Barbados, Jamaica and the development of news culture in the mid seventeenth century

Abstract

This article examines the production and circulation of news across the British Atlantic, focusing on two main events: the royalist rebellion at Barbados (1650-2) and the conquest of Jamaica (1655). Royalists and commonwealth supporters alike cast the rising on Barbados as an extension of the wars of the 1640s and early 1650s, which moved beyond England, Scotland, and Ireland into the Atlantic world. The conquest of Jamaica offered a new war against a different enemy, Spain, and a new imperial vision. Together, the Barbados rebellion and Jamaica conquest allow us to examine role of news in shaping political, military, and imperial goals.