{"product_id":"the-quaker-community-on-barbados-larry-gragg-9780826218476","title":"The Quaker Community on Barbados: Challenging the Culture of the Planter Class","description":"Prior to the Quakers' large-scale migration to Pennsylvania, Barbados had more Quakers than any other English colony. But on this island of sugar plantations, Quakers confronted material temptations and had to temper founder George Fox's admonitions regarding slavery with the demoralizing realities of daily life in a slave-based economy--one where even most Quakers owned slaves. In \u003ci\u003eThe Quaker Community on Barbados\u003c\/i\u003e, Larry Gragg shows how the community dealt with these contradictions as it struggled to change the culture of the richest of England's seventeenth-century colonies. \u003cbr\u003e Gragg has conducted meticulous research on two continents to re-create the Barbados Quaker community. Drawing on wills, censuses, and levy books along with surviving letters, sermons, and journals, he tells how the Quakers sought to implement their beliefs in peace, simplicity, and equality in a place ruled by a planter class that had built its wealth on the backs of slaves. He reveals that Barbados Quakers were a critical part of a transatlantic network of Friends and explains how they established a \"counterculture\" on the island--one that challenged the practices of the planter class and the class's dominance in island government, church, and economy. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e In this compelling study, Gragg focuses primarily on the seventeenth century when the Quakers were most numerous and active on Barbados. He tells how Friends sought to convert slaves and improve their working and living conditions. He describes how Quakers refused to fund the Anglican Church, take oaths, participate in the militia, or pay taxes to maintain forts--and how they condemned Anglican clergymen, disrupted their services, and wrote papers critical of the established church. By the 1680s, Quakers were maintaining five meetinghouses and several cemeteries, paying for their own poor relief, and keeping their own records of births, deaths, and marriages. Gragg also tells of the severe challenges and penalties they faced for confronting and rejecting the dominant culture. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e With their civil disobedience and stand on slavery, Quakers on Barbados played an important role in the early British Empire but have been largely neglected by scholars. Gragg's work makes their contribution clear as it opens a new window on the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Atlantic world.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor:\u003c\/b\u003e Larry Gragg\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-10:\u003c\/b\u003e 0826218474\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-13:\u003c\/b\u003e 9780826218476\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e University of Missouri Press\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eLanguage:\u003c\/b\u003e English\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 05\/28\/2009\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 208\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eFormat:\u003c\/b\u003e Hardcover\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeight:\u003c\/b\u003e 1.05lbs\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSize:\u003c\/b\u003e 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.90d\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eReview Citation(s): \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eChronicle of Higher Education\u003c\/i\u003e 06\/26\/2009 pg. 17","brand":"Larry Gragg","offers":[{"title":"Hardcover","offer_id":48086996025599,"sku":"9780826218476","price":49.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0662\/2982\/9887\/files\/img_a7d2fdb4-6012-4afb-a55e-f47d30be0b98.jpg?v=1769097704","url":"https:\/\/www.whiterainbookhouse.com\/products\/the-quaker-community-on-barbados-larry-gragg-9780826218476","provider":"WR Book House","version":"1.0","type":"link"}