In recent years Caribbean historians have moved beyond the traditional interpretation of the region’s historical experience leading to a more dynamic and accurate re-creation of events and processes. Traditional writings on Caribbean history focuses on European activity, treating the territories as ‘objects’ of history and glorifying the exploits of military and naval commanders, and the activities of colonial rulers and administrators both in the metropole and in the colonies. While later changes in the direction of the writing of Caribbean history sought to make the territories o f the region ‘subject’ rather than ‘objects’ of history, such writings remained fixed on planters, plantations and related commercial activities.

In Beyond Tradition some of the Caribbean’s younger generation of historians reflect new directions in the historiography off the region by extending the focus beyond the plantation and the dominant sugar culture to expose a vast range of dynamic economic, social and political activities previously ignored or considered insignificant. Thus, they introduce more actors, discuss non-agricultural forms of employment and examine the roles of non-elite males and females and those of Asians, Africans and Europeans. Together, these new writings represent a conscious effort to adjust the direction of Caribbean historiography by refining the analytical model to incorporate the full range of historical experiences.

The essays follow a chronological and thematic framework spanning the eighteenth to the twentieth century.

Contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Reconstructing the Eighteenth-Century Caribbean

• Beyond Planters and Plantership – Heather Cateau

1. African Secret Societies: Their Manifestations ad Functions in West Atlantic Plantation Cultures – Claudius Fergus
2. Beautiful and Dangerous: Women’s Depiction of the Eighteenth-Century Caribbean – Aleric Josephs

Movement within the Caribbean

1. 1. Communication and Trade in the Colonial Caribbean: Bridgetown, Barbados, 1714-1834 – Pedro L.V. Welch
   2. Ports around the Caribbean and their Links during the Spanish American Wars of Independence – Johanna von Grafenstein Gareis

• A Centre in the Periphery: His Majesty’s Botanic Garden – St Vincent, 1765-1815 – Rita Pemberton
• Power and the Body: Medicinal Practices on Board the ‘Coolie’ Ship – Kenneth Vidia Parmasad

Forging a Space of Their Own

1. George Numa Dessources, The Numancians and the Attempt to Form a Colony in Eastern Venezuela, circa 1850-1854 – Michael Toussaint
2. E-consciousness: Economic Black Consciousness in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Trinidad and Tobago – Melisse Ellis
3. The Role of Identity in the Movement for Autonomy in Tobago – Learie B. Luke

Contributors

Index

About The Author

Heather Cateau is a lecturer in Caribbean History at the University of the West Indies, St Augustine, specialising in economic history.

Rita Pemberton is a lecturer in Caribbean History at the University of the West Indies, St Augustine, specialising in Caribbean Health and Environmental History.