Within a broader frame, it demonstrates that the practices through which we produce knowledge, understandings, and "truth," in general, must be rigorously scrutinized. The work is also valuable because it demonstrates that geographical knowledge of Jamaica and the West Indies influenced the nature of the knowledge that was produced. This is a solid analysis of how knowledge is produced and it deconstructs how this particular narrative was a mix of truth and manipulation and the creation of multiple agents, white and black locked in an unequal distribution of power. The book is of particular value because it moves beyond theory. And much more she offers in her interpretation. She claims that although the Williams account is one of a few first-hand accounts of the searing indictment of the apprenticeship system in Jamaica, the narrative represents much more. Paton writes that a reading of the narrative must attend to the broader conditions of its production. The book concludes with some thirty-four pages of additional documents and a bibliography. Each section includes well-annotated endnotes. It also gives authenticity to Williams's telling of events, which were verified, for the most part, during the inquiry. Paton correctly argues that the juxtaposing of the two archival pieces has an analytical value because it offers a multivocal account of the apprenticeship system.
The third section is an account of an official commission of inquiry held in Jamaica to investigate the truthfulness of the narrative that infuriated the Jamaican white elite and reflected negatively on the penal system and the stipendiary magistrates who were authorized to replace the planters in punishing former slaves for labor infractions. For example, he narrates that he was punished for improperly cleaning the pimento crop, for not turning out sheep early enough in the morning, for not working hard enough, and for running away for seven weeks. In the narrative, Williams recounts the events that led up to his seven floggings and four periods of imprisonment in the house of corrections, and he also writes about the ordeals of others. The second is a reproduction of the narrative of Williams, a former slave serving as an apprenticed laborer working on a pimento plantation in St. She also presents her methodology and analytical findings and interpretations. The first is her lengthy and indispensable introduction in which she sketches in the plots, characters, and settings that situate the reader. In A Narrative of Events, Paton has produced a fine analysis positioned within the timely and fashionable debate about the "Production of Knowledge." The book consists of three sections. Dhanda (Department of History and Political Science, Nazareth College of Rochester) A Narrative of Events, since the First of August, 1834, by James Williams, an Apprenticed Labourer in Jamaica.ĭurham: Duke University Press, 2001.
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