An alternative approach to examining and studying Caribbean history part I

BY DESMOND BOLLERS

It is difficult to find a single exhaustive catalogue of the resistance of the non-European peoples of the Caribbean to European conquest, dispossession, domination, enslavement and ultimately, genocide. Additionally, teaching of Caribbean history is usually siloed by colonial possession with students in the English-speaking Caribbean being taught ‘West Indian’ history while those in the French-speaking Caribbean learn only about the history of the former or current French colonies/Départements. In the former Spanish colonies, possibly because they are larger, students learn only their own national history.

The free online course titled “Freedom Fighters of the Caribbean,” endeavours to overcome this problem by covering the history of the Caribbean in its entirety – the islands of the Caribbean Sea as well as the lands of the Caribbean littoral and adjacent territories such as the Guianas.

The reason for this approach is that the Native Americans suffered the same fate – dispossession, enslavement and, in some cases, genocide regardless of the nationality of the colonial administrators. The horror of slavery was the same regardless of the nationality of the enslaver. The lash of the whip was just as cruel whether the one wielding the whip spoke: Danish, Dutch, English, French or Spanish. As the Trinidadian calypsonian Black Stalin put it in his 1979 “Caribbean Man” Afro- Caribbean’s are “One race ………From de same place ………Dat make de same trip …….On de same ship.”

The history books about the Caribbean give full coverage to the contests among the European powers to settle the islands and territories of the Caribbean, and to capture territory from each other and the various types of administrative structures put in place by the Europeans to manage their colonies, and to control and exploit first the Native Americans and later the enslaved Africans whose labour produced the goods that led to the wealth of those nations. The books present painfully detailed accounts of the battles, both on land and at sea and the diplomatic contests among the Europeans contending for dominance in the Caribbean.

However, these same history books, even those written by persons born in the Caribbean, generally provide very little detail about the efforts of the original inhabitants to retain possession of the lands of their ancestors in the face of the assault launched against them by the European interlopers.

Stay tuned for Part II of “An alternative approach to examining and studying Caribbean history“