Creolisation and Creole Societies: a Cultural Nationalist View of Caribbean Social History

Caribbean Quarterly

Volumn 44, Issue 1-2, 1998, Pages 1-32

  Bolland, O Nigel ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 0007201051     PISSN: 00086495     EISSN: 24706302     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/00086495.1998.11829568     Document Type: Article

References (105)

1. This article was previously published in Intellectuals in the Twentieth Century Caribbean, Vol. 1. A. Hennessy (ed.), London and Basingstoke: 1992, 50–79. I am grateful to several friends and colleagues who have made helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper, including Salvatore Cucchiari, David Hess, Karen Judd, Michael Peletz, Mary Turner, and, especially, Arnold Sio and Gary Urton, whose criticisms have helped me to formulate and clarify my ideas. I also wish to thank Ellen Bolland for helping me to clarify the prose. However, they are absolved from responsibility for any remaining shortcomings in this paper.
2. Virginia R., Dominguez, White by Definition: social classification in Creole Louisiana (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1986), 13.
3. M. G., Smith, The Plural Society in the British West Indies (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1965), 5–6.
4. Ibid., 9.
5. John W., Nunley and Judith, Bettelheim, Caribbean Festival Arts (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1988), 37.
6. Ibid., 31.
7. David, Skinner and Barbara E., Harrell-Bond, “Misunderstandings arising from the use of the term ‘creole’ in the literature on Sierra Leone”, Africa 47: 3 (1977), 305.
8. Ibid.
9. Ibid., 314.
10. Eric, Hobsbawm, “Introduction: inventing traditions”, in Eric, Hobsbawm and Terence, Ranger (eds) The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 9.
11. Ibid., 13.
12. An excellent discussion of this cultural process and the social context in which it occurred is Sidney W., Mintz and Richard, Price, An Anthropological Approach to the Afro-American Past: a Caribbean perspective (Philadelphia: Institute for the Study of Human Issues, 1976). This paper was originally presented at a symposium on “Creole societies in the Americas and Africa” at the Johns Hopkins University in 1973.
13. On the importance of the concept of culture in world history, see Eric R., Wolf, Europe and the People Without History (IBerkeley: Los Angeles and London, University of California Press, 1983) and Peter, Worsley, The Three Worlds: Culture and the origins of World Development (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1984); and on the world-system approach, see Immanuel Wallerstein, The Modern World System: multiculturalist agriculture and the origins of the world economy in the sixteenth century (New York: Academic Press, 1974).
14. Raymond T., Smith has pointed out that Brathwaite, a leading exponent of the creole-society thesis, comes from Barbados, the only ex-British colony that was never subjected to Crown Colony rule, that “retained a resident White upper class, and… is the one country that developed a deep sense of national unity and a common ‘culture’ - even if it appeared abjectly pro-British at times”; “Race and Class in the Post-emancipation Caribbean,” in R., Ross Racism and Colonialism (The Hague: Boston: and London: Martinus Nijhoff, 1982), p. 118. Gordon K., Lewis has drawn attention to the sense of a ‘colonial aristocracy’ that developed among the Barbadian planters in the latter half of the seventeenth century. But this early ‘creole’ viewpoint was not much more than an ‘emergent sense of collective planter identity’, rooted in their divergence of interest from the British mercantilists, and, as such, is quite distinct from the popular nationalism in the twentieth-century West Indies; see Lewis, Main Currents in Caribbean Thought: the historical evolution of Caribbean society in its ideological aspects, 1492–1900 (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983), 72–5.
15. The first British Caribbean colonies to become independent were Jamaica, and Trinidad and Tobago, in 1962, followed by Barbados and Guyana in 1966.
16. William A., Green, “The Creolisation of Caribbean History: the emancipation era and a critique of dialectical analysis”, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 14:3 (1986), 164.
17. Raymond T., Smith described Guyanese history as a sequence of stages, each with a distinct ‘sociocultural model’: plantation society, creole society, and ‘open democratic’ or modem society. He called M.G. Smith's plural-society thesis a ‘most successful failure’. See “Social Stratification, Cultural Pluralism and Integration in West Indian societies,” in S., Lewis and T., Mathews Caribbean Integration: Papers on Social, Political and Economic Integration, (Rio Piedras: Institute of Caribbean Studies, 1967), 227.
18. Ibid., 229–32.
19. Orlando, Patterson, The Sociology of Slavery: an analysis of the origins, development and structure of negro slave society in Jamaica (London: MacGibbon & Kee, 1967), 70.
20. George, Beckford, Persistent Poverty: underdevelopment in plantation economies of the Third World (New York: Oxford University Press, 1972), 10.
