Why is Edward Long's "The History of Jamaica" significant? Written in 1774, Long's History, the most 'civilized' of texts, attempted to define Whites and Blacks as essentially different and unequal. Long used natural history and social theory, carefully mapping the island and drawing from poetry and engravings, in his attempt to establish a clear and stable hierarchy based on race. His White family was at the center of Jamaica's planter society and the West Indian sugar trade, which provided the basic economic foundation of this 18th-century system of racial capitalism. Catherine Hall tells the story behind the History of a family that owned slaves and thrived across generations, along with the destruction of those possibilities for the enslaved. She analyzes the many contradictions in Long's thinking, exposing the insidious myths and stereotypes that have poisoned social relations over generations and allowed reconfigured forms of racial difference and racial capitalism to survive in modern societies.