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Lords of the Pacific: Sugar Barons in the Hawaiian and Philippine Islands

Richard P. Tucker

in Insatiable Appetite: The United States and the Ecological Degradation of the Tropical World

This chapter takes a look at the sugar barons who built sugar plantations in the Hawaiian and Philippine Islands. The first section examines the trade in China, which was mostly cloth, timber, ... More

This chapter takes a look at the sugar barons who built sugar plantations in the Hawaiian and Philippine Islands. The first section examines the trade in China, which was mostly cloth, timber, spices, and other natural and processed products. It notes that the first Europeans who travelled to Southeast Asia and the South China Sea hoped to find sources of infinite riches and resources. These resources could be ocean resources, such as sea otter pelts and whale oil. The next section is about the discovery of the Hawaiian Islands and the plunder of sandalwood. It then discusses the American sugar barons in Hawaii and the Philippines, and notes that growing sugar cane in Hawaii was very different from growing sugar cane in other locations. The chapter also discusses the plantation system and introduces blackbirding, which is the practice of impressing unwilling laborers into service. The Hawaiian Sugar Planters' Association (HSPA), sugar production, and the profits made during and after the Second World War are also discussed.Less

Specific Aspects of Plantation Systems in the New World: Community Subcultures and Social Classes

Eric R. Wolf

in Pathways of Power: Building an Anthropology of the Modern World

This chapter attempts to discuss peasants in relation to landless workers and other social groupings within plantation systems. It places a typological construct on a continuum that could do justice ... More

This chapter attempts to discuss peasants in relation to landless workers and other social groupings within plantation systems. It places a typological construct on a continuum that could do justice to the range of variation in existing plantation systems in the New World and traces out the implications of these variable modes for the formation of subcultures, classes, and communities in the different regions. Plantation creates new communities, which translates in spatial terms into the chain of command of owners, managers, overseers, permanent laborers, and seasonal workers. The new-style plantation dispenses altogether with personalized phrasings of its technical requirements. These may involve attempts to widen the resource base through the manipulation of two different sets of cultural forms and attempts to improve life chances through mobility and, finally, to defend a specialized culturally defined niche and to participate in the life of the host society through a double adaptation.Less

Two Popular Theories of Caribbean Ideology and Race Relations: Frantz Fanon’s Theory of Liberating Violence and the Theory of Plantation Societies

Anthony P. Maingot

in Race, Ideology, and the Decline of Caribbean Marxism

Without specific reference to Haiti, two theories of regional ideology were widely held and circulated throughout the Caribbean: those of the Martinican Frantz Fanon on one hand ans those of the New ... More

Without specific reference to Haiti, two theories of regional ideology were widely held and circulated throughout the Caribbean: those of the Martinican Frantz Fanon on one hand ans those of the New World Group on the other. Both dealt with Marxist ideologies and race. Fanon, in his Algerian War of Liberation phase, argued that only by “liberating violence” against the white colonist could the colonial colored man be freed from his complexes. As a psychiatrist, Fanon had diagnosed an inferiority complex in the colonial, a phenomenon he compared to wearing a white mask over a black skin. The New World Group argued that only with the total elimination of the plantation system and the white elite which governed it could the islands begin the process of develoment. Both theories have proven mistaken.Less

Indian Migration during the Indentured Period

Lomarsh Roopnarine

in The Indian Caribbean: Migration and Identity in the Diaspora

This chapter studies Indian migration during indenture, primarily from when Indians arrived on the plantations to when their contractual obligations expired. It argues that Indians were brought to ... More

This chapter studies Indian migration during indenture, primarily from when Indians arrived on the plantations to when their contractual obligations expired. It argues that Indians were brought to the Caribbean under a series of restrictive colonial policies that stymied free movement. Indentured servants were subjected to a battery of labor ordinances and laws that locked them within a two-mile radius of their assigned plantations. Nonetheless, it is argued that some Indians challenged these policies in innovative ways to exercise their rights to migrate. Some took illegal actions and deserted the plantations, while others waited until their contracts expired to migrate. The number of Indians who migrated was smaller than those who remained in their residencies, but migration was a permanent feature of the plantation system that lasted as long as the period of indenture.Less

