CARIBBEAN IDENTITY DEFINING A CARIBBEAN SELF

Introduction

Lecture outline:

Defining identity

Construction of a Caribbean Identity

Imposition of identity by others

The Haitian Revolution

United States Imperialism

Defining Identity

Definition 1:

                The individual characteristics, style or manner that is fundamental to a person (or thing) and by which that person is recognised.

Limitations of Definition 1:

1. It is static and does not recognise the fact that human beings change over time.

Ali Rattansi:

 We live in a world where individuals can create and reinvent identities and mixtures of identities - androgynous Michael Jackson’s attempted transformation from ‘black’ to ‘white’ being only an extreme example...”

The Evolution of Michael Jackson

The Young Michael Jackson

The teenage Michael Jackson

 Present Michael Jackson

Definition 2:

I. Woodard and F. Grace (2006):-

Identity is a multi-layered concept that is a combination of social identity, personal identity and ego identity.

Social Identity

Social Identity is the groups we may belong to; these may be primary such as family, secondary such as friends, clubs, church and tertiary such as school and workplace

Personal Identity

Personal identity is the way we portray or project ourselves to the outside world and oftentimes to ourselves when we look in the mirror.

Ego Identity

Ego Identity is our own subjective sense of knowing who we are.

Definition 3:

Abrahim Khan:-

—  Identity is elusive

—  Identity is broken down into: ‘fact of identity’ and ‘sense of identity’.

The fact of identity refers to a group situation which focuses on shared characteristics and behaviours, called objective attributes (race, ethnicity and gender)

A sense of identity, includes subjective matters relating to how one perceives the world or how one experiences selfhood.

Summary

Identity is a dualist entity:

There is the personal aspect that includes our internal struggle for selfhood and eventually self actualisation.

There is also the collective/public dimension that is a collection of primary, secondary and tertiary groups. This includes who we are as a society, people and nation.

Both the personal and collective aspects of identity are important in the construction of a national identity.

Construction of Caribbean Identity

Definition 1:

National identity is the depiction of a country as a whole encompassing its culture, traditions, language and politics.

Definition 2:

Benedict Anderson:

Nations are: imagined political community...imagined because most members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion.

This communion is based on shared interests, ideologies, beliefs and other commonalities that come from e primary, secondary and tertiary groups, including schools and churches.

Factors that may shape identity

—  Education

—  Religion

—  Race

—  Politics

—  History

—  Gender

—  Sexual Orientation

—  Geography: Choosing to identify yourself by territory/county/parish you were born in and/or reside.

—  Linguistics: Identity by language you speak, hence Francophone Caribbean for the French speaking parts and Anglophone and Hispanic for the English and Spanish speaking parts respectively.

—  Economic activity: e.g. guilds and trade unions where you identify yourself with other workers.

Social Theories

Creole society thesis (Kamau Brathwaite)

People from West Africa and Europe came to the Caribbean, in particular Jamaica, and overtime, due to the continuing encounter between the two races a unique society developed, that fused two cultures. The process that allowed this to occur was called Creolisation.

Plural Society Thesis (M. G. Smith)

They mix but do not combine

Thesis was based on earlier work done by Furnival.

Caribbean society was not Creole but rather that it was divided.

The multiracial and multicultural nature of society led to the different groups having their own customs, traditions and organisations.

Therefore little or no homogeneity or consensus in the society.

Diasporic Double-Consciousness

—  Diaspora comes from a Greek word meaning disperse.

—  Diaspora literally means the dispersion of something that was initially localised e.g. people, language and culture.

—  Also refers to the spread of groups of people from their native land to regions outside their original locales.

What is Diasporic Double-Consciousness

—  Double-consciousness reflects the feelings experienced by the uprooted person, who in the new homeland is torn between two sets of identities:

1.       On one hand there is the view that one must settle in the new setting

2.       There is the belief that the original homeland (Africa, China,  Europe and India) is always home, even if generations have passed and no memory of the homeland remains.

—  Double-Consciousness leads therefore to the creation of dual identity.

Stereotypes and Identity

—  The Caribbean territories were ruled by colonial: Spain, France and England, Denmark and the Netherlands.

—  Colonialism is where one country has political, economic and often cultural control over another.

—  Imperialism is when another country directly or indirectly has control over another, generally weaker nation.

—  In cases where colonialism and imperialism are present, the ruling country is guided by the presumption of superiority over the other country. This presumption is based on assumptions.

—  Arguments abounded that Africans were apes.

—  Stereotypes also abounded about Indians and Chinese

—  White colonisers viewed it as their duty to civilise the peoples of the Caribbean.

Visual representation of Stereotypes:
The Hottentot Venus:

From Ayti to Haiti: The First Caribbean Republic

The Haitian Revolution was successful striving for and achieving individual, independent identity.

Called San Domingue by the French, Ayti by the Tainos

The wealth generated by San Domingue rivalled that of all the British sugar islands.

Between 1680 and 1777 about 800,000 Africans were transferred from the West African coast.

