Caribbean-Global Interaction Flashcards
Defintions To Know
- Regional - relating to or coming from a particular part of a country or particlar part of the world.
- Extra - outside or in addition to
- Extra-regional- means outside of the particular part of the world, in the case, the Caribbean.
Pre-emancipation (1834)
Pre-emancipation, the biggest contribution to the world of sugar and rum. This evolution of taste and demand for sugar as an essential food ingredient resulted in major economic and social changes. Sugar drove the slave trade and indentureship. It became a sign of wealth and completely changed the culinary landscape of the world.
Plus, the profits from the sales of goods developed places of Liverpool and London and other coloniser countries.
Post-emancipation (1834)
Economic Influences
Migrant Labour - With the onset of the construction of the Panama Railroad in 1850 thousands of Caribbean West Indians began to migrate en masse in search of a better life. Caribbean West Indians went to Panama in the 1850’s to help build railroads and even larger wave began to arrive in the 1880’s to begin construction on the canal. By 1888 the labour force numbered about 20,000, nine-tenths of them were Afro-Caribbean from the West Indies. They were lured by the opportunity of lucaritve work and the promise of wealth but they were faced with appaling living conditions, diseases and rugged terrain. In 1920, six years after its completion of the Canal, authorites estimated that there were 70,000 West Indies in Panama.
Post Emancipation: Economic Influences (1)
Migrant Labour cont’d - Canadian and US governments have allowed temproray migrant workers to pick fruit in Canada and Florida. These economies were very dependent on Caribbean workers to harvest fruits before winter. Increasing in the 1990s teachers, nurses and other health care professions are actively recruited to fill growing vacancies in these areas, to which nationals are not attracted or are in short supply. Caribbean people continue to impact on the economy of developed countries by providing and educating and willing workforce.
Post Emancipation: Economic Influences (2)
After World War II , many African Caribbeans people migrated to North America and Europe, especially to the US, Canada, the Unted Kingdom, France, and the Netherlands. As a result of the losses during the war, the British government began to encourage amss immigration from the countires of the British Empire and Commonwealth to fill shortages in the labour market. The Windrush Generation refers to the immigrants who were invited to the UK between 1948 and 1971 from Caribbean countries such as Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago and Barbados. The name derives from the ship MV Empire, Windrush, which on June 22, 1948, docked in Tilbury, Essex bringin nearly 500 Jamaicans to the UK. They worked in foundries on the railways as builders as farm workers and as electricians.
Post Emancipation: Economic Influences (3)
Festivals - Large populations of Caribbean migrants in Ney York, Toronto and London have created a tradition of Carnival celebrations which are attended by thousands. These festivals boost the local economy in hotel bookings, taxes on entertainment services, the food industry and provide work in producing coustumes and organizing aspects of the festivals. Ex. Notting Hill Carnival, England generated 93 million euros and 3000 full-time jobs in 2003; Caribana, Toronto generated Canadian $438 million in 2019. The Labor Day Parade (or West Indian Carnvical) in Brooklyn, New York attracts millions of visitors and millions in revenue.
Off-Shore Banking - The Cayman Islands, Bahamas British Virgin Islands, Turks and Caicos, Anguilla and Barbuda are off-shore economies catering to largely to clients abroad. These clients are mainly interest in tax avoidance in metropolitan countries.
Post Emancipation: Economic Influences (4)
Trade- Because most Caribbean countries do not have sufficient arable land to feed their populations, much of our food comes from abroad and the United States is the largest supplier of food products into the region. There is also a very large demand for consumer products like cell phones from the US. Ex. In 2021 consumer good worth US $874.3 million were exported to the region, a 6 percent increase in the previous year. The state of Florida, which does the shipping does most of its trade with the Caribbean and this supports tens of thousands of jobs. Thus any threat to the stabiity of the Caribbean should be of concern to the US.
Music - Music is a ‘commodity’ and the popularity of reggae, dancehall and soca in western countries has led to a mutually benefical relation where the hosts of festivals hire Caribbean artistts to perform. Only reggae, steelpan and the clture of the Rastafari, have made a real breakthrough into the mainstram culture of the US. The markets for Caribbean music remain tied to members of the Caribbean diaspora.
Post Emancipation: Political Influences (1)
The influence of the Caribbean on extra-regional countries in relation to politics revolves around questions of immigration. Persons from the Caribbean tend to move to North America and Europe in times of economic downturn, natural disaster and political instability.
