American Tropics

American Tropics
Author: Megan Raby
Publisher: UNC Press Books
Total Pages: 337
Release: 2017-10-03
Genre: Nature
ISBN: 1469635615

Biodiversity has been a key concept in international conservation since the 1980s, yet historians have paid little attention to its origins. Uncovering its roots in tropical fieldwork and the southward expansion of U.S. empire at the turn of the twentieth century, Megan Raby details how ecologists took advantage of growing U.S. landholdings in the circum-Caribbean by establishing permanent field stations for long-term, basic tropical research. From these outposts of U.S. science, a growing community of American "tropical biologists" developed both the key scientific concepts and the values embedded in the modern discourse of biodiversity. Considering U.S. biological fieldwork from the era of the Spanish-American War through the anticolonial movements of the 1960s and 1970s, this study combines the history of science, environmental history, and the history of U.S.–Caribbean and Latin American relations. In doing so, Raby sheds new light on the origins of contemporary scientific and environmentalist thought and brings to the forefront a surprisingly neglected history of twentieth-century U.S. science and empire.

Building a Nation

Building a Nation
Author: Eric D. Duke
Publisher: University Press of Florida
Total Pages: 385
Release: 2018-10-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 0813063728

Caribbean Studies Association Gordon K. and Sybil Lewis Award - Honorable Mention The initial push for a federation among British Caribbean colonies might have originated among colonial officials and white elites, but the banner for federation was quickly picked up by Afro-Caribbean activists who saw in the possibility of a united West Indian nation a means of securing political power and more. In Building a Nation, Eric Duke moves beyond the narrow view of federation as only relevant to Caribbean and British imperial histories. By examining support for federation among many Afro-Caribbean and other black activists in and out of the West Indies, Duke convincingly expands and connects the movement's history squarely into the wider history of political and social activism in the early to mid-twentieth century black diaspora. Exploring the relationships between the pursuit of Caribbean federation and black diaspora politics, Duke convincingly posits that federation was more than a regional endeavor; it was a diasporic, black nation-building undertaking--with broad support in diaspora centers such as Harlem and London--deeply immersed in ideas of racial unity, racial uplift, and black self-determination. A volume in this series New World Diasporas, edited by Kevin A. Yelvington

Victorian Jamaica

Victorian Jamaica
Author: Tim Barringer
Publisher: Duke University Press
Total Pages: 572
Release: 2018-04-19
Genre: History
ISBN: 0822374625

Victorian Jamaica explores the extraordinary surviving archive of visual representation and material objects to provide a comprehensive account of Jamaican society during Queen Victoria's reign over the British Empire, from 1837 to 1901. In their analyses of material ranging from photographs of plantation laborers and landscape paintings to cricket team photographs, furniture, and architecture, as well as a wide range of texts, the contributors trace the relationship between black Jamaicans and colonial institutions; contextualize race within ritual and performance; and outline how material and visual culture helped shape the complex politics of colonial society. By narrating Victorian history from a Caribbean perspective, this richly illustrated volume—featuring 270 full-color images—offers a complex and nuanced portrait of Jamaica that expands our understanding of the wider history of the British Empire and Atlantic world during this period. Contributors. Anna Arabindan-Kesson, Tim Barringer, Anthony Bogues, David Boxer, Patrick Bryan, Steeve O. Buckridge, Julian Cresser, John M. Cross, Petrina Dacres, Belinda Edmondson, Nadia Ellis, Gillian Forrester, Catherine Hall, Gad Heuman, Rivke Jaffe, O'Neil Lawrence, Erica Moiah James, Jan Marsh, Wayne Modest, Daniel T. Neely, Mark Nesbitt, Diana Paton, Elizabeth Pigou-Dennis, Veerle Poupeye, Jennifer Raab, James Robertson, Shani Roper, Faith Smith, Nicole Smythe-Johnson, Dianne M. Stewart, Krista A. Thompson

Revolutionary Masculinity and Racial Inequality

Revolutionary Masculinity and Racial Inequality
Author: Bonnie A. Lucero
Publisher: University of New Mexico Press
Total Pages: 361
Release: 2021-12-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 0826360106

One of the most paradoxical aspects of Cuban history is the coexistence of national myths of racial harmony with lived experiences of racial inequality. Here a historian addresses this issue by examining the ways soldiers and politicians coded their discussions of race in ideas of masculinity during Cuba’s transition from colony to republic. Cuban insurgents, the author shows, rarely mentioned race outright. Instead, they often expressed their attitudes toward racial hierarchy through distinctly gendered language—revolutionary masculinity. By examining the relationship between historical experiences of race and discourses of masculinity, Lucero advances understandings about how racial exclusion functioned in a supposedly raceless society. Revolutionary masculinity, she shows, outwardly reinforced the centrality of color blindness to Cuban ideals of manhood at the same time as it perpetuated exclusion of Cubans of African descent from positions of authority.

