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[Review of: D.B. Gaspar (1985) Bondmen & rebels: a study of master-slave
relations in Antigua: with implications for colonial British America]
Lamur, H.E.
Publication date
1986
Document Version
Final published version
Published in
Boletín de Estudios Latinoamericanos y del Caribe
Link to publication
Citation for published version (APA):
Lamur, H. E. (1986). [Review of: D.B. Gaspar (1985) Bondmen & rebels: a study of
master-slave relations in Antigua: with implications for colonial British America]. Boletín de Estudios
Latinoamericanos y del Caribe, 40, 105-106. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25675299
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harvesters. He fears that the small Cuban research effort (he suggests that only six
engineers, some technicians and 40 skilled workers are involved in the development of
a replacement for the KTP-1) will handicap the development of Cuban technological
capacity in its most important industry where it was once a strong innovator.
Strong Cuban economic and technological dependence on the Soviet Union is the other side of Cuban membership of Comecon and guaranteed sugar prices. Has this dependence allowed improvement of Cuban technological capacity? Edquist's answer
is positive and negative. Positive in that it has allowed stability; negative in that Cuba
over the last decade has not improved the cane harvesters it had developed, thereby widening the technology gap with the West.
Edquist need not scoff at his inability to gain further information from the Cuban
authorities. He already has more information and insight than other writers on
technical change in the front line Cuban sugar industry. This is truly a fascinating and important study.
David Wield
Development Policy and Practice
Research Group,
The Open University
Milton Keynes
David Barry Gaspar, Bondsmen and Rebels. A study of master-slave relations in Antigua.
The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 1985. XX 4- 338 pp.
Studies on slave resistance in the Caribbean generally point to external factors as the dominant cause of slave rebellions. The studies focus in particular on either the role of newly imported African slaves or the spread of tremors caused by the French Revolu
tion, or both. However, there are a few exceptions. Gaspar's book, for example,
suggests that the 'origins of the Antigua conspiracy were, by contrast, overwhelmingly, if not exclusively, internal, and herein lies part of the intrinsic interest of the plot' (p.
XIII).
The book contains three parts. In part one the author discusses the 1736 Slave rebellion. Part two presents a description of the slave society in Antigua. Both the recruitment of African slaves and the utilization of slave labour on plantations in
Antigua are examined. The patterns of slave resistance are analysed in part three, while
the main conclusions of the study are summarized in a separate section.
The purpose of Gaspar's study is to analyse the factors that contributed to the slave plot in 1736. His central hypothesis states that changes in the occupational structure of
the slave population associated with a rapid increase of the black population and
decline of the white population, made an obvious contribution to the 1736 revolt. As the white population decreased, slaves began to fill such occupations as drivers, skilled
boilermen, coopers, carpenters, and smiths on the plantations. These occupations,
which reflected slave owners' willingness to count on their slaves' loyalty, nurtured a
weakening of the bonds of dependence of slaves upon masters, and thereby undermi
ned an important element in social control. Slaves developed a world of their own that
whites could not penetrate and whose resources, as the plot shows, were used to challenge the power of the master class.
Gaspar's book makes an obvious contribution to our understanding of the influence of internal factors on the historical development of the Antigua slave society. Yet, I
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have a few reservations which concern the author's reasoning in weighing the relative importance of external influences. Although Gaspar stresses the importance of inter
nal causes, he does discuss some examples of external influences upon the plot which seem to contradict his hypothesis. Let me cite two examples. 'At the same time, Antigua slaves may have been influenced by news of the major slave revolt in Danish
St. John, only a few miles away, where, in 1733, forty whites lost their lives' (p. 221). Consider also the following quotation: 'In the organization of their revolt, moreover,
these leaders were able to draw heavily upon functioning resources of African tradi tion, ...' (p. 256). The retention of the African tradition was caused by the 'steady importation of sizable numbers of Africans in the 1720s' (p. 218), which can also be considered as an external influence. Given these examples of the contribution of
external influences to the emergence of the 1736 plot, it is difficult to see how Gaspar wants to defend his view that the 'origins of the Antigua conspiracy were, by contrast,
overwhelmingly, if not exclusively, internal' (p. XIII).
Humphrey E. Lamur
Department of Cultural Anthropology University of Amsterdam
Amsterdam
Stephen Glazier (ed.), Caribbean ethnicity revisited: a special issue of Ethnic Groups,
international periodical of ethnic studies, Gordon and Breach Science Publishers, New
York, 1985, 248 pp., $ 25.00
The articles collected in this book (and previously published in the journal Ethnic Groups, Vol.6, Nos. 2 and 3) all reflect their authors' interest in 'ethnic' or 'racial'
relations, but they vary widely in scope, approach and, indeed, sophistication.
Jorge Duany, in a solid and instructive essay, compares the consolidation of Creole
identity in Cuba and Puerto Rico during the years 1762 - 1868. In his view, ethnic groups are 'conditioned' by the factors of production, a position he illustrates by
juxtaposing the islands' respective dominant economic institutions (the sugar planta tion in Cuba, the coffee hacienda in Puerto Rico), and describing their different impacts on the evolution of social stratification and 'ethnic' relations.
Klaus de Albuquerque and Jerome L. McElroy discuss the changes in racial and
ethnic relations in the U.S. Virgin Islands since 1917, of which the gradual shift from a relatively flexible 'Caribbean' model to a more rigid U.S.-type of 'racial' stratification is perhaps the most interesting. In his 'To be or not to be a Chinese', Thomas A. Shaw investigates the different positions and cultural 'choices' of the Chinese immigrants in Jamaica and British Guiana. Contrary to Orlando Patterson who earlier dealt with the
same theme, Shaw maintains that economic security is not a pre-condition for ethnici
ty, but that ethnicity serves as a tool for achieving economic security. He further
stresses the importance of individual choice in pursuing ethnicity-linked strategies for
achieving economic success.
C. Thomas Brockmann gives a survey (based on research in the early seventies) of
the changes that the establishment of a large sugar industry brought about in mobility among Mestizos, as compared to Creoles, in the town of Orange Walk, Belize. Finally,
Anthony Layng, in a discussion of the Caribs of Dominica, observes that their
maintenance of a collective indentity vis-a-vis the other inhabitants of the island is
exclusively linked to the economic interests they derive from their access to land in the
Carib Reserve.
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