Associativism and networks in the British Caribbean: the experience of the Left Book Club in Jamaica

Abstract

Based on the history of the Left Book Club in Jamaica (LBCJ), founded in Kingston, in 1938, by the historian and unionist Richard Hart, this article intends to think about processes of circulation, reading and appropriation of anti-colonial ideas in a transnational circuit. In addition to serving as a book club, circulating printed material produced in the metropolis by its British head office, the Left Book Club of London, the LBCJ was a center for intellectual congregation and local educational formation, playing a key role in Jamaican associativism in a period of great political and social upheaval in the Caribbean on the eve of World War II.

Keywords:
Circulation of Ideas; Black Atlantic; British Empire; Colonialism and Anti-colonialism; British Caribbean