In this instructive volume, Colin Clarke shares his original fieldwork journals from his research conducted in Kingston, Jamaica, in 1961 and 1968. The first of these journals covers the year leading up to Jamaican Independence in 1962; the second covers a shorter period in 1968 and offers an interesting opportunity to reflect on the impact of Independence, and on Jamaica's refusal to join the West Indies Federation. It was a period of immense self-empowerment, excitement and potential as well as of intense suspicion, political manoeuvring and poverty. These journals are significant for offering a rarely seen insight into the emergence of an academic sensibility that has become one of the foremost voices in the study of the Caribbean. It is also invaluable for supplying a unique viewpoint from which to understand the mixture of race, politics, and class discussions energising such diverse groups as high-class dinner party guests and groups of Rastafarians in impoverished areas of downtown Kingston around the time of Independence.

Colin Clarke's entries in the first of the journals give an insight into the energetic discussions happening in the tumultuous year leading up to Independence. The most insightful entries indicate the conflict occurring over how to position and frame social and political disaffection. Clarke captures these discussions well when he rhetorically enquires: ‘Does Jamaica suffer from class or color prejudice?’ (p. 61). Such assertions can be striking given that race and class overlapped considerably, and continue to do so in the present. Yet, the importance of the journals resides in their ability to give an insight into a context before the possibility for critical reflection and deduction. Indeed, it is surprising to learn that organisations campaigning for Black self-empowerment in 1960 could also be antagonistic towards those espousing Marxism and the overthrow of the colonial class system. Although many powerful thinkers, such as Marcus Garvey and C.L.R. James, had long argued that race and class in the Caribbean might be viewed as two facets of the same overarching problem of white British Imperialism, these views were yet to become widespread in the population. Moreover, the threat of the spread of communist revolution such as that seen two years prior in Cuba made the stakes of such arguments readily apparent.

A thread running through these journals is the emergence of Rastafarianism as a significant force in Jamaican society. Although Rastafarianism has its origins in Jamaica in the 1930s, the movement gained particular momentum in the 1950s and 1960s with an increasing awareness of independence from British colonial rule and a global sense of Black self-improvement. Fears of the movement offer a fascinating layer of depth to the journals, as Clarke includes insights gleaned from the Local Standing Intelligence Committee Reports compiled by Jamaican special forces and the Special Branch reports compiled by their British counterparts, which reveal the data being compiled on figures involved in anti-colonial movements. The journals benefit significantly from Clarke's access to the figure of Ras Sam Brown, the first Rastafarian to stand for political office, and one of the foremost proponents of Rastafari in the early 1960s. Without such journals, it would be easy to forget the very real depth of suspicion and security forces surveillance that accompanied the movement in the first decades of its emergence, culminating in the Coral Gardens massacre in 1963.

The second of the journals revisits many of the same themes, and it is interesting to see how a large number of the discussions begun at the start of the 1960s were having a dramatic impact in 1968. When Colin Clarke returns to the Town Planning Department in which he collated much of the data for his thesis, he finds that ‘almost all the senior white personnel … have left’ (p. 153). Perhaps in part due to the schism between those arguing for Black empowerment and those engaging in class struggle, the Guyanese Walter Rodney emerges as a key figure uniting the two groups; Clarke's journal covers the period at which he was lecturer in African History at the University of the West Indies, Mona campus, in Kingston. Rodney was effective at the time for ‘making connections between left-wing students and poor blacks’ (p. 156) and catalysing and energising the debates begun in 1960. This 1968 journal therefore offers a compelling addition to the longer 1961 journal and contributes significantly to tracing the trajectory from the debates of race and class at the beginning of the decade to more holistic understandings of Black Power at the end of it.

Alongside these important additions to understandings of Jamaica in the 1960s, the journals also offer a glimpse into the emergence of an important scholar. At times, the entries can be disturbing, for example in the occasional generalisation of black-empowerment activists as ‘the racists’ (p. 157). However, the decision to include such language unchanged reflects a commitment to maintaining the authenticity and subjectivity of journals accompanying fieldwork. Although at times uncomfortable, these serve as a reminder that societies and politics can alter dramatically. The entries demonstrate how journals might operate as a space for thinking through complex realities before the demands to condense these thoughts into a coherent academic piece. Journal entries such as: ‘People in West Kingston are living outside the law’ (p. 56) clamour for further elucidation, but also reveal the myriad of possible avenues for research that might arise during fieldwork. Making it plain that even very accomplished academics might not be able to follow every lead, or cover every aspect of a topic, reveals the importance of recognising the positionality of the researcher.

Colin Clarke is an Emeritus Professor at Oxford University, and has had a distinguished career in Geography and Caribbean Studies. The fieldwork conducted in the 1960s contributed to the production of a study of urban development in Kingston, and to a number of further publications dealing with development and social change in Jamaica. He is an engaged academic whose work inspires emergent and established scholars alike. These journals would particularly contribute to debates over race and class in the Caribbean, the failure of the West Indies Federation, studies of Rastafarianism, and would be an aid to those teaching and studying research methods.