HURRICANES, CROPS, AND CAPITAL: THE METEOROLOGICAL INFRASTRUCTURE OF AMERICAN EMPIRE IN THE WEST INDIES

2016 ◽  
Vol 15 (4) ◽  
pp. 418-445 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jamie L. Pietruska
Keyword(s):  
West Indian ◽  
The United States ◽  
American Empire ◽  
The West ◽  
Knowledge Infrastructure ◽  
Military Security ◽  
Symbolic Extension ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Caribbean ◽  
Weather Service

This article examines the mutually reinforcing imperatives of government science, capitalism, and American empire through a history of the U.S. Weather Bureau's West Indian weather service at the turn of the twentieth century. The original impetus for expanding American meteorological infrastructure into the Caribbean in 1898 was to protect naval vessels from hurricanes, but what began as a measure of military security became, within a year, an instrument of economic expansion that extracted climatological data and produced agricultural reports for American investors. This article argues that the West Indian weather service was a project of imperial meteorology that sought to impose a rational scientific and bureaucratic order on a region that American officials considered racially and culturally inferior, yet relied on the labor of local observers and Cuban meteorological experts in order to do so. Weather reporting networks are examined as a material and symbolic extension of American technoscientific power into the Caribbean and as a knowledge infrastructure that linked the production of agricultural commodities in Cuba and Puerto Rico to the world of commodity exchange in the United States.

What Price Sugar? Land, Labor, and Revolution

2008 ◽  
Vol 81 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 79-84
Author(s):  
Daniel C. Littlefield
Keyword(s):  
North Carolina ◽  
The United States ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Spanish American ◽  
Sugar Production ◽  
American Empire ◽  
Chapel Hill ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Caribbean ◽  
Eighteenth And Nineteenth Centuries

[First paragraph]Sugar, Slavery, and Society: Perspectives on the Caribbean, India, the Mascarenes, and the United States. Bernard Moitt (ed.). Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2004. vii + 203 pp. (Cloth US $ 65.00)Tropical Babylons: Sugar and the Making of the Atlantic World, 1450-1680. Stuart B. Schwartz (ed.). Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004. xiii + 347 pp. (Paper US $ 22.50)These two books illustrate the fascination that sugar, slavery, and the plantation still exercise over the minds of scholars. One of them also reflects an interest in the influence these have had on the modern world. For students of the history of these things the Schwartz collection is in many ways the more useful. It seeks to fill a lacuna left by the concentration of monographs on the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, suggesting that we know less about the history of sugar than we thought we did. Perhaps in no other single place is such a range of information on so wide an area presented in such detail for so early a period. Ranging from Iberia to the Caribbean and including consumption as well as production of sugar, with a nod to the slave trade and a very useful note on weights and currencies, this volume is a gold mine of information. It considers (briefly) the theoretical meaning as well as the growing of this important crop, contrasting its production in Iberia with that on the Atlantic islands of Madeira and the Canaries, colonized by Iberian powers, and continuing the contrast with São Tomé, off the coast of Africa, and on to Brazil and the Spanish American empire before ending with the British in Barbados. In the transit, it of necessity considers and complicates the meaning of “sugar revolution” and shows how scholars using that term do not always mean the same thing. John McCusker and Russell Menard, for example, tackling a cornerstone of the traditional interpretation of the development of sugar, argue that there was no “sugar revolution” in Barbados; economic change had already begun before sugar’s advent, though sugar may have accelerated it, and yet sugar production was transformed on the island. They also undercut, without quite denying, the significance of the Dutch role in the process. Schwartz, while questioning, lings to the traditional expression if not the traditional outlook, seeing in Barbados “the beginning of the sugar revolution” (p. 10).

