Flash Del Espiritu

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Book Reviews

-Christopher B. Steiner, Robert Farris Thompson, Flash of the spirit: African and Afro-American

art and philosophy. New York: Random House, 1983. xvii + 317 pp.

-P.C. Emmer, Peggy K. Liss, Atlantic empires: the network of trade and revolution, 1713-1826.

Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, Johns Hopkins Studies in Atlantic

History and Culture, 1983. xxiii + 348 pp.

-Jerome S. Handler, Roger D. Abrahams ,After Africa: extracts from British travel accounts...in

the British West Indies. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1983. 444 pp., John F.

Szwed (eds)

-Franklin W. Knight, Ken Post, Strike the iron: a colony at war: Jamaica, 1939-1945. 2 volumes.

Atlantic Highlands NJ: Humanities Press, 1981. xiv + 567 pp.

-Mary Turner, Christine Bolt ,Anti-slavery, religion and reform: essays in memory of Roger

Anstey. Folkstone, Kent, England: William Dawson and Sons; Hampden CT: Archon Books, 1980.

xii + 377 pp., Seymour Drescher (eds)

-Carl C. Campbell, Mary Turner, Slaves and missionaries: the disintegration of Jamaican slave

society, 1781-1834. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1982. 223 pp.-Ransford W. Palmer, Hugh N. Dawes, Public finance and economic development: spotlight on

Jamaica. Washington D.C.: University Press of America, 1982. xvi + 147 pp.

-Michle Baj Strobel, Wellesley A. Baird, Guyana gold: the story of Wellesley A. Baird, Guyana's

greatest miner. With an end essay by Kathleen J. Adams. Washington D.C.: Three Continents

Press, 1982. 185 pp.

-Charles V. Carnegie, Bonham C. Richardson, Caribbean Migrants: environment and human

survival on St. Kitts and Nevis. Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press, 1983. xiii + 209 pp.

-Keith F. Otterbein, John Bregenzer, Tryin' to make it: adapting to the Bahamas. Washington,D.C.: University Press of America, 1982. viii + 88 pp.

-Wayne S. Smith, Louis A. Perez, Cuba between empires, 1878-1902. Pittsburgh: University of

Pittsburgh Press, 1982. xx + 490 pp.

-Sergio Roca, Susan Schroeder, Cuba: a handbook of historical statistics. Boston: G.K. Hall,

International Historical Statistical Series, 1982. xlii + 589 pp.

-James W. Wessman, H. Hoetink, The Dominican people 1850-1900: notes for a historical

sociology. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, Johns Hopkins Studies in Atlantic

History and Culture, 1982, 243 pp.

-Frank Pen Prez, Maria Rosario Sevilla Soler, Santo Domingo: tierra de frontera, 1750-1800.

Seville: Escula de Estudios Hispano-Americanos, 1980. xx + 502 pp.

-Ricardo Campos Orta, Francisco A. Scarano, Inmigracin y clases sociales en el Puerto Rico


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del siglo XIX. Rio Pedras, Puerto Rico: Ediciones Huracn, 1981.

-Roberto Mrquez, David William Foster, Puerto Rican literature: a bibliography of secondary

sources. Westport CT

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BOOK REVIEWS 2 3

B O O K R E V I E W S

Flash o f the spirit: A frican and Afro-American art and philosophy.ROBERT FARRIS THOMPSON. New York: Random House, 1983.xvii + 317 pp. (Cloth USS 19.95)W ithin the larger con text of art and aesthetics in the Americas, thecontributions made by peoples of African descent have gonelargely unnoticed or unappreciated by serious scholars in thefields of bo th an thro po log y a nd (especially) art history . For thisreason, Robert Farris Thompson's recent study of Afro-Americanart and philosophy a work conceived with sensitivity, andpresented in provocative prose is a welcome addition to adecidedly impo verished a rea of research. Howev er, from a m eth-odological perspective the book is, on the whole, disappointing,an d fails to attain the quality a nd originality of the au tho r's ea rliercon tributions to the study of Yo ruba art an d culture (1974; 1976).The book's methodological and conceptual shortcomings, to-gether with its intrepidly daring theoretical assertions, raise im-portant questions concerning the nature of scholarship in what isinevitably a highly em otional, political, and ideologically charg edarea of investigation. A critical reading of lashofthe spiritleavesthis reviewer with serious reservations about both the form andcontent of the work.

The purpose of the book, the author tells us, is to identify specifically Yoruba, Kongo[,] Dahomean, Mande, a n d Ejagham in -fluences on the art and philosophies of black people throughoutthe Am ericas (pp. xiv-x v). Ins doing, he proposes to go beyon dearlier works, which hav e show n [only] generalized African


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2 1 4 BOOK REVIEWScultural unities linking the women and men of West and Ce ntralAfrica to black people in the New W or ld (p. xiv). W hile seekingto identify specific cultural traits linking Africa to the Americas,Th om pso n skillfully skirts a pro blem atic issue cha racter istic of thebrief intellectual history of such research, namely the obviousdifficulty of distilling from the multifarious societies of the sub-Sa har an continent a single African culture. In effect, however,it would seem that the author has simply replaced Herskovits'sschema of cultu re area s (1924) with a more fashionable concep t ofethnic groups, thereby departing less radically from the con-tributio ns of a half centu ry ago than o ne would have hoped for in abook that advertises itself in the jac ke t blurb as a land m ar k ofscholarship.

lash o the spirit is comprised of five cha pte rs, each devoted toNew W orld manifestations of a pa rticula r African aes thetictra ditio n. T he first cha pter deals with w hat Thom pson refers toas Yoruba traditions in the Old and New World. Relying on hisexpertise in Yoruba art and culture, the author identifies similar-ities between the ways in which the Y oru ba of W est Africa reflectupon and create their art and their social world, and the ways inwhich certain peoples in the Americas (especially those of Africandescent in New York City, Miami, Havana, Matanzas, Recife,Bahia, a nd Rio de Jan eiro ) conceive of and act upon things inartistic, religious, and social domains. Thompson argues thatbecause art holds a privileged place in Yoruba society, its reaffir-m ation in the arts of black America is und erstan dab le and indeedto be expected. In the author's words:

. . . sheer artlessness may bring a cultu re dow n b ut a civilization like that of theYoruba, and the Yoruba-Americans, pulsing with ceaseless creativity richlystabilized by precision and control, will safeguard the passage of its peoplethrou gh the storms of time [p . 97].Though filled with tremendous appreciation and sympatheticperception for aesthetic continuities between Yoruba art of WestAfrica and Yoruba-looking art in the Americas, Thompson'sanalysis is seriously flawed by its failure to identify, or even tobroach, the historical (as opposed to metaphysical) links whichconnect the two artforms in space and time. What he offers is a


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BOOK REVIEWS 2 5highly thought-provoking analysis of the nature of a sharedYoruba ontology stretching across the Atlantic. What he fails toprovideisthe causative basis for such a conn ection: thefait ccomplithus being granted more analytical weight than the processes bywhich Yo ruba art and philosophy were tran sp lante d to theNew World.T he second c hap ter, based on one of Th om pso n's earlier works(1981), is an investigation of Kongo art and religion in theAm ericas. He re, Tho mp son argues that K on go civilization andart were not obliterated in the New World: they resurfaced in thecoming tog ether, here and there, of num erous slaves from Ko ngoand A ngo la (p. 104). Selecting four Kon go artistic and sacredtraditions the cosmogram,minkisicharm s, the grave, and bottletrees Thompson identifies what he perceives to be their NewWorld counterparts.In this section we are also introduced toJam es Ham pton andHenry Dorsey, two twentieth-century Afro-American artists.Th om pso n explores these indiv iduals' artistic creations, focusingprimarily on the Kongo traditions which seem to inform them.Again, there is no distinction made between the art and philo-sophies of Africa which date to the era of the Atlantic slave trade the material which, according to Thompson's argument,would have formed part and parcel of the cultural baggagetransported by African men and women to the New World an dthe art and philosophies of contemporary Africa. He writes, forinstance,

Like the spectral pulleys, wheels, and switches on a m odern Kong o drum , h e[H enry Dorsey] br oug ht toge ther a liquor ju g, the blades of an electric fan,and a metal disk to form a material constellation of objects ... [pp. 147-50].

W ha t links these two forms of aesthetic expressionisleft unc lea r tothe reader, save perha ps their being joined by the flash of thespirit th at visual and philosophic stream of creativity andimagination which somehow traverses the Atlantic owing noallegiance to boundaries of space and time.Hait ian vodun the topic of the third chapter, is described byTh om pso n as a vibran t, sophisticated synthesis of the tradition alreligions of Dahomey, Yorubaland, and Kongo with an infusion


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2 l 6 BOOK REVIEWSof Ro m an Cath olicism (p. 163). H ere, in a sense, Th om pson ismore sensitive than elsewhere in the book to what he terms the reb len din g, or w hat M intz and Price (1976) using a tech-nical linguistic analogy have called the rem od elling , ofvarious African and European cultures which were brought to-gether in the New World. Yet, hidden behind this apparentopenness to an acceptance of the complexity of cultural heritagethere lies a curious insistence on dissecting the product of suchsynthesis, in this case vodun into its putatively separate, distinctroots. Hence, we find that the chapter is divided into sectionslabeled D aho m ean Influences on Ha itian Sacred A rt and K on go Influences on Ha itian Sacred Ar t. Here again, thisreviewer finds little or no de pa rtu re from Herskovits's work on thesubject published in the 1930S.T his is a pity, for wh at was seminalscholarship fifty years ago appears today, in light of recent re-search (e.g., Lowenthal 1978), to be an unwarrantable retentionof the errors ofl ssadequ ate theories.T he final two chapters of the book are related to one ano ther bythe attention paid to the arts of adornment. Chapter Five is anexploration of Ejagham influences on the iconography of Afro-Cuban symbolic expression as represented in designs on cloth andclothing. Grea t attention is given to the Ejagha m featheredcalabash because the struc ture of these plum es is special to theEjagham, hence unmistakable when they reemerge in Cuba toattain full and lasting va lue (p. 236). Th e pen ultim ate ch apter, R ou nd Houses and Rhythm ized Tex tiles, examines the in-fluence of certain African stylistic traditions in architecture andweaving on specific Afro-American arts in the New World. Thischapter deserves detailed analysis, for it poses some of the mostserious methodological problems in the book.Th om pso n's analysis of Afro-American textiles posits a M an deinfluence which finds echoes in the rhyth m s of melodie accents inboth African and Afro-American music. His phrasing of theaesthetic principles which inform Mande and so-called Mande-influenced textiles in terms which are suggestive of a musicalparadigm is a fascinating and important contribution to ourunderstanding of the aesthetics of narrow-strip cloth. The para-digm , however, fails to help us grasp ad equ ately the continuitieswhich, Thompson argues, stretch across the Atlantic.


