Book chapter
Mary Prince’s Environmental History
The Cambridge Companion to Mary Prince, pp 184-200
24 Apr 2025
Abstract
This chapter considers The History of Mary Prince as an environmental history and demonstrates how Mary Prince theorized environmental justice from the perspective of an African descended woman who labored in the trenches of ecological imperialism and envisioned liberation. In studying Prince’s text, we can better understand how the interwoven systems of slavery and colonialism altered the natural world and also how imperialism, as a formalized ideological structure administered in the colonies as well as in the metropole, always left its imprint on the environment. The chapter argues that Prince demands a geography of freedom that is outside of the colonial-defined borders of the Caribbean islands, calling for an end to both slavery and ecological imperialism. In making this argument, it examines a series of vivid moments in Prince’s environmental history to catalogue Prince’s anti-imperialist geography. Further, this chapter also considers Barbadian poet Kamau Brathwaite’s theoretical neologism, tidalectics, as an entryway to comprehending Prince’s conceptualization of the marine landscapes of the islands she traversed.
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Details
- Title
- Mary Prince’s Environmental History
- Creators
- Elizabeth Polcha
- Publication Details
- The Cambridge Companion to Mary Prince, pp 184-200
- Publisher
- Cambridge University Press
- Resource Type
- Book chapter
- Language
- English
- Academic Unit
- English and Philosophy; Center for Science, Technology, and Society
- Scopus ID
- 2-s2.0-105016976106
- Other Identifier
- 991022064829504721