The Flow of Turtle Soup from the Caribbean via Europe to Canton, and Its Modern American Fate

2016 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 79-89
Author(s):  
May-bo Ching
Keyword(s):  
British Empire ◽  
The United States ◽  
Sea Turtle ◽  
Upper Class ◽  
The West ◽  
Canned Food ◽  
Printed Media ◽  
History Of ◽  
Trading Activities ◽  
The Caribbean

This article traces a transnational history of turtle soup through the flow of species, tastes, culinary techniques, and food technology across three continents over more than three centuries. It shows how the species, nested in the Caribbean, turned from a source of flesh for transatlantic seamen in the seventeenth century to a status dish for upper-class Europeans in the eighteenth century. The pleasure of eating turtle soup was underpinned by exotic references to “the West India Way” and national labels such as “the English fashion.” Such notions circulated via printed media across a variety of genres, constructing tastes that only a minority could afford; the less privileged consumed “mock turtle soup,” made with calf's head at best. Around the same time, turtle soup in “the English fashion” was reproduced in Asia along with the trading activities and colonial endeavors of the British Empire. Into the second half of the nineteenth century, with the invention of canned food, the once upper-class dish became widely popularized in the United States. The disastrous result was that the sea turtle hunt evolved from occasional seizure to outright massacre, which did not come to a halt until the 1970s, when the practices were outlawed.

scholarly journals A Disagreeable Text

2020 ◽  
Vol 94 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 39-74
Author(s):  
Devin Leigh
Keyword(s):  
Primary Source ◽  
West Indian ◽  
Caribbean Literature ◽  
Valuable Insight ◽  
British West Indies ◽  
The West ◽  
Indian History ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Caribbean ◽  
Insight Into

Abstract Bryan Edwards’s The History of the British West Indies is a text well known to historians of the Caribbean and the early modern Atlantic World. First published in 1793, the work is widely considered to be a classic of British Caribbean literature. This article introduces an unpublished first draft of Edwards’s preface to that work. Housed in the archives of the West India Committee in Westminster, England, this preface has never been published or fully analyzed by scholars in print. It offers valuable insight into the production of West Indian history at the end of the eighteenth century. In particular, it shows how colonial planters confronted the challenges of their day by attempting to wrest the practice of writing West Indian history from their critics in Great Britain. Unlike these metropolitan writers, Edwards had lived in the West Indian colonies for many years. He positioned his personal experience as being a primary source of his historical legitimacy.

scholarly journals Book Reviews

1996 ◽  
Vol 70 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 309-381
Author(s):  
Redactie KITLV
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
San Francisco ◽  
West Indies ◽  
British Museum ◽  
The United States ◽  
The West ◽  
University Of Pittsburgh ◽  
Historical Perspectives ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Caribbean