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BOOK REV IEW S 2 I 7

Here, as elsewhere, Thompson suggests that Afro-Americansrec ap ture d in their art the flavor of the [African] pa st whichwas tramp led by the experience of slavery, and physically alteredby a new environment (in this case the loss of the narrow-bandloom). The crux of his argument centers on the resemblance ofM an de cou ntry cloths (narrow -strip textiles sewn together insuch a way as to form a patte rn characterized by the juxtap ositionof different colored strips) and textiles produced by the S ara m ak aand D juka M aroon s of Surin am e (cloths m ade by sewing togetherstrips of multicolored commercially-made fabrics). Thompsoninsists tha t Su rinam e textiles are M ande -influenced expressions ofa deeply-rooted African past.Though relying extensively, for his information about Mandetextiles, on what is surely one of the finest works written on thesubject (Lamb 1975), Thompson completely disregards, for hisinformation on Suriname textiles, the work of Sally and RichardPrice (1980) which, like Lamb's study, is based on extensivefieldwork and historical research. This is clearly a sin of omission,but almost certainly not an involuntary oversight; for the Prices'findings plainly contradict Thompson's theory of Africanismsdirectly trans plante d to the New W orld, and the inclusion of theirmaterial would surely weaken his argument, pointing insteadtoward a more nuanced approach to Afro-American art history.The Prices introduc their detailed discussion by noting that

Maroon narrow-strip textiles... restrikingly similarto wovennarrow-stripcloths from West Africa ... Once we realize, however, that Maroon narrow-strip sewing began only during this centu ry, it becomes clear that this art couldnot have been passed down, generation by generation, from African origins,and we are forced to consider other more subtle and less readily docu-me ntab le processes of historical influence [1980: 72 -73 ].

Thompson, choosing not even to cite the Prices' historical re-search, suggests instead:Variables of Ma nde and Ma nde-related cloth-making remain indelibly intactin these M an de , West African-influenced regions of the New Wo rld. T herecombination of these variables to form novel creole art also embodyingEuropean influences isan autonomous development in the history ofAfro-American visual creativity, especially in Suriname. Nevertheless the vibrantvisual attack and timing of these cloths are unthinkable except in terms of


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2 8 BOOK REVIEWSpartial descent from Mande cloth, a world of metrically sparkling textiles [p.208;emphasis mine].

A critical reading of Thompson's book raises serious issues forstudents of Afro-Am erican art a nd cult ure . W ha t is at stake here isnot merely a pedantic argum ent over the tr ue provenance ofAfro-American artistic styles and sources of inspiration. What isbeing called into questionisa more fundamental problem, nam elythe nature and the use of evidence in art historical and anthro-pological research in areas of African and Afro-Am erican ar t. Fo rindeed , the shortcomings in Th om spo n's work force us to considerwhether it is sufficient or even acceptable to employ a metho-dology in which theory de term ines the use of evidence ra th er tha none in which each informs the other. Is it sufficient merely toextrapolate evidence backwards in time, assuming that similar-ities in the present are , perforce, echoes of the past? O r, rath er, is itmore reaso nable to proceed slowly from the evidence of the past tothe conditions of the present?

To be sure, each approach has its drawback. Whereas theformer risks painting a history of Afro-American art withbrushstrokes far too bold, the latter runs the chance of drawing aportrait so unfinished and incomplete that its image may notimmediately be recognizable. However, in the flnal analysis, thesecond approach, though perhaps more painstaking, provides uswith the empirical knowledge necessary to understand Afro-American art in ways far more profound. By avoiding the pre-sumption of positioning the art along an unbroken are of meta-physical continuities, the approach seeks to unco ver the art's p laceand m eaning in an historical context, thereby posing more direct-ly questions concerning what it is that makes it culturally distinctan d, as it were, Afro-Am erican in the fullest sense of the wo rd.

W ha t Tho m pson has offered us in lasho the spiritis a celeb ra-tion of Afro-American arts a celebration which, for all itsgenuine sensitivity and excitement, approaches the notion ofhistorical evidence in a strictly impressionistic way. One can onlyhope that future works, inspired by the sense of dignity andanimation with which Thompson embues the arts of blackAm erica, take mo re seriously the schism betw een intuitive feeling


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OOK REVIEWS 2 i g

and historical knowing, thereby embarkingon a rational,ob-jective study of Afro-American art which seekstoreconcile whatE .H. Gombrich (1979) appropriately called the demands of theheart with those of the head.

REFERENCES

G O M B R I C H E. H.,1979.Ideals and idols: essays on value in history and in art. Oxford,Phaidon Press.H E R S K O V I T S M E L V I L L EJ., 1924. A preliminary consideration of the cultureareas of Africa.American Anthropologist26(1): 50-63 .L A M B V E N I C E 1975.West Africanweaving London, Duckworth.L O W E N T H A L IRAP., 1978. Ritual performance and religious experience:aservicefor thegodsinsouthern Haiti.Journal ofAnthropological Research 34(3):392-4I4-M I N T Z S I D N E YW. R I C H A R D P R I C E I976.Ananthropologicalapproachto the AfroAmerican past: aCaribbean perspective. Philadelphia, Institute for the Study ofHuman Issues.P R I C E S A L L Y R I C H A R D P R I C E 1980.Afro American arts of th eSuriname rainforestBerkeley, University of CaliforniaPress.T H O M P S O N R O B E R T F A R R I S 1974. Africanart inmotion Los Angeles, University ofCalifornia Press., 1976.Black gods and kings. Bloomington, Indiana University Press. J O S E P H C O R N E T 1981. Thefour momentsof th e sun: Kongoart in twoworlds.Washington, D.C., National Gallery of Art.C H R I S T O P H E RB. S T E IN E RDepartment of AnthropologyHarvard UniversityCambridge MA 02138, U.S.A.

Atlantic empires:the network oftrade andrevolution IJ13 1826.P E G G Y K. LISS.Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins Univ-ersity Press, Johns Hopkins Studies in Atlantic HistoryandC ul ture 1983. xxiii+348 pp. (Cloth US$ 29.50)


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22 O BOOK REVI EW S

History m ono graph s are not any longer wha t they used to be. Th emajority of the learned additions to the field are stuflfed withtables, graph s, diagram s, and even scatterg ram s or by othersuch new gadgets as invented by the home computer industry. Ihasten to add here however, that the quantitative approach tohistory often has led to new and valuable interpretations, whichthe narrative historian has been unable to provide. In short, thewriting of history needs both the quantifier an d na rra tor .

It certainly is not difficult to exclude the author of tlanticempiresfrom the qu an titativ e category . Her book does not con taina single graph, diagram, or table. On the other hand, the bookdoes not really teil a story; it ju st ram bles on w ithou t a thesis orcon cep t, bu t with endless lists of nam es mixed w ith information onreligion, economie thinking, and intellectual history. Also, theauthor has done her homework and read an impressive list ofbooks, as the extensive set of footnotes indicates. Unfortunately,the reader sunsparingly m ade aw are of the auth or's hard work byendless quotes from both contemporary works and present-daymonographs.

Yet, th e actu al focus of the book is well chosen: the com m ercialnetworks of the eighteenth -centu ry A tlantic region have no t beenthe object of m any historicalworks.In fact, the most recen t surveyof eighteenth-century America by Max Savelle (1974) needed ashorter, more conceptual, and less encyclopaedic companion. tlantic empiresdoes not fill this ga p. T he title of the book promisestoo muc h: it does not really deal w ith the com mercial connectionsin the North Atlantic and no mention at all is made of thechanging position of West Africa within the Atlantic tradingnetwork. The book concentrates on the Iberian peninsula and itscolonial empire in South America.Admittedly, the author made a good choice, because the trad-ing connections between North America, the Caribbean, WestAfrica, and Europe have been extensively studied. To my know-ledge there are very few studies in English, which focus on theSouthern Atlantic during the eighteenth century. Because ofthis,chapters 3, 4, 6, 7, 8 and 9 all contain valuable information on

Spain, Portugal, Spanish America, and Brazil. In these chaptersthe au tho r discusses the ideology rega rding em p ire in the two


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m other countries as well as the impa ct of the U.S . W ar of In de p-endence on theintellectua l life in Latin Am erica and on itsperception of the colonial link with Spain and Portugal.Intheothe r chap ters the au tho r tries to describe similar develop ments inEngland and North America.Inso doin g she only confuses thereader, and she failstotake into account th at b oth N orth andSouth America could hardly beviewed as just two differentregions. Within each subcontinent there were innumerabledif-ferences and the book shou ld h ave confined itself to an analysis ofthe different areas within Latin America.

