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India and the Shaping of the Indo-Guyanese Imagination, 1890s-1920s
When the first East Indian intellectuals emerged in British Guiana at the end of the nineteenth century, most of their compatriots were still working as indentured or free labourers on the colony's sugar estates. Indians were conscious that they were looked down on as barbarous 'coolies' by other sections of the population. In response, the intellectual elite constructed a view of India, drawn from the writings of Max Muller and Tagore, which provided the Indo-Guyanese community with a sustaining sense of self-esteem and the sources of its resistance to colonialism. Focusing on individuals such as Joseph and Peter Ruhomon, JA Luckhoo and WH Wharton, the study looks at the way the beginnings ...
Bechu
Clem Seecharan has written a useful documentary history of Bechu, the first Indian to testify before the Royal Commission in 1897. Now who was this Bechu? He was, in Seecharan's words, "an indefatigable gadfly," who in letters to the local press revealed the conditions of Indian indentureship: poor wages, sexual exploitation of women by overseers and managers, and the virtual impossibility for Indians to obtain justice because of the collusion between colonial authorities and the planters. This knowledge we owe to economic historian Alan Adamson who "discovered" Bechu in the 1960s. Yet the man himself remained somewhat of a mystery, something Bechu himself seems to have cultivated. Seecharan has now filled a number of lacunae in our understanding with this two-part volume. The first section focuses on Bechu and the British Guianese environment in the late nineteenth century, while the second part includes letters and memoranda by Bechu (and reactions to them by local opponents).
Sweetening "bitter Sugar"
"This book is about Jock Campbell's role in the shaping of British Guiana (Guyana) towards the end of the empire. Campbell, the head of the Booker Company which owned most of the sugar plantations in colonial Guyana, was a reformer whose Fabian socialist beliefs drove him to secure major benefits for sugar workers, in the 1950s-60s." "Clem Seecharan explores the interplay between Campbell's programme of reforms and the doctrinaire Marxism of Guyana's charismatic politician Cheddi Jagan." "Sweetening 'Bitter Sugar' is part biography, part history and politics. It also encompasses ethnicity, trade unionism, agricultural and technological innovation, and health, housing and social welfare reforms. It is a study in modern Caribbean historiography."--BOOK JACKET.
Mother India's Shadow Over El Dorado
"Multiple constructions of India, as homeland, have been central to the shaping of Indo-Guyanese identity. An imagined India part fact, part fantasy has continually woven into the Indo-Guyanese consciousness a rich, elevating perception of self: an antidote to the deflating image of the coolie that lingered when the last Indian indentures were cancelled in 1920. In Mother India s Shadow over El Dorado: Indo-Guyanese Politics and Identity, 1890s-1930s, Clem Seecharan reconstructs the circumstances surrounding the development of Indo-Guyanese nationalism. He assesses the impact of the Golden Age of the Ramayana; the glories of ancient India unearthed by British scholars/administrators (Indolog...
Finding Myself
Clem Seecharan brings together two visions of Caribbean history--one public, the other personal--in his discussions of race, culture, and politics in Guyana and the Caribbean. Shaped over a period of 20 years, this is an elegantly written, scholarly, but highly accessible collection of essays that are essentially a map of how one of the Caribbean's most distinguished historians has sought to discover himself through practice of his craft. It covers new ground in Indo-Caribbean history primarily, but it also explores innovatively aspects of the intellectual legacy of four eminent Caribbean writers and thinkers: Guyanese poet Martin Carter, Guyanese historian Walter Rodney, Nobel laureate V.S. Naipaul, and C.L.R. James, author of one of the great books of the 20th century, Beyond a Boundary.
The Point Is to Change the World
Radical activist, thinker, and comrade of Walter Rodney, Andaiye was one of the Caribbean’s most important political voices. For the first time, her writings are published in one collection. Through essays, letters, and journal entries, Andaiye’s thinking on the intersections of gender, race, class, and power are powerfully articulated, Caribbean histories emerge, and stories from a life lived at the barricades are revealed. We learn about the early years of the Working Peopl’s Alliance, the meaning asnd impact of the murder of Walter Rodney and the fall of the Grenada Revolution. Throughout, we bear witness to Andaiye’s acute understanding of politics rooted in communities and the daily lives of so-called ordinary people. Featuring forewords by Clem Seecharan and Robin DG Kelley, these texts will become vital tools in our own struggles to “overcome the power relations that are embedded in every unequal facet of our lives.”
Marxism, Colonialism, and Cricket
Widely regarded as one of the most important and influential sports books of all time, C. L. R. James's Beyond a Boundary is—among other things—a pioneering study of popular culture, an analysis of resistance to empire and racism, and a personal reflection on the history of colonialism and its effects in the Caribbean. More than fifty years after the publication of James's classic text, the contributors to Marxism, Colonialism, and Cricket investigate Beyond a Boundary's production and reception and its implication for debates about sports, gender, aesthetics, race, popular culture, politics, imperialism, and English and Caribbean identity. Including a previously unseen first draft of Be...
Ethnicity, Class, and Nationalism
The result is a comparative study that is unique in its scope and also in its level of scholarly reflection. This book is essential reading for anyone interested in advancing their analysis of political, economic, social, and cultural thought in the Caribbean."--Jacket.
They Gave the Crowd Plenty Fun
In 1948, the West Indies cricket team beat England at Lord's for the first time. For some, West Indian victories provided a source of self-esteem. Whether they were passionate cricket fans or not, cricket offered some of the growing diaspora an opportunity to express a collective sense of identity. Colin Babb reflects on events which influenced the development of the social impact of cricket on British Caribbean communities from the arrival of the Empire Windrush onwards. He also explores factors which have challenged cricket's position as a social force for the diaspora today.
U.S. Intervention in British Guiana
In the first published account of the massive U.S. covert intervention in British Guiana between 1953 and 1969, Stephen G. Rabe uncovers a Cold War story of imperialism, gender bias, and racism. When the South American colony now known as Guyana was due to gain independence from Britain in the 1960s, U.S. officials in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations feared it would become a communist nation under the leadership of Cheddi Jagan, a Marxist who was very popular among the South Asian (mostly Indian) majority. Although to this day the CIA refuses to confirm or deny involvement, Rabe presents evidence that CIA funding, through a program run by the AFL-CIO, helped foment the labor unrest, race riots, and general chaos that led to Jagan's replacement in 1964. The political leader preferred by the United States, Forbes Burnham, went on to lead a twenty-year dictatorship in which he persecuted the majority Indian population. Considering race, gender, religion, and ethnicity along with traditional approaches to diplomatic history, Rabe's analysis of this Cold War tragedy serves as a needed corrective to interpretations that depict the Cold War as an unsullied U.S. triumph.