-Bridget Brereton, Emilia Viotti Da Costa, Crowns of glory, tears of blood: The Demerara slave rebellion of 1823. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994. xix + 378 pp.-Grant D. Jones, Assad Shoman, 13 Chapters of a history of Belize. Belize city: Angelus, 1994. xviii + 344 pp.-Donald Wood, K.O. Laurence, Tobago in wartime 1793-1815. Kingston: The Press, University of the West Indies, 1995. viii + 280 pp.-Trevor Burnard, Howard A. Fergus, Montserrat: History of a Caribbean colony. London: Macmillan Caribbean, 1994. x + 294 pp.-John L. Offner, Joseph Smith, The Spanish-American War: Conflict in the Caribbean and the Pacific, 1895-1902. London: Longman, 1994. ix + 262 pp.-Louis Allaire, John M. Weeks ,Ancient Caribbean. New York: Garland, 1994. lxxi + 325 pp., Peter J. Ferbel (eds)-Aaron Segal, Hilbourne A. Watson, The Caribbean in the global political economy. Boulder CO: Lynne Rienner, 1994. ix + 261 pp.-Aaron Segal, Anthony P. Maingot, The United States and the Caribbean. London: Macmillan Caribbean, 1994. xi + 260 pp.-Bill Maurer, Helen I. Safa, The myth of the male breadwinner: Women and industrialization in the Caribbean. Boulder CO: Westview, 1995. xvi + 208 pp.-Peter Meel, Edward M. Dew, The trouble in Suriname, 1975-1993. Westport CT: Praeger, 1994. xv + 243 pp.-Henry Wells, Jorge Heine, The last Cacique: Leadership and politics in a Puerto Rican city. Pittsburgh PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1993. ix + 310 pp.-Susan Eckstein, Jorge F. Pérez-López, Cuba at a crossroads: Politics and economics after the fourth party congress. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1994. xviii + 282 pp.-David A.B. Murray, Marvin Leiner, Sexual politics in Cuba: Machismo, homosexuality, and AIDS. Boulder CO: Westview, 1994. xv + 184 pp.-Kevin A. Yelvington, Selwyn Ryan ,Sharks and sardines: Blacks in business in Trinidad and Tobago. St. Augustine, Trinidad: Institute of social and economic studies, University of the West Indies, 1992. xiv + 217 pp., Lou Anne Barclay (eds)-Catherine Levesque, Allison Blakely, Blacks in the Dutch world: The evolution of racial imagery in a modern society. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993. xix + 327 pp.-Dennis J. Gayle, Frank Fonda Taylor, 'To hell with paradise': A history of the Jamaican tourist industry. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1993. ix + 239 pp.-John P. Homiak, Frank Jan van Dijk, Jahmaica: Rastafari and Jamaican society, 1930-1990. Utrecht: ISOR, 1993. 483 pp.-Peter Mason, Arthur MacGregor, Sir Hans Sloane: Collector, scientist, antiquary, founding Father of the British Museum. London: British Museum Press, 1994.-Philip Morgan, James Walvin, The life and times of Henry Clarke of Jamaica, 1828-1907. London: Frank Cass, 1994. xvi + 155 pp.-Werner Zips, E. Kofi Agorsah, Maroon heritage: Archaeological, ethnographic and historical perspectives. Kingston: Canoe Press, 1994. xx + 210 pp.-Michael Hoenisch, Werner Zips, Schwarze Rebellen: Afrikanisch-karibischer Freiheitskampf in Jamaica. Vienna Promedia, 1993. 301 pp.-Elizabeth McAlister, Paul Farmer, The uses of Haiti. Monroe ME: Common Courage Press, 1994. 432 pp.-Robert Lawless, James Ridgeway, The Haiti files: Decoding the crisis. Washington DC: Essential Books, 1994. 243 pp.-Bernadette Cailler, Michael Dash, Edouard Glissant. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. xii + 202 pp.-Peter Hulme, Veronica Marie Gregg, Jean Rhys's historical imagination: Reading and writing the Creole. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995. xi + 228 pp.-Silvia Kouwenberg, Francis Byrne ,Focus and grammatical relations in Creole languages. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 1993. xvi + 329 pp., Donald Winford (eds)-John H. McWhorter, Ingo Plag, Sentential complementation in Sranan: On the formation of an English-based Creole language. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 1993. ix + 174 pp.-Percy C. Hintzen, Madan M. Gopal, Politics, race, and youth in Guyana. San Francisco: Mellen Research University Press, 1992. xvi + 289 pp.-W.C.J. Koot, Hans van Hulst ,Pan i rèspèt: Criminaliteit van geïmmigreerde Curacaose jongeren. Utrecht: OKU. 1994. 226 pp., Jeanette Bos (eds)-Han Jordaan, Cornelis Ch. Goslinga, Een zweem van weemoed: Verhalen uit de Antilliaanse slaventijd. Curacao: Caribbean Publishing, 1993. 175 pp.-Han Jordaan, Ingvar Kristensen, Plantage Savonet: Verleden en toekomst. Curacao: STINAPA, 1993, 73 pp.-Gerrit Noort, Hesdie Stuart Zamuel, Johannes King: Profeet en apostel in het Surinaamse bosland. Zoetermeer: Boekencentrum, 1994. vi + 241 pp.

