“The Indies”: Baudelaire's Colonial World

PMLA ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 123 (3) ◽  
pp. 723-736 ◽  
Author(s):  
Françoise Lionnet
Keyword(s):  
West Indies ◽  
Edward Said ◽  
The West ◽  
East Indies ◽  
Cape Of Good Hope ◽  
The World ◽  
Southern Extremity ◽  
Geographical Element

[Les critiques] ont en commun avec les tyrans de plier le monde à leurs désirs.[Critics] and tyrants have this in common: they bend the world to their desires.—Yasmina Reza, L'aube le soir ou la nuit (9)If there is anything that radically distinguishes the imagination of anti-imperialism, it is the primacy of the geographical element. Imperialism after all is an act of geographical violence through which virtually every space in the world is explored, charted, and finally brought under control.—Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism (225)Denis Diderot's Encyclopédie is explicit about “Les Indes” ‘The Indies.‘ in explaining why distant landmasses were charted under the incorrect rubrics “East Indies” and “West Indies,” the Encyclopédie states in 1765 that these designations refer to countries situated on either side of the Cape of Good Hope, the southern extremity of Africa:[L]es modernes moins excusable que les anciens ont nommé Indes, des pays si différens par leur position & par leur étendue sur notre globe, que pour ôter une partie de l'équivoque, ils ont divisé les Indes en orientales & occidentales. … De-là vint l'usage d'appeller Indes orientales, ce qui est à l'orient du cap de Bonne-Espérance, & Indes occidentales, ce qui est à l'occident de ce cap. … [P]ar un nouvel abus, qu'il n'est plus possible de corriger, on se sert dans les relations du nom d'Indiens, pour dire les Amériquains. (“Indes”)[T]he moderns, who are less forgivable than the ancients, have called Indies countries so different by virtue of their location and their size on our globe that these had to be divided into East and West Indies in order to correct the ambiguity. … Hence the custom of calling East Indies what lies to the east of the Cape of Good Hope and West Indies what lies to the west of that cape. … [T]hrough a new misuse, which can no longer be corrected, the name Indians is used in travel relations to refer to Americans.

RESPONSE TO JENNER'S EPOCHAL ANNOUNCEMENT OF 1798

PEDIATRICS ◽  
1966 ◽  
Vol 37 (6) ◽  
pp. 921-923
Author(s):  
John A Washington
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
West Indies ◽  
Measles Vaccine ◽  
The West ◽  
East Indies ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Poliomyelitis Vaccine ◽  
The World ◽  
Resident Surgeon ◽  
Tropical Climates

To Pediatricians long in practice the administration of Salk and Sabin poliomyelitis vaccines and the use of measles vaccine have been exciting and gratifying experiences. That the advent of the new vaccination against smallpox was similarly stirring to alert physicians of 1800 is evidenced by the following excerpts from Samuel Scofield's Treatise on Vaccina or Cowpock published in 1810.1 The prospect of controlling this scourge stimulated a widespread demand somewhat comparable to that for poliomyelitis vaccine. Facilities for communication, supply, and transport were so vastly inferior that the extensiveness of its use in a few years time is surprising. Eleven years have now elapsed since the world was put into possession of this inestimable blessing by the accurate and indefatigable Jenner. . . . The Cowpock Inoculation has been practiced in every quarter of the Globe. . . . In the West-Indies I have witnessed the most salutory effects from it in preserving the Blacks from smallpox, which so frequently commits the most terrible ravages in tropical climates. It has received the patronage of every government under whose cognizance it has come and in many countries, as America, Great Britain, France, Italy. . . . institutions have been established for the gratuitous inoculation of the poor. In January, 1802, an institution was established in this city (New York) for the purpose of vaccinating the poor gratis. . . . To this establishment the author of the present treatise was appointed Resident Surgeon. . . . From late accounts we are informed that the Cowpock has been received in the East-Indies with the greatest enthusiasm and many millions have already been vaccinated.

