Dame Eugenia Charles was the first female prime minister in the Caribbean. The nine essays in this book capture critical elements of her life and times and her motivations as prime minister of Dominica. She was at once feared, vilified and admired, even by her friends, yet all she ever did, as considered by her, was to act for her country within the best traditions of social and political conservatism. The contributors, even when they are at their most critical, reveal an admiration for her as a purpose-driven leader, who never acted out of malice or vindictiveness. Dame Mary Eugenia Charles...

This work is a collection of selected papers presented at the conference "Trajectories of Freedom: Caribbean Societies, 1807-2007", a theme inspired by the two-hundredth anniversary of the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade in the British Empire. The papers interrogate and problematise shifting notions and expressions of "freedom" as they have evolved in Caribbean societies over the past two hundred years and as they have been applied in the context of the contemporary Caribbean.

Together, these essays illustrate the historical and continuing efforts in the various spheres of...