scholarly journals The 'New Frontier' of Empire in the Caribbean: The Transfer of Power in British Guiana, 1961–1964

2000 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 583-610 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cary Fraser
1998 ◽  
Vol 72 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 125-199
Author(s):  
Redactie KITLV

-Valerie I.J. Flint, Margarita Zamora, Reading Columbus. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993. xvi + 247 pp.-Riva Berleant-Schiller, Historie Naturelle des Indes: The Drake manuscript in the Pierpont Morgan Library. New York: Norton, 1996. xxii + 272 pp.-Neil L. Whitehead, Charles Nicholl, The creature in the map: A journey to Eldorado. London: Jonathan Cape, 1995. 398 pp.-William F. Keegan, Ramón Dacal Moure ,Art and archaeology of pre-Columbian Cuba. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1996. xxiv + 134 pp., Manuel Rivero de la Calle (eds)-Michael Mullin, Stephan Palmié, Slave cultures and the cultures of slavery. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1995. xlvii + 283 pp.-Bill Maurer, Karen Fog Olwig, Small islands, large questions: Society, culture and resistance in the post-emancipation Caribbean. London: Frank Cass, 1995. viii + 200 pp.-David M. Stark, Laird W. Bergad ,The Cuban slave market, 1790-1880. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. xxi + 245 pp., Fe Iglesias García, María Del Carmen Barcia (eds)-Susan Fernández, Tom Chaffin, Fatal glory: Narciso López and the first clandestine U.S. war against Cuba. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1996. xxii + 282 pp.-Damian J. Fernández, María Cristina García, Havana USA: Cuban exiles and Cuban Americans in South Florida, 1959-1994. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996. xiii + 290 pp.-Myrna García-Calderón, Carmen Luisa Justiniano, Con valor y a cómo dé lugar: Memorias de una jíbara puertorriqueña. Río Piedras: Editorial de la Universidad de Puerto Rico, 1994. 538 pp.-Jorge Pérez-Rolon, Ruth Glasser, My music is my flag: Puerto Rican musicians and their New York communities , 1917-1940. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1995. xxiv + 253 pp.-Lauren Derby, Emelio Betances, State and society in the Dominican Republic. Boulder CO: Westview Press, 1995. xix + 162 pp.-Michiel Baud, Bernardo Vega, Trujillo y Haiti, Volumen II (1937-1938). Santo Domingo: Fundación Cultural Dominicana, 1995. 427 pp.-Danielle Bégot, Elborg Forster ,Sugar and slavery, family and race: The letters and diary of Pierre Dessalles, Planter in Martinique, 1808-1856. Elborg & Robert Forster (eds. and trans.). Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1996. 322 pp., Robert Forster (eds)-Catherine Benoit, Richard D.E. Burton, La famille coloniale: La Martinique et la mère patrie, 1789-1992. Paris: L'Harmattan, 1994. 308 pp.-Roderick A. McDonald, Kathleen Mary Butler, The economics of emancipation: Jamaica & Barbados, 1823-1843. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995. xviii + 198 pp.-K.O. Laurence, David Chanderbali, A portrait of Paternalism: Governor Henry Light of British Guiana, 1838-48. Turkeyen, Guyana: Dr. David Chanderbali, Department of History, University of Guyana, 1994. xiii + 277 pp.-Mindie Lazarus-Black, Brian L. Moore, Cultural power, resistance and pluralism: Colonial Guyana 1838-1900. Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press; Mona, Kingston: The Press-University of the West Indies, 1995. xv + 376 pp.-Madhavi Kale, K.O. Laurence, A question of labour: Indentured immigration into Trinidad and British Guiana, 1875-1917. Kingston: Ian Randle; London: James Currey, 1994. ix + 648 pp.-Franklin W. Knight, O. Nigel Bolland, On the March: Labour rebellions in the British Caribbean, 1934-39. Kingston: Ian Randle; London: James Currey, 1995. viii + 216 pp.-Linden Lewis, Kevin A. Yelvington, Producing power: Ethnicity, gender, and class in a Caribbean workplace. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1995. xv + 286 pp.-Consuelo López Springfield, Alta-Gracia Ortíz, Puerto Rican women and work: Bridges in transnational labor. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1996. xi + 249 pp.-Peta Henderson, Irma McClaurin, Women of Belize: Gender and change in Central America. New Brunswick NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1996. x + 218 pp.-Bonham C. Richardson, David M. Bush ,Living with the Puerto Rico Shore. José Gonzalez Liboy & William J. Neal. Durham: Duke University Press, 1995. xx + 193 pp., Richard M.T. Webb, Lisbeth Hyman (eds)-Bonham C. Richardson, David Barker ,Environment and development in the Caribbean: Geographical perspectives. Mona, Kingston: The Press-University of the West Indies, 1995. xv + 304 pp., Duncan F.M. McGregor (eds)-Alma H. Young, Anthony T. Bryan ,Distant cousins: The Caribbean-Latin American relationship. Miami: North-South-Center Press, 1996. iii + 132 pp., Andrés Serbin (eds)-Alma H. Young, Ian Boxill, Ideology and Caribbean integration. Mona, Kingston: The Press-University of the West Indies, 1993. xiii + 128 pp.-Stephen D. Glazier, Howard Gregory, Caribbean theology: Preparing for the challenges ahead. Mona, Kingston: Canoe Press, University of the West Indies, 1995. xx + 118 pp.-Lise Winer, Richard Allsopp, Dictionary of Caribbean English usage. With a French and Spanish supplement edited by Jeanette Allsopp. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996. lxxviii + 697 pp.-Geneviève Escure, Jacques Arends ,Pidgins and Creoles: An introduction. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 1995. xiv + 412 pp., Pieter Muysken, Norval Smith (eds)-Jacques Arends, Angela Bartens, Die iberoromanisch-basierten Kreolsprachen: Ansätze der linguistischen Beschreibung. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1995. vii + 345 pp.-J. Michael Dash, Richard D.E. Burton, Le roman marron: Études sur la littérature martiniquaise contemporaine. Paris: L'Harmattan. 1997. 282 pp.


