Jerome S. Handler

2006, 2007  Bibliographic Addenda to Guides for the Study of Barbados History, 1971 & 1991: Installment One, Installment Two. Jl. of the Barbados Mus. and Hist. Soc. Vol 52: 35-53; Vol 53: 199-211.

Published and some manuscript materials that have come to my attention since the publication of “A Guide to Source Materials for the Study of Barbados History, 1627-1834″ ( Southern Illinois University Press, 1971; reprinted Oak Knoll Press, 2002), and “Supplement to A Guide to Source Materials for the Study of Barbados History, 1627-1834″ (The John Carter Brown Library, 1991).

Bibliographic Addenda to Guides for the Study of Barbados History, 1971 & 1991: Installment One

Bibliographic Addenda to Guides for the Study of Barbados History, 1971 & 1991: Installment Two

2006   (F. Brady and J. Handler), Jonathan Corncob Visits Barbados: Excerpts from a Little-Known 18th Century Novel.  Jl. of the Barbados Mus. and Hist. Soc. 52:17-34.

Published in 1787, this obscure satirical novel written by an author who to this day remains anonymous treats the adventures of a young man from Massachusetts during the period of the American Revolution. During the course of his adventures, Corncob spends some time in Barbados, and the three brief chapters that depict this visit are reproduced here with historical notes by the editors.

2005  A Rare Eighteenth-Century Tract in Defense of Slavery in Barbados: The Thoughts of the Rev. John Duke, Curate of St. Michael.  Jl. of the Barbados Mus. and Hist. Soc. 51:58-65.

In this article I summarize the contents and argument of this rare pamphlet (I know of only one existing copy) as a contribution to the historiography of slavery in the West Indies and to make known a resource that has hitherto escaped notice by scholars and bibliographers of early West Indian history and slavery.

1994    (J. R. Rickford and J. S. Handler), Textual Evidence on the Nature of Early Barbadian Speech, 1676-1835. Jl. of Pidgin and Creole Languages 9: 221-55

On the evidence of textual attestations from 1676-1835, early Barbadian English is shown to have exhibited many more nonstandard features than is generally recognized. Such features, which are commonly, if not exclusively, found in pidgins and creoles, include vowel epenthesis, paragoge and initial s-deletion processes, creole tense-modality-aspect marking, copula absence, the use of invariant no as a preverbal negative and as an emphatic positive marker, the occurence of one as indefinite article, and a variety of  morphologically unmarked pronomial forms.

Textual Evidence on the Nature of Early Barbadian Speech, 1676-1835

1969 Review of English Rustics in Black Skin: A Study of Modern Family Forms in a Pre-lndustrialized Society. Sidney M. Greenfield. New Haven: College and University Press, American Anthropologist 71:335-337.

This review argues against the basic cultural historical premises developed by Greenfield, particularly his view of the influence of English culture on Afro-Barbadian society, and his naive perspective on Barbadian history and the life of the enslaved.

Review of English Rustics in Black Skin: A Study of Modern Family Forms in a Pre-lndustrialized Society