Abstract
V.S. Naipaul, the Trinidad novelist, has called the Caribbean ‘the Third World’s Third World’, implying that the region lacks an authentic, indigenous heritage, distinct from that imposed by the imperial powers — Spain, Britain, France, Denmark, the Netherlands and, more recently, the US. But the all-embracing nature and sheer length of the colonial impact, coupled to the careful tutelage in metropolitan democratic procedures and values, especially since World War II, have ensured that the Caribbean has become one of the few parts of the Third World where political independence has been accompanied by free elections, multiple parties and liberal democratic freedoms. There is, therefore, in the Caribbean an interesting distinction between new states and old societies; between restrictive social orders founded on slavery and indentured labour, and the current enjoyment, in most but not all societies, of political liberties.
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Notes
Pioneer non-Marxist sociological works use the term colour-class; see Fernando Henriques, Family and Colour in Jamaica (London: Eyre and Spottiswood, 1953)
Lloyd Braithwaite, ‘Social Stratification in Trinidad: a preliminary analysis’, Social and Economic Studies, Vol. 2, Nos 2 and 3 (1953), pp. 5–175.
Ken Post, Arise Ye Starvlings: the Jamaican Labour Rebellion of 1938 and its Aftermath (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1978), especially pp. 77–158
Aggrey Brown, Colour, Class and Politics in Jamaica (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transaction Books, 1979)
George Beck-ford and Michael Witter, Small Garden Bitter Weed: Struggle and Change in Jamaica (London: Zed Press, 1982).
W. Richard Jacobs and Ian Jacobs, Grenada: El Camino hacia La Revolución (México: Editorial Katun, 1983).
Carl Stone, Class, Race and Political Behaviour in Urban Jamaica (Kingston: Institute of Social and Economic Research, 1973).
The term ‘caste’ is used by J. Lobb, ‘Caste and Class in Haiti’, American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 46 (1940), pp. 23–34
James G. Leyburn, The Haitian People (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1941).
David Nicholls, From Dessalines to Duvalier: Race, Colour and National Independence in Haiti (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), p. 10.
Stuart Hall, ‘Pluralism, Race and Class in Caribbean Society’, in A Study of Ethnic Group Relations in the English-speaking Caribbean, Bolivia, Chile and Mexico (Paris: UNESCO, 1977), pp. 150–82.
The primacy of culture over class — and race — has been strongly advocated by M.G. Smith in numerous publications, for example, The Plural Society in the British West Indies (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1965)
M.G. Smith, Corporations and Society (London: Duckworth, 1974), pp. 271–346
David Harvey, Social Justice and the City (London: Edward Arnold, 1973)
Frank Parkin, Max Weber (London and New York: Tavistock Publications, 1982), p. 96.
J.S. Furnivall, Colonial Policy and Practice: a Comparative Study of Burma and Netherlands India (London: Cambridge University Press, 1948)
M.G. Smith, The Plural Society in the British West Indies (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 1965).
David Lowenthal, West Indian Societies (Oxford and London: Oxford University Press, 1972)
Colin Clarke, Kingston Jamaica: Urban Development and Social Change 1692–1962 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1975)
Talcott Parsons, The Social System (London: Tavistock, 1952).
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Selected Works (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1972).
M.G. Smith, Corporations and Society (London: Duckworth, 1974)
Colin Clarke ‘Pluralism and Plural Societies: Caribbean Perspectives’, in Colin Clarke, David Ley and Ceri Peach (eds), Geography and Ethnic Pluralism (London: Allen and Unwin, 1984), pp. 51–86.
As in the case of Trinidad and Guyana. For Trinidad, see Chapter 2 of this book. For Guyana see especially Leo A. Despres, Cultural Pluralism and National Politics in British Guiana (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1967)
J. Edward Greene, Race vs Politics in Guyana (Jamaica: Institute of Social and Economic Research, University of the West Indies, 1974).
This is a modification of David Lowenthal’s five-fold categorization of West Indian societies which divides folk societies into those that are homogeneous and differentiated by colour, but omits the class-based Hispanic units; see David Lowenthal, West Indian Societies (Oxford and London: Oxford University Press, 1972), pp. 78–9.
M.G. Smith, Culture, Race and Class in the Commonwealth Caribbean (Kingston: Department of Extra-Mural Studies, University of the West Indies, 1984), pp. 37–45.
For example, M.G. Smith, Kinship and Community in Carriacou (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1962)
John Y. Keur and Dorothy L. Keur, Windward Children (Assen: Vangorcum, 1960)
David Lowenthal and Colin Clarke, ‘Common Lands, Common Aims: the Distinctive Barbudan Community’, in Malcolm Cross and Arnaud Marks (eds), Peasants, Plantations and Rural Communities in the Caribbean (Guildford and Leiden: Department of Sociology University of Surrey and Department of Caribbean Studies of the Royal Institute of Linguistics and Anthropology, 1979), pp. 142–59.
Special tabulations of the 1960 and 1982 censuses in my possession reveal that Kingston’s white population has been reduced by 90 per cent since independence. The Chinese have recorded a similar reduction, as have the Jews; see Carol S. Holzberg, Minorities and Power in Black Society: the Jewish Community of Jamaica (Lanham, Maryland: North-South Publishing, 1987), pp. 248–9.
