Economy and Environment in the Caribbean: Barbados and the Windwards in the Late 1800s

In this historical geography of the British colonies of Barbados and the Windwards (St. Lucia, St. Vincent, and Grenada), Bonham C. Richardson describes the economies, environments, and societies of the four geographically dissimilar islands and outlines the severe economic depression they experienced following the 1884 plunge in London sugar prices and the exacerbating effects of two catastrophes, a massive hurricane in 1898 and a volcanic eruption in 1902. In a novel approach, Richardson emphasizes the effects of the islands' physical environments and devotes chapters to climate, waters, lowlands, and highlands. He also demonstrates how these environmental zones and resources were contested by different socioeconomic groups, leading him to one of his most provocative arguments: that depression-induced demonstrations and riots in the islands in the late 1890s in large part precipitated the Royal Commission's wise decision to advocate the break-up of sugarcane plantations into smaller shareholds. Thus, Richardson demonstrates the ways in which working people, far from being victims of colonialism, managed to influence British decision makers so that each island developed a unique adaptation to the economic and geophysical stresses placed on it, proving fruitless the British attempts to "regionalize" the islands under a single policy. Throughout, Richardson's discussion of insularity and islandness is important to understanding problems in the Caribbean today, a century later, and will be of interest to geographers and historians of the Caribbean and to anyone with an interest in small-island economics.