II. The Revolt of Palermo in 1647

1946 ◽  
Vol 8 (03) ◽  
pp. 129-144 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. G. Koenigsberger
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
West Indies ◽  
The West ◽  
Philip Ii ◽  
Charles V ◽  
East Indies ◽  
The World ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Stability

There is no stronger proof of the stability of the Empire which Charles V and Philip II had built, and of the vitality of the monarchic idea in the seventeenth century, than the ability of the Spanish Monarchy to survive the crisis of the years 1647 and 1648. In a dispatch to his Senate the Venetian ambassador in Madrid characterized Spain's history in those years as a string of disasters: Portugal and Catalonia in open revolt; Andalusia in the grip of corruption owing to the treachery of the Duke of Medina Sidonia; the East Indies with Brazil (a country large enough for four kingdoms) lost with Portugal; the West Indies hard-pressed by the Dutch; the royal revenues mortgaged, credit extinct; friends become enemies or vacillating neutrals, and the Government abandoned to the inexperience of a new favourite. Thus the Spanish Monarchy resembled that great colossus which for many years had been the wonder of the world and which during an earthquake had collapsed in a few moments while every one hurried along to enrich himself with the fragments.

The Parasites of the Coffee Leaf-Miners (Leucoptera spp.) in Africa

1936 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 477-491 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ch. Ferrière
Keyword(s):  
South America ◽  
West Indies ◽  
Central Africa ◽  
The West ◽  
Leaf Miners ◽  
The World ◽  
Leucoptera Coffeella

The coffee leaf-miners of the genus Leucoptera, Hübner, are serious pests of coffee wherever it is cultivated and they have often caused great anxiety to planters in many parts of the world. Leucoptera coffeella, Guér., is known from the West Indies, Central and South America, Central Africa, Madagascar, Réunion and Ceylon. Another species, L. daricella, Meyr., seems to be responsible for still more damage in Africa.

Settling Up

Worldview ◽  
1978 ◽  
Vol 21 (5) ◽  
pp. 35-36
Author(s):  
Thomas J. Cottle
Keyword(s):  
West Indies ◽  
The West ◽  
The World ◽  
The Right ◽  
Council House ◽  
As If ◽  
Settling Up

Beatrice Waters lives in the corner flat on the top floor of a council house in the Islington district of London. She spent four years of her life making the arrangements to rent a flat in this particular block of council houses. Four long years of speaking with this or that authority and arguing with her husband over whether they had made the right decision. At fifty, Henry Waters doubted he could survive still another move. He couldn't even remember all the places in which he had lived, as if immigrating from the West Indies to England wasn't significant enough. “Don't you think,” he would ask Beatrice, “there comes a time that people just settle down, no matter how good or bad a deal they've made for themselves? How long do you keep changing homes just to prove you're really getting somewhere in the world?’

First Round the World: 1519–22

1963 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 463-466
Author(s):  
E. G. R. Taylor
Keyword(s):  
West Indies ◽  
Far East ◽  
The West ◽  
The Far East ◽  
World Geography ◽  
The World ◽  
Secret Knowledge

In 1518 a Spanish gentleman, just back from the West Indies, addressed a Summary of World Geography to his King. In the Dedication he pointed out that since the Pope's Line, which parted the Portuguese and Spanish spheres, ran through the mouth of the River Amazon, 28°W. of Ferro, all the World beyond 150°E. (i.e. 130°E. of Greenwich) lay open to exploitation by Spain. And according to the World Map of the day the area included Java, Japan, King Solomon's Ophir, and (best of all) the Spice Islands or Moluccas from which the Portuguese were already making fabulous fortunes. This gentleman was not the only person to speak to the young King on this matter. The captains and pilots who had opened up the Spice Islands for Portugal were dissatisfied with the rewards which their own King had given them, and a number of them offered their services and their special and secret knowledge to his rival. Ferdinand Magellan was one of them. From his experience in the Far East he was of the opinion that the Moluccas could be safely approached from the west, by way of the Great Ocean. And it should be emphasized that in suggesting this he had no romantic notions about becoming the first man to circumnavigate the globe. He put forward a business pro position which the Spanish King accepted. Immediately the most thorough preparations were set on foot. They included the making of new charts, new globes, new sea-quadrants and sea-astrolabes, by the best pilots and craftsmen of the day, of whom the most were Portuguese.

