"From oaths, proclamations and speeches, to conversations, sermons and incantations, The Freedom of Speech is concerned with the centrality of a variety of speech practices - what was said, how, where, by whom, how it was interpreted - to social relations in Britain’s most important Caribbean colonies. While many historians of the region have addressed the violence and alienation associated with linguistic imperialism, naming practices, coerced talk and forced silence, as well as the subversive opportunities associated with mockery, rumours and conspiratorial oath-making, none have examined the place of talk in Caribbean history with Miles Ogborn’s consistency and concentration."

Journal of Historical Geography

“Ogborn's The Freedom of Speech brilliantly explores the cultures of orality in the Caribbean. It provides a highly original and fascinating perspective on the world of the enslaved and of the slaveholders as well as on the study of slavery more generally.”

Gad Heuman, emeritus, University of Warwick

“In the beginning was the word, which made all things—or at least, in Ogborn’s telling, all the most important relations of power that define modern politics. His inspired examination of the intimacies of speech, liberty, and bondage in the British Caribbean announces a vital new departure for the study of slavery, its political geography, and its legacies. This book will change the way we hear the insistent chorus of voices that echo across generations of freedom struggle.”

Vincent Brown, author of Tacky’s Revolt: The Story of an Atlantic Slave War

“How were forms of freedom and bondage made through speech? Who could speak—when, where, and how? Ogborn’s powerful and original exploration considers the many kinds of talk—whether political, legal, botanical, or spiritual—of the colonizers, the abolitionists, and the enslaved in the Anglo-Caribbean. Speech, he convincingly demonstrates, needs attention: it is one of the dialogic practices at the heart of the making, remaking, and undoing of race and slavery.”

Catherine Hall, emerita, University College London

"Miles Ogborn’s new book highlights the importance of speech and speech practices in broadening our understanding of slavery in the Anglo-Caribbean and the Atlantic World. By examining how speech in sugar islands like Barbados and Jamaica was policed, attributed force, diminished, held accountable, and discredited, Ogborn delineates the oral cultures that made empire and slavery."

H-Net

"This latest monograph by Miles Ogborn perfectly illustrates the current renaissance in research on the colonial Caribbean. . . . This particular original contribution to that effort provides a significan account of the fundamental role that speech played in the social relations between the enslavers and the enslaved over two centuries in the British colonies of Jamaica and Barbados. . . . Ogborn's masterful use of a vast array or primary sources—letters, accounts, ephemera, reports, herbals, and others—from Caribbean and British archives allow him to tease out words long since lost on the trade winds"

Andrew Sluyter | The AGG Review of Books

"This is an important book that will be essential reading in multiple fields."

New West Indian Guide