By the 1780s, the income for Haiti averaged about £7.2 million annually.

Accounting for the Wealth of San Domingue

Fertility of the soil

Labour of the enslaved people

This led to high mortality and an increasing demand for enslaved Africans, creating an influx of them in the colony.

The Haitian Revolution

—  The Haitian Revolution occurred through 1791 to 1803.

—  Many factors contributed to the rebellion:

1. Political fermentation and discord between:

1. the coloureds and the whites,
2. the wealthy whites and the poor whites,
3. the coloureds, whites and enslaved Africans

2. French Revolution with its emphasis on liberty, equality and fraternity

Carolyn Fick

—  The only united group were the Africans.

—  Carolyn Fick sums up perfectly the united spirit of the enslaved Africans:

The aim was to overthrow the white regime, whereby the blacks would become the new masters of Saint Domingue. It was the first attempt in the long history of slave resistance at disciplined, organised revolt aiming not only at the destruction of the white masters and of slavery, but at the political notion of independence...

—  The revolutionaries, under the leadership of Toussaint L’Overture, overthrew the French planters between 1791 and 1795 and declared black liberty.

—  In 1804 General Dessalines declared a republic.

—  According to Verene Shepherd:

It was not given for twenty years official recognition by the French or other imperial government, but the first black state seemed a permanent feature of the Caribbean world.

John Thornton

—  According to Thornton,

...A great many of the slaves had served in African armies prior to their enslavement and arrival in Haiti. Indeed, African military service had been the route by which many, if not most, of the recently arrive Africans became slaves in the first place, since so many people had been enslaved as a result of war.

—  Thus, the enslaved people had clearly defined goals and the experience with which to carry them out.

The Legacy of the Haitian Revolution

Haiti displayed the self determining ethos of the Caribbean people.

The Haitian Revolution provided black people across the Caribbean with pride in themselves and the belief that a successful large-scale rebellion was possible.

Michael Craton, “Forms of Resistance to Slavery” in Franklin Knight (ed.) UNESCO General History of the Caribbean Volume 3: Slave Societies of the Caribbean

—  The example of Haiti and French Revolutionary slogans were instrumental in stirring up the Jamaican leeward Maroons in the Second Maroon War.

—  Planter paranoia resulted in cruel repression of riots involving the enslaved people. This had an indirect effect. In three rebellions, the 100,000 slaves involved killed less than 20 persons; yet at least 350 of them were slaughtered in the field and 700 judicially murdered, with an equal number flogged, imprisoned or deported. The severity of the repression led to calls for emancipation in England.

—  The British Parliament, in light of increasing slave uprisings feared that if emancipation did not come from authorised government, it would come from the enslaved people. They had in their minds the example of Haiti.

Patrick Bryan, “Emigres: Conflict and Reconciliation- The French Emigres in Nineteenth Century Jamaica” in The Haiti-Jamaica Connection Fifth Seminar Series on Intra-Regional Migration, April 3, 2004

—  The failure of black Haitians to work as free labourers meant that the belief that enslaved people would not work unless there was a whip present was reinforced. … St. Domingue, for years to come, was to be a ‘test case’ of the capability of Negroes to work as free-labourers. The general view was that the freed Haitian Negroes had to be forced to work at the point of the bayonet.

 

—  The Haitian economy declined drastically after the Revolution. Other parts of the Caribbean feared the same fate and thus persons contended that their economy would fail like Haiti’s unless slave labour was allowed to continue.

Legacy Ctd.

•       Conflict in Haiti between the blacks and mulattoes.

•       Haiti also suffered several setbacks including the 150 million francs indemnity she had to pay France.

•       A fledgling economy based on peasant production, corrupt leaders and poor infrastructure and social development all marked Haiti's development since 1820.

•       As such, as the premier independent black nation, Haiti displayed to racists everywhere, the view that a black country could not make it without white tutelage.

The Shaping of Caribbean Identity:
Twentieth Century United States’ Imperialism

By the 1880s, the United States started to abandon this policy of isolationism due to:

the fact that her borders were secure;

her industrial and agricultural output had risen to the point where the internal market could no longer consume the entire output.

Manifest Destiny

—  America developed the idea of manifest destiny in the 1890s.

—  Put forward by Captain Alfred Mahan, manifest destiny promoted the doctrines of “racial superiority” and the “national mission”.

—  Captain Mahan argued that for the U.S. to become powerful, it needed to look beyond its borders, particularly control of the Panamanian isthmus and the Caribbean.

Reasons for U.S. Interference in the Caribbean

Racism

Humanitarian Aid

Economic development

Defense/Military/Strategic purposes

The Monroe Doctrine

In December 1823, US President, Monroe issued a warning to European: The American continents by the free and independent conditions which they have assumed and maintained are henceforth not to be considered subjects for future colonisation by European powers. He went on to say that the attempt of European countries to meddle in the affairs of the western hemisphere would be taken as the manifestation of an unfriendly disposition to the United States.

