Written by two of the Caribbean's leading historians, Freedoms Won is an essential book for students engaged in following courses on the history of the Caribbean. It will also be of interest to general readers seeking information on the history of the region. Starting with the aftermath of emancipation, Freedoms Won covers the African-Caribbean peasantry, Asian arrival in the Caribbean, social and political experiences of the working classes in the immediate post-slavery period, the Caribbean economy, US intervention and imperialst tendencies from the 18th century, the Labour Movement in the Caribbean in the 20th centurym the social life and culture of the Caribbean people, and social protest, decolonisation and nationhood.

No study of Caribbean history can be complete without an examination and appreciation of the topic of reparation. The opposition to reparation by former colonial powers and others, though, means that the demand for it is an ongoing struggle. Reparation, however, is the final link required to close the circle which began with two of the worst crimes in human history (indigenous genocide and chattel slavery) and must end with atonement and restitution by the perpetrators on the one hand, and redemption for the descendants of the victims on the other. Otherwise, there can be no true peace. As reggae singer Peter Tosh declared, "Everyone is crying out for peace, no one is crying out for justice. . . . I need equal rights and justice."

Lady Nugent's husband was governor of Jamaica, the most important of the highly prized British sugar colonies, during a critical period of the Napoleonic Wars. Her entertaining personal diary conveys fresh impressions of life among the slave-owning colonial gentry, and a distinguished American scholar has called it "an utterly inimitable and imperishable picture of planter society."

The Journal was first published by the Institute of Jamaica in 1907 and a fourth (revised) edition was issued in 1966, and has been out of print for decades. This paperback reprint is designed for those scholars and general readers who have been requesting copies for years.

This wide ranging collection spanning the field of Caribbean and Atlantic world slavery, history and historiography, human and physical geography, archeology and cultural studies, has been inspired by the work of Barry Higman in whose honor it is being published. The contributors use a variety of sources and methodologies to deal with topics which intersect with Higman's overall work and research interests. These topics include Caribbean archeology; urban townscape and landscape; slavery and technology; slave demography; the varied contexts of slave and free labor; gender agricultural regimes on non-sugar properties, resistance; the slave trade, compensation and manumission; adjustments to emancipation and contemporary Caribbean society. Caribbean and wider Atlantic World history are growing fields in all major universities and these essays will be of interests to all who are engaged in the project of recovering Caribbean history.