In spite of all the information the author provides, she fails todocument some major developments. Sheisunable toexplainwhy the population ofthe p lantatio n areas inLatin Am ericareacted differently towards themovement for colonial inde-pendence from the inhabitants of the settlement areas. Why didthe Spanish Caribbean remain Spanish formuch of the sub-sequent nineteenth century, while parts of Argentine andVenezuela had already rebelled long before Simon Bolivar ap-peared on the scne?In discussing the Spanish Caribbean, the author mentions theupsurge in sugar production during the period of British occupa-tion in the Seven Years W ar. The slave imp orts even tripled. Shedoes not explain which factors inhibited the growthofCubanplantation agriculture under Spanish domination. Why were theCuban planters sokeen onrestoring Spanish rule? Or alter-natively, why were the British at all willing to hand C ub a back toSpain?In her last chapter (10), the author triestomake up fortheconceptual deficiencies inthe previous pa rt of the book. Inh erepilogue she makes some comp arative observations regard ing theeffect of the newly acquired in dep end ence of N orth and SouthAmerica. It is, indeed, striking to see how the economie grow th ofthe U.S. after independence more than matched that of WesternEu rope, while the socio-economic developm ent of La tin Am ericaonly created isolated areas of growth within that continent. Afterposing this very interesting question, how ever, Liss fails to give an

answer andinstead confronts thereader with an impressivenumberofcitations from scholars, which belong to the socio-


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2 2 2 BOOK REVIEWShistorical dep end enc ia school, now headed by Im m anu el W al-lerstein. In another of her observations, she comes back to thisim po rtan t question by arguing th at the economy of theU.S.coulddevelop towards an industrial take-off, while Latin Americawas inhibited in taking a similar course, because En gland neededan outlet for the prod ucts of its own Ind ustria l R evo lution. Again,this observation is no answer to the question of why the in-corporation of N orth and South Am erica in the world econom yhad such different consequences for the two sub-continents con-cerned. If the author really had addressed herself to this question,she would have realized that the formal similarity between theacquisition of independence in North and South America ob-scured the vital socio-economic differences w hich existed betw eenthese two areas. Actually, long before indep ende nce the involve-ment of Latin America in the Atlantic trading network hadproduced structural underdevelopment in many regions, whilefrom the outset the particip ation of N orth A merica in the A tlanticcommerce had had an opposite effect. It sobvious th at in order tocope properly with her own observ ations the auth or shouldhave written another book.

R E F E R E N C ESAVELLE, M AX , 1974. Empires to nations; expansion in America, 17131824.M inneapolis and Lon don; University of M innesota Press and Oxford UniversityPress.P. C. EM M ERCentre for the History of European ExpansionUniversity of Leiden2300 RA Leiden, The Netherlands

A/ter Africa: extracts from British travel ccounts in the British WestIndies R O G E R D . ABRAHAM S and J O H N F. SZWED (eds.). NewH ave n and Lo ndo n: Yale U niversity Press, 1983. 444 pp . (P aperUS$ 12.95)In a competent and intelligent introductory essay (which non-


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BOOK REVIEWS

fifty-six nam ed au thors on the West Indies lack biog raph icalno tes. Notes for the rem aind er are usually minimally informa-tive, and assist little in evaluating the individual authors, thena tu re and c ontex t of their observ ations, even sometimes identify-ing the territory an d time period they are discussing. O the r (non-extracted) published works by the same authors are also listed;since most of these have no bearing on the West Indies or slavery,it is unclear why they are included. T h e t'ask of ou r book, the editors write, is to seek ou t in theoldest documents available the encounter of Africans and Euro-

peans in the New W orld, toward the discovery of wh at was and isdistinctly Afro-American in the cultures of the Am ericas (p. 2).How ever, by including only the British West Indies and publishednarrative accounts in English this book does not deal with the oldest docum ents ava ilable. Given the editors' general inter-ests, it is unclear why they confine themselves geographically, oreven omit non-English and manuscript accounts of the BritishWest Indies. Moreover, the main sources utilized, despite theirethnographic richness, can implicitly convey a distorted geo-graphic and temporal image of British West Indian slave life.Althou gh published accou nts of Ja m ai ca n slaves (and post-em ancip ation black folk) a re relatively copious, abo ut6 % of theBritish West India n extract pages deal with Ja m aic a a nd , w ithoutguida nce from the editors, can give the misleading impression tha tthe cultural practices ofJamaican slaves (and ex-slaves) are fullyrepresentative of the rest of the West Indies. Suriname/BritishG uia na receive a little over 15% of the pages, Barba dos 8 % , a ndthe British Virgins close to 5% . Th e rem aining % are,unequallyspread am ong A ntigua, the Baham as, St. Lucia, St. Vincen t, St.Kit ts, Grenada, and Trinidad.

T he extracts presented can also create an impression that slavebehavior and beliefs showed no significant changes over a longperiod and that, for example, an early eighteenth-century de-scription ad equ ately conveys wh at existed a century later; or th atobservations in the i88os and 1890S are applicable to the slaveperiod (oritslater phases?) .A ltho ug h the extracts extend from themid-16oos to the 1890S, roughly 6% treat the seventeenth centuryand early decades of the eighteenth; about 20% cover the last


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BOOK REVIEWS _ 2 2 5qu arte r or so of the eighteenth century, and abou t 35 thepreemancipation decades of the nineteenth century. Thus, whileabout6 of the extract pages treat the slave period perse,manyreflect the last stages of that period (when im po rta nt changes wereoccurring in slave sociocultural life) and a significant number ofpages deal with postem ancipation times (abo ut 30 from the1850S through the i8go s). Althoug h m any cu ltural features of freeblack folk emerged during slavery, the form these features as-sumed over time and the identification of which ones emerged orcrystallized after slavery remain to be established. The editors donot explain why they include post-slavery accounts or how suchaccounts elucidate the behaviors and beliefs ofslaves.The book's intended audience is not explicitly defined, but it isclearly for a student audience new to the subject matter. Yet thebook can create a misleading geographic, temporal, and ethno-grap hic picture of West In dia n slave life and encourage a n arrowview that n arrativ e published accoun ts by planters and travellersare the only types of sources or da ta base availab le for recon struct-ing tha t life. Mo reover, altho ugh the editors attem pt to locate theaccounts in general in a wider cultural context so as to help thereader understand the Euro-centric perspectives represented, thereaderisnonetheless often expeeted to accept individ ual accountsat face value. The accounts, however, can be misleading in theirreportage and interpretations of slave behavior andbelief Thus,the reader should have some guidance (external to this book) inapproaching the accounts and in exploring the methodologicalprob lems of researching slave life in orde r to appre ciate more fullythe wider issues addressed by the editors in their introduction.

JER OM E S. HANDLERDep artmen t of AnthropologySouthern Illinois UniversityCarbondale IL 62901,U.S.A.

Strike the iron: a colony at war: Jamaica 1939 1945- K E NP OST. 2volumes. Atlantic Highlands NJ: Humanities Press, 1981. xiv +567 pp. (Cloth USS 40.00)


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2 2 6 BOOK REVIEWSIn 1978 Ken Post published his first study of the development ofthe Jam aican labor m ovement Arise TeS tarvelings It focused onthe disturb ance s 0^1937 -38 which profound ly affected the historyof the island. This two-volume sequel takes the record up to theclosing phases of the Second World War and the beginning ofmajor political reform: the new constitution of 1944 which intro-duced un iversal adu lt suffrage. These three volumes are w ithoutany do ub t the finest exam inations of this crucial period ofJa m aic an h istory. Th ey are characterized by meticulous researchinsightful analysis and a sha rp overtly-stated M arxist orienta-tion which fortun ately never allows ideology to obscure theconfusing com plexity of the political reality ofja m aica du rin g thewar years.

No one has described with greater detail the bewildering dif-ficulties of that period. The agriculture mainly based on theproduction of sugar and ban anas was in trouble. The polit icalsystem un der an au tho ritari an am bitious and egotistical gover-nor was in troub le. Th e imperial system was undergoingeconomie strains even before the Second World War exposed itsun tena ble fragility. A nd the social structu re ofjam aica was recon-stitutingitself as the old p lanter class of exp atriate Euro peans andpsychological transients lost their basis for wealth lost theirsta m ina for life in the tropics lost the ir influence in the E nglishPar liam enta ry system and w ere in dan ger of losing their hold onthe administrative machinery of the colony. For the ancienregim e the n it was the wo rst oftimes.Ye t for the aspirin g classesit looked like the best of times. Ja m ai ca n nation alism was beingborn . Posterity however will record ano ther chap ter in the cata-logue of missed op po rtun ities shifting alliances vicious politicalsquabbling and administrative inadequacy which characterizedthe passage from colonialism.

Basing his research on documentation in the British PublicRec ord Office the N ation al Archives of the U nited States theWest In dia Reference Lib rary of the Institute ofjam aica and thecollection of pap ers left by R icha rd H ar t do cum enting the for-ma tive years of the Peoples N ational Pa rty Post sethimself andaccomplished with remarkable success five tasks:


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BOOK REVIEWS 22 7the evolution of British policy tow ards Ja m ai ca und er pressure of war; thepenetration by United States capitalism u nder cover of wartim e conditions;the developm ent of the labou r m ovem ent in the colony, with special referenceto the role of its avowed Communists; the continuing importance of BlackNationalism as a theme of resistance to colonial capitalism; and the role ofcritics of that phenomenon in the United Kingdom itself [p .vii].