The Roosevelt Corollary

President Theodore Roosevelt (1904): Latin Americans managed their affairs so badly that they provided European powers with an excuse for interfering. The US would act as the police of the Caribbean and Latin America and see that they behaved and acted with decency. If not, and they displayed ‘brutal wrongdoing’ or weakness ‘which results in the general loosening of the ties with a civilised society’, then they should expect intervention by a ‘civilised nation’ such as the US.

Dollar Diplomacy

Howard Taft, who became president in 1908 provided subsidies to shipping, public works and mining and construction companies wishing to invest in the Caribbean or Latin America. American owned plantations were aided by placing high customs duties on sugar, bananas, coffee and other crops which did not come from areas where Americans had investments in agriculture. This policy was named Dollar Diplomacy. By aiding the economic development of her less fortunate neighbours, the US could gain influence in these territories.

The U.S. and the Dominican Republic

—  In 1903 the government of the Dominican Republic took over the funds of the Improvement Company.

—  President Roosevelt objected along the lines of the Roosevelt Corollary and in 1905 he forced the Dominican Republic to permit him to appoint an American agent to collect customs duties to pay compensation to the company and debts to European bankers.

—  In 1916, the US government landed marines to put an end to civil disturbances and to prevent Germans making claims on the island. American military government controlled the Dominican Republic for eight years.

The United States and Haiti

By 1915, American bankers gained control of Haiti’s National Bank, railways, public utilities and customs houses.

In 1914, Germany, eager to gain an American base attempted to seize Haiti for non-payment of debts.

The US, backed by the Roosevelt Corollary and the Monroe Doctrine, occupied Haiti in 1915.

Haiti was forced to sign a ten-year occupation treaty. Which provided that the Americans run the customs service, treasury and police force.

Americans were to be in charge of public works, health programmes and new agricultural training schools.

Visualization of U.S. vs. Haiti

The United States and Cuba

Cubans gained their independence from Spain in 1898.

Teller Amendment, 1898:

U.S. led Military government imposed on Cuba until the U.S. deemed her free and peaceful

The Platt Amendment, 1901

Gave the US the right to interfere in Cuban affairs whenever the US Congress felt that important economic, military or human interests were threatened.

The Cuban government could not sign foreign treaties or accept foreign loans without approval from the United States.

Visualization of U.S. vs. Cuba

The United States and Puerto Rico

Foraker Act, 1900:

Gave the island a civilian government and a law making body composed of and elected by Puerto Ricans.

Final power resided in the hands of the US through the Senate comprised of an American governor and five official members appointed by the American government.

Judges in the Puerto Rican Supreme Court were also appointed by the United States.

Puerto Ricans were not American citizens and could not travel freely to the US.

Jones Act, 1917

Granted Puerto Ricans full American citizenship.

Since Puerto Rico was not made a state of the US

 Puerto Ricans could not vote in US elections unless they moved to the mainland.

The US Congress and the president could reject laws passed by the local Puerto Rican legislature.

The United States and the Danish Virgin Islands

—  The Danish Islands were the first line of defence for the United States against any invasion from the Atlantic.

—  American desire to acquire them increased when she entered the First World War against Germany in 1917.

—  Denmark agreed to sell the islands for $25 million and the islands became known as the American Virgin Islands and were administered by the US navy until 1931.

The United States and the English Speaking Caribbean

—  In 1940, British allowed the US to set up bases in Trinidad, Guyana, St. Lucia, Antigua, Jamaica and Bermuda.

—  During the construction of bases in the in the English speaking Caribbean territories work was provided for many local and migratory residents.

—  Mineral resources such as oil and bauxite were given a boost by Canadian and US investors.

—  More than ¾ the money used to set up new manufacturing and hotel industries came from the US

—  By 1962 the US became the major trading partner of many Caribbean nations. The problem with much of this investment lay in the fact that much of it was repatriated overseas.

Reversal of the Monroe Doctrine and the Roosevelt Corollary

—  In 1922, the U.S. Secretary of State issued an announcement that the US had a deep interest in the prosperity, the independence and the unimpaired sovereignty of the countries of Latin America.

—  President Calvin Coolidge in 1928, announced that America was no longer to be guided by the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine.

Good Neighbour Policy

Herbert Hoover was the first to use the phrase ‘good neighbour’ to describe the relationship that the US was to have with Latin America and the Caribbean.

The US withdrew from Haiti and the Dominican Republic in 1934 and 1924 respectively.

The good neighbour policy benefited the US by strengthening her economic interests in Latin American and the Caribbean.

By the 1930s American businesses played a central part in the economic life of many Latin American and Caribbean nations.

Conclusion

—  While the U.S. involvement in the Caribbean was economically advantageous, it did much to set back nationalism and the search for national identity in the Caribbean.

—  Today, though many Caribbean nations have claimed sovereignty, they are still very much subjected to U.S. policies directly and indirectly. U.S. movies, music, clothes, styles, and slang pervade our psyche, having an impact on the evolution of the Caribbean identity.

—  As we know identity is not static, it is ever changing and tomorrow, who knows what Caribbean identity will mean?

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