The Department of History and Archaeology, UWI, Mona presents the annual Elsa Goveia Memorial Lecture on Wednesday, March 24, 2010 at 5 pm at the Philip Sherlock Centre for the Creative Arts (PSCAA), UWI, Mona. This year’s lecture is entitled “Powerless Masters: The Curious Decline of Jamaican Sugar Planters in the Foundational Period of British Abolitionism.” Professor Trevor Burnard, Professor of History of the Americas, History and Comparative American Studies, University of Warwick will deliver the Lecture.
 
The Lecture explores how the white West Indian planters were the first loyal colonial settlers to be demonized by metropolitan opinion in the history of imperial relations, facing unprecedented opprobrium from well-placed metropolitan opinion makers, from the 1780s onwards, about their character, behavior and supposedly un-British tendencies. The lecture, among other issues, will discuss the question: Why were the West Indian planters so quickly and effectively demonized by metropolitan opinion makers?

The public is invited. For more information interested persons may telephone 977-1922.