In 1834 Antigua became the only British colony in the Caribbean to move directly from slavery to full emancipation. Immediate freedom, however, did not live up to its promise, as it did not guarantee any level of stability or autonomy, and the implementation of new forms of coercion and control made it, in many ways, indistinguishable from slavery. In Troubling Freedom Natasha Lightfoot tells the story of how Antigua's newly freed black working people struggled to realize freedom in their everyday lives, prior to and in the decades following emancipation. She presents freedpeople's efforts to form an efficient workforce, acquire property, secure housing, worship, and build independent communities in response to elite prescriptions for acceptable behavior and oppression. Despite its continued efforts, Antigua's black population failed to convince whites that its members were worthy of full economic and political inclusion. By highlighting the diverse ways freedpeople defined and created freedom through quotidian acts of survival and occasional uprisings, Lightfoot complicates conceptions of freedom and the general narrative that landlessness was the primary constraint for newly emancipated slaves in the Caribbean.

Suddenly, there were black clouds in the sky. Everyone heard a loud noise coming from the sky and they all knew that Vorltrarr the Dragon was coming. King Aurthorr yelled out, "Daughters, Vorltrarr comes! Get ready your weapons! The time has come for you to fulfill the prophecy!" Princess Sasha, Princess Trina, Princess Alexandra and Rebecca walked up ahead of the army and lined up together in a row. They looked like warriors! Rebecca was not afraid! She took a deep breath and got her weapon ready for the task that lay ahead. She understood the prophecy now and had faith in herself and the Princesses. She was determined not to let them or the Land of Antigua down. They each pulled out their bows and prepared to kill the dragon. The Dragon Vorltrarr got nearer to the heroes! Fire came out of his nostrils and his mouth. Princess Alexandra handed each of the other girls one of the special arrows that they had gotten from the Head Centaur of the Unicorns. All four of the girls pointed their bows up into the air and waited for Vorltrarr to come nearer. Vorltrarr let out such a loud noise that the ground shook! Then fire came right out of his nostrils. The Wizard Thandorfur held his mighty wand up toward the sky and yelled, "Mighty clouds of the sky, I call upon you to bring forth lightening to destroy the Dragon Vorltrarr!" Suddenly the black clouds over the Dragon Vorltrarr began to roar like a freight train. Large lightening bolts came out of the clouds toward Vorltrarr. One lightening bolt struck Vorltrarr and wounded him but it didn't kill him!

Originally published in 1985, and available for the first time in paperback, Bondmen & Rebels provides a pioneering study of slave resistance in the Americas. Using the large-scale Antigua slave conspiracy of 1736 as a window into that society, David Barry Gaspar explores the deeper interactive character of the relation between slave resistance and white control.

This volume uses archaeological and documentary evidence to reconstruct daily life at Betty’s Hope plantation on the island of Antigua, one of the largest sugar plantations in the Caribbean. It demonstrates the rich information that the multidisciplinary approach of contemporary historical archaeology can offer when assessing the long-term impacts of sugarcane agriculture on the region and its people. Drawing on ten years of research at the 300-year-old site, the researchers uncover the plantation’s inner workings and its connections to broader historical developments in the Atlantic World. Excavations at the Great House reveal similarities to other British colonial sites, and historical records reveal the owners’ involvement in the Atlantic slave trade and in the trade of rum and other commodities. Artifacts uncovered from the slave quarters—ceramic tokens, repurposed bottle glass, and hundreds of Afro-Antiguan pottery sherds—speak to the agency of enslaved peoples in the face of harsh living conditions. Contributors also use ethnographic field data collected from interviews with contemporary farmers, as well as soil analysis to demonstrate how three centuries of sugarcane monocropping created a complicated legacy of soil depletion. Today tourism has long surpassed sugar as Antigua’s primary economic driver. Looking at visitor exhibits and new technologies for exploring and interpreting the site, the volume discusses best practices in cultural heritage management at Betty’s Hope and other locations that are home to contested historical narratives of a colonial past. A volume in the Florida Museum of Natural History: Ripley P. Bullen Series

Historical facts, personal experiences and legends detail the human history of Antigua from the first European landings until 1843.

This Spanish Borderlands classic recounts Jesuit colonization of the Old California, the peninsula now known as Baja California.