Each of these smagisterially ex am ined. Post explores the differentclass appeals and contradictions not only of the cousins, NormanManley and Alexander Bustamante, but also of the politicaltechniques an d appe als of their rival parties for the initial electionsof 1944. He demonstrates the internal conflicts, contradictionsand problems of the Peoples National Party which not onlyelucidate the causes for their electoral problems in the 194OS and195OS,but also presage the problems th at would retu rn to ha un tthe party in the 1970S. Post clearly demonstrates that ideologyrepresented only one aspect of political party formation inJa m aic a. In those years, the class rhy thm s failed to harm onizethemselves with national self-consciousness, economie develop-ment, and intellectual articulation. For the political actors oftrades unions, im perial bure auc racy (at the local or central level),the United States, as well as the fledgling parties, the conflictingdemands of religion, race, nationalism, and class consciousness(for the various sectors) created some complex situations, whichthey could not control and which they dimly understood.

Post covers some of the same ground of some other worksdealing with the rise of organized trades unionism and partypolitics in Ja m aic a, for exam ple, Trevor M unr oe's, The politicsofconstitutionaldecolon ization Ge o rg e E a to n ' s , lexander Bustamante andmodernJamaica and two books by United Stated representative,Paul Blanshard Democracy andempire in the Caribbean and hisautobiography,Personal andcontroversial No ne of these, however, isas richly detailed or as thoroughly analytical asStrike the iron. Noone who attempts to understand Jamaican labor and politicaldevelopment and West Indian history can avoid reading thisdelightful and thoroughly rewarding book. Here the issues, thepersonalities, and the complicated ways in which they resolvedthemselves or were postponed come to light with a shar-


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2 2 8 BOOK REVIEWSpened poignancy which evokes the thought that the more thingschange in Ja m aic an politics, the m ore they rem ain the same.FRANKLIN W. KNIG HTDepartment of HistoryTh e John s Hopkins Universi tyBaltimore MD 21218, U.S.A.

Anti-slavery religion andreform:ess ys inmemory of Roger Anstey.CHRISTINE BOLTand SEYMOUR DRESGHER(eds.). Folkstone, K en t,England: William Dawson and Sons; Hampden CT: ArchonBooks, 1980. xii + 377 pp. (C loth U.S.S 27.50)Roger Anstey was a scholar whose combination of industry,integrity, and open-mindedness made him, in David Brion Davis'words (in the preface to this volume) a nerve centre of inter-national and comparative scholarship on slavery issues. Thepapers now published from the conference he organized at theBellagio Cen tre, Ita ly in 1978, a few m onths before his sudden anduntimely death, are a tribute to the role he played. The volumecharts work in progress, main currents, promising eddies, andareas unkno wn; contributions are draw n from Britain, the U nitedStates, France, and Holland, a North Atlantic provenance leav-ing Spain, Portugal, and Latin America open for new initiatives.The main current proves to be, still, the investigation of abol-itionist ideology (or its absence) and its political impact. C.Duncan Rice examines anti-slavery ideology as reflected in con-temporary literature; Howard Temperley discusses it as culturalimp erialism ; Ch ristine Bolt explores it in term s of its effect on workamo ng A merican Indians ; W yatt-Brow n considers its connectionswith missionary work; and Brion Davis' end-piece re-affirms that the impetus behind British anti-slavery policies were mainlyreligious (p. 364).

Equal attention, however, is given to the processes that refrac-ted religious convictions into political action, a process which, asAnstey's own article adumbrates, had made abolitionist convic-tions pa rt of the official m in d of imp erial En gland by the mid-nineteenth century. Ditchfield elaborates the underlying conver-


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BOOK REVIEWS 2 2 9gence of abolition, parliamentary reform, and repeal (i.e., of theTest and Corporation acts) in terms of the numbers of M.P.'swilling to support them. Abolition survived the impact of theFrench Rev olution best because it was the most broadly based inparliament and the country (p. 114).

W ha t is most significant here is that the abolitionists, from theoutset of their struggle, are p art of a broadly based thru st towardmajor reforms a thrust w hich in H arrison 's analysis generatedthe Liberal Party (p. 119). It was this broad base which allowedthe generation , at crucial m om ents, of the unp recede nted levels ofextra-parliamentary support for abolition described by Walvin,ensured British abolitionist influence among French protestants asoutlined by Drescher (p. 53), and gave weight to British abolition-ist efforts to protect fugitive American slaves who sought freedomin Canada, an issue investigated in Turbey's contribution (p.163)-T h e class basis and political conten t of this po pu la r sup port snow under investigation on both sides of the Atlantic. Hollismakes clear that, in the analysis of radical working class leaders,chattel slavery left the people better provided for than proletarianwage slavery; they saw em ancipa tion as a species of moralhu m b ug and the road to m ore intensive exploitation for blacksand whites (p. 302). T he analysis of the radical leaders, however,does not preclude the possibility that, at a popular level, bothfactory and farm workers supp orted abolition, as Co bbett himselfwas moved to do, in the final reform elections. Walvin remarksthat from the m id-i8 2os reform petitions were steeped in thevern acu lar of wh at had once been artisan radicalism (p. 155).The radicals' labour-oriented critique of slavery became, per-haps, more compelling propaganda in the hands of the Chartistsafter slave emancipation had taken place as it did, Foner argues,in the United States after the Civil War (p. 269).These mainstream papers are placed in a new context byaccompanying studies which begin the process, long overdue, ofcomparison between the Anglo-American and Continental abol-itionism. Drescher's detailed exercise throws into relief the uni-quely religious and popular formation of the Anglo-Americanmodel and D aget concludes tha t religious sentiment played a


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2 3 O B O O K R E V I E W Svery feeble pa rt in the French struggle (p. 76), which wasinfluenced rather by the Institut D'Afrique's concern with aneconomically appropriate basis for African colonization. Thissha rp difference does not rela te, as Dresc her establishes, to Ca tho -lic and Protestant divisions; Denmark, Sweden, and predomi-nantly Protestant Holland are Continental cases (p. 45). Dutchemancipation eventually took place in 1863 only after prolongeddebate which, Emmer suggests, reflected a society where polit-icians, elected by 10% of the highest taxed male population, andinvestors in industrial and colonial firms worked hand in hand (p.94) when , in fact, it was judg ed app rop riate to Ho lland'sbalance of trade.The continental contrast makes it clear that Anglo-Americanstudies of abolition must, ultimately, encompass the economiesubstruc ture of those events. O ne of the most interesting papersveers in this direction. Eltis and Engerman point to the divorceE ric W illiams has been allowed to institute between m orality an deconomics a divorce which would have puzzled the abolition-ists themselves (p. 2 61). W illiams' critics have provided a be ttercontext for reviewing the relationship between anti-slavery andindu strial c apitalism , b ut ha ve left th e specifics in do ub t. E ltis andEngerman address the specific ideological assumption that freelabour was more productive than slave labour and suggest thatthe mid-nineteenth-century Foreign Office was automaticallyabolitionist because free labor, along with free trade, were thefoun datio ns of B ritish civilization a nd best for the rest of the w orld.The abolitionists emerge, momentarily, as servants of industrialcapital and its flood of manufactures. A conference to discuss w he re do ideologies come from? ma y soon be on the ag end a.M A R Y T U R N E RDepartment of HistoryDalhousie U niversityHalifax, N ova Scotia, Can ada B 3H 3 J5

Slaves and mission aries: the disintegration of Jama ican slave society17871834. M A R Y TU R N E R . U rb an a: U niversity of Illinois Press,1982. 2 23 pp. (Cloth U S$ 25.95)


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BOOK REVIEWS 3

It has never been easy to persuade yo ung studen ts of W est In dia nhistory at the University of the West Indies that the influence ofthe Dissenting m issionaries on the slaves before em anc ipatio n wasanything but patently conservative. Did not their parent societiesin the metropole insistently warn them off politics? Did the mis-sionaries not emphasize in their preaching that servants/slavesmust obey their masters? Did not the missionaries support thestatus quo in order to gain the tolerance of planter patrons? W ha twas the so-called neutrality on the question of slavery if notsupport for the slave masters? Did the missionaries not dissuadethe slaves from rebellion an d r ep udi ate any p ar t in the grea t 1831slave rebellion in Jam aic a? T h at slave rebellion ha pp ene d in spiteof the missionaries, not because of them. Some missionaries didbecome open abolitionists after 1832, but these were the refugeemissionaries in England rather than those remaining nJ amaica ;and at any rate, two years of support for abolition can hardlyexon erate fifty years of sup port for the slave system. T his po int ofview has always coexisted with two facts that apparently contra-dict it: planters generally took the missionaries as enemies ofslavery; and slaves generally took them as friends of abolition.Could so many slaves have been mistaken? How could experien-ced and embattled planters not have known their enemies?

T he assessment of the role of the Dissenting m issionaries beforeemancipation is inherently more problematic than an evaluationof wh at they did after e m ancip ation. T his book by Ma ry T ur ne r isthe most valuable contribution to the discussion in relation toJamaica. Turner has uncompromisingly developed the view thatthe influence of the Dissenting missionaries was a solvent on themaster/slave relationship, undermining the slave system not byattacking it directly, but by indirectly preparing the slaves toattac k it themselves. She recognizes a degree of am bivalence in thesituation of the m issionaries before 1831, bu t she has no dou btstha t greater w eight should be attache d to their contribution to theintellectual an d political develo pm ent of some slaves than to theirsermons of submission to slavery. Turner s thesis is that the mis-sion chapels gave slave converts a new status based on meritindependent of the plantation hierarchy; provided opportunitiesfor the development of leadership capacity; enhanced the con-


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2 3 2 BOOK REVIEWSver ts self esteem a nd sense of equ ality with free persons; gave thema new right (religious freedom) to fight for; and provided somewith the precious tools of literacy. In all these ways the mission-aries developed the m oral a nd intellectual capacities of the slaves.The Baptist mission allowed the Native Baptists to spread andshelter under their protective neglect. Slave support for the mis-sion churches and the Native Baptists became almost a form ofslave resistance. In making this case, Turner has been painsta-king, thoughtful, and competent. Turner acknowledges that itwas the slaves themselves who politicized the Christian message,not the missionaries. It was the slaves themselves who made theirown struggle for freedom under their own slave leaders. TheBaptist war, Turner knows, might more correctly have beencalled the Native Baptist war. Perhaps the extent to which mis-sionary influence was a decisive factor in slave resistance can onlybe gauged after a general inquiry into the nature and causes ofslave resistance in Ja m ai ca , which is not do ne in this book.