Identity and Cultural Interaction in French Guiana during the Eighteenth Century: The Case of the Storehouse at Loyola

Antoine Loyer Rousselle and Réginald Auger

in Archaeological Perspectives on the French in the New World

In colonial times, French Guiana, located on the north coast of South America, was part of the circum-Caribbean region and participated in the triangular trade. Beginning with their arrival in 1665, ... More

In colonial times, French Guiana, located on the north coast of South America, was part of the circum-Caribbean region and participated in the triangular trade. Beginning with their arrival in 1665, Jesuit missionaries had control over the religious affairs for the colony and gained a very influential position within the colonial population until their expulsion (1763-1768). They also participated in the plantation system, as a way to finance the establishment of their evangelization work among the Native people of South America. With their most iconic plantation, the Habitation Loyola (ca 1720-1768), the Jesuits were the first producers of sugar, coffee, and cocoa; over a century of their exploitation more than a thousand slaves were scattered over all their possessions. In this chapter we seek to explore the social dynamics and cultural interactions between the Jesuits, the enslaved Africans, and the Native populations within the plantation system. We begin with a brief review of the plantation studies in French Guiana and the Caribbean, then we address the questions of cultural interaction studies and the creolization process. Our analysis is based on specific sets of artifacts retrieved mainly from a trash deposit associated with the kitchen and the Great House.Less

Unleashing the Loas: The Literary Legacy of the Haitian Revolution in the U.S. South and the Caribbean

John Wharton Lowe

in Calypso Magnolia: The Crosscurrents of Caribbean and Southern Literature

This chapter surveys the ways in which the Haitian Revolution was made a taboo subject in the U.S. South, as slave owners feared a similar conflagration; concurrently, however, appearances of the ... More

This chapter surveys the ways in which the Haitian Revolution was made a taboo subject in the U.S. South, as slave owners feared a similar conflagration; concurrently, however, appearances of the conflict in Southern letters is surveyed, leading to a comparison of the guarded nature of such presentations with subsequent settings of the conflict by Caribbean writers. Nineteenth-century works by Victor Séjour, Charles Gayarré, Sherwood Bonner, George Washington Cable, and Grace King are noted, followed by extended readings of texts by twentieth-century writers such as Arna Bontemps, Zora Neale Hurston, James Weldon Johnson, and William Faulkner, who are placed in company with Caribbean writers - Alejo Carpentier, Aimé Césaire, C.L.R. James, Derek Walcott, Édouard Glissant - who dramatized the conflict. The chapter concludes with a reading of Madison Smartt Bell’s All Soul’s Rising. All these sections are supported by a discussion of relevant histories and critical analysis by figures such as J. Michael Dash, Sybille Fischer, Franz Fanon, and Michel-Rolph Trouillot; special attention goes to vodoun, the interplay of colonial powers in the basin, varying portrayals of leaders such as Macandal, Toussaint, and LeClerc, and the contrasting roles of enslaved characters, who mount the “revolution from below.”Less

“Map Maker, Troublemaker, History Maker”: The Boll Weevil Threatens the Delta

in Boll Weevil Blues: Cotton, Myth, and Power in the American South

This chapter addresses the anxiety of the Yazoo-Mississippi Delta about the boll weevil. The boll weevil forced planters to tighten their grip on Delta society. From the moment of its arrival in 1908 ... More

This chapter addresses the anxiety of the Yazoo-Mississippi Delta about the boll weevil. The boll weevil forced planters to tighten their grip on Delta society. From the moment of its arrival in 1908 to the start of the New Deal, the same white landowners exercised their social, political, and economic power over black sharecroppers by using their control of the Delta's physical environment as their main weapon. It is noted that the Delta could be saved from the boll weevil by its geographic location and the presence of its powerful planter class. The farmers were reluctantly encouraged to plant crops other than cotton, but only on “surplus land.” The myth of the boll weevil's wholesale destruction of the plantation system had troubled Delta society even before the pest itself attained the alluvial region. There was no mass exodus of labor from the Delta during the boll weevil's initial foray into northwest Mississippi.Less

