page_title: Augusta Zelia Fraser
section_title: Historical background
hierarchical_section_title: Augusta Zelia Fraser / Writing / Historical background
caption_attribution_description: English: Street, man pumping water. Port Antonio, Jamaica (about 60 miles from Kingston). 1899. Name of Expedition: Allison V. Armour Expedition Participants: Charles F. Millspaugh, Edward P. Allen, Edward S. Isham Jr.,Jordan L. Mott Jr. Expedition Start Date: December 21, 1898 Expedition End Date: March 11, 1899 Purpose and Aims: Plant collecting and photography for Botany in the Bermuda, Bahamas, Haiti, Jamaica, Puerto Rico, Cuba, Yucatan. Vessel Name: Utowana (Yacht, Sailboat) Location: Central America, Jamaica, Port Antonio Original material: 4x5 inch Interpositive Digital Identifier: CSB4066 Learn more about The Field Museum's http://www.fieldmuseum.org/research_collections/library/library_sites/photo_archives/default.htm.
context_page_description: Augusta Zelia Fraser, born Augusta Zelia Webb, generally publishing pseudonymously as Alice Spinner, was an English-born writer of fiction and amateur ethnography who produced much of her work while living in Jamaica in the late 19th century. She published two novels, one memoir, and a number of short stories.
context_section_description: Jamaica in the 19th century was marked by crisis. The Imperial Parliament had ended slavery by the Slavery Abolition Act 1833, but abolition did not result in equality. Rather, on 1 August 1834, slaves became so-called 'apprentices', with full legal emancipation to come six years later, on 1 August 1840 (later amended to 1 August 1838). Traditional practices such as obeah had long been criminalised.
  'By the 1840s', Hall explains, 'the island was increasingly identified as a problem' by the imperial metropole, as a result of the labour strife that followed emancipation. A prevailing view in London was that the 'experiment' of abolition had 'failed'. 
  The Morant Bay rebellion of 1865 brought an end to representative government on the island and the return of direct rule by colonial governors: Jamaica was once more a Crown colony. Reforms in the 1870s reintroduced some representative elements, including election of some members of the legislature by a tightly restricted franchise.   
  Global sugar prices dropped in the 1890s, shocking Jamaica's export-driven economy. Nonetheless, British promoters were advertising island vacations to Jamaica in the late 19th century. Evidently, the view from the metropolis was not all bad.  
  Buckridge explains that Jamaica, following emancipation, was divided into three racialised classes: the 'white elite', the 'brown population'; and 'Afro-Jamaicans'. The white elite comprised plantation owners and bourgeois professionals. The 'brown' class, which was internally stratified along various lines, viewed itself as a 'separate and distinct group' from others on the island and constituted a burgeoning middle class. 'Afro-Jamaicans', who, Buckridge notes, were 'often viewed through the lens of negative racial stereotyping carried over from slavery', typically experienced the most limited social opportunities. 
  The Jamaica Fraser chronicled, then, was suffering economically and riven by racial divides carried over from slavery, which had ended formally just over 50 years before she arrived. Her writing accordingly attends closely to racial dynamics.
caption: Street scene, Port Antonio, 1899.
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