Empire of Neglect: The West Indies in the Wake of British Liberalism.

• Date: 01 August 2019
• Author: Ford, Amanda

Taylor, Christopher, Empire of Neglect: The West Indies in the Wake of British Liberalism. Durham: Duke University Press, 2018. ix+320 pages. Paperback, 27.95.

In Jane Austen's novel, Persuasion, an admiral's wife describes her travels throughout the Atlantic with her husband, and laments that she has never been to the West Indies because, "We do not call Bermuda or Bahama, you know, the West Indies." In response her dinner companion confesses, internally at least, "she could not accuse herself of having ever called them any thing in the whole course of her life." This snippet of the novel captures one of the contradictions at the heart of British identity and history--empire is both the heart of Britain and easily erased or forgotten by the British themselves. Christopher Taylor's Empire of Neglect examines this story from a new angle, namely how does it feel to be forgotten? How did West Indians attempt to reinsert themselves in the narrative and force the British to consider their place in empire? Neglected by the British, Taylor argues that West Indian authors turned instead to a new empire--the United States. These writers could...