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Caribbean histories and identities – and the influence those views have had, as well as the rather wider influence which, one might say, they should have had. If the ‘Jamesian hypothesis’ around which this volume revolves – that in Bill Schwarz’s words ‘it was through the encounter with the formerly colonial peoples of the Caribbean that native white Britons were first able to see themselves in
The work of the CPRC to identify new uses for sugar was incorporated into Colonial Office plans to encourage industrial development in Britain’s Caribbean colonies. Expanding on its role as a sponsor of research at British universities, the CPRC created a new laboratory for sugar research in Trinidad in 1951 with the goal of inspiring West Indian sugar producers to diversify their interests and establish chemical factories in the Caribbean. A second laboratory was created in Trinidad to carry out research into microbiological problems
fact’ry chimneys pourin’ smoke up to de sky, An’ to see de matches-children, dat I hear ‘bout, passin’ by. 1 These stanzas from McKay’s poem – ‘Old England’ – express the conventional, British Caribbean and colonial view of the mother country. It was published in 1912. His opinions, however
his wife again; was never to see his daughter; and he never returned to the Caribbean. This represents a particular variant on the theme of emigration which underwrites the story of twentieth-century Caribbean intellectuals. From 1929 to 1933 Padmore energetically devoted himself to the ideals of Soviet Communism, rising high in the firmament of the Communist administration; thereafter, until his death
During the 1930s, episodes of violent protest by the inhabitants of Britain’s Caribbean colonies brought the extremely poor living and working conditions that existed in these territories to domestic and international attention. Revelations of widespread unemployment, squalid housing and malnutrition threatened the moral authority of British rule and provided fuel for critics of British imperialism. As a result, Britain made a commitment to improving living conditions in an area of the British Empire that it had previously neglected. This
circulating before economists such as Prebisch and W. W. Rostow published their ideas. It has aimed to revise the usual story in which Britain resisted economic diversification in its Caribbean colonies and instead has shown that a number of visions of Caribbean industrialisation were proposed after 1942 that can be described as types of industrialisation-by-invitation, in a stronger or weaker form. These ideas, promoted by the British government, Arthur Lewis and the Caribbean Commission, differed so that no unified theory of development can be said to have informed plans
It is practically a cliché in discussions of the post-war Caribbean to state that the British government did nothing to foster the growth of secondary industry in the British West Indies after 1940, and even purposively frustrated development of this kind. The original fault is said to lie with the Moyne Commission since the Commission’s 1945 report did not expound the need for any major initiatives to foster the growth of industry in the region. 1 In the standard story, a period of indifference by Britain to the development of new industry
For C. L. R. James West Indian identity was something to be celebrated, associated as it was for him, with the whole of the Caribbean, from Cuba and Haiti to Martinique, Trinidad and Jamaica. 1 Its distinctive character he saw as intimately linked to its particularly modern history, with the plantation at the centre of a global capitalist system linking slavery with
By expanding the geographical scope of the history of violence and war, this volume challenges both Western and state-centric narratives of the decline of violence and its relationship to modernity. It highlights instead similarities across early modernity in terms of representations, legitimations, applications of, and motivations for violence. It seeks to integrate methodologies of the study of violence into the history of war, thereby extending the historical significance of both fields of research. Thirteen case studies outline the myriad ways in which large-scale violence was understood and used by states and non-state actors throughout the early modern period across Africa, Asia, the Americas, the Atlantic, and Europe, demonstrating that it was far more complex than would be suggested by simple narratives of conquest and resistance. Moreover, key features of imperial violence apply equally to large-scale violence within societies. As the authors argue, violence was a continuum, ranging from small-scale, local actions to full-blown war. The latter was privileged legally and increasingly associated with states during early modernity, but its legitimacy was frequently contested and many of its violent forms, such as raiding and destruction of buildings and crops, could be found in activities not officially classed as war.
promoted as institutions at the cutting edge of international scientific research whilst at the same time performing an important service in stimulating industry across the British Caribbean and wider Colonial Empire. The potential of new industry based on the use of cane sugar was endorsed in a report sponsored by the Caribbean Commission, and singled out for praise by the mission of British industrialists that had visited the Caribbean in 1952. When Colonial Office officials considered the achievements of Britain in terms of technical work of benefit to the colonies