- Paperback: 240 pages
- Publisher: Cambridge University Press (20 Sep 1990)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0521358795
- ISBN-13: 978-0521358798
- Product Dimensions: 22.6 x 15.1 x 1.4 cm
- Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 1,109,005 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- See Complete Table of Contents
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Product Description
Review
"...the first comprehensive history of the island ever written by a professional historian...[Beckles] has succeeded admirably in producing a clear, competent, and comprehensive social history of Barbados, incorporating much information into a relatively short book while avoiding facile oversimplification." Hispanic American Historical Review
Product Description
This book is the first general history of Barbados written by a professional historian. Using a vigorous and unbiased approach to the collective experience of all the island's inhabitants, the author traces the events and ideas that shaped contemporary society. He examines the influences of the Amerindians, European colonisation, the sugar industry, the African slave trade, emancipation, the civil rights movement, independence and nationalism. Dr Beckles has blended an impressive quantity of primary research and published literature to produce an exciting and provocative history of this island state.
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First Sentence
Barbados, unlike some of the other islands in the Caribbean, was not inhabited during the Archaic Age. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
Barbados, unlike some of the other islands in the Caribbean, was not inhabited during the Archaic Age. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Mixed feelings, but encouragement?,
By
This review is from: A History of Barbados: From Amerindian Settlement to Nation-State (Paperback)
I am not a history buff, but as my wife an I were travelling to Barbados on vacation, I felt it would serve us well to understand the basics of Barbadian history, so we might put our human experiences there into some perspective.
The book is fluid at times, but the flow is often interrupted by excessive detail about the historical financial data on the sugar cane industry. When I say excessive, I mean literally that I tired of reading about the price of a "hogshead" of sugar cane during the year 1792 and how that compared with the same in 1801, and 1805, and 1820, and 1823, and 1825, and well you get the point. The sheer volume of forgettable numbers is heavy enough on the eyes to lull the reader into REM sleep. The writer ought to have summarized financial data swiftly to permit a more entertaining read. Defining exactly what a hogshead, and other colloquialial and period expressions are, might have been nice as well, since I had no dictionary on vacation, and couldn't look it up until I got back to the states. In fairness, the specific financial dynamics of sugar cane sales were critical to political developments on the island, and the transaction details provided in the book convey that point with impunity. Another mild complaint I had is that the writer sometimes foreshadows or backtracks to different time periods to explain the political background of some protagonist or event in the reader's current chapter. Thus, the book sometimes lacks some chronological linearity which might better satisfy a sense of forward progress in time. It would be easy to dramatize or embellish the struggle of Barbadians to overcome slavery, indentured servitude, and discriminatory labor practices. The writer mostly avoided this, which helps the book maintain historic and factual integrity. The book, unlike some others, has not been reduced to a commentary of Barbadian superheroes. This book is SCREAMING for a second edition.
4.0 out of 5 stars
A History of Barbados,
By Havana56 (London, UK) - See all my reviews
This review is from: A History of Barbados: From Amerindian Settlement to Caribbean Single Market (Paperback)
Have travelled to Barbados often so was interested in reading this book. Good to see something published that is not a big money spinner. Enjoyed this book.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta) Amazon.com:
4.0 out of 5 stars (1 customer review) 1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Careful, interesting and informative, although flawed,
By Jerry Dwyer - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: A History of Barbados: From Amerindian Settlement to Caribbean Single Market (Paperback)
This is a careful, thorough history of Barbados. It is a scholarly work in the best sense. It is interesting, thorough, clear and well written. If you are interested in the history of Barbados, as I am, you will be glad you read the book. It covers the entire history of Barbados, with perhaps only recent history being a little short on detail.
Beckles writes with a point of view: the history of Barbados is a struggle between the slaves and later freed people against a monolithic "plantocracy." The book is not particularly good at sorting out currents and cross-currents in developments, instead forcing everything to fit into this this point of view, whether or not the people or the developments really fit. Beckles has no capability of seeing the history of Barbados from the viewpoint of people who were not slaves, whether they are rich English people or poor Irish people. People from both of these groups were in Barbados for hundreds of years, in fact they were in Barbados before African slavery. He mentions in passing that many of these people left Barbados in the last half of the twentieth century, without discussing either the number who left or the underlying reasons or implications. The observations in the book related to economics are simply dreadful. I am a professional economist, so this probably is a bigger deal to me than you unless you are an economist, but Beckles has no grasp of basic economics. Beckles presents simplistic answers when the results of thoughtful analysis would be informative. The discussion of population and emigration is particularly poor. He sees emigration as all bad. It is hard for those leaving. Still, Beckles does not seem to realize that emigration raised the wages of those remaining in Barbados. He does seem to realize that small peasant holdings did not come into existence in Barbados precisely because the land was productive in producing cash crops on large farms or plantations. Still, rather than examine whether smallholdings were quite unlikely no matter who owned the land when slavery was abolished and what might have happened instead, Beckles blames the evil plantocracy for getting in the way of the former slaves' aspirations and leaves it at that. This is easily the most careful and thorough history of Barbados available. It is the best place to get the actual developments, even though you will not get a good understanding of why they happened. I highly recommend it. |
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