette. Notes in Jerome Handler’s Guide to Source Materials for the Study of Barbados History 1627–1834 lists the locations and dates of the few issues of Keimer’s newspaper available for study.
- 2.
Charles E. Clark, Charles Wetherell. “The Measure of Maturity: The Pennsylvania Gazette, 1728–1765.” William and Mary Quarterly 46.2 (April 1989): 279–303.This is the same Pennsylvania Gazette where Benjamin Franklin apprenticed as a young man under Keimer. Franklin’s Autobiography also provides details of a bitter rivalry that continued until Keimer’s death in 1738.
- 3.
E. M. Shilstone, “Some Notes on Early Printing Presses and Newspapers in Barbados.” Journal of the Barbados Museum & Historical Society 26.1 (Nov 1958): 19–33.
- 4.
The term “creole” in its strict eighteenth-century English usage denoted a white European born in or residing permanently in the West Indies.
- 5.
John Drummond to Lord George Germain, March 24, 1778, quoted in O’Sullivan frontpage to Benedict Anderson’s In Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism.
- 6.
Benedict Anderson. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso, 1983. 61.
- 7.
Ibid., 59.
- 8.
Michel Foucault. The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences. New York: Routledge, 1970.
- 9.
Catherine Hall. “Civilising Subjects: Metropole and Colony in the English Imagination, 1830–1867.” Journal of British Studies no. 4 (2003).
- 10.
David Lambert. White Creole Culture, Politics and Identity During the Age of Abolition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005b.
- 11.
Phyllis J. Guskin. ““Not Originally Intended for the Press”: Martha Fowke Sansom’s Poems in the Barbados Gazette.” Eighteenth-Century Studies 34.1 (2000): 61–91.
- 12.
Hayden White. The Content of the Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987.
- 13.
Hayden White. Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974.
- 14.
John Locke. “An Essay on Human Understanding” (IV: XIX.2) 1969. Rpt. in. Ed. Geoffery Tillotson et al. New York: Harcourt and Brace, 1690. 188–204.
- 15.
Charles E. Clark, Charles Wetherell. “The Measure of Maturity: The Pennsylvania Gazette, 1728–1765.” William and Mary Quarterly 46.2 (April 1989): 279–303.
- 16.
Disraeli, Pompanilla, qtd. in Semmel, 100.
- 17.
Ibid.
- 18.
David Chandler. “Semiotics for Beginners.” Semiotics: The Basics. 2001. April 2005. Routledge.
- 19.
Jerome J. McGann. The Poetics of Sensibility. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996.
- 20.
David Lambert. White Creole Culture, Politics and Identity During the Age of Abolition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005b.
- 21.
Ibid.
- 22.
Thomas Hodges. Calendar for State Papers for the American West Indies. B. Barker, B. Lintot, and J. Billingsley. British Library, London. 1702.
- 23.
Caribbeana Containing Letters and Dissertations, Together with Poetical Essays on Various Subjects and Occasions in Two Volumes. Ed. Samuel Keimer. London: T. Osborne, 1741. Millwood: Kraus, 1978. Vol I. 13.
- 24.
Benjamin Franklin. Ed. Leonard W. Labaree. The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1964.
- 25.
Ibid.
- 26.
Clarke, Bob. From Grub Street to Fleet Street: An Illustrated History of English Newspapers to 1899 Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004.
- 27.
David Sloan. “John Campbell and the Boston News-Letter.” Early America Review Winter/Spring 2005 (2004). Archiving Early America. 26 Oct 2007.
- 28.
Robert T. Sidwell. “‘An Odd Fish,’ Samuel Keimer and a Footnote to American Educational History.” History of Education Quarterly 6.1 (Spring 1966): 16–30.
- 29.
Samuel Keimer. “A Brand Pluck’d from the Burning: Exemplify’d in the Unparallel’d Case of Samuel Keimer.” London: Borsham, 1718.
- 30.
Charles E. Clark, Charles Wetherell. “The Measure of Maturity: The Pennsylvania Gazette, 1728–1765.” William and Mary Quarterly 46.2 (April 1989): 286.
- 31.
Robert T. Sidwell. ““An Odd Fish,” Samuel Keimer and a Footnote to American Educational History.” History of Education Quarterly 6.1 (Spring 1966): 21.
- 32.
Ibid., 24.
- 33.
Ibid., 26.
- 34.
Benjamin Franklin. Ed. Leonard W. Labaree. The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1964.
- 35.
Caribbeana Containing Letters and Dissertations, Together with Poetical Essays on Various Subjects and Occasions in Two Volumes. Ed. Samuel Keimer. London: T. Osborne, 1741. Millwood: Kraus, 1978. Vol II. 264–271.
- 36.
Ibid.
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Harris, J.A. (2018). Order, Disorder, and Reorder: The Paradox of Creole Representations in Caribbeana (1741). In: Aljoe, N.N., Carey, B., Krise, T.W. (eds) Literary Histories of the Early Anglophone Caribbean. New Caribbean Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71592-6_5
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