Caribbean Reading

In 1974 Lucille Mathurin Mair defended her dissertation, which has since become a classic work in Caribbean historiography and influenced generations of scholars. Through extensive archival work with estate records, legal records, family papers and private correspondence, she sought out the women of Jamaica's past during slavery, women of all classes, all colours, black, brown and white. The work stands as a convincing exposure of women as agents of history - a path-breaking achievement at a time when Caribbean historiography ignored women. From her meticulous research emerged a powerful statement that has shaped subsequent understandings of gendered and cultural relations in Jamaican society: the white woman consumed, the coloured woman served and the black woman laboured. Over three decades Mair's dissertation became the most sought after unpublished work among students and scholars of Caribbean history and culture. Now available as a published monograph, the work will be more widely available to a new generation of scholars concerned with Atlantic history, slavery, culture and gender. bibliography, containing the original bibliography in the dissertation now supplemented by bibliographies detailing Mathurin Mair's subsequent publications, subsequent UWI theses on women or gender, and books, articles and papers on Caribbean gender issues since 1974. Co-published with the Centre for Gender and Development Studies, University of the West Indies, Jamaica.

A History of Money and Banking in Barbados documents the development of money and commercial banking in Barbados from the date of the settlement in 1627 to the establishment of the Central Bank of Barbados in 1973. It examines the early years of barter; the introduction of British coins by the Royal Proclamations of 1825 and 1838; the issue of colonial coins (anchor money); the introduction and circulation of foreign coins; the debate over the legal tender of British silver coins and the share of the seigniorage of these coins.

Armstrong examines the first banks, the Colonial Bank and the West India Bank, in the nineteenth century, the introduction of Canadian banks in the twentieth century, the expansion of Barclays Bank as well as the issue of Barbados government currency notes; the measures taken by the British government and the Caribbean governments during the Second World War to ensure an adequate supply of currency; and the agreement between Barbados, Trinidad and British Guiana (Guyana) to make their government currency legal tender in each country.

Armstrong analyses the establishment and operation of the British Caribbean Currency Board and its acrimonious demise, the establishment of the East Caribbean Currency Authority, the withdrawal of Barbados from the Authority, and the establishment of the Central Bank of Barbados.

Henry Fraser's entertaining
autobiography starts with tales of a unique childhood growing up at the local
governance centre of a rural parish in Barbados, where most parishioners
visited the offices of his parents at the family home. This rich community
involvement had a profound influence on his life of service. Sir Henry describes
why he chose to study medicine at the University of the West Indies at Mona, Jamaica,
and so became a passionate West Indian. After specialization and PhD studies in
London, he returned to Barbados and helped to build better health care there. He
promoted rational therapeutics regionally and globally, working with PAHO and
WHO, and his research centre and wide-ranging research have greatly benefited the
Caribbean. His passion for teaching, patient care, mentoring and management
shows throughout the book.

Sir Henry has
been described as the Renaissance man of Barbados: in addition to his
remarkable medical career, he has been public orator for Barbados and for the
University of the West Indies, Cave Hill, and an independent senator in the
Barbados Senate (where he discovered the reasons for the syndrome he labelled
Government's Implementation Deficit Disorder or GIDD). His other lifelong
passions have been art, architectural history and heritage preservation, and
writing. His autobiography makes fascinating reading: he is a natural story
teller and, as he often says, "History is his story." The book is replete with
captivating anecdotes and is illustrated with some of his paintings.

This first volume of poems records the thoughts and reflections over a journey of some fifty years. The author considers this collection to be a subtle response to the developmental realities of half a century. He successfully weaves race, religion, romance, politics, and sport into the fabric of the 'Rainbow', noting subtly the absence of the colour black in the recognition and hierarchy of this multi-coloured world. Some of the poems offer an alternative or a 'solution' to the problems facing global development, others offer a challenge to the status quo, yet others merely comment and leave you to determine whether there is a real need to 'Add Black to the Rainbow'.

This text follows Cuba's efforts to dig itself out of an economic rut through new and original research concerning production, support systems, quality maintenance, and trade systems of Havana and its urban agricultural sector. Special attention is given to a variety of related areas, including legal frameworks, issues of irrigation, women and their participation in the agricultural sector.

This book has been prepared for researchers, specialists, producers, students, decision makers and those with a general interest in the management and control of the urban environment.

The reconstruction of one of the rare Caribbean slave narratives is an amplification, interrogation, and modification of its original texts by cross-reference with official documents, contemporary diary entries and reports, present-day oral sources, and secondary analyses of plantation society. Accessing a variety of primary records, Maureen Warner-Lewis meticulously reconstructs a biography of enslaved Archibald Montieth, an Igbo, who was brought to Jamaica around 1802, became active in the Moravian Church and later purchased his freedom. Through Monteath's biography she explores the sociology of slavery from 1750 to the 1860s. Fieldwork conducted in Africa brings an important dimension to the work, and scholars of Caribbean history, church history, diasporic studies, Atlantic studies and Jamaica will find it of significant interest.

A short account of the history of medicine leads on to Jamaican medical care in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In the twentieth century the demand for local autonomy increased steadily. When the University College of the West Indies opened, the local practitioners welcomed it enthusiastically. This account ends as the University became autonomous in 1962.

The Caribbean islands are home to some of the most unusual species of bats. A number of them are endemic, living in no other region of the world. On Puerto Rico alone, thirteen different species have been found. Bats are the only naturally occurring mammals there; all others were introduced after settlement of the island first by the Taino Indians and later by the Spanish. Puerto Rico is important for study because of its human history, tropical climate, size, relief and isolation from the mainland. Thus, it is a useful model for understanding how historical, geographic and environmental factors interact in a controlled environment to affect the diversity and complexity of its resident species. This volume is the first complete compilation of the distribution, natural history, taxonomy and ecology of the bats of Puerto Rico. The coauthors, all experienced researchers, introduce the book with a discussion of Puerto Rican ecosystems and an overview of facts and misconceptions about bats in general. The main text then provides detailed descriptions of each of the thirteen Puerto Rican species, as well as illustrations of their faces and skulls. The book concludes with keys to the characters of these bats and a complete glossary. Maps show the distribution of each species on the island. Bats of Puerto Rico is designed to be an easily used source of information for the general public as well as a complete descriptive record for ecologists, mammalogists and wildlife biologists.

Clem Seecharan has written a useful documentary history of Bechu, the first Indian to testify before the Royal Commission in 1897.

Now who was this Bechu? He was, in Seecharan's words, "an indefatigable gadfly," who in letters to the local press revealed the conditions of Indian indentureship: poor wages, sexual exploitation of women by overseers and managers, and the virtual impossibility for Indians to obtain justice because of the collusion between colonial authorities and the planters. This knowledge we owe to economic historian Alan Adamson who "discovered" Bechu in the 1960s. Yet the man himself remained somewhat of a mystery, something Bechu himself seems to have cultivated. Seecharan has now filled a number of lacunae in our understanding with this two-part volume. The first section focuses on Bechu and the British Guianese environment in the late nineteenth century, while the second part includes letters and memoranda by Bechu (and reactions to them by local opponents).