21. Susan, Craig, “Sociological Theorising in the English-speaking Caribbean: a review,” in Susan, Craig (ed.) Contemporary Caribbean: a sociological reader (Port of Spain: the author, 1982), 150.
22. Clive Y., Thomas, Plantations, Peasants, and State: a study of the mode of sugar production in Guyana (Los Angeles and Kingston: Center for Afro-American Studies and Institute of Social and Economic Research, 1984), 9.
23. Marc, Bloch made a comparable point when he deemed it important to maintain a distinction between the manor, as an institution, and feudalism, by not equating the manorial system with feudal society; see Feudal Society (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961), 279.
24. M.G., Smith, The Plural Society in the British West Indies (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1965), 111
25. M.G., Smith, Culture, Race and Class in the Commonwealth Caribbean (Mona: University of the West Indies, 1984), 7; he refers to A Framework of Caribbean Studies as published in 1956, but it was actually published a year earlier (Kingston: University Collego of the West Indies, Caribbean Affairs Series, 1955), and reprinted in The Plural Society., 18–74.
26. Smith, Culture. Race and Class, 29.
27. Ibid., 32.
28. Ibid., 34.
29. Ibid., 141.
30. Ibid., 140; emphasis added.
31. ‘Given the fundamental differences of belief, value, and organisation that connote pluralism, the monopoly of power by one cultural section is the essential precondition for the maintenance of the total society in its current form’; M.G., Smith, The Plural Society 86
32. Malcolm, Cross, “On Conflict, Race Relations, and the Theory of the Plural Society”, Race 12:4 (1971), 484.
33. O., Nigel Bolland, Colonialism and Resistance in Belize: essays in historical sociology (Benque Viejo de Canneti: Mona and Belize City: Cubola Productions, Institute of Social and Economic Research and Society for the Promotion of Education and Research, 1988), Introduction.
34. Kamau, Brathwaite, The Development of Creole Society in Jamaica, 1770–1820 (Oxtord: Clarendon Press, 1971), 311.
35. Kamau, Brathwaite, “Jamaican Slave Society, a Review,” Race 9 (1968), 336.
36. Ibid., 333.
37. Elsa V., Goveia, Slave Society in the British Leeward Islands at the end of the Eighteenth Century (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1965, 249–50.
38. Brathwaite, Jamaican slave society 337.
39. Ibid., 341.
40. Brathwaite, The Development of Creole Society in Jamaica, 296.
41. Ibid., 300. This contrasts sharply with the view of Africans, stripped of their cultures, becoming Europeanised: “If Europe dominates West Indian political and economic life, in terms of culture the West Indies are also Old World appendages. No other ex-colonies are so convinced they are British or French or cling more keenly to their European heritage… Englishness, Frenchness, and even Dutchness and Americanness permeate all aspects of West Indian life. - - (l)n the Caribbean, European culture and institutions, artifacts and ideas, are the only generally recognised heritage”; David, Lowenthal, West Indian Societies (New York: London: and Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1972), 5.
42. Ibid., 305. See also Arnold A., Sio, “Marginality and Free Coloured Identity in Caribbean Slave Society”, Slavery and Abolition 8 (1987), 166–82.
43. Ibid., 212
44. Brathwaite's tendency to refer to ‘African culture’, in the singular has been justly criticised. Richard Price, for example, has commented that the simple model of cultural interaction between Africans and Europeans pays too little attention to the cultural heterogeneity of the Africans and envisions culture as “some kind of undivided whole”; Richard, Price, “Commentary”. in Vera, Rubin and Arthur, Tuden (eds) Comparative Perspectives on Slavery in New World Plantation Societies (New York: New York Academy of Sciences (1977), 497
45. Brathwaite, The Development of Creole Society in Jamaica, op. cit. (1971), 231–2.
46. Ibid., 307.
47. Ibid., 311.
48. Ibid., 212.
49. Ibid., 311.
50. Rex M., Nettleford, “The Melody of Europe, the Rhythm of Africa,” in Mirror, Mirror:Identity, Race and Protest in Jamaica (Kingston: Collins and Sangster, 1970), 173
51. Ibid., 211.
52. Ibid., 210.
53. Ibid., 211.
54. Rex, Nettieford, “Implications for Caribbean Development”, in Nunley and Bettleheim, Caribbean Festival Arts, 1988, 194.
55. Mervyn C., Alleyiie, “A Linguistic Perspective on the Caribbean,” in Sidney W., Mintz and Sally, Price (eds) Caribbean Contours (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985), 160.
56. Ibid., 160.
57. Ibid., 175.
58. Mervyn C., Alleyne : Roots of Jamaican Culture (London: Pluto Press, 1988) 152.
59. Ibid., 161
60. Orlando, Patterson, “Context and Choice in Ethnic Allegiance: a theoretical framework and Caribbean case study,” in Nathan, Glazer and Daniel P., Moynihan (eds) Ethnicity Theory and Experience (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1975), 319. For a compatible analysis of the development of two segmentary creole cultures in nineteenth-century Jamaica, see Philip D., Curtin, Two Jamaicas: the role of ideas in a tropical colony, 1830–1865 (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1955).