Isles of Noise

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alejandra Bronfman
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Great Britain ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Mobilization ◽  
Media History ◽  
Virtual Laboratory ◽  
American Empire ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Caribbean ◽  
The Cold War

In this media history of the Caribbean, Alejandra Bronfman traces how technology, culture, and politics developed in a region that was "wired" earlier and more widely than many other parts of the Americas. Haiti, Cuba, and Jamaica acquired radio and broadcasting in the early stages of the global expansion of telecommunications technologies. Imperial histories helped forge these material connections through which the United States, Great Britain, and the islands created a virtual laboratory for experiments in audiopolitics and listening practices. As radio became an established medium worldwide, it burgeoned in the Caribbean because the region was a hub for intense foreign and domestic commercial and military activities. Attending to everyday life, infrastructure, and sounded histories during the waxing of an American empire and the waning of British influence in the Caribbean, Bronfman does not allow the notion of empire to stand solely for domination. By the time of the Cold War, broadcasting had become a ubiquitous phenomenon that rendered sound and voice central to political mobilization in the Caribbean nations throwing off what remained of their imperial tethers.

scholarly journals What Price Sugar? Land, Labor, and Revolution

2007 ◽  
Vol 81 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 79-84
Author(s):  
Daniel C. Littlefield
Keyword(s):  
North Carolina ◽  
The United States ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Spanish American ◽  
Sugar Production ◽  
American Empire ◽  
Chapel Hill ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Caribbean ◽  
Eighteenth And Nineteenth Centuries

[First paragraph]Sugar, Slavery, and Society: Perspectives on the Caribbean, India, the Mascarenes, and the United States. Bernard Moitt (ed.). Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2004. vii + 203 pp. (Cloth US $ 65.00)Tropical Babylons: Sugar and the Making of the Atlantic World, 1450-1680. Stuart B. Schwartz (ed.). Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004. xiii + 347 pp. (Paper US $ 22.50)These two books illustrate the fascination that sugar, slavery, and the plantation still exercise over the minds of scholars. One of them also reflects an interest in the influence these have had on the modern world. For students of the history of these things the Schwartz collection is in many ways the more useful. It seeks to fill a lacuna left by the concentration of monographs on the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, suggesting that we know less about the history of sugar than we thought we did. Perhaps in no other single place is such a range of information on so wide an area presented in such detail for so early a period. Ranging from Iberia to the Caribbean and including consumption as well as production of sugar, with a nod to the slave trade and a very useful note on weights and currencies, this volume is a gold mine of information. It considers (briefly) the theoretical meaning as well as the growing of this important crop, contrasting its production in Iberia with that on the Atlantic islands of Madeira and the Canaries, colonized by Iberian powers, and continuing the contrast with São Tomé, off the coast of Africa, and on to Brazil and the Spanish American empire before ending with the British in Barbados. In the transit, it of necessity considers and complicates the meaning of “sugar revolution” and shows how scholars using that term do not always mean the same thing. John McCusker and Russell Menard, for example, tackling a cornerstone of the traditional interpretation of the development of sugar, argue that there was no “sugar revolution” in Barbados; economic change had already begun before sugar’s advent, though sugar may have accelerated it, and yet sugar production was transformed on the island. They also undercut, without quite denying, the significance of the Dutch role in the process. Schwartz, while questioning, lings to the traditional expression if not the traditional outlook, seeing in Barbados “the beginning of the sugar revolution” (p. 10).

Caribbean Commission

1947 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 368-368
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Great Britain ◽  
West Indies ◽  
West Indian ◽  
Well Being ◽  
The United States ◽  
Virgin Islands ◽  
The West ◽  
Rules Of Procedure ◽  
The Caribbean

The Caribbean Commission, formally established on October 20, 1946, by the United States, Great Britain, the Netherlands and France, held a third meeting of its four national sections consisting of representatives of the above mentioned countries at Curacao, Netherlands West Indies, in December, 1946. Particular items on the agenda included 1) discussion of the activities of the Commission's Secretariat, 2) rules of procedure for the Commission and the West Indian Conference, and 3) appointment of the budget. Attention was directed to the implementation of the recommendations of the second session of the West Indian Conference, which was held in St. Thomas, Virgin Islands of the United States, in February, 1946. Such recommendations reflected the effort of the member powers to coordinate their activities with a view to improving the economic and social well-being of Caribbean inhabitants.

