SS 150: PEOPLES AND CULTURES OF THE CARIBBEAN

PROFESSOR LAGANA

SPRING 2009: CARIBBEAN INTERNET RESOURCES

              Since we will be talking about some fairly complex concepts and ideas in the next couple of weeks, here’s an outline which summarizes the most important ideas you’ll be hearing about during this part of the course. I’ve indicated the chapters in your book, Faces of the Caribbean, where you’ll find more detailed discussions of these ideas. We will be talking more about these ideas throughout the rest of the semester. Remember: these are the important factors which have made the societies of the Caribbean what they are today.

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1.  The Environment (chapter 5 in your book).

a.  What kinds of climates and environments are found on these small islands?

b.  The dark side of paradise: natural disasters and the Caribbean.

c.  Changes in the Caribbean environment since 1492: deforestation, introduction of new plants and animals into the region, environmental damage by people (for example, the impact of the tourist industry, the bauxite industry in Jamaica, etc.).

2.  The People of the Caribbean.

a.  The virtual extermination of the pre-1492 population of the Caribbean (the Taino of the Greater Antilles and the various peoples whom the Spanish called “Caribs”). Why did this happen (especially important was the role of new infectious diseases introduced into the

b.  Caribbean by people from other parts of the world) and what were the consequences?

The people who populate the region today are the descendants of people who came from all over the world: Europe, Africa, India, China and Southeast Asia, the Middle East, etc.

3.  Colonialism in the Caribbean (chapter 1)

a.  What effect did centuries of European (an in the 20th century the U.S.) colonialism have on the societies of the Caribbean (if you’re not sure what exactly colonialism is, please make an effort to find out)?

4.  Plantations in the Caribbean (chapters 2 and 6).

a.  The development of what scholars call the plantation system began to develop very early on in Caribbean history. The first really successful plantation system (successful in the sense that it made some Europeans very rich) was the one that developed on the British island of Barbados in the mid-1600’s. Most Caribbean societies today have a history of large-scale plantations dominating political and economic life.

b.  Over the centuries these plantations have grown a variety of tropical products: coffee, spices, tobacco, bananas, chocolate, and, by far the most important, sugarcane.

c.  These plantations were literally “agricultural factories” producing a variety of tropical crops for export to Europe and, later, to the U.S.

5.  The Atlantic Slave Trade and the Caribbean (chapters 6 and 7).

a.  The development of the plantation system would not have been possible without a large labor force. After a number of failed experiments, Europeans in the mid-1600’s turned to West Africa as a source of cheap and abundant labor.

b.  From the early 1500s, when the Spanish began importing (although on a relatively small scale compared to what would come later) enslaved Africans into their Caribbean colonies, until the late 1800’s (when Spain finally emancipated the slaves in its colony of Cuba), approximately 5 million Africans, most of them West Africans, were brought to the Caribbean. Note that this number only includes those Africans who made it here alive; it does not include those who died either back in Africa or those who died on what was known as “the Middle Passage”,  voyage of the slave ships across the Atlantic.

c.  What were the consequences of slavery for the development of Caribbean societies? Remember that the slave system was a system ultimately based on terror and brutality, or at least the continual threat of terror.

6.  Class and Color in the Caribbean (chapter 10).

a.  One of the long term legacies of Caribbean slavery was the development of societies where wealth and power were, and to at least some extent still are, closely linked to what Europeans called “race”. The color of one’s skin became the crucial factor in individuals’ access to wealth, power, and status (what social scientists call “class”). Lighter skinned people tend to occupy the top levels of Caribbean societies; darker skinned people tended to make up the bottom levels. In between these two extremes was usually a group of people who were of mixed ancestry.

7.  Caribbean Cultures and the Creolisation Process (chapter 10).

a.  What exactly are anthropologists talking about when they talk about culture and its importance in human life?

b.  There are 3 important points to remember about what we think of as Caribbean cultures:

i.  Caribbean cultures of today are the result of a process (still going on) which anthropologists call creolisation (see especially pages 161-162): the blending of cultural elements from many different parts of the world. Out of this blending process came a variety of new cultures.

ii.  What we think of as Caribbean cultures (as seen in such diverse aspects of life as foods, languages, music, religions, etc.) have been largely the creation of people at the bottom of these societies. The people at the top usually tried their best to maintain a culture that was as European as possible.

8.  Migration in Caribbean History (chapter 10).

a.  The movement of people has been an important part of Caribbean history. There have been many different kinds of migrations: the various migrations which brought people to the islands (starting at least 6000 years ago), migration within islands, migration from one island to another, and, especially important after World War 2, migration out of the

Caribbean (for example, the more than 200 thousand English-speaking West Indians who left for Britain after 1945 or the hundreds of thousands of Puerto Ricans who left the island after the mid-1950’s).

b.  Important questions about migration:

i.  Why do people choose to leave in the first place? Scholars who study migration use the term “push factors” for the factors at home which impel people to migrate. A perceived lack of economic opportunities has been a key factor here.

ii.  What about the “pull factors” involved in migration? What draws immigrants to the various places they go?

iii. How do people migrate?

iv.  What do Caribbean immigrants experience once in their new homes?

v.  What are the consequences of migration for the societies that people leave behind? The people who do make the decision to migrate are often the people that Caribbean societies can least afford to lose.

9.  The Caribbean in the Modern World (chapters 3 and 10).

a.  In an age of globalization and “free” trade, what happens to the small societies (in some cases “microstates” like the island of Dominica) of the Caribbean? Does the world need the Caribbean anymore?

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