1963 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 987-988 ◽  

The second meeting of the Caribbean Council was held in March 1962 in British Guiana. The Coulcil approved the immediate establishment within the secretariat of a clearinghouse for the exchange of information on trade and tourism between member countries.


1962 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 881-882 ◽  

The Agreement for the Establishment of the Caribbean Organization, Article V (2), stated that the agreement would enter into force on signature of a joint declaration to that effect by the signatory governments following deposit of instruments of approval or acceptance by the signatory governments and after the Secretary-General of the Caribbean Commission had received notification from not less than six of the prospective members of the Organization. It was announced in February 1961 that the Secretary-General had received formal notification from six prospective members, who had accepted the obligations imposed by the Statute of the Caribbean Organization and elected to become members. These were: France for the departments of French Guiana, Guadeloupe, and Martinique; Surinam; the Netherlands Antilles; British Guiana; Puerto Rico; and the Virgin Islands of the United States. The government of the British Virgin Islands later notified the Secretary-General of its intention to join the Organization and became a member on May 31, 1962.


2008 ◽  
Vol 79 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 31-54 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laurence Brown

Focuses on indentured and other labour migration from Barbados to other parts of the Caribbean starting in 1863. Within the context of the sugar estate-dominated agriculture of Barbados, as well as its high population density, the author describes the policies and decisions of the governors and local assemblies regarding emigration. He points out how the sugar industry's need for labourers remained dominant in the policies, but that the drought in 1863 caused privations and unrest among the labourers, resulting in more flexibility regarding allowance of indentured emigration schemes and recruitment, such as toward St Croix and Antigua, and later toward British Guiana, and to a smaller degree Jamaica. He discusses how this led to rivalries regarding labour immigrants between colonies, and further attempts at restrictions on labour emigration and recruitment in Barbados.


