SIR RONALD SANDERS
Sunday, May 26, 2013
This commentary is a much shortened version of a paper delivered at a
public seminar at London University on May 20 on the 'Legacy of the
British Empire in the Caribbean'.
The Legacy of Empire in the Caribbean is a mixed one — some aspects are
good, many aspects are bad, and one in particular is ugly. I will start
with the good aspects:
The Good: Language
Because English has become the first language of international commerce,
the legacy of the English language in the former British colonies has
been beneficial to the English-speaking Caribbean countries in a range
of global transactions.
Governance
With regard to institutions related to governance, important legacies of
empire were: an established legal and judicial system; a functional
public service; and, at independence, written constitutions based on the
rule of law.
These institutions — apart from the independence constitutions — were
set up to serve the interests of Britain. The civil service is a
particular example where the role of a colonial power group was to carry
out the instructions of the British Colonial Office rather than to
bolster policies locally devised by local officials.
A former prime minister of Barbados, Errol Barrow, described the civil
service in the pre-independence Caribbean as "an army of occupation sent
down to the area by the colonial office".
Education
Basic education in the Caribbean — largely missionary-led — ensured
literacy in English at an early stage. Then in 1948 — 14 years before
the first English-speaking Caribbean country became independent — the
University College of the West Indies was established in Jamaica to
serve the region as a whole.
The university's second campus was established in 1960, two years before the independence of Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago.
While the British education system was set up in individual Caribbean
countries to serve British colonial interests and was narrow in that
context, it was a solid grounding in basic education, sufficient for a
region of five million people to produce three Nobel Laureates — one in
Economics and two in Literature.
Additionally, Caribbean nationals have served — and are serving — in
high capacities in Commonwealth and international organisations, in
international business institutions and in international courts in a
manner that is disproportionate to the small number of the region's
population.
Their accomplishments belie the doctrine of inferiority that underpinned
the excuse for slavery and indentured labour in the Caribbean.
But it should be noted that the basic and limited education system was
not matched by industrialisation or the building of infrastructure that
could create employment or professional opportunities for the tertiary
educated. As a major consequence, more than 60 per cent of the region's
tertiary educated people have had to migrate to developed nations such
as Britain, Canada and the United States of America.
The Bad
One-crop Economies
One of the bad legacies of empire in the Caribbean was the concentration
in production of one crop — sugar — and the non-industrialisation of
the economies.
Sugar production for the benefit of British conglomerates remained the
mainstay of many Caribbean economies even after independence.
In smaller islands of the Caribbean — Dominica, St Vincent and the
Grenadines, and Grenada — British interests turned to another one-crop
economy, bananas.
Production in both these sectors was based on low wages and poor
conditions of work. While British companies benefited first from
Commonwealth preferences in the UK market and then preferences in the
European Market after Britain joined what was then the European Economic
Community, workers in the Caribbean remained poor with all the
consequences that flowed from poverty.
Poor Transportation links for trade
In the post-independence period, Caribbean countries have sought to
diversify their economies and their trade, but these efforts have
suffered from the need for vital infrastructure, and from the absence of
transportation links to markets. Such transportation links as exist are
based on the colonial model in which to get to Africa, Asia or the
Pacific. The route is through Britain with all its attendant additional
costs, making trade in goods difficult and expensive.
Divided Societies
In Guyana and Trinidad and Tobago, their politics and development have
suffered from the racial divisions between their two major ethnic
groups, Africans transplanted as slaves and East Indians transported as
indentured labourers.
The racial division — which is a direct result of British colonial
policy of divide and rule — continues to frustrate the politics and
governance of these two major countries in the English-speaking
Caribbean and retards their development.
A fragmented Caribbean
A bad feature of empire in the Caribbean was the acquiescence of Britain
in the plantocracy's determination over 300 years to maintain the
region as separate enclaves of influence.
When it was overcome in the late 1950s by the effort of local leaders,
it is arguable that the British Government's abandonment of the
Federation of the West Indies by offering Jamaica and Trinidad and
Tobago the opportunity of independence individually in 1962, assured for
the future a weak and vulnerable region.
While the British Government's action was not the sole contributor to
the break-up of the West Indies Federation that lasted from 1958 to
1962, the seeming desire to be shed of its Caribbean colonies resulted
in the creation of what is now 12 independent states — many with
populations of less than 100,000 and each struggling to survive at
various levels as sovereign states, beset with high levels of crime,
high rates of unemployment, no economies of scale for production, low
rates of technological knowledge, and little capacity to bargain in the
international community.
The Ugly
Slavery and Indentured Labour
African slavery and East Indian indentured labour were the mainstay of
cheap production of sugar from the Caribbean that contributed for
centuries to the wealth, growth and development of Britain.
In 1838, when slavery was abolished by England, British slave owners in
the English-speaking Caribbean received £11.6 billion in today's value
as compensation for the emancipation of their "property" — 655,780 human
beings of African descent that they had enslaved and exploited.
The freed slaves, by comparison, received nothing in recompense for
their dehumanisation, their cruel treatment, the abuse of their labour
and the plain injustice of their enslavement.
The fact that African slaves in particular received no compensation for
their captivity and enforced exploitation is a stain on Britain's legacy
of empire in the Caribbean.
Sir Ronald Sanders is a Visiting Fellow at London University and a former Caribbean diplomat
Responses and previous commentaries: www.sirronaldsanders.com
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