Empire of Neglect – The West Indies in the Wake of British Liberalism Taylor

Empire of NeglectThe West Indies in the Wake of British Liberalism\nAuthor(s): Christopher Taylor\nFormat: Hardback\nPublisher: Duke University Press, United States\nImprint: Duke University Press\nISBN-13: 9780822371045, 978-0822371045\nSynopsis\nFollowing the publication of Adam Smiths The Wealth of Nations, nineteenth-century liberal economic thinkers insisted that a globally hegemonic Britain would profit only by abandoning the formal empire. British West Indians across the divides of race and class understood that, far from signaling an invitation to nationalist independence, this liberal economic discourse inaugurated a policy of imperial neglect-a way of ignoring the ties that obligated Britain to sustain the worlds of the empires distant fellow subjects. In Empire of Neglect Christopher Taylor examines this neglects cultural and literary ramifications, tracing how nineteenth-century British West Indians reoriented their affective, cultural, and political worlds toward the Ame.