A House for Mr Biswas and the Theory of the West Indian Novel

2020 ◽  
pp. 31-80
Author(s):  
William Ghosh
Keyword(s):  
West Indian ◽  
The Novel ◽  
George Lamming ◽  
The West ◽  
Kamau Brathwaite ◽  
Cultural Sovereignty ◽  
Novel Theory ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Caribbean ◽  
The 1960S

This chapter is about the novel form in the West Indies in the 1960s. The novel, in this period, was a key site in which debates about decolonization, originality, and cultural sovereignty took place. Naipaul’s A House for Mr Biswas was central to this debate. It responds to a history of West Indian novels and novel theory, and became an influential text in novels, criticism, and social theory in the region. Work by George Lamming, Kamau Brathwaite, and Sylvia Wynter is discussed in detail. By tracing the changing reception of A House for Mr Biswas in the Caribbean through the 1960s, we can also trace changing ideas and priorities in Caribbean social thought.

scholarly journals Book Reviews

2001 ◽  
Vol 75 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 297-357
Author(s):  
Redactie KITLV
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Puerto Rico ◽  
West Indian ◽  
Harvard University ◽  
San Juan ◽  
The West ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Caribbean ◽  
Universidad De Puerto Rico ◽  
English Atlantic World

-Stanley L. Engerman, Heather Cateau ,Capitalism and slavery fifty years later: Eric Eustace Williams - A reassessment of the man and his work. New York: Peter Lang, 2000. xvii + 247 pp., S.H.H. Carrington (eds)-Philip D. Morgan, B.W. Higman, Writing West Indian histories. London: Macmillan Caribbean, 1999. xiv + 289 pp.-Daniel Vickers, Alison Games, Migration and the origins of the English Atlantic world. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1999. xiii + 322 pp.-Christopher L. Brown, Andrew Jackson O'Shaughnessy, An empire divided: The American revolution and the British Caribbean. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000. xviii + 357 pp.-Lennox Honychurch, Samuel M. Wilson, The indigenous people of the Caribbean. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1997. xiv + 253 pp.-Kenneth Bilby, Bev Carey, The Maroon story: The authentic and original history of the Maroons in the history of Jamaica 1490-1880. St. Andrew, Jamaica: Agouti Press, 1997. xvi + 656 pp.-Bernard Moitt, Doris Y. Kadish, Slavery in the Caribbean Francophone world: Distant voices, forgotten acts, forged identities. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2000. xxiii + 247 pp.-Michael J. Guasco, Virginia Bernhard, Slaves and slaveholders in Bermuda, 1616-1782. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1999. xviii + 316 pp.-Michael J. Jarvis, Roger C. Smith, The maritime heritage of the Cayman Islands. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2000. xxii + 230 pp.-Paul E. Hoffman, Peter R. Galvin, Patterns of pillage: A geography of Caribbean-based piracy in Spanish America, 1536-1718. New York: Peter Lang, 1999. xiv + 271 pp.-David M. Stark, Raúl Mayo Santana ,Cadenas de esclavitud...y de solidaridad: Esclavos y libertos en San Juan,siglo XIX. Río Piedras: Centro de Investigaciones Sociales, Universidad de Puerto Rico, 1997. 204 pp., Mariano Negrón Portillo, Manuel Mayo López (eds)-Ada Ferrer, Philip A. Howard, Changing history: Afro-Cuban Cabildos and societies of color in the nineteenth century. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1998. xxii + 227 pp.-Alvin O. Thompson, Maurice St. Pierre, Anatomy of resistance: Anti-colonialism in Guyana 1823-1966. London: Macmillan, 1999. x + 214 pp.-Linda Peake, Barry Munslow, Guyana: Microcosm of sustainable development challenges. Aldershot, U.K. and Brookfield VT: Ashgate, 1998. x + 130 pp.-Stephen Stuempfle, Peter Mason, Bacchanal! The carnival culture of Trinidad. Philadelphia PA: Temple University Press, 1998. 