Review:
"[P]rovocative. . . . Garraway's readings of her sources are imaginative and thought-provoking."
--Jeremy Popkin, "H-France, H-Net Reviews"
"Garraway's analytical insights are penetrating and sophisticated. "The Libertine Colony" is a remarkable achievement that transforms our understanding of eighteenth century Caribbean culture. . . . It deserves a wide readership."
--Joe Brooker, "Textual Practice"
"[Garraway's] enthralling analysis revisits significant seventeenth-and-eighteenth-century texts .... to explore the racial, cultural, and sexual interaction between the French, the swiftly annihilated indigenous population of the West Indies, and imported Africans."
--Roger Little," Modern Language Review"
"[A] dense, imaginative book. . . . [Garraway's] book deserves to be read and debated because of her admirable immersion in the primary printed and secondary historical literature, and because this brief review cannot plumb the depth and complexities of her work."
--Philip P. Boucher, "American Historical Review"
""The Libertine Colony" offers complex and varied readings of a series of important primary published texts that many historians have used, more or less critically, to pin down the history of the islands colonized by the French in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries . . . . [I]nsighfrul and serious . . . ."
--Sue Peabody, "Itinerario"
"This excellent book represents a ground-breaking work of scholarship in an essential but long-neglected area of Caribbean Studies: the genesis and construction of those early historical and ethnographic narratives, written largely by members of the clergy and the established social hierarchy from mainland France, that provided the framework for the study of the social inequities, physical brutality, and outright racism that was subsequently to characterize the French colonial encounter in the Caribbean."
--H. Adlai Murdoch, "Research in African Literatures"
""The Libertine Colony" . . . is a model scholarly work. The writer excels at keeping the theoretical perspective to a minimum so as not to impede the reading. As a result, the reader is hardly ever overwhelmed by the analytical terminology. . . . "The Libertine Colony" is an invaluable addition to the field of postcolonial studies. One can only wish that a French translation will soon be available for the benefit of the French-speaking readership."--Alix Pierre, "Caribbean Studies"
"An inquiry into the limitless ambiguity of violence, lust, and law in the early French Caribbean, The Libertine Colony is a daring scholarly feat. A model of convergence for its contribution across disciplinary boundaries, this book not only challenges how we read Old Regime colonial narratives but prompts us to think again about the proximity of the common and the sacred. In giving a detailed history to the vagaries of colonial slavery, Doris Garraway confronts the gist of torture in those realms that most seem to deny it. In fascinating detail, she rethinks conceits of love, as she exhumes rituals of belief."--Joan Dayan, author of Haiti, History, and the Gods
"Extremely well written, with a wonderful balance between impeccable scholarship and theoretical sophistication, The Libertine Colony is a very important contribution to postcolonial studies and the study of Caribbean literature and history."--Peter Hulme, author of Remnants of Conquest: The Island Caribs and their Visitors, 1877-1998
"The Libertine Colony . . . is a model scholarly work. The writer excels at keeping the theoretical perspective to a minimum so as not to impede the reading. As a result, the reader is hardly ever overwhelmed by the analytical terminology. . . . The Libertine Colony is an invaluable addition to the field of postcolonial studies. One can only wish that a French translation will soon be available for the benefit of the French-speaking readership."--Alix Pierre "Caribbean Studies "
From the Back Cover:
"Extremely well written, with a wonderful balance between impeccable scholarship and theoretical sophistication, "The Libertine Colony" is a very important contribution to postcolonial studies and the study of Caribbean literature and history."--Peter Hulme, author of "Remnants of Conquest: The Island Caribs and their Visitors, 1877-1998"
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.