Antislavery

Author(s):  
Deirdre Coleman

Smeathman arrives in the West Indies mid-1775, just as the American revolution begins. He makes numerous comparisons between tropical nature in its ‘rude’ (African) state and its ‘cultivated’ (West Indian) version, He also observes the various societies of the different islands and, appalled by the cruelty of plantation slavery, starts to reconsider Quaker Fothergill’s plans for ‘legitimate’ African commerce. The flogging of slaves in public places shocks him into sketching two of these scenes, one of which is particularly chilling because it is conducted by a white woman. Smeathman decides to return to England and compile his ‘Voyages and Travels’, a book which would reveal the truth about ‘those little known and much misrepresented people the Negroes’.

2008 ◽  
Vol 36 (2) ◽  
pp. 317-329 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julia Sun-Joo Lee

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.


1949 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 166-166

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.


1962 ◽  
Vol 52 (4) ◽  
pp. 957-962
Author(s):  
D. H. Shurbet

abstract The long duration and high frequency of P and S phases from earthquakes along the West Indian island are are deseribed. These phases have been described previously in the literature without explanation. It is shown that the long duration, high frequency, and velocity of both phases can be explained as due to a minimum velocity channel slightly below the M-discontinuity. Other observations are shown to indicate the probable presence of the minimum velocity channel.


1950 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 36-58 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Gallagher

‘The Black in the West Indies will.… receive his Emancipation at the expense of his Brethren in Africa.’ So the Lieutenant-Governor of the Gambia had forecast before the 1833 Act, and he was right, although for the wrong reasons. Emancipation cramped the sugar production of the British Caribbean, but it did not affect the sweet tooth of the sugar consumer, and as West Indian output fell, sugar production in Cuba and (less noticeably) in Brazil rose sharply. Outproduced, undersold and overcultivated, the West Indian plantations began to lag as competitors, a result inevitable in the long run, but accelerated by the freeing of the slaves.


The Auk ◽  
2007 ◽  
Vol 124 (3) ◽  
pp. 868-885 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew J. Miller ◽  
Eldredge Bermingham ◽  
Robert E. Ricklefs

Abstract Solitaires (Myadestes spp.) are montane-forest birds that are widely distributed throughout the New World, ranging from Alaska to northern Bolivia and including both Hawaii and the West Indies. To understand the origins of this impressive distribution, we used five mitochondrial gene sequences to reconstruct the historical biogeography of the genus. The resulting phylogeny indicates a rapid initial spread of the genus to occupy most of its contemporary continental range at least as far south as lower Mesoamerica, plus Hawaii and the Greater Antilles. The North American M. townsendi appears to be the sister taxon of the rest of Myadestes. Myadestes obscurus of Hawaii is more closely allied to Mesoamerican lineages than to M. townsendi. The strongly supported sister relationship of the two West Indian taxa, M. elisabeth and M. genibarbis, indicates a single colonization of the West Indies. A more recent node links the Andean M. ralloides to the Mesoamerican M. melanops and M. coloratus. A standard molecular clock calibration of 2% sequence divergence per million years for avian mitochondrial DNA suggests that the initial diversification of Myadestes occurred near the end of the Miocene (between 5 and 7.5 mya). Cooler temperatures and lower sea levels at that time would have increased the extent of montane forests and reduced overwater dispersal distances, possibly favoring range expansion and colonization of the West Indies. The split between South American and southern Mesoamerican lineages dates to ∼3 mya, which suggests that Myadestes expanded its range to South America soon after the Pliocene rise of the Isthmus of Panama. Despite the demonstrated capacity of Myadestes for long-distance dispersal, several species of Myadestes are highly differentiated geographically. Phylogeographic structure was greatest in the West Indian M. genibarbis, which occurs on several islands in the Greater Antilles and Lesser Antilles, and in the Andean M. ralloides. The phylogeographic differentiation within M. ralloides was not anticipated by previous taxonomic treatments and provides a further example of the importance of the Andes in the diversification of Neotropical birds. Overall, the historical biogeography of Myadestes suggests that range expansion and long-distance dispersal are transient population phases followed by persistent phases of population differentiation and limited dispersal. Biogeografía Histórica de los Zorzales del Género Myadestes


Author(s):  
Anne-Marie Lee-Loy

Asians in the West Indies are primarily migrants and their descendants from either South Asia or China. The representation of the Chinese in West Indian fiction is integrally connected to the specific development of the region. Indeed, to consider the role that the Chinese play in West Indian fiction is to engage, more generally, in the act of imaginatively locating the West Indies. Despite the fact that numerically, they have always held a marginal status in the region, the Chinese are very much present in West Indian literary landscapes. The recurring representations of the Chinese and Chineseness in such fiction are intimately tied to locating the metaphorical and discursive contours of the West Indies and of West Indians. In this context, depictions of the Chinese in West Indian literary texts tend to follow three lines of representation: (1) defining the region as an exotic “other place”; (2) negotiating the boundaries of West Indian belonging; and (3) complicating settled narratives of West Indian identity.


1998 ◽  
Vol 72 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 283-289
Author(s):  
Frank Birbalsingh

[First paragraph]The Art of Kamau Brathwaite. STEWART BROWN (ed.). Bridgend, Wales: Seren/Poetry Wales Press, 1995. 275 pp. (Cloth US$ 50.00, Paper US$ 22.95)Atlantic Passages: History, Community, and Language in the Fiction of Sam Selvon. MARK LOOKER. New York: Peter Lang, 1996. x + 243 pp. (Cloth n.p.)Caliban's Curse: George Lamming and the Revisioning of History. SUPRIYA NAIR. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996. viii + 171 pp. (Cloth US$ 34.50)Phyllis Shand Allfrey: A Caribbean Life. LlZABETH PARAVISINI-GEBERT. New Brunswick NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1996. xii + 335 pp. (Cloth US$ 55.00, Paper US$ 18.95)Of the four books to be considered here, those on Brathwaite, Selvon, and Lamming fit snugly together into a natural category of literature that has to do with the emergence of a Creole or African-centered Caribbean culture, and related issues of race, color, class, history, and nationality. The fourth is a biography of Phyllis Shand Allfrey, a white West Indian, who is of an altogether different race, color, and class than from the other three. Yet the four books are linked together by nationality, for Allfrey and the others are all citizens of one region, the English-speaking West Indies, which, as the Federation of the West Indies between 1958 and 1962, formed a single nation.


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