-Caribbean History

Does the scientific "theory" that HIV came to North America from Haiti stem from underlying attitudes of racism and ethnocentrism in the United States rather than from hard evidence? Award-winning author and anthropologist-physician Paul Farmer answers with this, the first full-length ethnographic study of AIDS in a poor society. First published in 1992 this new edition has been updated and a new preface added.

Since the mid-nineteenth-century abolition of slavery, the call for reparations for the crime of African enslavement and native genocide has been growing. In the Caribbean, grassroots and official voices now constitute a regional reparations movement. While it remains a fractured, contentious and divisive call, it generates considerable public interest, especially within sections of the community that are concerned with issues of social justice, equity, civil and human rights, education, and cultural identity. The reparations discourse has been shaped by the voices from these fields as they seek to build a future upon the settlement of historical crimes.

This is the first scholarly work that looks comprehensively at the reparations discussion in the Caribbean. Written by a leading economic historian of the region, a seasoned activist in the wider movement for social justice and advocacy of historical truth, Britain's Black Debt looks at the origins and development of reparations as a regional and international process. Weaving detailed historical data on Caribbean slavery and the transatlantic slave trade together with legal principles and the politics of postcolonialism, Beckles sets out a solid academic analysis of the evidence. He concludes that Britain has a case of reparations to answer which the Caribbean should litigate.

International law provides that chattel slavery as practised by Britain was a crime against humanity. Slavery was invested in by the royal family, the government, the established church, most elite families, and large public institutions in the private and public sector. Citing the legal principles of unjust and criminal enrichment, the author presents a compelling argument for Britain's payment of its black debt, a debt that it continues to deny in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

It is at once an exciting narration of Britain's dominance of the slave markets that enriched the economy and a seminal conceptual journey into the hidden politics and public posturing of leaders on both sides of the Atlantic. No work of this kind has ever been attempted. No author has had the diversity of historical research skills, national and international political involvement, and personal engagement as an activist to present such a complex yet accessible work of scholarship.

Tennyson Joseph provides
a comprehensive analysis of the relevance of C.L.R. James's political thought
to twenty-first-century Caribbean politics. He clarifies, explains and
justifies James's method, and applies his ideas to concrete political developments
occurring in the twenty-first century Caribbean in its interconnection with the
rest of the world. The work offers a unique treatment of James in three
distinctive ways: firstly, in its scope and specific focus on the application
of the thought of James to the post-Soviet Union, post-Cold War era of
Caribbean politics; secondly concerning discussing the possibilities for
radical, anti-systemic possibilities in the Caribbean in the early twenty-first
century; and thirdly, in the employment of James's thought and method as an
explanatory tool for understanding those contemporary issues. The book
brings the ideas of C.L.R. James to a new generation of Caribbean and global
readers and is a useful resource to all students, teachers, and activists
interested in Caribbean politics, political ideas, and radical political
theory.

The 1820s and 1830s were a crucial period in the historical experience of the British Caribbean colonies, because it marked the adoption of a policy of slaveemancipation by the British government. Central to the implementation of that policy was the formal embrace of the enslaved Africans by the state church, the Anglican Church. This was made clear in the official pronouncement that religious instruction is the surest foundation for the amelioration of the state of the slave population.

Facing the Challenge of Emancipation shows, in clear and concise fashion, how William Hart Coleridge, the first Anglican bishop of Barbados and the Leewards, executed new mandate of the Anglican Church. Between 1824 and 1842, this inexperienced theologian displayed immense energy and skill in establishing his control over the diocese, in neutralizing the entrenched opposition to reform, and in raising financial support for a phenomenal building programme.

The result was that the Anglican Church for the first time became fully accessible to the enslaved and to their successors, the so-called apprentices and the newly freed persons. Particularly important was the provision of the rudiments of education, both religious and secular, to an increasing number of converts and their children through the agency of newly constructed chapels of ease and chapel schools. Goodridge demonstrates that, by the time that Bishop Coleridge retired to England, a flood of beneficial light had been cast on a dark period and that the Anglican Church in Barbados could be said to possess a popular dimension.

