A Polite and Commercial People in the Caribbean

2019 ◽  
pp. 173-190
Author(s):  
P. J. Marshall
Keyword(s):  
West Indian ◽  
Commercial Success ◽  
The Caribbean ◽  
British People ◽  
At Home

British people throughout the empire as well as at home envisaged themselves as ‘polite and commercial’. There could be no doubt of the commercial success of West Indian plantation islands, but were their societies polite? This chapter focuses on the efforts of an individual planter, Sir William Young (1725–88) to live to the highest ideals of politeness both in England and in the Caribbean, especially in the island of St Vincent, where he acquired extensive estates. For a time he undoubtedly succeeded, but early British settlement on St Vincent encountered problems that meant that Young and other planters could not extract resources from the island adequate to sustain their ambitions. Young ended his life as a debtor to the Crown on his St Vincent plantation rather than enjoying the eminence in English landed society and cultured circles to which he aspired.

A West Indian Midwife’s Tale

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katherine Paugh
Keyword(s):  
Population Growth ◽  
Family Life ◽  
West Indian ◽  
Wage Labor ◽  
British Government ◽  
Costs Of Reproduction ◽  
Radical Reform ◽  
Registry System ◽  
Sugar Market ◽  
The Caribbean

The abolition of the Atlantic slave trade by the British government in 1807 was prompted by a confluence of geopolitical developments and concerns about reproduction. Shifts in the Atlantic world sugar economy had led to a glut on the British sugar market, and boosting production was therefore less of an economic concern than safeguarding reproduction. After 1807, demographic and financial calculations regarding the future of the plantation system intensified with the institution of a registry system designed to track slave populations. By 1823, British politicians, both abolitionists and West Indian planters, agreed to further radical reform: they hoped that encouraging Christian marital mores would finally bring about economically beneficial population growth. Acts legalizing Afro-Caribbean marriage were subsequently passed throughout the Caribbean. The outcome of this new emphasis on family life was ironic: as slavery gave way to wage labor, the costs of reproduction were shifted to Afro-Caribbean parents.

THE (SLAVE) NARRATIVE OF JANE EYRE

2008 ◽  
Vol 36 (2) ◽  
pp. 317-329 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julia Sun-Joo Lee
Keyword(s):  
West Indies ◽  
West Indian ◽  
Jane Eyre ◽  
Slave Narrative ◽  
British Imperialism ◽  
The West ◽  
American Slavery ◽  
Indian Slavery ◽  
At Home

InImperialism at Home, Susan Meyer explores Charlotte Brontë's metaphorical use of race and empire in Jane Eyre. In particular, she is struck by Brontë's repeated allusions to bondage and slavery and wonders, “Why would Brontë write a novel permeated with the imagery of slavery, and suggesting the possibility of a slave uprising, in 1846, after the emancipation of the British slaves had already taken place?” (71). Meyer speculates, “Perhaps the eight years since emancipation provided enough historical distance for Brontë to make a serious and public, although implicit, critique of British slavery and British imperialism in the West Indies” (71). Perhaps. More likely, I would argue, is the possibility that Brontë was thinking not of West Indian slavery, but of American slavery.

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.

Caribbean Commission

1952 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 136-136
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
West Indian ◽  
Virgin Islands ◽  
The West ◽  
The Caribbean

The thirteenth session of the Caribbean Commission was held in the Virgin Islands from October 29 to November 3,1951, with Ward M. Canaday (United States) presiding. Items on the agenda included the budget for 1952, consideration of special reports and recommendations, and preparation for the fifth session of the West Indian Conference scheduled to be held in Jamaica in 1952.

An English Library at Trinidad, 1633

1955 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-41
Author(s):  
Eleanor B. Adams
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
West Indian ◽  
The West ◽  
The Third ◽  
Caribbean Area ◽  
The Caribbean ◽  
El Dorado ◽  
Short Time

The island of Trinidad was discovered by Columbus on the third voyage in 1498. One of the largest and most fertile of the West Indian islands, for many years it remained on the fringe of European activity in the Caribbean area and on the coasts of Venezuela and Guiana. A Spanish settlement was founded there in 1532, but apparently it disintegrated within a short time. Toward the end of the sixteenth century Berrio and Raleigh fought for possession of the island, but chiefly as a convenient base for their rival search for El Dorado, or Manoa, the Golden Man and the mythical city of gold. Throughout the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries explorers, corsairs, and contraband traders, Spanish, French, English, and Dutch, passed near its shores, and many of them may well have paused there to refresh themselves and to make necessary repairs to their vessels. But the records are scanty and we know little of such events or of the settlements that existed from time to time.

Caribbean Commission

1949 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 166-166
Keyword(s):  
Dominican Republic ◽  
United Nations ◽  
West Indies ◽  
West Indian ◽  
The West ◽  
French West Indies ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Caribbean ◽  
The United Nations

The third session of the West Indian Conference opened at Guadeloupe, French West Indies on December 1, 1948 and closed on December 14, after considering policy to be followed by the Caribbean Commission for the next two years. The Conference was attended by two delegates from each of the fifteen territories within the jurisdiction of the commission and observers invited by the commission from Haiti, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and the United Nations and its specialized agencies.

scholarly journals NÅR KULTUR SKAL „BEVARES" - perspektiver fra et vestindisk projekt

1996 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karen Fog Olwig
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Indigenous People ◽  
West Indian ◽  
Fourth World ◽  
The West ◽  
Research Project ◽  
Indigenous Status ◽  
Cultural Traditions ◽  
Anthropological Theory ◽  
The Caribbean

Karen Fog Olwig: When culture is to be „preserved“: perspectives from a West Indian research project At the same time as anthropology has begun to apply a more processual perspective to the study of culture as fluid and changing, many of the „fourth world“ peoples studied by anthropologists have become preoccupied with codifying their culture in the form of aboriginal, authentic traditions which can be preserved from change. This concem with cultural traditions is tied to the struggle for human rights by indigenous people. The concept of culture as unchanged traditions is not only in conflict with current anthropological thinking, it is also ill suited to the struggles of peoples who cannot claim this form of ancient indigenous status, but who nevertheless share with „fourth world“ peoples the same need to defend their cultural autonomy. Among this latter group is the people of the Caribbean, who are indigenous to Africa, but came to the islands as part of a process of colonization. This article is based upon a study of the difficulties faced by such a non-indigenous, but nevertheless „native“ community of several centuries standing, in their efforts to defend their cultural and economic autonomy. In the West Indian case modem anthropological theory and the population studied by anthropologists need not be in conflict.

London Calypso

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amanda Bidnall
Keyword(s):  
First Generation ◽  
West Indian ◽  
The West ◽  
Social Commentary ◽  
Indian Community ◽  
The Caribbean

“London Calypso” examines the burst of popular enthusiasm for Trinidadian calypso that coincided with the arrival of the first generation of postwar settlers to London from the Caribbean. To explain this phenomenon, Bidnall traces the calypso’s roots as a vehicle of unbridled social commentary and bawdy celebration. The reflections of calypsonians Lord Kitchener, Lord Beginner, Lord Invader and others, captured on records from labels like Melodisc and Parlophone, were therefore a unique barometer of the rewards and frustrations of postwar migration for the West Indian community. “London Is The Place For Me” may be the most celebrated of this oeuvre, but the legacy of the London calypsonians is rawer and more unbridled.

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