But even then there would be problems in establishing thenature of the connection between missions and slave resistance.The evidence is generally too soft in the belly, too dependent oninference. If Tur ne r s thesis canno t be th oroug hly disproved , itcan hardly be proved beyond doubt either. There is an insuper-able element of incalculability in the transmission of values fromteache r to pup il, from Eu rop ean to creole/African, from Christianto hea th en , from missionary to slave, which m akes it very difficultto convince beyond doubt that Burchell (or his chapel) causedSam Sharpe to rebel. Perhaps Turner might feel that her thesisabout the subversive effects of missionary activity on the slavesystem does not need a m ajor slave rebellion asproof but readersmight very well think differently or must begin to believe thatmissionary activity everywhere in the West Indies, even inAntigua, was ipso facto disruptive of the slave system. For themissionaries apparently went about their pre-emancipation en-terprise in pretty much the same fashion everywehere. In somerecen t analyses of slave resistance, scholars have been objecting toexplanations that are Euro-centered; and Turner seems to beproviding an explanation that is more Euro-centered than slave-centered. Still, this might simply mean no more than that she is


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BOOK REVIEWS 2 3 3writing more about missionaries than slaves. And she is writingmore about free-lancing small town Methodist and Baptist mis-sionaries than abo ut patron-pro tected, estate-bound Presbyterianand Moravian missionaries; it is not easy to erase the image ofthose quiet Moravians in St. Elizabeth and Manchester as con-servers, not breakers, of the slave system; and Turner has notmade them an exception to her conclusions.In writing laves andm issionaries Turner has single-mindedlypursued her thesis without stopping to look to the right or to theleft at controversies along the way. Readers who expect a con-tribution to the debate on the relationship between the 1831 slaverebellion and the abolition of slavery will be disappointed.Elsewhere Turner has suggested that this rebellion helped toconvince the metropoliton abolitionists that immediate abolitionwas the best solution; this perhaps represents a more recent posi-tion. T ur ne r could reasonably answ er, however, tha t in the bookshe is interested in what missionaries, not slaves, did for theabolition of slavery. Still, Sam Sh arpe, as the supreme missionarypro duc t, certainly deserves more serious a ttention .

Dr. T ur ne r has ma de exhaustive use of the missionary records.She has obviously had to face the unhappy consequences of thedestruction of some of the Baptist materials in the Second WorldWar. The evidence from the Methodist missionaries predom-inates in the pre-1831 era. Readers might justifiably have expec-ted a M ethodist W ar by Ch apter 6, rather than a Baptist war.We have grown accustomed, perhaps without enough evidence,to thinking of the Baptist missionaries as the most active groupboth before and after emancipation.C A R L . C. CAMPBELLDepartment of HistoryUniversity of the West IndiesMona, Kingston, Jamaica

Publicfinance andeconomiedevelopment spotlightonJamaica. H U G H N .DAWES.Wa shing ton D .C.: University Press of Am erica, 1982. xvi+ 147 pp . (Cloth US S 21.25, Pap er US $ 10.00)


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2 3 4 BOOK REVIEWSThis book starts with the assumption th at capital investmen tistheprimary engine of growth and sets out to show how the publicsector in Ja m ai ca may influence the ra te of capital formation bycarry ing ou t policies th at will affect the ra te of savings. Th e logicof the author's argument follows closely that of the Harrod-Domar economie growth model in which capital is the onlygrow th-determ ining a gent. In fact, itisthe extension of this m odelby Richard A. M usgrave (1959) to include the gov ernm ent sectorwhich forms the basis of Da we s' analysis.

Th e core of the book is a 46-equ ation econom etrie m odel whichis described in Chapter 2. In Chapters 3, 4, and 5, the authordiscusses his statistical estimation of the various sectors of themodel, but his main aim is to estimate the rates of private andpub lic saving since these are considered crucial for cap ital forma-tion. In Chapter 6, he provides a verification of his model bycomparing his projected estimates of the variables with theirobserved values for 19591974 and for 1958 and 1975, and con-cludes that th e pred icted values are . . . significantly close to theobserved val ues and that th e model behaves sufficiently well torender its use as an extrapolation device for a longer period oft ime (p. 86).

Yet Daw es recognizes the futility of this exercise: T h e realproblem . . . is tha t these types of models . . . reflect the stru cture ofthe economy for a past period, [so that] if the structure changessignificantly, so too w il l. .. the values of the predicated varia bles(pp. 114-15).In Ja m aic a, as in other non-oil-producing developing coun-tries,the oil price shocks of the 197 Shad a profound effect on the

course of economie development. When we add to this massiveexpansion of gov ernm ent consum ption by the Michael M anleygov ernm ent, the drying u p of foreign d irect investm ent, and thegrowing bu rde n of the public debt, we are left w ith a picture of aneconom y drastically different from that frozen in dat a th at are tenyears old.Dawes' estimates show that the personal savings rate inJa m aic a du ring the 1959-1974 period was negative; he attributesthis partly to the growth of consumer credit and partly to thedemonstration effect of Nortri American consumption levels on


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BOOK REVIEWS 2 3 5dom est ic con sum pt io n . His p resc r ip t ion for inc reas ing the sav ingsra t io , an d h enc e the ra t e of gro w th of gross dom est ic pr od uc t , is toreduce domes t ic consumpt ion wi th h igher taxes . In a soc ie ty inwhich a subs tan t ia l share o f the popula t ion l ives a t subs is tenceleve l , the bu rd en of add i t ion a l ac ross - the-b oard taxes wou ldreduce the Standard of l iv ing. The s implis t ic qual i ty of h is pol icyprescr ipt ion ar ises direct ly f rom the s implis t ic nature of thegr ow th m od el on w hich his analysis is bas ed. A ser ious l im ita t io nof th is model , as far as i ts appl icat ion to a developing country isconcerned, l ies in i ts assumption that in equi l ibr ium there is ful le m p lo y m e n t a n d p r i c e s t a b il i ty . I n t h e J a m a i c a n c o n te x t , fo r t h eper iod examined by Dawes , no such condi t ions p reva i led . And nosuch condi t ions have appeared s ince . The fac t i s tha t the unera -p loyment ra te has been hover ing a round twenty- f ive percen t overthe pas t de ca de an d th e ra te of inf la t ion for th at per io d h asexceeded the h ighes t in the deve loped count r ies .

Properly specif ied econometr ie models are more useful form ak ing shor t t e rm pred ic t ion s , s ince d ras t ic s t ru c tu ra l change s donot normal ly occur in the shor t t e rm. The deve lopments o f thepas t decad e c lea r ly und ersco re the r isk o f m aki ng long te rmpred ic t ions . The upsho t i s tha t the impor tance o f th i s book i sred uc ed to th at of a m ere his tor ical ar t i fact .

REFERENCEMUSGRAVE, RICHARDA., 1959. he iheoryof public inance.New York, McGraw-Hill.RANSFORDW. PALMERDepartment of EconomicsHoward UniversityWashington D.C. 20059, U.S.A.

Guyana gold: the story of We llesley A. Baird Guyana s greatest miner.W E L L E S L E YA.BAIRD,with an end essay by K A T H L E E NJ. ADAMS.Washington D.C.: Three Continents Press, 1982. 185 pp. (ClothU SS 16.00, Pap er U S 7.00)It m ay be of some use to com pare this autobio grap hical work by a


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2 3 6 BOOK REVIEWSGuy anese gold m iner with anoth er celebrated exam ple of a Carib -bean life story, taken from the anthropological literature. Byconsidering uyanagoldalongside Sidney M intz's orker in the cane(1960), we can gain an imm ediate u nd erstan din g of wh at it isnotorker in the canemarks an innovation in the history of Americanan thro po log y, for in it, pro ba bly for the first time, speech is givento those whom M intz calls the ordinary people. Th roug h theunfolding of a particular life history, we gain insights into thesocio-economic and ideological complexity of Puerto Ricansociety. But what makes this enterprise especially effective is theprivileged relation between the informant, Taso, and the anthro-pologist, who is the actual agent responsible for the final shape ofthe narrative. In counterpoint to the story itself, analyses andinterpretations are put forth, which raise the significance of theanecdotes to a more general level. Mintz in a sense intrudes intothe web of Taso's discourse in ord er to be ab le to identify with him ,while at the same time m aking explicit the conditions su rrou ndin gthe gathering of information and the forming of interpretations.T he work of Wellesley Baird can no t be placed in this same line, inspite of its shared autobiographical character, for the author ishimself the na rra tor . Baird addresseshimself, then, directly to theread er, with out passing his acco unt thro ug h the filter of ano ther'sinterpretat ion.