1998 ◽  
Vol 72 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 305-362
Author(s):  
Redactie KITLV

-Lennox Honychurch, Robert L. Paquette ,The lesser Antilles in the age of European expansion. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1996. xii + 383 pp., Stanley L. Engerman (eds)-Kevin A. Yelvington, Gert Oostindie, Ethnicity in the Caribbean: Essays in honor of Harry Hoetink. London: Macmillan Caribbean, 1996. xvi + 239 pp.-Aisha Khan, David Dabydeen ,Across the dark waters: Ethnicity and Indian identity in the Caribbean. London: Macmillan Caribbean, 1996. xi + 222 pp., Brinsley Samaroo (eds)-Tracey Skelton, Ralph R. Premdas, Ethnic conflict and development: The case of Guyana. Brookfield VT: Ashgate, 1995. xi + 205 pp.-Rosemarijn Hoefte, Basdeo Mangru, A history of East Indian resistance on the Guyana sugar estates, 1869-1948. Lewiston NY: The Edwin Mellen Press, 1996. xiv + 370 pp.-Rosemarijn Hoefte, Clem Seecharan, 'Tiger in the stars': The anatomy of Indian achievement in British Guiana 1919-29. London: Macmillan, 1997. xxviii + 401 pp.-Brian Stoddart, Frank Birbalsingh, The rise of Westindian cricket: From colony to nation. St. John's, Antigua: Hansib Publishing (Caribbean), 1996. 274 pp.-Donald R. Hill, Peter van Koningsbruggen, Trinidad Carnival: A quest for national identity. London: Macmillan Caribbean, 1997. ix + 293 pp.-Peter van Koningsbruggen, John Cowley, Carnival, Canboulay and Calypso: Traditions in the making. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. xv + 293 pp.-Olwyn M. Blouet, George Gmelch ,The Parish behind God's back : The changing culture of rural Barbados. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1997. xii + 240 pp., Sharon Bohn Gmelch (eds)-George Gmelch, Mary Chamberlain, Narratives of exile and return. London: Macmillan, 1997. xii + 236 pp.-Michèle Baj Strobel, Christiane Bougerol, Une ethnographie des conflits aux Antilles: Jalousie, commérages, sorcellerie. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1997. 161 pp.-Abdollah Dashti, Randy Martin, Socialist ensembles: Theater and state in Cuba and Nicaragua. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994. xii + 261 pp.-Winthrop R. Wright, Jay Kinsbruner, Not of pure blood: The free people of color and racial prejudice in nineteenth-century Puerto Rico. Durham NC: Duke University Press, 1996. xiv + 176 pp.-Gage Averill, Deborah Pacini Hernandez, Bachata: A social history of a Dominican popular music. Philadelphia PA: Temple University Press, 1995. xxiii + 267 pp.-Vera M. Kutzinski, Lorna Valerie Williams, The representation of slavery in Cuban fiction. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1994. viii + 220 pp.-Peter Mason, Elmer Kolfin, Van de slavenzweep en de muze: Twee eeuwen verbeelding van slavernij in Suriname. Leiden: Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde, 1997. 184 pp.-J. Michael Dash, Jean-Pol Madou, Édouard Glissant: De mémoire d'arbes. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1996. 114 pp.-Ransford W. Palmer, Jay R. Mandle, Persistent underdevelopment: Change and economic modernization in the West Indies. Amsterdam: Gordon and Breach, 1996. xii + 190 pp.-Ramón Grossfoguel, Juan E. Hernández Cruz, Corrientes migratorias en Puerto Rico/Migratory trends in Puerto Rico. Edición Bilingüe/Bilingual Edition. San Germán: Caribbean Institute and Study Center for Latin America, Universidad Interamericana de Puerto Rico, 1994. 195 pp.-Gert Oostindie, René V. Rosalia, Tambú: De legale en kerkelijke repressie van Afro-Curacaose volksuitingen. Zutphen: Walburg Pers, 1997. 338 pp.-John M. Lipski, Armin J. Schwegler, 'Chi ma nkongo': Lengua y rito ancestrales en El Palenque de San Basilio (Colombia). Frankfurt: Vervuert, 1996. 2 vols., xxiv + 823 pp.-Umberto Ansaldo, Geneviève Escure, Creole and dialect continua: Standard acquisition processes in Belize and China (PRC). Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 1997. ix + 307 pp.


