Synopses & Reviews
Through Creole houses and merchant stores to sugar fields and boiling houses, Jamaica played a leading role in the formation of both the early modern Atlantic world and the British Empire.
Architecture and Empire in Jamaica offers the first scholarly analysis of Jamaican architecture in the long eighteenth century, spanning roughly from the Port Royal earthquake of 1692 to Emancipation in 1838. In this richly illustrated study, which includes hundreds of the authorandrsquo;s own photographs and drawings, Louis P. Nelson examines surviving buildings and archival records to write a social history of architecture.
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Nelson begins with an overview of the architecture of the West African slave trade then moves to chapters framed around types of buildings and landscapes, including the Jamaican plantation landscape and fortified houses to the architecture of free blacks. He concludes with a consideration of Jamaican architecture in Britain. By connecting the architecture of the Caribbean first to West Africa and then to Britain, Nelson traces the flow of capital and makes explicit the material, economic, and political networks around the Atlantic.and#160;
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Synopsis
This important and original study of 18th-century Jamaican architecture, from creole houses to sugar refineries, reveals the islandandrsquo;s impact on the formation of both the modern Atlantic world and the British Empire.
About the Author
Louis Nelson is professor of architectural history and associate dean for research in the School of Architecture, University of Virginia.