Introduction to Part III

Summary

Part III, “Tristram Shandy in the Tropics: or, Reading Enlightenment in Jamaica,” begins with vignettes that demonstrate how acquiring publications was as important for Jamaicans as it was for British people of the metropole and North America and that they did so for similar reasons. Part III thus addresses a significant lacuna in the histories of the book and reading, vigorous fields in European and early American Enlightenment studies. As in Parts I and II, Part III shows the continuity in a colonial context of metropolitan intellectual practices and their adaptation by colonists to suit their needs, interests, and purposes. It begins with an impressionistic survey of reading on the island that explores what publications colonists secured and how they did so. It then delves into the meaning of reading for two Jamaicans, the ex-overseer Thomas Thistlewood and the planter Robert Long, by focusing on two themes: race and slavery, and religion. While the practices of these two readers cannot be generalized to all Jamaican readers, they demonstrate how colonial readers took possession of Enlightenment through reading and suggest how their reading was informed by personal experience, social status, intellectual, and even spiritual aspirations.