Barry William Higman (born 30 September 1943) is a retired Australian historian of Caribbean studies who primarily taught at the University of the West Indies from 1971 to 1996. During his career, Higman wrote multiple books including the 1977 Bancroft Prize winning work Slave Population and Economy in Jamaica, 1807-1834 before his retirement from academics in 2014. Higman was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1987 and the Musgrave Medal in 1992.
On 30 September 1943, Higman was born in Wagga Wagga, Australia. For his post-secondary education, he graduated from the University of Sydney in 1967 with a Bachelor of Arts before obtaining Doctor of Philosophy degrees at the University of the West Indies in 1967 and the University of Liverpool in 1971. [1]
Higman began his academic career in 1971 teaching at the University of the West Indies as a lecturer. He took a leave of absence in the late 1970s when he became a fellow at Princeton University in the history department. [2] During his academic career, Higman wrote multiple books focusing on Caribbean history including Slave Population and Economy in Jamaica, 1807-1834, which was awarded the 1977 Bancroft Prize. Higman resumed his teaching with UWI in the late 1970s and became a history professor with the university in 1983. [1] While working in history, Higman completed a three-year tenure as the history department chair in the mid 1980s and the early 1990s. In 1996, Higman left UWI to become a teacher at the Australian National University before his retirement in 2014. [3]
Higman was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1987 for studies in Iberian and Latin American history. [4] Outside of the United States, Higman became a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society in 1988 and received the Musgrave Medal in 1992. [5] [6]
The Honourable Edward Kamau Brathwaite, CHB, was a Barbadian poet and academic, widely considered one of the major voices in the Caribbean literary canon. Formerly a professor of Comparative Literature at New York University, Brathwaite was the 2006 International Winner of the Griffin Poetry Prize, for his volume of poetry Born to Slow Horses.
The University of the West Indies (UWI), originally University College of the West Indies, is a public university system established to serve the higher education needs of the residents of 18 English-speaking countries and territories in the Caribbean: Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, The Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Bermuda, British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Dominica, Grenada, Guyana, Jamaica, Montserrat, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Trinidad and Tobago, and Turks and Caicos Islands. Each country is either a member of the Commonwealth of Nations or a British Overseas Territory. The aim of the university is to help "unlock the potential for economic and cultural growth" in the West Indies, thus allowing improved regional autonomy. The university was originally instituted as an independent external college of the University of London.
Slavery in the British and French Caribbean refers to slavery in the parts of the Caribbean dominated by France or the British Empire.
Ralston Milton "Rex" Nettleford, OM, FIJ, OCC, was a Jamaican scholar, social critic, choreographer, and Vice-Chancellor Emeritus of the University of the West Indies (UWI), the leading research university in the Commonwealth Caribbean.
Edward Alston Cecil Baugh is a Jamaican poet and scholar, recognised as an authority on the work of Derek Walcott, whose Selected Poems (2007) Baugh edited, having in 1978 authored the first book-length study of the Nobel-winning poet's work, Derek Walcott: Memory as Vision.
Carolyn Cooper CD is a Jamaican author, essayist and literary scholar. She is a former professor of Literary and Cultural Studies at the University of the West Indies, Mona, Jamaica. From 1975 to 1980, she was an assistant professor at Atlantic Union College in South Lancaster, Massachusetts. In 1980, she was appointed as a lecturer in the Department of Literatures in English at the University of the West Indies (UWI), where she continued to work until her retirement as a professor in 2017. Also a newspaper journalist, Cooper write a weekly column for the Sunday Gleaner.
Erna Brodber is a Jamaican writer, sociologist and social activist. She is the sister of writer Velma Pollard.
Charles Rose Ellis, 1st Baron Seaford was a British politician, sugar planter, and slave holder.
