Clarence Maxwell came upon his area of expertise “by accident”.

While studying West Indian history at the University of Warwick, the subject opened up for the historian, now a leading expert in the early slavery period.

He might also say he was pushed into it.

His father, Clifford Maxwell, was principal at Berkeley Institute. His mother, Florenz Maxwell, was the head librarian of the youth library.

Both members of the Progressive Group, the secret society behind the 1959 Theatre Boycott that led to Bermuda’s desegregation, they held a big place in the island’s civil rights history.

“My father pushed strongly for me to do Bermuda history,” he laughed.

“I was interested first in trying to understand West Indian migration to Bermuda and therefore had to put a context to it. That meant having to study the period before then and ultimately that resulted in [slavery],” he explained.

“Plus, a lot of the work at the National Museum was focused on trying to solve certain questions about Bermuda, trying to get an idea of Bermuda’s slave past.”

Mr Maxwell worked for what was then the Bermuda Maritime Museum between 1999 and 2005 and moved to the US 11 years ago when he was offered a position at Millersville University in Pennsylvania.

As the assistant professor of history, the 51-year-old lectures on Latin American and Caribbean history.

Mr Maxwell has authored Pembroke, the latest in The Bermuda National Trust’s series of books on Bermuda’s architectural heritage.

The volume explores the history of the parish and covers many of its buildings, from Government House to humbler homes on The Glebe Road and North Shore.

Mr Maxwell grew up in the parish.

“Anytime I do something about Bermuda, my home becomes more complex and interesting,” he said.

“We learnt a lot about places you’d normally just look at. This allowed for the opportunity to put a history to them.”

He called Pembroke a “microcosm of Bermuda’s history” and outlined four key stages in the island’s background: “[The] early colonial period when it was under company rule; the maritime commercial revolution; the post-emancipation period and the modern period — the 1900s.

“Historians are liable to create divisions as they go forward, but for me, it was very reflective of those periods,” he said.

It was while at the National Museum, that he grasped this “notion of periodisation”.

“It’s like a layer cake. Each period was so different than the other. Watching that development was interesting for me and seeing the massive and complex social history that the place has.”

He said the book is more than simply an architectural history. The series not only traces the history of Bermuda’s oldest and most notable buildings, but the people who built and lived in them.

“It is essentially an architectural history, but it’s a fusion,” he said. “It’s massive maritime economic revolution and the social changes, social migrations to Bermuda by the Portuguese and the West Indians. It’s a reflection of a large portion of Bermuda social development.”

Mr Maxwell said writing about architecture represented “a learning curve” for him.

“It provided a challenge, but it is a co-operative work. It’s more of a ‘we’ in this picture than a ‘me’.

“I like to see history as a collaborative activity. This is a very good example of that. When people work together on a project like this, we bring all of our individual talents and understandings and the result is that we have a much richer project.”

Eighteen researchers and six writers left no stone unturned; Mr Maxwell is satisfied with the outcome.

“It is such a reflection of how this is a collective contribution. Everyone in Bermuda has had some effect on some aspect of Bermuda’s architectural heritage. If anything reflects our collective will or, as Germans like to say geist, it’s got to be our architecture.”

He said Bermuda has benefited from its ability to chronicle its relatively short history

“There were probably a whole pile of people who were responsible for constructing the pyramids, but we would never know because it’s lost in time. This, we know.

“We know the totality of the contribution. Maybe this provides something for other places as well as we try to develop an understanding of our national culture.

“So many social developments occurred — the push for land ownership by newly enfranchised blacks after slavery is clear in Pembroke.”

The team chose to focus not only on the grand houses and the great buildings like Bacardi, but looked at ordinary homes that had some architectural or social importance.

“I think it was [Harry S.] Truman who said that ‘The only thing new in the world is the history you do not know’.

“I was like a kid in a candy store, learning every new thing about people and buildings that you just pass by. It comes alive because you realise that these are places where people several generations before had walked through and touched and lived their lives.

“They died, were born. The human drama is all around the buildings and you can feel it.”

He added: “I like to walk around them and transpose myself in time and see what it was like. The researchers did the same. The volume of their work helped give so much detail.

“History is about people. It’s about people and the things that they do.”