In dedicating his book to his fellow miners of the Guyaneseforest, he addresses himself also to all those to whom the pe ne trat -ing of frontiers m atte rs. W e the re ade rs, likewise, are given the taskof pe ne tratin g his narrativ e, following his m eandering move-ments, and the difficulties that marked his life as a gold-seeker inthe interior of British G uia na between 1932 and 1969. The role ofthe anthro polog ist h ere was one of m ediating for this edition of thework: I am wo nde ring if I would be asking too much of you asregard s helping to pu t my biogra phy in shape if I send you a roughdra ft (p. 176). Beyond this, K athlee n J . Adam s provides us, in awell-documented and illuminating essay following Baird's story( God, Utopia, and Guyana ), with some elements of analysisand some interpretations. Ad am s' treatmen t resituates the adven-tures and the particular testimony of Baird in a wider contextinvolving a meeting between two modes oflife: on the one hand,


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BOOK REVIEWS 2 3 7that of the Carib Indian s, centered essentially on the m aintena nceof a cultural fund and on the prob lem of survival; and on the othe rhand, that of the Afro-Americans who pursue a quest which,guided by the quest for gold, involves the realization in the NewWorld of the ancient European concept of Utopia.One might well regret the division of a book of limited rangeinto three ra the r different sections (narr ativ e, technical notes, andinterpretation). Moreover, a combination of the ensemble ac-cording to a more flexible scheme would have permitted us toappreciate better the originality of the enterprise. It is to beregretted that there is not m ore coherence between the two prin-cipal texts; both deserve to be illuminated by one another betterand more reciprocally.In this connection, one notices as well the corpus of illustrationsthat accompany the different texts. Those that appear in theaccount of Baird are strongly moving and constitute importantvisual documents. For its part, Adams' essay is accompanied byphotographs of Carib works of art whose atemporal quality issurprising. These two types of illustrations permit us to measurethe difference in tonality between a narrative development forwhich illustration is corollary an d an inte rpretiv e discourse whosecorollary is above all stylistic.It would not be useful to summarize the various stages thatmark out the itenerary of Baird and which lead him along severalroutes from the coast into the interior of the cou ntry , bu t also,ineluctably, from adolescence to manhood. We will single out,however, three particular points from this narrative: the initiationinto the universe of the forest, the possession of a te rrito ry, and theglance at the other .T he true encounter w ith the woods snot realized by Baird u ntilafter he has had the anguish ing experience of being lost there. T hisentrance into the forest in the first pages of the account procuresfor the auth or the op po rtun ity to m easure his fantasies aga inst thereality of a virgin land. W antin g to make the journ ey between twolocations 34 miles apart, and becoming lost en route, he feels,successively, physical pain, abandonment, the feeling of dispos-session ofself and fear all things previously imagined but notyet feit in their dramatic reality. When he finally arrivs at


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2 3 8 BOOK REVIEWS civiliza tion, he has intimately tra ined his solitude, to be con-fronted by the ab an do nm en t of the landscapes of his own interior.Fro m the time of his trial, which we would describe as init-iat ory, it app ear s to him easy to clear a territory , such a spacehaving already been conquered within himself as well as withinthe surrounding forest. He in fact appropriates a territory for theconstant search for the gold that it conceals. He knows how toestablish landm arks there, to invent techniques, and to note downpoints of reference, dra w ing resources for survival, wh ethe r fromwithin himself or from the forest. The district of Barama (in thenorthw est of w hat was then British Gu iana ) becomes in a way hisown area of sojourn and of diverse investigations. The relationswoven between pa rt ne rs (fellow miners) the tem porar y aswell as permanent inhabitants permit him a familiarity withplaces and allow him to mark this description of a pionee r m ode oflife with a detailed observ ation of na tur al elemen ts: the flooding ofrivers, the animals, the woods. If he obviously speaks of isgoldyields, one feels yet that these are not intimately involved with hisfundam ental preocc upations, and this is rath er parad oxica l.These latter have as their essential focus the relations with theCarib,the possible exchanges, the distances that it was importantnot to infringe. Whatisof im por tan ce for us, then , is the view tha the carries of these.

Thisisinitially and above all amo rous, in the most genera l senseof the word. E ven if his intrusion into the woods has transformedtheir way of life and the system of exchanges, Baird clearly doesnot regard the Carib with an anthropological eye. This is not somuch owing to a lack of desire to participate and blend himselfintimately into the everyday life of these populations that pre-ceded him into this territory ; he is obliged to share their daily life,through the game of exchanges and looks, and a form of co-habitationisestablished which is acco mpanied also by an involve-m ent in work. But wha t m atters to him even m ore is the am orousadventure. In this sense, the tenor of the account is stronglyevocative. For example, beginning with an exceedingly sensiblebu t still distanced observation how ca n one m ake love in aham m oc k? the re unroll in his head and in his text a series ofquestions which lead to the following obvious conclusion: it is a


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BOOK REVIEWS 2 3 9Carib woman who will give birth to his eldest son. He involveshimself right aw ay in the r elations hip, imp licates himself in it, andyet it is of little impo rtan ce to him in fact as an in divid ual toquestion himself about what is to become of a people with whomhe shares the same territory.

Another thing this book demonstrates is the profound culturalunity of the Gu iana s. In the forest of Fren ch G uia na , where I hav ebeen studying Creole gold prospectors orpailleurs)for the past twoyears, for example, there still live a few gold prospectors, incontact with other Carib In dian s, with the Wa yan a, and also withthe Aluku (Boni) M aroons. It is certain th at Ba ird's narr ativewould appear profoundly familiar to them. Certain of theseCreoles of Antillean origin would spontaneous ly feel themselves tobe "partners" of Baird. They have cut their way into the samespaces, are confronted by the same difficulties of ad ap tat ion , andshare the same hopes. The working of gold itself its varyingtechniques, and the thorny q uestion of exchanges with the autoch -tonous or immigrant populations are superimposable aspects.Even in the most pe culiar little details, one can piek out revealingcorrespondences. Like the miners of Guyana, those of FrenchG uia na use condensed milk cans to measure their gold yields an d,like Baird, some of them employ a wooden stick to extract thecartridges from their old shotguns

In the two Guianas, one likewise notices that in spite of afamiliarity between the different populations, a relative lack ofcommunicativeness is maintained. This in fact permits the re-specting of the boundaries of coexistence between the diversecommunities. This distance appears to us to be the gauge of thereciprocal existence of each culture, since each finds for itself itsown subsistence fund, the resources necessary for its renewal andits dynam ism. T hey are not un aw are of each other, being obligedto make exch anges, bu t there still persists between them a ce rtainimpermeability.

This distance between cultures likewise poses the problem ofthe place of the anthro polog ist's discourse. Ca n such a discourse initself make explicit th e diversity of ways of life? Is there not alwaysquietly concealed un de rne ath it his famous n otion of Utopia theUtopia of being in possession of know ledge of the o ther? But if the


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24O BOOK REVIEWSstranger, by his very presence, enjoys the prestige of novelty andembo dies the chance of widening socialti s it wassofor Baird inrelation to the C aribs an d vice versa - then w ha t else are we, if notthe attentive witnesses of exchanges that we only rarely master?

REFERENCEMINTZ, SIDNEY W., 1960.Worker in thecane: aPuerto Rican life hislory New Haven,Y ale University Press. (T ranslated into French by Jacq ueline Ro uah and pu b-lished in 1979 as Taso Paris, Francois M aspero.)M IC H L E B AJ STR OB EL97370 M aripasoulaFrench Guiana

C a r i bb e a n m i gr a n t s: e n v i ro n m e n t a n d h u m a n s u rv iv a l on S t K i tt s a n dNevis BONHAM C. RIGHARDSON. Knoxville: T he University ofT ennessee Press, 1983. xiii + 209 pp . (Cloth US$ 19.95, Pap erUSS 12.50)Richardson's study is as much about the denuding effect of 350years of intensive cultivation on fragile island ecosystems as it isabout migration, and as much about the Caribbean's past andfuture as it is ab ou t its present. T he au tho r asserts with urgency : T h e area's physical environ me nts destabilized, modified, anddepleted by centuries of colonial control do not support andcan no t gu ara nt ee the succes of livelihood strategies based entirelyon local resources and op portu nities (p. 8). T he book departsdeliberately, then, from the present-bound consideration thatoften beclouds public opinion, policy, and even migrationscholarship.T he push towards political decolonization th at peaked in thepast few decad es, while imp orta nt, has inadve rtently allowed for aconven ient dem arcatio n of reality between the colonial con ditionand its aftermath so much so that one detects noticeableimp atience now adays at mention of past dom ination . Focusing onthe two former island colonies of St. Kitts and Nevis, Richardsoneffectively shows that colonization set in motion a chain of events


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BOOK REVIEWS 2 4 Ithat cannot be ended by political decree or by perceptualamnesia. In human and ecological terms the consequences ofcolonization in St. Kitts and Nevis have been prolonged andirreversible.

European settlers, relying heavily on the labor of their Africanslaves, cleared m uch of the ex isting forest cover w ithin the first fewdecades for fuel and building materials, and to make way forintensive export erop cultivation. This systematic deforestation,along with the grazing practiced by Eu rope an-intro duc ed anim alspecies, initiated permanent environmental changes. As Rich-ardson remarks succinctly: . . . the climatic pertu rbatio ns of thearea now becam e enviro nm ental haz ar ds (p. 12). Ch ronic soilerosion, greater susceptibility to severe drought, and the ex-tinction of several pla nt and an im al species are ju st a few of theenvironmental costs the author discusses.Richardson's emphasis on the ecological question provides anindispensable context for considering Caribbean migration.Monocrop cultivation has, in the first instance, depleted thefertility of the land and prevented the production of food staples.At the same time, it has created a surplus population (because ofits need for large amounts of labor) that cannot be sustainedadequately by existing resources. Against this backdrop theau tho r describes in detail what he calls the m obile livelihoodsystem tha t has propelled K ittitians and Nevisians to seek workin other islands of the Eastern Caribbean, Bermuda, theDominican Republic, the Dutch Antilles, Britain, Canada, andthe United States.Individual emigrant motivation andpay off the major pre-occupations of the push/pu ll school of migration theory an d theimp act of structu ral shifts in the interna tiona l econom y, are bothtreated in Richardson's account. Neither of these theoreticalcurrents occupies center stage, however. Instead, Richardsonargues persuasively for a local-level approach that views migra-tion as an outcome of particular cultural and environmentalcircumstances and that, in turn , helps to re-form the home cultureand environment .So,for instance, the auth ors owshow the post-emancipation migrations to and from these islands has contri-buted to reformulating their status systems. Or again, he points


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out that the purchase of livestock, though a rational investmentstrategy for Nevisians who had earned money abroad, has sinceaccelerated environmental deterioration of the island throughovergrazing and thus contributed to the necessity for continuedmigration as a livelihood strategy.W hile local-level analysis is one of the book 's streng ths, it is notalways employed boldly or consistently. In his perfunctory dis-cussion of kinship and its relation to migration, for instance,Ric hardso n employs uncritically the outside r's categories of sta-bility and illegitimacy to depict conjugal unions and thechildren bom of them (p. 49). Moreover, important questionstha t might have been treated in just this kind of m icro-scaleapproach go unasked. For example, one wonders how the migra-tion trajectories of men and women differ, given the varyingcultu ral expectations th at impinge on males and females at differ-ent stages of the life cycle. Richardson's discussion of the relation-ship btween migration and class position in St. Kitts and Nevisdoes use the m icro -sca le ap pro ach to good effect, althoug h hisdemarcation between middle and lower class seems overly rigid.