2019 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 104-118
Author(s):  
Nalini Mohabir ◽  
Ronald Cummings

This interview provides a rich account of Frank Birbalsingh’s experiences from his early life in colonial British Guiana in the early part of the twentieth century to his continuing work as a literary scholar and critic in diaspora. What is also revealed is a thoughtful critical reflection on the Caribbean, its multiplicity, and its course of change over a lifetime. The discussion also traces Birbalsingh’s migrations to India, Canada, New Zealand, and Nigeria and examines how these journeys have shaped his critical work within the fields of Commonwealth literature, postcolonial literature, and Caribbean studies, situating these shifts and movements within and against the backdrop of histories of decolonization. Birbalsingh’s early years in a plantation colony become prologue to his experience of education as a pathway to migration (a brain drain that still marks Guyanese and Caribbean experience to this day). The interviewers focus on the scholar’s career highlights and finally turn to the space that all wide-ranging departures and journeys beyond the nation encounter (regardless of emotional investments)—the place of exile and diaspora.


Author(s):  
Lomarsh Roopnarine

The movement of indentured laborers from Europe, Java, and Africa to the Caribbean in the decades before and after the abolition slavery (British Caribbean (1838), Dutch Guiana (1873), and the Danish West Indies (1848) in particular) has been overshadowed by the larger movement of indentured Indians and Chinese to the region. An estimated 500,000 Indians and 250,000 Chinese were brought to the Caribbean and Spanish Peru. By contrast, no less than 90,000 indentured Europeans, Africans, and Javanese were brought to the Caribbean region. Nevertheless, the smaller number of indentured from the latter group pales in comparison to their significance and contribution to the Caribbean plantation society in the 19th and early 20th centuries in terms of providing labor, serving as a buffer between the planters and other ethnic groups, and adding to the mosaic of culture in the Caribbean. However, European, African, and Javanese indentured servitude in the Caribbean has to be contextualized in its own domain before any careful assessment can be made. The European indentured were mainly from Ireland, Germany, Scotland, and Denmark, on the one hand, and Portugal (honorary whites), on the other. The former groups were brought to the Caribbean before African slavery while the Portuguese were brought to the region, mainly to British Guiana, after the abolition of slavery, although the first batch of Portuguese arrived in British Guiana in 1835. Taken together, both groups of indentured proved to be a supplementary source of labor to the plantation system for reasons relating to maladjustment to tropical labor and victims of social ills. The Portuguese, in particular, when their contracts expired drifted toward retail business. Some indentured Africans were brought or recruited from the West African coast but a majority of them were rescued on the high seas on slave ships bound for Cuba, Brazil, and the southern United States by British warships policing the Atlantic Ocean after the slave trade was abolished in 1807. Instead of sending these rescued Africans back to their homeland, they were indentured mainly to the British Caribbean. The Javanese were brought from the Dutch colony of Indonesia, mainly inland Java and the seaports of Batavia, Surabaya, and Semarang to Dutch Guiana after 1873. When their contracts expired, they formed independent communities and engaged in large-scale agriculture and retail business. The Javanese were brought only to Dutch Guiana, now Suriname.