The Igbo of Igboland became one of the principal ethnic groups to be enslaved during the Atlantic slave trade. An estimated 14.6% of all slaves were taken from the Bight of Biafra, a bay of the Atlantic Ocean that extends from the Nun outlet of the Niger River (Nigeria) to Limbe (Cameroon) to Cape Lopez (Gabon) between 1650 and 1900. The Bight’s major slave trading ports were located in Bonny and Calabar.
The Crown Colony of Jamaica and Dependencies was a British colony from 1655, when it was captured by the English Protectorate from the Spanish Empire. Jamaica became a British colony from 1707 and a Crown colony in 1866. The Colony was primarily used for sugarcane production, and experienced many slave rebellions over the course of British rule. Jamaica was granted independence in 1962.
The Musgrave Medal is an annual award by the Institute of Jamaica in recognition of achievement in art, science, and literature. Originally conceived in 1889 and named in memory of Sir Anthony Musgrave, the founder of the Institute and the former Governor of Jamaica who had died the previous year, the medal was the first to be awarded in the Western Hemisphere.
Richard Hart was a Jamaican historian, solicitor and politician. He was a founding member of the People's National Party (PNP) and one of the pioneers of Marxism in Jamaica. He played an important role in Jamaican politics in the years leading up to Independence in 1962. He subsequently was based in Guyana for two years, before relocating to London in 1965, working as a solicitor and co-founding the campaigning organisation Caribbean Labour Solidarity in 1974. He went on to serve as attorney-general in Grenada under the People's Revolutionary Government in 1983. He spent the latter years of his life in the UK, where he died in Bristol.
Sir Hilary McDonald Beckles KA is a Barbadian historian. He is the current vice-chancellor of the University of the West Indies (UWI) and chairman of the CARICOM Reparations Commission.
Elsa Goveia was born in British Guiana and became a foremost scholar and historian of the Caribbean. She was the first woman to become a professor at the newly created University College of the West Indies (UCWI) and first professor of West Indian studies in the UCWI History Department. Her seminal work, Slave Society in the British Leeward Islands at the End of the Eighteenth Century (1965), was a pioneering study of the institution of slavery and the first to put forth the concept of a "slave society" encompassing not just the slaves but the entire community. She was one of the pioneers of historical research on slavery and the Caribbean and is considered the "premier social historian" from the 1960s to her death.
Franklin W. Knight is a historian of Latin America and the Caribbean. He is an emeritus professor at Johns Hopkins University, where he was the Leonard and Helen R. Stulman Professor of History from 1993 to 2014 and director of the Centre for Africana Studies. He was awarded a Gold Musgrave Medal for literature in 2013.
Sheila Dorothy King, CD was a Barbadian-born, Jamaican academic and physician. She was the second woman to be appointed as full professor at the University of the West Indies (UWI). She was the first woman appointed as a professor in the Faculty of Medicine in 1983, ten years after she was appointed as head of UWI's Microbiology Department. A specialist in infectious disease and viral epidemiology, she advised numerous national, regional and international departments and governmental agencies on such diseases as dengue, influenza, and typhoid. In 1998, she was honored as a Commander of the Order of Distinction.
The Jamaican Historical Society is a local history society in Jamaica. The society publishes a journal, the Jamaican Historical Review, as well as a Bulletin.
Benjamin McMahon was an Irish man of the 19th century. Emigrating to the Americas, he worked as an overseer on a Jamaica slave plantation, and wrote an account of his experiences.
Maureen Warner-Lewis is a Trinidadian and Tobagonian academic whose career focused on the linguistic heritage and unique cultural traditions of the African diaspora of the Caribbean. Her area of focus has been to recover the links between African cultures and Caribbean cultures. She has been awarded multiple prizes for her works, including two Gordon K. and Sybil Lewis Awards, the Gold Musgrave Medal of the Institute of Jamaica, and was inducted into the Literary Hall of Fame of Tobago.
Jamaica–Turkey relations are foreign relations between Jamaica and Turkey. Neither country has a resident ambassador.