For decades the US has had an open-door for Cuban migrants. In an effort to undermine Castro’s regime US governments offered asylum to any Cuban reaching territory. Large numbers of Cubans left for the US after the 1959 revolution. The Cuban-American lobby is second in importance to the Israeli-Ameircan in US politics. They have largely spoken with one voice, fought for one cause the overthrow of Castro. Cubans hold offices in state, local and federal governments. They represent a significant voting bloc in South Florida.
Post Emancipation: Political Influences (2)
Since 1972 people from Haiti have also been finding their way to the US, by both official and unofficial channels. This continues today in the wake the Haiti earthquake of 2010, many Haitian displaced by the disaster also made this journey. The Haitian population is scattered mainly across Florida, Miami and Boston. Their political impact is limited largely because they are divided along class lines; the professionals speak French and the working class speak kreyol (Haitian Creole). In Miami, Haitian acts as a voting bloc. The issue of the ‘boat people’ has been used to mobilize the Haitian community. In 1982 the Haitian Refugee Center brought a class action suit against the US government that was successful in winning release on parole of 1900 detainees.
Post Emancipation: Political Influences (3)
The Notting Hill race riots occured in LOndon at the end of August 1958, just ten years after the Empire Windrush docked. They were anti-black riots where the whites were protesting the presence of the immigrants who were taking their jobs (and women). The riots caused tension between the Metropolitan Police and the British-African-Caribbean community, which claimed that the police had not aken their report of racial attacks seriously.
Cultural Influences
Culinary practices - to people in extra-regional countries Caribbean cuisine represents one more type of ethnic food that any metropolitan centre offers. Migrant communites supprot their restaurants and markets to enjoy food from home. Curries, rice and peas, saltfish, jerk meats, cocunut milk and highly seasoned food are slowly being made to non-Caribbean people.
Religion - Rastafari has gone global. At the same time, major religions like Roman Catholicism and Anglicanism are going through a creolising process. Clapping, steel pans, drumming and a great deal of music of the folk variety are not typical of mainstream Chrisitan services in Europe.
Sport
Cricket - The 1980s West Indies Cricket Team introduced the world to fast bowling. Fast bowling techniques have now been incorporated into cricket.
Track and Field - Caribbean athletes are most successful in Track and Field. World-class athletes from the region compete at the highest levels of internation competition, including the Olympics and World Championship. Usain Bolt currently holds the fastes records in the men’s 100m and 200m races. Jamaica has the fasstest men’s 4 x 100m record and Melaine Walker has the women’s 400m hurdle record.
Imperialism and Colonialism
The age of imperialism began with the coming of the Europeans who conquered lands and peoples and established colonies. These imperial powers rules their subject peoples through a combination of military might, fear and deliberate psychological condiition promoting the Europeans as the superior person fo culture. Ex. There were laws showing that slaves could not own land, wear silk or be on the road ata cetain time. With the exception of Haiti (liberalised in 1791) all Caribbean countires were subjects to centures of culutral conditioning into Eurocentric attitudes and values. Colonialism was a period during which European culture was promoted and the culture of the Amerindian, African or Indian was treated as ‘the other’.
Neo-colonial and post colonial socieites
The Caribbean is now in its post colonialsim era due to independence. However many questions whether the relationship between coloniser and colonised has changed. Our political, education, religious and judicial system, sports, dress and trading patterns all show an orientation towards the metropole, the former colonisers. Indigenous efforts have had to struggle to gain legitimacy (Ex. Rastafari, Warri) or have been virtually ignored (Ex. other languages)
The Caribbean economy has been infilitrated with multi-national corporttions with their headquaters in the metropole and without any serios allegiance to the Caribbran. Ex. Hotels, ICTs, fast food, banks.
The debt burden of Caribbean countries has seen the econmies at the mercy of multilateral agencies like the IMG and the WTO, which are controlled by the Metropole and on which Caribbean countries have little to no political sqay over.
Trade and Consumption Patterns
As mentioned before, ahigh percentage of the goods and services consumed in the Caribbean originate in western countries, particularly the US. As a consequence, our production and manufacturing sectors are very small scale and suffer competition from imports, which are heavily subsidiezed by their governments to be cheap.
Eg. potatoes, milk.
Colonial policy deliberately fostered a skewed economic relationship prohibiting manufacturing and encouraging dependency. According to postcolonial theory, consumption pattern therefore reflect a mind-set privileging western values.
- The value in belieivng what is foreign is better - aform of self hate?
- The extreme improtance associated with ‘being modern’
- Ex. Having the latest phone.
- Building social capital. Ex. associating with brands and designer labels which originate in the west.
- The United States is the centre of the world- Having a US visa is a status symbol.