O. Nigel Bolland, Colonialism and Resistance in Belize: Essays in Historical Sociology (Benque Viejo del Carmen, Kingston, Jamaica and Belize City: Cubola Productions, Institute of Social and Economic Research, University of the West Indies, and the Society for the Promotion of Education and Research, 1988).
Eric Williams, From Columbus to Castro: the History of the Caribbean 1492–1969 (London: André Deutsch, 1970), especially pp. 23–57.
That is black slaves, according to James L. Dietz, Economic History of Puerto Rico: Institutional Change and Capitalist Development (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1986), Table 1.7, p. 36.
Jose del Castillo, ‘The Formation of the Dominican Sugar Industry: from Competition to Monopoly, from National Semiproletariat to Foreign Proletariat’, in Manuel Moreno Fraginals, Frank Moya Pons and Stanley L. Engerman (eds), Between Slavery and Free Labour: the Spanish-Speaking Caribbean in the Nineteenth Century (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985), pp. 215–34.
Hugh Thomas, Cuba or the Pursuit of Freedom (London: Eyre and Spottiswood, 1971), p. 1120.
The incorporation of mulattos into the majority white population in Puerto Rico and Cuba, in contradistinction to their association with the black population in the US and their separate status in the British, French and Dutch West Indies, has been discussed by H. Hoetink, Two Variants in Caribbean Race Relations (London: Oxford University Press, 1967).7.
For detailed accounts of small island dissention refer to Colin Clarke, ‘Political Fragmentation in the Caribbean: the case of Anguilla’, Canadian Geographer, Vol. 15 (1971), pp. 13–29
David Lowenthal and Colin Clarke, ‘Island Orphans: Barbuda and the Rest’, The Journal of Commonwealth and Comparative Politics, Vol. 18, No. 3 (1980), pp. 293–307.
For a discussion of black and mulatto competition for power in an independent Caribbean state, Haiti, see Nicholls, op. cit. Good examples of anti-black sentiment in the Hispanic Caribbean are given by Harry Hoetink, ‘The Dominican Republic in the Nineteenth Century: Some Notes on Stratification, Immigration and Race’, in Magnus Morner (ed.), Race and Class in Latin America (New York and London: Columbia University Press, 1970), pp. 96–121
Rex Nettleford in Mirror Mirror: Identity, Race and Protest in Jamaica (Kingston: William Collins and Sangster, 1970)
Peter Marshall, Cuba Libre: Breaking the Chains (London: Victor Gollancz, 1987).
For studies of race and politics in Trinidad and Guyana see Selwyn Ryan, Race and Nationalism in Trinidad and Tobago: a study of de-colonization in a multi-racial society (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1972)
Leo A. Despres, Cultural Pluralism and National Politics in British Guiana (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1967)
J. Edward Greene, Race vs Politics in Guyana (Jamaica: Institute of Social and Economic Research, University of the West Indies, 1974).
In addition to the two books by Rex Nettleford cited above, an excellent account of the denigration of blacks by whites and blacks’ internalization of the evaluation is given in a classic book by Madeline Kerr, Personality and Conflict in Jamaica (London and Kingston: Collins and Sangster’s Book Stores, 1963; 1st edition 1952).
The most complete study of these plural-stratified and segmented societies to date is David Lowenthal’s excellent comparative volume, op. cit. Because of lack of space, little attention in this introduction is given to the emergence of the free people of colour. Those who are interested should consult David W. Cohen and Jack P. Greene (eds), Neither Slave Nor Free: the Freedmen of African Descent in the Slave Societies of the New World (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1972)
Gad J. Heuman, Between Black and White: Race, Politics and the Free Color eds in Jamaica, 1792–1865 (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1981).
The crucial role of slaves in the maintenance of the sugar industries of Cuba and Puerto Rico, as their numbers declined in the run up to emancipation, is discussed thoroughly in Rebecca J. Scott, Slave Emancipation in Cuba: the Transition to Free Labour, 1860–1899 (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1985)
H. Hoetink, The Dominican People, 1850–1900: Notes for a Historical Sociology (Baltimore and London: the Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982), p. 182.
For a controversial treatment of Puerto Rico see Raymond Carr, Puerto Rico: a Colonial Experiment (New York and London: New York University Press, 1984).
Julian H. Steward et al., The People of Puerto Rico: a Study in Social Anthropology (Chicago and London: University of Illinois Press, 1972; 1st edition 1956).
Colin Baber and Henry B. Jeffrey, Guyana: Politics, Economics and Society (London: Frances Pinter, 1986).
Tony Thorndike, Grenada: Politics, Economics and Society (London: Frances Pinter, 1985).
Michel S. Laguerre, Voodoo and Politics in Haiti (London: Macmillan, 1989), p. 108.
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Clarke, C. (1991). Introduction: Caribbean Decolonization — New States and Old Societies. In: Clarke, C. (eds) Society and Politics in the Caribbean. St Antony’s. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-11987-5_1
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