With Black 1919, Jacqueline Jenkinson has provided the first detailed investigation of the 1919 riots, which were among the most severe, widespread, and prolonged social disturbances to occur in Britain in the first half of the twentieth century. Jenkinson argues that the riots, which were dominated by attacks on black, Arab, and Chinese seamen and their neighborhoods by white, working-class men, were caused primarily by empirically measurable social and material conditions rather than by more nebulous cultural ones such as racism (27). The author's analysis builds on work done by scholars of the “new imperial history,” who have sought to integrate the history of empire and metropole. Her most salient influences come from historians such as Catherine Hall, Laura Tabili, and Kathleen Wilson, who have traced the reciprocal connections among imperialism and society, economy, and culture in Britain itself; from historians of national identity in wartime (e.g., Sonya Rose, Roy May, and Robin Cohen); and from historians of immigration and immigrant identities, such as David Cesarini and Panikos Payani. The author's stated goal is to “assess the expression of imperial and national identification within the groups of British colonial subjects who were attacked during the riots, and among the host population, at both the individual and official level” (3–4). Therefore, the success or failure of Black 1919 ultimately rests on what Jenkinson's assessments add to the current scholarly understanding of colonialism's impact in the metropole, a point to which I will return at the end of this review.

Jenkinson's interest in the wider social and political context of the riots is apparent from her first chapter. Here, she places the violence in relation to a wide variety of dynamics, chief of which are labor tensions across the modern Atlantic world, wartime xenophobia and its other expressions in anti-Semitism and anti-German demonstrations, and the influence of maritime union organization. Jenkinson points to 1919 as being, to a great degree, the legacy of wartime patterns of anti-alienism and a consequence of interwar labor dislocations. The examination of U.S. and French riots at the conclusion of the chapter, while interesting, is not effectively related to the author's analysis of events in Britain. Chapter 2 documents the broad swath of violent outbreaks during this period, the bulk of which took place in Liverpool, Cardiff, London, Glasgow, South Shields, Salford, Newport, and Barry between January and August 1919. The chapter describes chief instances of rioting in clear, concise terms. Chapter 3 documents in impressive detail the geographic origins, race, ages, genders, and occupations of the rioters. The same detailed and careful statistical analysis, enlivened by narrative description, is brought to chapter 4, which examines the police and judicial responses to the rioting. The rioters were drawn largely from the merchant marine, most were men, and, when prosecuted, black and Arab rioters were more likely to be arrested, to be accused of escalating the violence and of seriously threatening public order, and to receive harsh sentences than their white counterparts were for the same actions. This last conclusion is a particularly significant one, since the comparative framework taken provides concrete evidence of prejudices that are more often traced by historians through the diffuse realms of culture and social relations.

Chapter 5 eschews the statistical and descriptive character of the previous three in favor of a deeper analysis of official attitudes and policies adopted in the wake of the riots, the response of those against whom these policies were directed, and how these tensions played out in the British Caribbean. This is, by far, the most insightful section of the book and the one most worthy of note for scholars of British imperialism, the Black Atlantic, and the development of Afro-Caribbean political consciousness. Jenkinson argues that the contested repatriation of black seamen to the British Caribbean contributed substantially to the growing political dissatisfaction with British imperial rule there, heightened the anxiety of Colonial Office officials over Caribbean nationalist movements, and made the political climate more receptive to radicalization through the influence of pan-African activists. The final chapter assesses some of the specific consequences, positive and negative, of the 1919 riots for both black and Arab residents in Britain during the years immediately afterward. On the whole, the events of 1919 worsened their situation, legally, socially, and economically, but it also prompted some prominent instances of political mobilization and self-help initiatives. Of particular long-term significance was the official classification of both black and Arab colonials as “aliens” and their consequent subjection to the laws and regulations that restricted the movement and employment of the latter.

In Black 1919, Jacqueline Jenkinson has, beyond a shadow of a doubt, described the actual events of 1919 in as detailed a manner as is possible given the sources available. The author's use of statistical evidence and anecdote to paint a panoramic view of the riots is an extremely impressive accomplishment, as is her attention to detail in her descriptions and her broad array of evidence, which includes court records, personal memoirs, government documents, and her single most extensively employed source, newspaper accounts. Jenkinson's careful establishment of how racial prejudice worked its way into concrete expressions of law and policy is also worthy of both praise and emulation. Chapter 5 is a particular standout of the book, and it demonstrates an excellent depth of analysis and an astute engagement with broader themes in the study of imperialism, race, political discourse, and transnational identities. But the largely descriptive nature of the other chapters, the lack of engagement with the theoretical approaches that have been used to examine identity and colonialism in recent years, her somewhat cursory exploration of race as a discursive category, and an insufficient contextualization of 1919 with broader trends in British society in both the pre- and interwar periods leave many vital questions unaddressed. In particular, besides the official reclassification of black and Arab colonials as aliens and the transatlantic response to government repatriation schemes, we do not learn what the significant consequences (or precedents) of 1919 in constructions of British national, racial, class, and gender identity were beyond the rioters and involved government officials. Black 1919 is a very worthwhile contribution to the social history of race, labor, and imperial dynamics in Britain and offers some valuable insights into the constructions of the Black Atlantic there and in the British Caribbean. Ultimately, however, it does not make a strong case for why scholars who are not already interested in maritime labor politics or the lives of black and Arab seamen in Britain's cities from 1919–25 should pay attention to the riots in the first place. Jenkinson's work establishes the foundation for understanding the violent events 1919, but there is clearly much more that can be gleaned from the study of this disturbing and highly significant chapter in the history of late imperial Britain.