“An Unfeeling Traffick”: The Intercolonial Movement of Slaves in the British Caribbean, 1807–1833

Hilary McD. Beckles

in The Chattel Principle: Internal Slave Trades in the Americas

This chapter discusses how stakeholders of the plantation system were divided after 1807 with respect to its economic condition, viability, and responsiveness to meaningful social reform. The ... More

This chapter discusses how stakeholders of the plantation system were divided after 1807 with respect to its economic condition, viability, and responsiveness to meaningful social reform. The enslaved population also took the opportunity to press its opinions and emerged as a major focus of policy formulation. In some instances slaves successfully challenged slaveowners' rights by protesting relocation proposals. In this regard, they welcomed the imperial campaign to promote amelioration strategies. Many debates serve to illuminate the forces that brought about the dismantlement of chattel slavery in English Caribbean colonies. None, however, reveals as clearly the tensions and contradictions inherent to the slave system as that concerning the intercolonial movement of enslaved persons during the years between the 1807 abolition of the transatlantic slave trade and the 1833 emancipation legislation, which is the main focus of this chapter.Less

The Peasant in Economic Modernization

Yujiro Hayami

in Can Economic Growth Be Sustained?: The Collected Papers of Vernon W. Ruttan and Yujiro Hayami

This chapter reviews controversy concerning the nature and fate of the peasantry in the course of modern economic development. It discusses the strengths and weaknesses of the peasant system in ... More

This chapter reviews controversy concerning the nature and fate of the peasantry in the course of modern economic development. It discusses the strengths and weaknesses of the peasant system in comparison with the plantation system, and investigates the impact of commercialization on peasants, focusing on the relationship between peasants and middlemen. The chapter concludes with an analysis of the possibility of rural-based economic development by mobilizing peasants’ entrepreneurship in commerce and industry, including policies to enhance the process.Less

Cotton's Obituaries: The Boll Weevil in Georgia

in Boll Weevil Blues: Cotton, Myth, and Power in the American South

This chapter discusses in detail the boll weevil in Georgia, where the image of the boll weevil as the destroyer of the plantation system has proven stronger and more lasting than in any other state. ... More

This chapter discusses in detail the boll weevil in Georgia, where the image of the boll weevil as the destroyer of the plantation system has proven stronger and more lasting than in any other state. The state leaders made the appearance of preparing the farmers to fight the weevil as the pest approached and then finally invaded Georgia. Since the earliest days of the boll weevil's arrival in the state, Georgia's farm experts had been very concerned about a labor exodus, and in Georgia, the outmigration had been heavy. The idea that the boll weevil eliminated their cotton livelihood came closer to the truth there than in any of the other Deep South states. The appearance of the pest did correspond with both a decline in the state's cotton production and an exodus of cotton laborers.Less

Fitting In

Perry Gauci

in William Beckford: First Prime Minister of the London Empire

This chapter describes the difficulties faced by Beckford as he endeavored to fit into metropolitan society. Regardless of the recent success of the West India lobby in Parliament, and for all his ... More

This chapter describes the difficulties faced by Beckford as he endeavored to fit into metropolitan society. Regardless of the recent success of the West India lobby in Parliament, and for all his personal advancement in Jamaican society, he knew that he would face obstacles along the way. His arrival back in Britain coincided with a key juncture, when other West Indian settlers also found opportunity to make an impact in the mother country. While the success of the plantation system would provide the greater sugar magnates with the financial clout to relocate to Britain, it remained to be seen whether political advancement or social acceptance would be accorded to Beckford and his fellow Creoles. His experiences over the ensuing decade highlighted the differences that remained between colonial and metropolitan cultures, however much white Caribbeans sought to model themselves on the British.Less