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Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2009

Elsa V. Goveia
Elsa V. Goveia
Affiliation:
University College of the West Indies, Jamaica
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Extract

The West Indian area is one of the most attractive fields for comparative study. For, as Dr. Mintz has pointed out, it includes territories, generally similar in physical environment, which, nevertheless, differ in their individual histories. The marked divergence in the histories of Puerto Rico and Jamaica during the first half of the nineteenth century is only one instance among many which can be cited as worthy of attention. The interest of this particular case is that it raises the point in an acute form.

Type
Research Article
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 1 , Issue 3 , March 1959 , pp. 281 - 283
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 1959

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References

1 In my Study of the Historiography of the British West Indies (Mexico, 1956), pp. 140–151Google Scholar, I have tried to indicate, by comparing his interpretation with those of other writers including Sewell, why it is that Merivale seems to me to have under-rated the importance of other factors, such as capital, while over-rating the importance of land.

2 There is a very useful discussion of this question by George, Cumper, “Labour Demand and Supply in the Jamaican Sugar Industry”, in Social and Economic Studies, Vol. II, No. 4Google Scholar, in which Cumper shows the soundness of Sewell's emphasis on capital in explaining the difficulties of the Jamaican sugar industry after Emancipation.

3 Philip, Curtin, Two Jamaicas (Cambridge, Mass., 1955)Google Scholar, is one of the more recent works dealing with this emergence of a “new” Jamaica.

4 Probably the best-known exposition of the “capitalistic” nature of the sugar industry in the West Indies is Fernando, Ortiz’ brilliant Cuban Counterpoint: Tobacco and Sugar (New York, 1947).Google Scholar

5 Eric, Williams, Capitalism and Slavery (Chapel Hill, 1944).Google Scholar