Marxism, Colonialism, and Cricket

Marxism, Colonialism, and Cricket
Author: David Featherstone
Publisher: Duke University Press
Total Pages: 210
Release: 2018-10-25
Genre: Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 1478002557

Widely regarded as one of the most important and influential sports books of all time, C. L. R. James's Beyond a Boundary is—among other things—a pioneering study of popular culture, an analysis of resistance to empire and racism, and a personal reflection on the history of colonialism and its effects in the Caribbean. More than fifty years after the publication of James's classic text, the contributors to Marxism, Colonialism, and Cricket investigate Beyond a Boundary's production and reception and its implication for debates about sports, gender, aesthetics, race, popular culture, politics, imperialism, and English and Caribbean identity. Including a previously unseen first draft of Beyond a Boundary's conclusion alongside contributions from James's key collaborator Selma James and from Michael Brearley, former captain of the English Test cricket team, Marxism, Colonialism, and Cricket provides a thorough and nuanced examination of James's groundbreaking work and its lasting impact. Contributors. Anima Adjepong, David Austin, Hilary McD. Beckles, Michael Brearley, Selwyn R. Cudjoe, David Featherstone, Christopher Gair, Paget Henry, Christian Høgsbjerg, C. L. R. James, Selma James, Roy McCree, Minkah Makalani, Clem Seecharan, Andrew Smith, Neil Washbourne, Claire Westall

A Guide to the Indian Wars of the West

A Guide to the Indian Wars of the West
Author: John Dishon McDermott
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
Total Pages: 244
Release: 1998-01-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780803282469

A rich and detailed look at the wars that the United States conducted against its native population from 1860 to 1890 explores the fundamental circumstances of events, investigates the different responses of tribes to the conflict, and much more. Original. UP.

Dying to Better Themselves

Dying to Better Themselves
Author: Olive Senior
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2014
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9789766404574

The epic story of the involvement of the tiny islands of the West Indies in providing the work force for the construction of the Panama Canal (1904-1914) and before that, the Panama Railroad (1850-1855), and the French attempt under de Lesseps to build the Panama Canal (1881-1889). Written by a West Indian, the book allows the voices of the participants to tell their stories alongside the official accounts.

Far from Mecca

Far from Mecca
Author: Aliyah Khan
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2020-04-17
Genre: History
ISBN: 1978806647

Far from Mecca: Globalizing the Muslim Caribbean is the first academic work on Muslims in the English-speaking Caribbean. Khan focuses on the fiction, poetry and music of Islam in Guyana, Trinidad, and Jamaica, combining archival research, ethnography, and literary analysis to argue for a historical continuity of Afro- and Indo-Muslim presence and cultural production in the Caribbean: from Arabic-language autobiographical and religious texts written by enslaved Sufi West Africans in nineteenth century Jamaica, to early twentieth century fictions of post-indenture South Asian Muslim indigeneity and El Dorado, to the 1990 Jamaat al-Muslimeen attempted government coup in Trinidad and its calypso music, to judicial cases of contemporary interaction between Caribbean Muslims and global terrorism. Khan argues that the Caribbean Muslim subject, the "fullaman," a performative identity that relies on gendering and racializing Islam, troubles discourses of creolization that are fundamental to postcolonial nationalisms in the Caribbean.

Birds of the West Indies Second Edition

Birds of the West Indies Second Edition
Author: Herbert A. Raffaele
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 288
Release: 2020-06-16
Genre: Nature
ISBN: 0691180512

An updated edition of the acclaimed field guide to the spectacular birds of the West Indies Birds of the West Indies is the first field guide that covers and depicts all birds known to occur in the region, including infrequently occurring and introduced forms. Now fully updated and expanded, this stunningly illustrated book features detailed accounts of more than 600 species, describing identification field marks, range, status, voice, and habitat. There are more than 100 beautiful color plates that depict plumages of all species—including those believed to have recently become extinct—as well as distribution maps, a color code for endemic birds, and an incisive introduction that discusses avifaunal changes in the West Indies in the past fifteen years and the importance of conservation. Covers more than 60 new species, including vagrants, introductions, and taxonomic splits Updates the status of every species Features illustrations for all new species and improved artwork for warblers and flycatchers Color codes endemic species confined to one or just a few islands Includes many new and enhanced maps Provides bird weights for each species Compact and easy to use in the field