Apocalypse 1692 Empire, slavery, and the great Port Royal earthquake

Despite its title, this book is less a history of the great Port Royal earthquake of 1692 and its lingering effects (the earthquake is the subject of just one chapter) than a general overview of English Jamaica in the late 17th century. Hughes focuses on the 1680s and 1690s, but the book ranges over topics and events well before and after those decades (including a brief epilogue that traces developments across the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries). The author emphasizes political and military affairs, although he also rightly highlights the rise of slavery in Jamaica during this period. Hughes does a nice job narrating major events, including the earthquake itself, as well as the lives of key individuals, particularly the earl of Inchiquin, Jamaica's governor from 1690 until 1692. He does so based on a wide reading of the relevant published primary and secondary materials, along with some archival material. Overall, Hughes presents a good deal of information in an accessible manner. Scholars will not find much new in his book, but general readers will gain a solid understanding of Jamaica's emergence as a plantation society. Summing Up: Recommended. General readers/public libraries. --Matthew Mulcahy, Loyola University Maryland

Hughes (The Siege of Fort William Henry) wittily portrays the grittiness and debauchery of late-17th-century Jamaica in this well-crafted narrative history, focusing on the city of Port Royal in the years preceding the devastating earthquake of 1692. As the heart of the British Empire in the Caribbean, Port Royal was bustling with commercial activity, military craft, markets, and attractions; it was also home to an eclectic mix of merchants, slaves, indentured servants, banished minorities, sailors, and privateers. Hughes entertainingly illustrates the character of this "peculiarly debauched society," which was rife with alcoholism, gluttony, corruption, loose sexual morals, disease, and "a self-indulgent attitude toward sin," within a broader "climate of gross brutality." He situates this "wickedest town in the English Empire" in the larger contexts of Jamaican, Caribbean, and Atlantic history while touching on various interrelated topics: the sugar-fueled and slave-operated plantation economy of the island, slave resistance and maroon communities, imperial rivalry and buccaneering, and the barbarity of the slave trade. The calamitous earthquake of 1692, around which the narrative is framed, sent much of the city tumbling into the ocean and is depicted in the last few-dozen pages. Though Hughes presents little new historical information, this work provides an entertaining and substantial account of an underdiscussed era. (Dec.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.