Black Empire

“Black Empire advances an argument arced with poetic political justice: the isles that endured the most sustained suffering at the hands of a racist imperialism cultivated its most biting critics.” - Harvey Neptune, Small Axe

“[T]his impressive volume is both wide-ranging and intellectually challenging as Stephens interrogates the contribution of a range of under-researched authors and works to the creation of a ‘black federation’ within a transnational framework.” - Celeste-Marie Bernier, Atlantic Studies

"[A] remarkable overview of visionary black leadership in the early 20th century. . . . Recommended." - A. J. Guillaume Jr., Choice

“Black Empire is a remarkable achievement, a comprehensive account of the global cognitive remapping of the Atlantic world by its travelling black subjects. This is a theoretically sophisticated and conceptually innovative study of West Indian intellectuals who confronted and shaped the geopolitical realities of the modern and modernizing world and refused to be limited by the historical terms, conditions, and discourses of national identity. Michelle Ann Stephens has produced a pathbreaking account of their response to migrancy, transnationalism, gender and empire. An invaluable book for everyone in Atlantic studies, the study of the Americas, black studies, ethnic studies and gender studies.” - Hazel V. Carby, author of Race Men

“In this strikingly original and rich study, Michelle Ann Stephens makes wonderful use of geography to remap early-twentieth-century black nationalism beyond the confines of national boundaries. With great acuity, she shows how three different radical Caribbean intellectuals imagined an international black empire that extended from the Americas to Africa and Europe. Black Empire brings a genuinely new perspective to bear on the complex interconnections of citizenship and Diaspora, gender and freedom, race and sovereignty.” - Amy Kaplan, author of The Anarchy of Empire in the Making of U.S. Culture