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.

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.

Calling the West Indies: Una Marson’s Wireless Black Atlantic

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ian Whittington
Keyword(s):  
West Indies ◽  
West Indian ◽  
Caribbean Literature ◽  
Black Atlantic ◽  
The West ◽  
Kamau Brathwaite ◽  
Cultural Autonomy ◽  
History Of ◽  
Edward Kamau Brathwaite ◽  
The Uk

As a colonial subject and woman of colour, Una Marson occupies a unique place in the history of wartime broadcasting in Britain. Her weekly programCalling the West Indies began as a “message home” program for Caribbean soldiers stationed in the UK but grew, as the war progressed, into a literary and cultural forum for writers from across the Black Atlantic. Though barred from advocating openly for independence, Marson used her program to promote West Indian cultural autonomy by spotlighting emerging Caribbean literary figures and forging connections with activists and intellectuals from the U.S., Britain, Africa, and elsewhere. Beyond building such transatlantic networks, Calling the West Indies afforded listeners in the Caribbean the first opportunities to hear literature spoken in the West Indian forms of English which Edward Kamau Brathwaite would go on to call “nation language.” By focusing on Marson’s wartime work, this chapter rectifies a persistent tendency, in histories of Caribbean literature and broadcasting, to omit not only the central role played by this progressive feminist intellectual, but also the role of the war itself as catalyst to the postwar literary renaissance in the West Indies.

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

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.

A note on John Hawkins (1761–1841) and the Hawkins archive

2000 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 261-268
Author(s):  
R. J. CLEEVELY
Keyword(s):  
Major Part ◽  
Reference Lists ◽  
The West ◽  
History Of ◽  
The 1960S

A note dealing with the history of the Hawkins Papers, including the material relating to John Hawkins (1761–1841) presented to the West Sussex Record Office in the 1960s, recently transferred to the Cornwall County Record Office, Truro, in order to be consolidated with the major part of the Hawkins archive held there. Reference lists to the correspondence of Sibthorp-Hawkins, Hawkins-Sibthorp, and Hawkins to his mother mentioned in The Flora Graeca story (Lack, 1999) are provided.

V.S. Naipaul, Caribbean Writing, and Caribbean Thought

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Ghosh
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual Development ◽  
Public Intellectual ◽  
Historical Narrative ◽  
Derek Walcott ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Kamau Brathwaite ◽  
Political Debates ◽  
History Of ◽  
Principal Subject ◽  
Intellectual Formation

This book presents a new portrait of V.S. Naipaul, one of the twentieth-century’s most controversial writers about colonialism and its aftermath, by looking at his relationship with the Caribbean, the region of his birth. It argues that whilst Naipaul presented himself as a global public intellectual—a citizen of nowhere—his writing and thought was shaped by his Caribbean intellectual formation, and his investment in Caribbean political debates. Focusing on three key forms of Caribbean writing—the novel, the historical narrative, and the travel narrative—it shows how the generic, stylistic, and formal choices of writers had great political significance. Telling the story of his creative and intellectual development at three crucial points in Naipaul’s career, it offers a new intellectual biography of its principal subject. By showing Naipaul’s crucial place in the history of Caribbean ideas, it also provides new perspectives on a number of major writers and thinkers from the region, including C.L.R. James, Eric Williams, Kamau Brathwaite, Sylvia Wynter, George Lamming, Derek Walcott, Maryse Condé, and David Scott.

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.

scholarly journals The Psychoprophylactic Method of Painless Childbirth in Socialist Czechoslovakia: from State Propaganda to Activism of Enthusiasts

2016 ◽  
Vol 60 (4) ◽  
pp. 534-556 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ema Hrešanová
Keyword(s):  
Pain Relief ◽  
Scientific Method ◽  
Communist Regime ◽  
The West ◽  
Medical Journals ◽  
History Of ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Pharmacological Method ◽  
Insight Into

This paper explores the history of the ‘psychoprophylactic method of painless childbirth’ in socialist Czechoslovakia, in particular, in the Czech and Moravian regions of the country, showing that it substantially differs from the course that the method took in other countries. This non-pharmacological method of pain relief originated in the USSR and became well known as the Lamaze method in western English-speaking countries. Use of the method in Czechoslovakia, however, followed a very different path from both the West, where its use was refined mainly outside the biomedical frame, and the USSR, where it ceased to be pursued as a scientific method in the 1950s after Stalin’s death. The method was imported to Czechoslovakia in the early 1950s and it was politically promoted as Soviet science’s gift to women. In the 1960s the method became widespread in practice but research on it diminished and, in the 1970s, its use declined too. However, in the 1980s, in the last decade of the Communist regime, the method resurfaced in the pages of Czechoslovak medical journals and underwent an exciting renaissance, having been reintroduced by a few enthusiastic individuals, most of them women. This article explores the background to the renewed interest in the method while providing insight into the wider social and political context that shaped socialist maternity and birth care in different periods.

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.

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