Author(s):  
Randy M. Browne

The Guianas span some nine hundred miles of Atlantic coast in northern South America, from the Orinoco River in the west to the Amazon River delta in the east. The name, from an indigenous word meaning “land of many waters,” is fitting for a region dissected by thousands of rivers and where most people live along the coast. Far off the tourist paths of the Caribbean Sea and Latin America, the Guianas are also understudied, despite having been the scene of intense European imperial rivalries, colonialism, and slavery for several centuries. Though geographically part of South America, the Guiana colonies have historically and culturally been considered part of the circum-Caribbean. Today, the Guianas are made up of three major political territories: the independent Republic of Guyana (formerly British Guiana and composed of Berbice, Demerara, and Essequibo), the Republic of Suriname (a former Dutch colony first established by the English), and French Guiana or Guyane (once a colony and now an overseas department of France and part of the European Union). Home to numerous and diverse indigenous societies, including Arawakan-speaking groups who migrated to the Caribbean islands, the Guianas were “discovered” by Columbus in 1498 on his third voyage to the Americas, but they became the site of sustained European exploration and conquest only in the early 17th century. In the wake of Sir Walter Ralegh’s wildly exaggerated account of his 1594–1595 voyage, which advanced the myth of a city said to be ruled by a golden king named “El Dorado,” English, Dutch, and French explorers jockeyed for access to the vast region between Spanish claims in the west and Portuguese Brazil in the east. The Dutch were the most successful early colonizers, establishing trading posts and eventually colonies along the Demerara, Essequibo, and Berbice Rivers. They also captured Suriname from the English. Much of the scholarship on the Guianas understandably concentrates on Dutch colonialism and especially on Suriname, where the Dutch established a major slave society by the early 18th century. There is also a growing body of scholarship on Berbice, Demerara, and Essequibo, both under Dutch rule and during the period when the colonies were controlled by Great Britain (1803–1966), when the slave system expanded rapidly until emancipation (1834) and where planters responded to the post-slavery labor crisis by importing large numbers of indentured laborers, primarily from India. The experience of indentured Asian laborers, who also immigrated to Suriname after slavery was abolished there, has also been the subject of much study, both by historians of the Indian diaspora and by Caribbean historians. Overall, scholarship on the Guianas is uneven and linguistically fractured, with a large number of works on the Dutch Guianas and especially Suriname, most of which are written in Dutch; a smaller but sizable body of work on British Guiana is in English, and relatively little scholarship has been done on French Guiana, almost of all of which is in French. The historiography of the Guianas thus reflects the region’s historical divisions along imperial and linguistic lines and the persistent effects of colonialism.


1960 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 215-216 ◽  

A special session of the West Indian Conference convened on July 28, 1959, in St. Thomas, the Virgin Islands, to consider revision of the agreement which established the Caribbean Commission in October 1946. The delegates were welcomed by Mr. John Merwin, Governor of the Virgin Islands, who referred to the proposed revision for the transfer of control to local governments as an exciting new concept which would witness the withdrawal from active membership of the metropolitan powers and the taking over of these functions by the non-self-governing territories and possessions. Before starting deliberations on the successor body, delegates went on record in support of a continuation of regional cooperation in the area through some machinery similar to the Caribbean Commission, the good work of which was unanimously acclaimed. After several days of discussion and working in committees, the Conference accepted a Statute for a new Caribbean Organization to succeed the present Caribbean Commission, agreeing that it should be submitted to the governments concerned. The statute gave the Organization consultative and advisory powers and defined the areas of its concern as being those social, economic, and cultural matters of common interest in the Caribbean area. Eligible for membership were the Republic of France for the Departments of French Guiana, Guadeloupe, and Martinique; the Netherlands Antilles; Surinam; the Bahamas; British Guiana; British Honduras; British Virgin Islands; the West Indies; Puerto Rico; and the Virgin Islands. The governing body of the new organization would be the Caribbean Council, which would hold annual meetings and to which each member would be entitled to nominate one delegate. The Organization was to come into being after an agreement with the members of the present Caribbean Commission—namely, the governments of France, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and the United States—for its establishment had been ratified. Following an offer from the government of Puerto Rico to contribute 44.3 percent of the total budget on the understanding that the new Organization would have its headquarters in that country, the Conference agreed on the following apportionment of costs to cover its proposed budget: France, $50,560; Netherlands Antilles, $24,490; Surinam, $19,750; British Guiana, $11,760; the West Indies, $44,240; Puerto Rico, $140,000; and the Virgin Islands, $25,200. As an interim step designed to facilitate the transition, the Conference recommended that the Commission appoint a working group of experts to examine the problems which would arise from the change-over, and to give its attention as well to the task of formulating guiding principles for the work of the Organization.


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