Rogue Bankers, Black Radicalism, and the Caribbean History of Racial Capitalism

2020 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 197-207
Author(s):  
Peter James Hudson
Keyword(s):  
Fundamental Aspect ◽  
Caribbean Region ◽  
Wall Street ◽  
History Of Capitalism ◽  
Caribbean History ◽  
Racial Capitalism ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Caribbean ◽  
History Of Finance

This essay offers a response to two critical commentaries—from diplomatic historian Brenda Gayle Plummer and political theorist Clarisse Burden-Stelly—on the author’s Bankers and Empire: How Wall Street Colonized the Caribbean. While locating both commentaries under the epistemological and political purview of the radical wing of black studies, the essay focuses on four topics that appear in Plummer’s and Burden-Stelly’s comments: (1) the question of class, and in particular the role of the Caribbean middle classes, in the history of finance, banking, imperial expansion, and Caribbean sovereignty; (2) the particular status and nature of the Caribbean region within the history of capitalism; (3) the nature and the meaning of the well-worn term racial capitalism; and (4) the idea of “war” as a fundamental aspect of the modes of regulation and accumulation of said racial capitalism.

Dark Finance, Dark People

2020 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 187-196
Author(s):  
Brenda Gayle Plummer
Keyword(s):  
Tax Evasion ◽  
Multiple Roles ◽  
National Identities ◽  
Hierarchical Systems ◽  
Wall Street ◽  
Racial Capitalism ◽  
The Past ◽  
Self Interest ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Caribbean

This discussion of Peter James Hudson’s Bankers and Empire: How Wall Street Colonized the Caribbean focuses on the way transnational banks are revealed to be players of multiple roles in the development of past and present Caribbean economies. The banks were hardly mere stalking horses for imperialism, and their considerable autonomy and self-interest were sometimes at odds with the objectives of both host governments and metropoles. They acquired a cosmopolitan character that allowed them to bypass particular national identities when convenient. Caribbean markets lay at the epicenter of their financial projects, which employed racism as a technology to banking interests, and racial capitalism grafted itself onto existing hierarchical systems. Hudson has shown the banks to be heirs to a long history of Caribbean commerce that tracks the shadowy line between the legal and the illicit and the piracy and smuggling of the past to the money laundering, tax evasion, and drug smuggling of the present.

Capitalisms

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Tenth Century ◽  
History Of Capitalism ◽  
Commodity Production ◽  
Production And Distribution ◽  
History Of ◽  
National Boundaries ◽  
Small Producers ◽  
Circulation Of Knowledge ◽  
Industrial Revolutions

Conventional accounts often conceive the genesis of capitalism in Europe within the conjunctures of agricultural, commercial, and industrial revolutions. Challenging this widely believed cliché, this volume traces the history of capitalism across civilizations, tenth century onwards, and argues that capitalism was neither a monolithic entity nor exclusively an economic phenomenon confined to the West. Looking at regions as diverse as England, South America, Russia, North Africa, and East, South, West, and Southeast Asia, the book explores the plurality of developments across time and space. The chapters analyse aspects such as historical conjunctures, commodity production and distribution, circulation of knowledge and personnel, and the role of mercantile capital, small producers, and force—all the while stressing the necessity to think beyond present-day national boundaries. The book argues that the multiple histories of capitalism can be better understood from a trans-regional, intercontinental, and interconnected perspective.

“Cuba Libre”

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Njoroge Njoroge
Keyword(s):  
Industrial Production ◽  
Cultural Identification ◽  
Caribbean Region ◽  
Labor Discipline ◽  
Political Evolution ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Caribbean ◽  
Cross Fertilization

This chapter explores musical and political evolution of Cuba in the early 20th century. Cuba provides an interesting condensation of the history of the Caribbean region where sugar and slavery were the dominating and defining features of society. Musical developments in Cuba demonstrate this history on a cultural plane, and by examining the music of the Rumba and the Son in the pre-revolutionary Cuban context and their confluence and cross-fertilization in the 20th century, we can glimpse dynamics of national and regional consciousness, ethnic and cultural identification, class formations and power, slave culture, experience and expression, the transitions of emancipation and urbanization, and the different rhythms of industrial production and modern labor-discipline. The Cuban counterpoint of the Rumba/Son complex reveals the complex interrelations between modes of production and musical formations and the polyrhythmic tensions of race, class, and nation.

Introduction

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-30
Author(s):  
William Ghosh
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Caribbean Region ◽  
The Political ◽  
The World ◽  
Colonial Experience ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Caribbean ◽  
Formed Part ◽  
Historical Past

V.S. Naipaul is one of the most internationally acclaimed twentieth-century writers from the Caribbean region. Yet it is usually assumed that he was neither much influenced by the Caribbean literary and intellectual tradition, nor very influential upon it. This chapter argues that these assumptions are wrong. It situates Naipaul’s life and work within the political, social, and intellectual history of the twentieth-century Caribbean. Naipaul’s work formed part of a larger historical debate about the sociology of slavery in the Caribbean, the specificity of Caribbean colonial experience, and the influence of that historical past on Caribbean life, culture, and politics after independence. The chapter closes with a reading of Naipaul’s late, retrospective book about Trinidad, A Way in the World.

