Books published by University of the West Indies Press

The contributors to thi volume address topics and issues of colonial and postcolonial citizenship, identity and belonging; sovereignty and the body politic and unresolved class and other contradictions of the Haitian Revolution, Commonwealth Caribbean societies, Cuba, and the non-independent territories of Puerto Rico and the Netherlands Antilles, the French Antilles, and the Cayman Islands.

An exposure of women as agents of history - a path-breaking achievement at a time when Caribbean historiography ignored women. The white woman consumed, the coloured woman served and the black woman laboured.

Provides a comprehensive, well-researched and up-to-date discussion of the local and international health communication literature and provides a theoretical and practical framework for teaching health and/or medical communication skills.

Provides an authentic record of current English from the Caribbean archipelago, Guyana and Belize. Drawing its data from a broad range of enquiry, the Dictionary surveys a range of over 20,000 words and phrases and includes hundreds of illustrative citations.

Since the mid-nineteenth-century abolition of slavery, the call for reparations for the crime of African enslavement and native genocide has been growing. In the Caribbean, grassroots and official voices now constitute a regional reparations movement. While it remains a fractured, contentious and divisive call, it generates considerable public interest, especially within sections of the community that are concerned with issues of social justice, equity, civil and human rights, education, and cultural identity. The reparations discourse has been shaped by the voices from these fields as they seek to build a future upon the settlement of historical crimes. This is the first scholarly work that looks comprehensively at the reparations discussion in the Caribbean. Written by a leading economic historian of the region, a seasoned activist in the wider movement for social justice and advocacy of historical truth, Britain's Black Debt looks at the origins and development of reparations as a regional and international process. Weaving detailed historical data on Caribbean slavery and the transatlantic slave trade together with legal principles and the politics of postcolonialism, Beckles sets out a solid academic analysis of the evidence. He concludes that Britain has a case of reparations to answer which the Caribbean should litigate. International law provides that chattel slavery as practised by Britain was a crime against humanity. Slavery was invested in by the royal family, the government, the established church, most elite families, and large public institutions in the private and public sector. Citing the legal principles of unjust and criminal enrichment, the author presents a compelling argument for Britain's payment of its black debt, a debt that it continues to deny in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. It is at once an exciting narration of Britain's dominance of the slave markets that enriched the economy and a seminal conceptual journey into the hidden politics and public posturing of leaders on both sides of the Atlantic. No work of this kind has ever been attempted. No author has had the diversity of historical research skills, national and international political involvement, and personal engagement as an activist to present such a complex yet accessible work of scholarship.

A History of Money and Banking in Barbados documents the development of money and commercial banking in Barbados from the date of the settlement in 1627 to the establishment of the Central Bank of Barbados in 1973. It examines the early years of barter; the introduction of British coins by the Royal Proclamations of 1825 and 1838; the issue of colonial coins (anchor money); the introduction and circulation of foreign coins; the debate over the legal tender of British silver coins and the share of the seigniorage of these coins. Armstrong examines the first banks, the Colonial Bank and the West India Bank, in the nineteenth century, the introduction of Canadian banks in the twentieth century, the expansion of Barclays Bank as well as the issue of Barbados government currency notes; the measures taken by the British government and the Caribbean governments during the Second World War to ensure an adequate supply of currency; and the agreement between Barbados, Trinidad and British Guiana (Guyana) to make their government currency legal tender in each country. Armstrong analyses the establishment and operation of the British Caribbean Currency Board and its acrimonious demise, the establishment of the East Caribbean Currency Authority, the withdrawal of Barbados from the Authority, and the establishment of the Central Bank of Barbados.

Provides a panorama of performance from the imported touring companies nad fledgling local elitist groups of the 1920s and 1930s, to the birth of the Little Theatre Movement during the war years; from the small, ambitious groups of the 1950s and 1960s to the thriving commercial roots theatre of the twenty-first century.

Reconstructs a biography of enslaved Archibald Monteath, an Igbo, who was brought to Jamaica around 1802, became active in the Moravian Church and later purchased his freedom. This book explores the sociology of slavery from 1750 to the 1860s through Monteath's biography.

Following the abolition of slavery in the Caribbean, a concerted effort was made to replace enslaved labour with indentured Indian labour. This is the story of one Indian woman's tragic experience in trying to immigrate to the Caribbean in the 19th century.

This remarkable description of Jamaica in the 1680s was written by a contemporary English observer, John Taylor, who spent some months on the island. He offers an image of the island before the general spread of sugar cultivation, citing some creatures now extinct n Jamaica; he also makes many suggestions about the medical use of natural products.

Aalyses the important but neglected role of the attorneys who managed estates, chiefly for absentee proprietors, and assesses their efficiency and impact on Jamaica during slavery and freedom. This work charts both the extent of absentee ownership and the complex structure of the managerial hierarchy that stretched across the Atlantic.