British Policy and Spanish America, 1783–1808

1969 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-30 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Lynch
Keyword(s):  
West Indies ◽  
Military Intervention ◽  
Spanish America ◽  
Rapid Decline ◽  
Political Debate ◽  
The West ◽  
Potential Market ◽  
Official Policy ◽  
The World ◽  
British Policy

‘The liberation of South America’, wrote Castlereagh in 1807, ‘must be accomplished through the wishes and exertions of the inhabitants; but the change can only be operated…under the protection and with the support of an auxiliary British force’. The argument, familiar in political debate, was rare in official policy. Britain, it is true, had long regarded Spanish America as a source of strength for her rivals and a potential market for her manufactures. After the Peace of 1783 interest became more intense as British observers, impressed by the vulnerability of empires, claimed to see signs of rapid decline in the empire of Spain. Intelligence reports on Spanish America accumulated in government departments; plans for British attacks flowed from official and private sources; and a section of merchant opinion increased its agitation for military intervention in the area. Yet, apart from the conquest of Trinidad in 1797 and the attempted conquest of the Río de la Plata in 1806–7, British policy towards Spanish America was diffident in its approach and vague in its intent. There were, indeed, compelling reasons why Spanish America should remain on the margin of British policy. Britain's existing European and imperial interests necessarily dominated her policy and absorbed her resources. Until 1806, moreover, existing channels of trade in Europe and the rest of the world were sufficient to take the bulk of British industrial production. And military resources were usually insufficient to release troops either from Europe or the West Indies for major operations in a new theatre of war.

Observations on the Larval Diapause of the Pink Bollworm, Platyedra gossypiella, Saund.

1940 ◽  
Vol 30 (4) ◽  
pp. 475-481 ◽  
Author(s):  
F. A. Squire
Keyword(s):  
West Indies ◽  
Dry Season ◽  
Pink Bollworm ◽  
Wet Season ◽  
The West ◽  
Long Cycle ◽  
Larval Diapause ◽  
The World

As cotton crops in many parts of the world end either with the onset of winter or of the dry season, it is natural that the larval diapause which becomes more and more conspicuous as the crop ripens should have come to be regarded as an instance of either hibernation or aestivation; yet in the West Indies where the following observations were made, there is no winter, nor does the ripe boll phase of the crop necessarily fall in the dry season. The latter moreover is not one of complete drought but rather dry only by comparison. Indeed in some islands, such as Montserrat and St. Kitts, the crop is harvested in the wet season. Yet long-cycle or resting larvae are regularly found in all of these islands.

scholarly journals An Analysis into the Travels of the Translated Self in V.S Naipaul’s Half A Life

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 14
Author(s):  
Gora Chand Das
Keyword(s):  
West Indies ◽  
Life Form ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Stream Of Consciousness ◽  
The West ◽  
Modern Life ◽  
Fictional World ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
The World

V.S.Naipaul expertly exhibited a great craftsmanship in literary pieces like fiction, travel and journalistic writing. His fictional world reveals a critical look on the world and also utilizes its traditions, customs and cultures. Naipaul’s writing express the ambivalence of the exile, a feature of his own experience as an Indian in the West Indies, a West Indies in England, and a nomadic intellectual in a post colonial world. Naipaul adhered to the form of the traditional narrative, and by doing away with the technical devices of the stream of consciousness; he exhibits his power of writing by making his readers share the inevitable irony and paradox of modern life form by its quintessential self-division and inner conflict. The protagonist of Naipaul’s fiction may be different persons but there may be sensed a thread of continuity in their fate and there “limbotic” status. He has described the theme of a quest for identity, a sense of displacement, alienation, exile of an individual in the backdrop of colonial and postcolonial period. The act of displacement, his trying efforts to organize his experience, and his gazing back to know about his roots and his continuing search for the desirable self can be clearly stated in his novel Half A Life (2001). In the novel Half A Life, Willie Chandran is a migrant from one place to another and then to another. And he keeps on doing that through both Half A Life, and its sequel Magic Seeds (2004).  

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