191 pp.-Christine Chivallon, Catherine Benoît, Corps, jardins, mémoires: Anthropologie du corps et de l' espace à la Guadeloupe. Paris: CNRS Éditions, 2000. 309 pp.-Katherine E. Browne, Mary C. Waters, Black identities: Wsst Indian immigrant dreams and American realities. New York: Russell Sage Foundation; Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1999. xvii + 413 pp.-Eric Paul Roorda, Bernardo Vega, Los Estados Unidos y Trujillo - Los días finales: 1960-61. Colección de documentos del Departamento de Estado, la CIA y los archivos del Palacio Nacional Dominicano. Santo Domingo: Fundación Cultural Dominicana, 1999. xx+ 783 pp.-Javier Figueroa-de Cárdenas, Charles D. Ameringer, The Cuban democratic experience: The Auténtico years, 1944-1952. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2000. ix + 230 pp.-Robert Lawless, Charles T. Williamson, The U.S. Naval mission to Haiti, 1959-1963. Annapolis MD: Naval Institute Press, 1999. xv + 395 pp.-Noel Leo Erskine, Arthur Charles Dayfoot, The shaping of the West Indian Church, 1492-1962. Kingston: The Press University of the West Indies; Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1999. xvii + 360 pp.-Edward Baugh, Laurence A. Breiner, An introduction to West Indian poetry. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. xxii + 261 pp.-Lydie Moudileno, Heather Hathaway, Caribbean waves: Relocating Claude McKay and Paule Marshall. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999. xi + 201 pp.-Nicole Roberts, Claudette M. Williams, Charcoal and cinnamon: The politics of color in Spanish Caribbean literature. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2000. xii + 174 pp.-Nicole Roberts, Marie Ramos Rosado, La mujer negra en la literatura puertorriqueña: Cuentística de los setenta: (Luis Rafael Sánchez, Carmelo Rodríguez Torres, Rosario Ferré y Ana Lydia Vega). San Juan: Ed. de la Universidad de Puerto Rico, Ed. Cultural, and Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña, 1999. xxiv + 397 pp.-William W. Megenney, John H. McWhorter, The missing Spanish Creoles: Recovering the birth of plantation contact languages. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000. xi + 281 pp.-Robert Chaudenson, Chris Corne, From French to Creole: The development of New Vernaculars in the French colonial world. London: University of Westminster Press, 1999. x + 263 pp.

Caribbean Commission

1947 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 540-541
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Industrial Development ◽  
West Indian ◽  
The United States ◽  
Secretary General ◽  
Final Report ◽  
The West ◽  
Caribbean Area ◽  
Comprehensive Survey ◽  
The Caribbean

Agreement to begin a comprehensive survey of industries and industrial potentialities in Caribbean territories of the four member countries was reached in the fourth meeting of the Caribbean Commission which convened on June 23, 1947, at Jamaica, B.W.I., with representatives present from France, the Netherlands, United King-dom and the United States. On the basis of recommendations passed at the 1946 session of the West Indian Conference, the Commission drew up a program of action by which a panel of four experts on industrial affairs (one chosen by each national section) was to act as a committee headed by the Secretary-General of the Commission (Lawrence W. Cramer), and was to submit a report on the present and proposed state of industrial development in the Caribbean area. An adviser was to be appointed to coordinate the work of the experts and to edit the text of the final report. The Commission agreed that the report was to be ready in time for submission to the next session of the West Indian Conference, scheduled for the spring of 1948.

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