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J. R. Kerr-Ritchie, Rites of August First Emancipation Day in the Black Atlantic World, Baton Rouge: Louisiana University Press, 2007, xix + 272 pp.
This interesting and well-researched book looks at August First celebrations in the British Caribbean, the United States and Canada between 1834 and 1860 and seeks to explain their social and political meanings. Throughout, Kerr-Ritchie insists on two major points. First, the subject should not be approached using a "national" framework (the United States, Canada, Jamaica); instead, these celebrations must be seen as "transnational" events for which Paul Gilroy's Black Atlantic (more correctly, the anglophone Black Atlantic) provides an appropriate matrix. Second, a close look at the changing meanings of these events between the 1830s and the start of the US Civil War will help shift attention away from the White abolitionists of the Anglo-American world, to people of African descent and how they used August First, especially as a means to mobilize against slavery in the United States in the antebellum decades.
The author posits three major objectives for his book. First, and most important, he wants to provide the first detailed examination of an important Black institution which (he believes) has been relatively ignored in the relevant literature. Second, he hopes to contribute to the study of emancipation and Black Atlantic identity by examining the comparative and transnational dimensions of freedom festivals in the British Caribbean, the Northern United States, and Ontario. Finally, he aims to show how Emancipation Day celebrations played a critical role in mobilizing Blacks and others in the cause of ending slavery everywhere, especially in North America.
Chapter 1 looks at August First celebrations in the British Caribbean. The analysis and description are based on work mainly on Jamaica and Trinidad by B.W. Higman, myself and others, along with some missionary and official publications. In chapter 2, Kerr-Ritchie considers how British emancipation influenced the agenda...