Paradoxically, this reader would have liked both a bit moreethnography and a bit more information on pertinent shifts in theinternational economy. (Why the changeover from Caribbean toEast Indian laborers in Trinidad in the nineteenth century, andwhy the decline in labor demand in the Dominican Republic in ribbe n igrantsoffers an extrem ely useful com pariso n ofthese two neighboring islands. Both were intensively cultivatedsugar colonies, yet Nevis, always the more marginal producer ofthe two, underwent an almost complete changeover to cotton,then to a largely peasa nt-ho lding econom y, in the early decad es ofthis century. St. Kitts, on the other h an d, has limped along in theinternational sugar market to the present. St. Kitts, thoughhav ing less eroded and depleted soils, has experienced lower ratesof population increase and reportedly poorer nutritional levelsthan its sister island of pea san t prod uce rs. Woven thro ugh thebook one finds contrasts such as these which Caribbean scholars

and policy makers should find provocative and important.Rich ardson , a geographer by training, mines the da ta reserves


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BOOK REVIEWS 243of several scholarly disciplines.Hemakes extensiveuse ofBritishColonial Office reports and Parliamentary Papers for thenineteenth and twentieth centuries and effectively incorporatesthe findings of historians, anthrop ologists,andother geographe rs.For the m ost par t, this givestheworkapleasing blurr ed genre squality which, as Geertz remarks, typifies muchof the bestofcom temp orary scholarship. If the account slowsattimesitis onlybecause,out ofdiffidence pe rhap s,its author departs from boldanalysisanddescendsto thelevelofst pbystep chronology.CHARLESV. CARNEGIECenterfor Latin American StudiesUniversityofFloridaGainesvilleFL32611, U.S.A.

Tryir to makeit adaptingto theBahamas JOHN BREGENZER. W a s h -ington, D.C.:Un iversity Pressof America, 1982. viii + 88 pp.(Cloth USS 18.00, Paper US$7.25The Bahama Islandsare one ofthe least studiedfromasocialscience poin tofview ofthe countriesof the world. With overtwenty-two inhabited islands, the Bahamas could providescholars withaunique opportunityfor studying ecological adap-tation using various comparative methods. Such research wouldbe facilitated by the island's well-documented history. La-Flamme's (1976) annotated bibliography, which aimed atcompleteness, lists only seventy-one items. A complete socialscience libraryon theBaham as, including dissertationsand un-published stud ent pap ers, fills onlyathree-foot shelf.Thusit is anotable event when a book on the Bahamas is published.Although John Bregenzer's research focused on the island ofEleuthera, the study is not a traditional ethnography but atheoretical work dealing with culture change.

Bregenzer beginsbyrejectingthe m yth of the tropical isle, amyth which is being continually perpetrated by the Bahamiantourist industry. Each chapter starts with an interesting quota-tion, the most appropriate for the theme of the book being: W H E R E ARE THE PALM TREES? (Disappointed firstre-


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action of a U .S. college stud ent arriving at Rock S o un d) (p. 57).Bregenzer's purpo se, however, is not to debu nk the my th, bu t topresent a generalization regarding the island of Eleuthera: theplace is exposed, not isolated. It is subject to, shaped by, andada pted to great and fluctuating forces from o utside. .. . T he w ayof life on Ele uth era srega rde d as a system, but as a system which isa functioning p art in a m uch broa der system (p. 3).In a series of short chapters Bregenzer presents descriptions ofthe ecology of the island and the islanders themselves (Afro-Americans who speak a dialect of English), the history of the

Bahamas and Eleuthera, the demography of the island, the hu m an system (a discussion of Eleu theran social fragmenta-t ion ) ,a description of the three co mm unities at the south end ofEleuthera (Rock Sound, Greencastle, and Bannerman Town,with populations of about 1000, 500 and 100, respectively), atheoretical discussion, and an epilogue.Bregenzer examines several models for understanding culturechan ge. His app roa ch is to distinguish between overt culture (thereal world, what the outside observer sees) and covert culture (a

cognitive orientation of individuals) and to construct four logi-cally possible linkages: 1) cha nge in overt cu lture , then ch ang e incovert culture, 2) change in covert culture, then change in overtculture, 3) change in covert culture with no change in overtculture; and 4) change in the overt culture with no change incovert culture . It is the typ e four linka ge (p. 78) which Bregen-zer finds characterizes his Eleutheran communities. His metho-dology is to rank the three communities in terms of degree ofexposure to the outside world (overt culture), with Rock Soundthe most exposed and Bannerman Town the least. Data on covertculture were obtained by using two measures a values testdeveloped by William B. Rodgers for Abaco (another Bahamianisland) a nd the Ka hl test of individu al m odernism . Th e resultsshow that the people of Rock Sound and Bannerman Town aresimilar, wh ile the people of Gre enca stle differ from b oth . Bregen -zer concludes: H ere the end points of a con tinum of ou twa rdchange appear to be associated with little change in individuals.On Eleuthera it seems to be at the midpoint of outward changetha t the changes in individuals have occu rred (p. 77). H e finds


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BOOK REVIEWS 2 4 5the explanation in the theme of his study Eleuthera is anexposed island. Eleu theran s and Bah amians have had to ad ap tto an environment of fluctuating economie prosperity and fluc-tuating reliance on the outside world. It would seem to be areaso nab le proposition t ha t these peop le developed th e covert sideof their culture to cope with either extrem e (p. 78).

Specific strengths of the book are thefiv ma ps and the six-pagebibliography which lists many Bahamian references. The study ishistorically an d ethnog raphically accu rate; no factual errors werefound. Th ere are no photog raph s or line drawings, nor is there anindex. Since no biographical information on the author is pro-vided, it is ap pr op riat e to state in this review th at Jo hn Bregenzerreceived his Ph.D. degree from the University of Minnesota,M inneap olis in 1976. HeisAssociate Professor of Anthropology atthe University of Dayton, Ohio, where he has taught for manyyears.

REFERENCELAFLAMME, ALAN G., 1976. An annotated, ethnographic bibliography of theBahama Islands. ehavior Science Research 11: 57-66.KEITH F. OTTERBEINDepartment of AnthropologyState U niversity of New Y ork at BuffaloAmherst NY 14261, U.S.A.

uba betweenempires i8y8-igo2. LouisA. P E R E Z .Pittsburgh: U niv-ersity of Pittsburgh Press, 1982. xx + 490 pp. (Cloth US$ 32.95)Brilliantly written and based on solid research, Luis A. Perez's uba between empiresis a book th at explains why the origins of eventoday's hostilities in U.S.-Cuban relations are to be found inCuba's frustrated struggle for independence at the end of the lastcentury. Having fought long and courageously to win their free-dom from the Spanish em pire, C ub an p atriots found their cou ntryensnared in a new colonial system and their independencecircumscribed by an even more powerful patron, the UnitedStates. As Perez notes, T he unfinished revolution of 895 f


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2 4 6 BOOK REVIEWSgave decisive shape and content to republican politics, a legacythat served as a mandate to revolution for the next three gen-erations of C ub an s (p. 386).In many ways, Castro's Revolution originally sprang directlyout of Cu ba's shattered earlier dream s of full sovereignty. Ce rtain-ly Cas tro saw it in those terms. As he entered San tiago de C ub a intrium ph in Ja n u ar y 1959, Castro noted acerbically th at thestruggle begun by Jos M arti was now complete and that GeneralShafter was no longer on the scne to deny Cubans their victoryparade. (As Perez points out, th Commander ofU.S . forces inCuba, General William R. Shafter, who was also the fattest manin the U.S. army, refused to allow Cuban insurgent forces topar ticipa te in the trium ph al m arch throug h the streets of Santiagoin 1898, or even to enter the city.)

Beginning his saga in 1878, as the Ten-Years War for inde-pend ence ended and a respite of almost twenty years began, Perezskillfully weaves developments in Cuba, Spain, and the UnitedStates into a composite whole. He explains the objectives andactions of each side and how the m ovem ents of one affected thepositions of the other two. We thus have a complete view of thedrama as it unfolds.