The Relevance of the Responsibility to Protect for Latin America and the Caribbean Region: Prevention and The Role of Civil Society

2011 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 266-285 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gilberto M. A. Rodrigues ◽  
Andrés Serbin
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Civil Society ◽  
Responsibility To Protect ◽  
Caribbean Region ◽  
General Strategy ◽  
Traditional Role ◽  
Research Education ◽  
Peaceful Resolution ◽  
The Caribbean

AbstractThe authors argue in this article that the main dimensions to be considered regarding the implementation of the Responsibility to Protect in Latin America and the Caribbean are the preventive dimension and, eventually the rebuilding dimension. The preventive dimension of the Responsibility to Protect cannot be dissociated from a general strategy of armed or violent conflict prevention, and should not be focused only in the prevention of mass atrocities. In the framework of the juridical and cultural legacy of the region, special attention should be directed to avoid considering the reactive dimension of RtoP, as well-embedded principles of national sovereignty, non-intervention and regional peaceful resolution of disputes obstruct any attempt of external intervention, even if they are related to international community initiatives. In this regard, the authors argue that the traditional role of regional organisations and mechanisms in peaceful resolution of inter-state conflicts, should be deepened, combined and coordinated with civil society initiatives, in the implementation of RtoP. The role of civil society organisations and networks should be strengthened through an increasing capacity building process, which includes developing skills and capacities to address both prevention and early warning, and which ought to be based on research, education and networking.

The kinematic evolution of the Demerara plateau and Guyana-Suriname margins

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Júlia Gómez-Romeu ◽  
Emmanuel Masini ◽  
Nick Kusznir ◽  
Sylvain Calassou
Keyword(s):  
Magnetic Data ◽  
Moho Depth ◽  
Caribbean Region ◽  
Equatorial Atlantic ◽  
Kinematic Evolution ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Caribbean ◽  
Surrounding Areas ◽  
Complex Architecture ◽  
Central Atlantic

<p>The Caribbean region has undergone a complex plate kinematics evolution due to the interaction between Central Atlantic pre-subduction paleogeography and Caribbean subduction dynamics. To better understand the initiation and dynamics of the Caribbean subduction it is important to determine the pre-subduction template. However, this template cannot be easily recognized as it either suffered from pervasive tectonic overprinting or has been consumed by subduction. To address this problem, it may be valuable to first unravel the structure and deformation history of the surrounding areas of the Caribbean region.</p><p>Here we investigate the kinematic evolution of the Triassic-Jurassic Demerara plateau and Guyana-Suriname (i.e Dp and G-S) margins which are present-day located to the south of the Caribbean subduction. To achieve our aim, we use seismic, gravity and magnetic data and apply a gravity anomaly inversion technique to determine Moho depth, crustal basement thickness and crustal thinning factor.</p><p>The Dp and G-S margins avoided subduction and consequently preserve the divergent history of Early Jurassic to Early Cretaceous rifting related to the opening of the Central Atlantic and Equatorial Atlantic respectively. This is inferred by a complex architecture of the Dp and G-S margins characterized by a set of transfer zones that crosscut each other.</p><p>By unravelling the kinematic evolution of the Dp and G-S margins we attempt to determine the pre-subduction template of the surrounding area of the Caribbean region.</p>

Laugh and Resist! Humor and Satire Use in the Gezi Resistance Movement

2016 ◽  
Vol 15 (5) ◽  
pp. 567-587 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yeşim Kaptan
Keyword(s):  
Wall Street ◽  
Political Humor ◽  
Political Processes ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Cultural Forms ◽  
Modern Turkey ◽  
Resistance Movement ◽  
Folk Stories

This article focuses on the local humor employed in the Gezi Park Protests, one of the most widespread protests in the history of modern Turkey. By analyzing examples of widely circulated graffiti in the social media during and after the Gezi Park protests, I explore the role of socio-cultural and political humor in the protests as a form of resistance, which is intertwined in many ways with local popular culture, as well as global cultural forms of resistance used in anti-capitalist movements such as the Occupy Wall Street movement and public protests in Greece, Egypt, Algeria, and Spain. The humor and laughter in political processes manifests relation to traditional Turkish cultural forms. However, context-bounded humor originating from local meanings and traditional folk stories in the humorous graffiti of the Gezi Protests is considered not only an artistic and creative form of opposition to the conservative-religiousakpgovernment, but also a local response to global capitalism.

scholarly journals The slippery paths of commemoration and Heritage tourism: the Netherlands, Ghana, and the rediscovery of Atlantic slavery

2008 ◽  
Vol 79 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 55-77 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gert Oostindie
Keyword(s):  
The Netherlands ◽  
Minority Groups ◽  
Slave Trade ◽  
American Slavery ◽  
African Slaves ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Caribbean ◽  
Atlantic Slavery ◽  
Dutch History

Reflects upon the commemoration of the Atlantic slave trade and American slavery. Author describes how the slave trade and slavery was recently "rediscovered", as a part of Dutch history, and he compares this to the attention to this history in other European countries once engaging in slavery. He argues that despite the fact that the history of the slave trade and slavery is worthy of attention in itself, contemporary political and social factors mainly influence attention to the slave trade and slavery, noting that in countries with larger Afro-Caribbean minority groups the attention to this past is greater than in other once slave-trading countries. He further deplores the lack of academic accuracy on the slave trade and slavery in slavery commemorations and in the connected search for African roots among descendants of slaves, and illustrates this by focusing on the role of Ghana, and the slave fortress Elmina there, as this fortress also has become a much visited tourist site by Afro-Americans. According to him, this made for some that Ghana represents the whole of Africa, while African slaves in the Caribbean, also in the Dutch colonies, came from various parts of Africa. Author attributes this selectivity in part to the relatively large Ghanaian community in the Netherlands.

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