1. Recitation #1: - Why Anthro. Why the Caribbean
Recitation #1: - Why Anthro? Why the Caribbean? - Populating the Caribbean - Sugar, Surplus, Capitalism TextS: Trouillot’s “The Caribbean Region” Cromwell’s “More than slaves” Hauser’s “Land, Labor, and Things”
Prof. L. Kaifa Roland
The Caribbean in
Post-Colonial Perspective
Anth 1115

2. (Trouillot; Day 2 Notes)
Why Anthropology?
(Trouillot; Day 2 Notes)
Objective
Understanding & Explaining Humankind
Describe, Analyze & Explain different cultures (past, present, geographically dispersed)
Kinds of anthro
- Physical/Biological
- Archaeological
- Linguistic
- Socio-cultural
Concerned with (sub/conscious) behaviors & actions
Interested in the question: How have groups adapted and given meaning to their lives?

3. What is Culture?
Shared beliefs/understandings/practices that are learned

4. Background to the Discipline
Origins in European discovery
Anthro and colonial legacy
Obsessed with being a Natural science?

5. Why post-colonial approach?
Considers legacy of colonial rule
Role in national/cultural identity

6. Why the Caribbean?
Problematic for essentialist & essentializing anthropology
Exemplifies globalization historically and today
Colonial histories
Creolization and local issues
Continuing issues of meanings of mobility

7. QUESTIONS/COMMENTS/DISCUSSION

8. What did Columbus “Discover”? (Cromwell; Day 3 Notes)
“Indians”
Ciboney
oldest
Taino-Arawak
most numerous
Carib (aka Kalinago)
most recent arrival
military threat
Path to Spn Domination
Acculturation/
Assimilation
Military technology
Disease

9. Gold on the Mainlands Spanish attention to North and South America
Period of creole identity formation in Caribbean
Enter Holland, England, and France

10. Pirates and other Caribbean “Others”
Soldiers
Smugglers/Pirates
Europe’s ethnic minorities
Jews
Irish
Scots
Free(d) people of color
Native Americans
Maroons (runaways)

11. Dutch West India Company
Mass importation of enslaved Africans
Shift to plantation slavery
Shift to chattel slavery
Underwater monument to lives lost to slavery off coast Grenada

12. Race under construction
Meanings assigned to skin color
Whites
Browns/Coloreds/Mulatos
Blacks/Slaves

13. QUESTIONS/COMMENTS/DISCUSSION

14. Gimme some Sugar!(Hauser; Day 4 Notes)
Natural/Biological affinity for sweetness
Sweetness in nature
From Flavor to “Taste”

15. Sugar requires Labor

16. Supply and Demand (supply driven)
Pre-1650s low global supply
Dutch technology and growing slave labor
Small-scale spread to working class by mid-1700s

17. Shift to High Supply Europe and global colonization
Domestic market + colonial market

18. Surplus and the seeds of market capitalism
Chancellor Eric Williams
Surplus in global sugar provided Europe capital for industrialization
Anthropologist Sydney Mintz
surplus in domestic provisions demonstrated people will work harder for pay
Hauser’s article
Strength of domestic surplus and global surplus depends on scale
Both/neither Williams/Mintz could be correct in why slavery ended and free market capitalism arose

19. Surplus under Analysis
Land Surplus: Dominica
Located btwn Martinique and Guadeloupe
Erased natives and “unused surplus”
French squatters surplus provisions for Mart & Guad
British take Dominica and surplus for UK
Labor Surplus
Slaves provisioning in “free time”
Feed household
Sell surplus at market
SL large regimented plantation =greater global surplus;
Less provisioning=Less household surplus
BC smaller/newer plantation
=weaker global sugar surplus;
greater domestic provisioning =greater household surplus
Material Surplus
Utilitarian/Standard housewares in SL
More differentiated housewares in BC

20. QUESTIONS/COMMENTS/DISCUSSION