Perez describes the resumption of hostilities between Cubaninsurgents and Spanish troops in 1895, Spain's efforts to quell thenew uprising , first with a velvet glove, then with a n iron fist, an d,finally, exhausted, with a scheme for autonomy. But it was toolate. Cuba's insurgent armies, led by Maximo Gomez, knewvictory was within their grasp; they had no inten tion of settling foran yth ing less tha n full sovereignty. Th en enter the U nited States.For a century , the bottom line ofU.S .policy with respect to Cubaha d been to preven t its transfer from Spain to any othe r power andto oppose Cu ban independen ce. Th eU.S.preferred the status qu ountil such time as Cu ba, in the words of Jo h n Qu incy Ada ms , feillike an apple into the bosom of the North American Union. Inpursuing this policy, the United States had several times tried tobuy Cuba from Spain, it had refused to grant belligerent rights toCuban rebels during the Ten-Years War (1868-1878), and from1895 forward it refused either to extend such rights to the newgeneration of insurgents or to indicate support for their cause, i.e.


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2 4 8 BOOK REVIEWSPerez notes also that the Cuban Councilwashorrified at the

ideaofU .S . interven tion witho ut some expression of suppo rtforCuban independence. Theyhad even indicated that withoutit,Cuban troops would fighttheU . S .aswellasSpain. Th at mighthave beena temporary embarrassment,butU. S. strategists musthave doubted that the Cubanshad thewillor wherewithal tocarryit out, andeven iftheydid,tha t they could long p revailagainst U.S. arms.Perez notes that the commitment to Cuban independencereflected in theTeller A m endm ent rested fragilelyon afleetingbut convenient convergence of special interests. He makesamore creditable effort thananyAm erican historian with w hoseworksI amacquaintedtoexplain this sudden about-faceinU . S .policy.In theend, however,theexplan ation seemedto me to beinsufficient. But ifa flaw ,it is indeedasmall onein anotherwisefascinatingandeven exciting work.Finally, as one reads this account of how Cuba freed itself fromSpanish do min ation only to fall un der tha t of the U .S. , one cann otbut note that, in a sense, history hasrepeated itself,or at leastcompleted still another cycle. Cuba freed itself from Spainbutcame un der U .S. domination. Castro freeditfrom U .S. dom ina-tion, onlytobringitunder thatofthe Soviet Un ion.AsequeltoPerez's book, then, might well be entitled uba among threeempiresW A Y N ES. SMITHCarnegie EndowmentforInternational PeaceWashington D.C. 20036, U.S.A.

Cuba: ahandbookofhistoricalstatistics SUSAN SCH ROEDE R.Boston: G.K. Hall, International Historical Statistical Series, 1982. xlii589 pp. (Cloth US$ 85.00).This isamassive work w hich p rovidesacomprehensive statisticalpanorama of Cuban society over several centuries.Thevolumecontains482statistical tables covering dem ogra phy, educa tion,labor force, employment and wages, agriculturaland industrialproduction, mining, energy, construction, Communications,cul-


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BOOK REVIEWS 2 4 9ture,sports, foreign trad e, public debt, foreign aid, pub lic financeand government budgets, tourism, public officials, banking andfinance, national income accounts, and price indices. Some tablesprovide scattered coverage from the sixteenth to the nineteenthcenturies, but m ost of the materials relate to the present century .Schroeder is to be com me nded for comp iling in one volume anabundance of statistical materials, many of them difficult toobtain. This book will become a handy reference volume forCuban scholars, especially in terms of ts bibliographic usage.On the other hand, given the complexity of the undertaking(e.g., wide historical scope, mu ltiplicity of sources, and chang es insocial systems), the deg ree of success of this pub lica tion in term s ofactual research capabilities depe nds g reatly on the quality of theeditorial contribution. In this case, it is glaringly poor. Instead ofsolid historical background, careful methodological evaluation,and precise critical w riting, we find simplistic gene ralizations andsloppy com menta ries. Som e examples will suffice to illustrate m yassessments.Though the book contains over 500 pages of statisticalmaterials, the main introduction occupies a mere nine pages, ofwhich six are devoted to painfully basic historical notes. Thu s, inonly three pages the a uth or a ttem pts, with limited success, to dealwith key issues concerning statistical availability and reliability,and the non-comparability of pre- and post-revolutionary data.In fact, what we find even in this limited space, are long citationsfrom her academie mentor regarding the uses and pitfalls ofhistorical statistics. It is true that each chapter is preceded byintrodu ctory comm ents tailored to the topics covered w ithin, bu tin general the author further engages in historical simplificationsor simply previews what is to be presented.For instance, Schroeder states tha t th e Cub ans were un able tomake any long-term commitment for economie developmentbecause of a lack of professional statisticians, the U.S. embargo,and the vagaries of the wea the r (p. 488). But obviously statist-icians can be tra ined in a few years, socialist markets an d a id weremade quickly available to the island, and good planning shouldmak e allowances for the we ather an d o ther un certainties. In somecases, carelessness in the reading of the data is quite apparent.


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25O BOOK REVIEWSSchroeder writes that "tobacco production during the twentiethcentury has not varied significantly, except during the late 1970's.. ." (p. 234). However, Table IX.30 (p. 264) mislabeledm etric tons, when it should be thousan ds of metric tons showsthat tobacco output reached 130,000 tons in 1936 and 1946, andthen fluctuated from 30,000 to 60,000 tons in the 1950S. TableIX.31 (p. 267), presenting data only through 1976, indicates astable level of tobacco production (around 50,000 tons) since1960, except for two years.In addition, sme of the remarks found in the chapter intro-ductions must be characterized as gross mistakes. The authorstates that "in 1960 the M inistry of La bo r . . . decided th at m oneywould no longer be used as an incentive for workers. Moralincentives were to motivate society as a whole" (p. 180). In fact,only after 1962 was this policy implemented in selected sectors,especially the Ministry of Industry under Guevara, whereas theeconomy-wide introduction of moral incentives took place in1966. In her treatment of the 1971 policy change involving thereturn to material incentives and the reduction of the moneysupply, Sch roeder declares that "th e results ofth new policy canbe seen on Table VII.13" (p. 181); but the table shows averagewages by state economie sectors in 1962-1966Another flaw in the chapter introductions is that there is littleor no discussion related to the sources being used, the quality ofthe data, or potential contradictions among similar tables.Consider, for example, the following data extracted from TableV .i (pp. 12224), heade d "C u ba n Schools, Teach ers and Enroll-ments, 1882-1978":

1962 96319681969

chools16,16434,44O37,70315,804

eachers4 6 , 9 3 675^46103,12981,191

W ha t kinds of schools are included : prim ary, seco ndary, or both?What types of teachers are counted: regular, popular (i.e., non-professional), or both? What accounted for a gain of 30,000


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BOOK REVIEWS 2 5 Iteachers in 1963 and a loss of 22,000 teachers in 1969? How toexplain the year-to-year variations in the number of schools:cou nting classroomsvs.schools? (O n this issue, the table footnotesadd more confusion than clarification.)

Consider also the potentially misleading natu re of Ta ble IV .1(p . 112), dealing with Cuban immigrants to the United Statesadm itted as residents und er IN S criteria. In 1960-1962, the tableshows small inflows (8,000 to 16,000 immigran ts) simply becausemost Cub ans em igrated to the U .S. und er visa waivers instead ofresidency permits. A more accurate picture of the Cuban exodusof this period is contained in the in terna tiona l m igration tables ofth eAnuario Estadistico de Cubaigj6 cited by the auth or m any timeselsewhere in the volume. About 65,000 Cubans emigrated annu-ally in 19601962, and most of them were ultimately destined forthe U.S.

In sum , to turn this book into a valuable research tooi, the usermust be aware of its many shortcomings. There are classificationsand terms to defne, statistical quirks to explain, and historicalfacts to correct. Itislamen table th at this volum e, which acco rdingto the author developed from work done at a graduate seminar,could not rise above the level of a sophom oric effort.SERGIO ROCADepartment of EconomicsAdelphi UniversityGarden City NY 11530, U.S.A.

The Dominican people 1850-igoo: notesfor a historical sociology .H .HOETINK.Baltimore: Th e Jo hn s Hopkins University Press, Joh nsHopkins Studies in Atlantic History and Culture, 1982, 243 pp.(Cloth USS 22.50)Th e intent of Ho etink's TheDom inicanpeople 1850-igoo(the trans-lation ofElpueblo Dominicano is to bring the p relim inary results ofa continuing investigation to the attention of others interested inthe sociological aspects of the history of the D om inican R ep ub lic(p .x). T he book consists of a collection of no tes , draw n mainlyfrom archival sources and primary documents, that comprise


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fruitful steps toward a historical sociology of the Do m inicanRep ublic between the early years of independe nce from Ha iti andthe end of the nineteenth century.

The book is organized into chapters on agrarian life, de-mography, Communications, economics, politics, culture, society,and the family, each conceptualized as a stru ctu re . These arenot highly ab strac t or formal categories, nor elem ents of a specificparadigm, but rather general categories. Given that Hoetinkresearched the book in the igos, and given the state of knowledgeabout the Dominican Republic at that time and the author'searlier research, this orientation does not seem inappropriate, aslong as the reader does not mistake the movement toward ahistorical sociology with the accomplishment of that goal.

Th is struc tura l a rgu m en t is consistent with the types of sourcesHo etink employs. In the section on political ideas, for exam ple, hequo tes extensively from letters written by key figures of the period:Gregorio Lupern, Ulises Heureaux, Pedro F. Bon, Fr.Fern ando Arturo M erino, et al. Although he mentions that Heu -reaux often quoted Talleyrand, to the effect that words can beused to conceal thought, Hoetink appears to believe that he canread this correspondence as a faithful record of nineteenth-century values, intentions, and methods. What results from thisdiscussion, unfortunately, is a top-heavy interpretation of thenecessity of caudillo politics which often reads as justificationrather than explanation.

Sources such as letters and government reports, of course, donot lend themselves easily to macrosociological analysis. Onenecessarily rem ains at the level of historical sociology out ofwhich emerges no definitive theory of Dominican society. Thereare no theoretical devices to show how the (structural) pieces fittogether, nor are there models of social structure that take intoaccount actors at ot

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