Written by two of the Caribbean's leading historians, Freedoms Won is an essential book for students engaged in following courses on the history of the Caribbean. It will also be of interest to general readers seeking information on the history of the region. Starting with the aftermath of emancipation, Freedoms Won covers the African-Caribbean peasantry, Asian arrival in the Caribbean, social and political experiences of the working classes in the immediate post-slavery period, the Caribbean economy, US intervention and imperialst tendencies from the 18th century, the Labour Movement in the Caribbean in the 20th centurym the social life and culture of the Caribbean people, and social protest, decolonisation and nationhood.

In Indentured Labor, Caribbean Sugar Walton Look Lai offers the first comprehensive study of Asian immigration and the indenture system in the entire British West Indies―with particular emphasis on the experiences of indentured laborers in the major receiving colonies of British Guyana, Trinidad, and Jamaica. Exploring living and working conditions as well as the makeup of immigrant communities and their cultures, Look Lai offers a "dialectical pluralist" model of Caribbean acculturation that contrasts with the more familiar "melting pot" or "pure pluralist" model.

This remarkable description of Jamaica in the late 1680s was written by a contemporary English observer, John Taylor, who spent some months on the island. The original manuscript is held by the National Library of Jamaica, and has rarely been used by scholars. It contains information about Jamaica under the Spaniards, about the English invasion of 1655 and about the formation of the subsequent society, including the treatment of slaves. There are sections on the island's settlement and architecture, including a particularly full description of Port Royal. John Taylor sets out fifty current laws, many of them unknown to other such collections. He also carefully explains the nature of Jamaica's birds, beasts and plants. Taylor offers an image of the island before the general spread of sugar cultivation, citing some creatures now extinct in Jamaica; he also makes many suggestions about the medical use of natural products. His world is still one in which certain places are enchanted, though he also describes an island whose main features will be entirely familiar to modern Jamaicans. and he provides an annotated version of the manuscript, which was originally more than 850 pages and was in three volumes. This edition covers the second half of volume 1 and the whole of volume 2, providing a rich tapestry of Taylor's observations and notes on Jamaica. Most of the remaining manuscript contains autobiographical material and nautical logs. Buisseret's edition provides an annotation and a glossary. The text will be useful to generations of scholars and students alike or to anyone with an interest in Jamaica and its colourful history. Co-published with the National Library of Jamaica and the Mill Press.

The book is an attempt to show that,
contrary to general belief, free villages were established in Barbados soon
after the end of the Apprenticeship in 1838. The term "free villages" is employed in the way that it was coined by
its author, William Knibb, Baptist missionary in Jamaica. He said in November
1838 that such villages were to be the blacks' routes of escape from their
"inveterate enemies"; the emancipated black man could use the village as an "asylum" from which he
could "defy them with scorn, and go to any estate he pleases to work".
Therefore, the fact that as many as 69 such settlements could be found within
thirty years in small, densely populated Barbados suggests that the scenario
which was being played out in less densely populated territories was not absent
from Barbados. Indeed, there is evidence to suggest that every opportunity was
being exploited by blacks to acquire land that they could control and therefore
escape the restrictions of conditional tenancy on planters' lands.

However, free village development in
Barbados can be seen as a variant. Unlike elsewhere in the Caribbean, free
villages could not be equated with the emergence of a small farmer class of
significant size. In Barbados, the average size of holding was less than one
acre, which meant that the vast majority of the villagers had to find regular
employment as agricultural labourers on the plantations. Therefore, by 1945,
while free villages housed a majority of the rural population, that population
was forced to remain close to the plantation, not merely because of the size of
the island, but because the plantations were the main source of employment. In
this way, free village development in the island did not adversely affect
labour supplies on the plantations.