61. Patterson, in Glazer and Moynihan, “Context and Choice” 334.
62. Ibid., 319.
63. See Worsley, The Three Worlds 252, and Bolland, Colonialism and Resistance ih Belize, (1988), 204–5.
64. Melville J., Herskovits's work on ‘the amalgamation of cultures’ and the concept of ‘syncretism’ was pioneering in Caribbean anthropology; see, for example, Life in a Haitian Valley (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1937).
65. Brathwaite, The Development of Creole Society in Jamaica xiv.
66. Ibid., 296.
67. Ibid., 305.
68. Ibid., xvi.
69. Kenneth M., Bilby, “The Caribbean as a Musical Region,” in Mintz and Price, Caribbean Contours, op. cit. (1985), 182, 185.
70. Brathwaite, The Development of Creole Society in Jamaica, 307.
71. Mervyn C., Alleyne, in Mintz and Price, Caribbean Contours, 158.
72. Karl, Marx, “The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte”, in Robert C., Tucker (ed.), The Marx-Engels Reader (New York: W.W. Norton, 1972), 437.
73. Philip, Abrams, “History, Sociology, Historical Sociology,” Past and Present, 87 (1980), 13. This is similar to the theory of ‘structuration’, in Anthony, Giddens, Central Problems in Social Theory: action, structure and contradiction in social analysis (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1979).
74. Karl, Marx, Capital, in Tucker, The Marx-Engels Reader, 314–315.
75. Peter, Worsley, Marx and Marxism (Chichester: Ellis Horwood, 1982), 67.
76. Michel, de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, trans, by Steven F. Rendall (Berkeley: Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 1984), xi.
77. Ibid., p. xiii.
78. O., Nigel Bolland,” United States Cultural Influences on Belize: television and education as ‘vehicles of import’,” Caribbean Quarterly 33 (1987), 60–74.
79. De Certeau, The Practice, xiv.
80. Ibid., xvii.
81. Quoted in Richard Price, ‘Foreword’ to Roger Bastidc,”African Religions of Brazil” trans, by Helen Sebba (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978), x.
82. Ibid., x.
83. Brathwaite, The Development of Creole Society in Jamaica. 219.
84. Meyer, Fortes, “Kinship and Marriage Among the Ashanti”, in African Systems of Kinship and Marriage [A.R., Radcliffe-Brown and Daryll, Forde (eds)] (London: Oxford University Press, 1950), 258.
85. S.F., Nadel, “Dual Descent in the Nuba Hills”, in Radcliffe-Brown and Forde, African systems, op. cit. (1950), 345.
86. Bastide, op. cit. (1978), 400.
87. Brathwaite, The Development of Creole Society in Jamaica, 162.
88. Alleyne, Roots of Jamaican Culture, 79.
89. Brathwaite, The Development of Creole Society in Jamaica, 300.
90. Ibid. 303, 305.
91. Kamau, Brathwaite, Contradictory Omens: cultural diversity and integration in the Caribbean (Mona: Savacou Publications, 1974), 6.
92. Brathwaite, The Development of Creole Society in Jamaica, 228.
93. Ibid. 229–32.
94. Judith, Bettelheim, “Jamaican Jonkonnu and Related Caribbean Festivals’, in Margaret E., Crahan and Franklin W., Knight (eds), Africa and the Caribbean: The Legacies of a Link (Baltimore and London: The John Hopkins University Press, 1979), 87.
95. Brathwaite The Development of Creole Society, 100.
96. Ibid., 101.
97. Kamau, Brathwaite, “Caliban, Ariel, and Unprospero in the Conflict of Creolisation: a study of the slave revolt in Jamaica in 1831–32”, in Rubin and Tuden, Comparative Perspectives on Slavery, 42–3.
98. Peter, Worsley, The Three Worlds, 4.
99. O., Nigel Bolland, Colonialism and Resistance in Belize
100. Karen, Judd, “Who will Define us? Creolisation in Belize” Cimarron (forthcoming).
101. Ibid., 79
102. O., Nigel Bolland,” Systems of Domination After Slavery: the control of land and labour in the British West Indies after 1838”, Comparative Studies in Society and History (1981), 591–619 Walter Rodney argued that the indentured Indians in late-nineteenth-century Guyana were becoming creolised, but that the ‘existing aspects of cultural convergence were insufficiently developed to contribute decisively to solidarity among the people of the two major race groups. The obverse of this race-class conjuncture is that the development of class forces and class consciousness was inadequate to sustain unity of the working people across the barriers of racial exclusiveness, and the separate trajectories created by legal distinctions, and class struggles against the domination of capital which effect two semi autonomous sets of people and important aspects of culture. There was the one conducted by the descendants of ex-slaves and the other by indentured labourers and their fellow Indians pursuing their legitimate aspirations, these two ethnically defined sectors ot'the labouring people could and did come into conflict with each other. A History of the Guyanese Working People, 1881–1905 (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981).
103. Brathwaite, Contradictory Omens, 64–103
104. Ibid., 64.
105. See O., Nigel Bolland, “African Continuities and Creole Culture in Belize” in Charles V., Carnegie (ed.) Afro-Caribbean Towns and Villages in the Nineteenth Century: a Historical Perspective”, (Kingston: African-Caribbean Institute of Jamaica, 1987), 63–82.