Writing in the Diversified Caribbean

7/29/2019 Writing in the Diversified Caribbean

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THE ROLE OF HISTORICAL WRITING

IN THE CREATION OF

THE REGIONS

COLLECTIVE MEMORY


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In his book, The Middle Passage, V.S. Naipaul makes

the claim that the history of the islands can never be

satisfactorily told because History is built around

achievement and creation and nothing was created in

the West Indies.


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"The Mimic Men" (1967) presents and examines a newly independent country in the

Caribbean, the island of Isabella, with a pessimistic view: the previous colony has

now become independent but the formerly colonized people of the island are

unable to establish order and govern their country. The colonial experience has

caused the colonized to perceive themselves as inferior to the colonizer. Colonialeducation and cultural colonization have presented the English world, with its rich

culture, as a world of order, discipline, success, and achievement. As a result, the

natives consider their own culture, customs and traditions, religion, and race to be

inferior to those of their master and try to identify themselves with the empire.

Since they are far away from their original homeland, their own original traditions

and religions have become meaningless to them, and thus, they cannot identify

themselves with those remote rules and codes. However, as they are different from

the master in cultural, traditional, racial, and religious backgrounds, they can never

successfully associate themselves with the colonizer either. They suffer from

dislocation, placelessness, fragmentation, and loss of identity. They become mimic

men who imitate and reflect the colonizer's life style, values, and views. As thesepsychological problems cannot be solved after independence is achieved,

independence itself becomes a word but not a real experience. Without the

colonizer, the colonized see themselves as lost in their postcolonial society that fails

to offer a sense of national unity and identity.


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Derek Walcott

The Caribbean: Culture or Mimicry

The absurdity of pursuing the anthropological idea of mimicry then, if weare to believe science, would lead us to the image of the first ape

applauding the gestures of what we must call the first man. Here the

contention crumbles because there is no scientific distinction possible

between the last ape and the first man, there is no memory or history of

the moment when man stopped imitating the ape, his ancestor, andbecame human. Therefore, everything is mere repetition.

Advance some thousand years, protract the concept of evolution to the

crossing of the mirror and the meridian of Alexander VI [Treaty of

Tordesillas line] . . . what was the moment when the old ape, of the OldWorld saw himself anew and became another, or, was paralyzed with the

knowledge that henceforth, everything he did in the New World, on the

other side of the mirror, could only be a parody of the past? Of course

there is no such moment, just as there is no such moment for science of the

transition from ape to man.


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Walcott

Nothing will always be created in the West Indies, for quite long time, because

what will come out of there is like nothing one has ever seen before. The

ceremony which best exemplifies this attitude to history is the ritual of Carnival.

This is a mass art form which came out of nothing, which emerged from thesanctions imposed on it. The banning of African drumming led to the discovery

of the garbage can cover as a potential musical instrument whose subtlety of

range, transferred to the empty oil drum, increases yearly, and the calypso itself

emerged from a sense of mimicry, of patterning its form both on satire and self-

satire. The impromptu elements of the calypso, like the improvisation andinvention of steelband music, supersedes its traditional origins, that is, the

steeldrum supersedes the attempt to copy melody from the xylophone and the

drum, the calypso supersedes its ancient ritual forms in group chanting. From

the viewpoint of history, these forms originated in imitation if you want, and

ended in invention.


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Ecclesiastes 1: 9-10

What has been is what will be,

and what has been done is what will be done again;

there is nothing new under the sun.Is there anything of which one can say,

"See! This is something new?"

It was here already, long ago;

it was here before our time.


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In looking at how our history has been written we

must examine:

the Eurocentric perspectives that pervaded the

early histories of the island

the attempts made by Caribbean historians and

writers to correct this situation

The critiques of this local approach


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For the professional historian, history is:

Not just about dates though their subject matter has

to be dealt with in the context of time Not only about events

Not only about just about the significant dead or

ancient individuals


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Rather it is:

An analysis of how man acted in the past

A quest for an understanding of past societies andpeoples

A search for an explanation of events of the past

A search for an understanding of the consequences of

those events

An examination of the impact of those events on thepresent


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One role of the historian is to create the

collective memory of the society.

John Tosh argues that past experience helps us

to develop an identity.

He writes that history is:

collective memory, the storehouse of experience

through which people develop a sense of identity.


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According to E. H. Carr,

history is an unending dialogue between the

present and the past.

History informs the present while the present

needs inform the discipline

Thus, each society writes its own history


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The style of writing history is important as it may reflect

our opinions on a subject.

Irony, metaphors, similes and other literary devices are

used to create a specific image.

These devices are commonly referred to as tropes.

Specifically as it relates to the writing of history, tropes aregenerally understood to be styles of discourse underlying

the historian's writing of history.


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Carl Becker says that the historian is someone who

helps to develop the artificial extension of social

memory

Most people do not research the past themselves:

they depend on the work of historians to give them

an idea of the past

This means that the ideas that people have of thepast come from the ideas that historians give to

them about the past


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Caribbean Historiography

Historiography is the history of writing history

In critical analysing the historical writings of an areaor period, we look at: the identification of source

material (evidence); the techniques used to interpret

the evidence; and the relationship between these

findings and theoretical models and assumptions.

The historiographer seeks to understand change in

the activities and interpretations of historians


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Caribbean Historiography

Historiography is rooted in understanding the actual past

and seeks to explain the processes and products of

historians in terms of their own historical contexts

Historiography examines the changes to the discipline of

history over time along with changes in the sociological,

political and ideological context in which it exists

Historiography also identifies tropes that are products of

these sociological, political and ideological contexts


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Phases in the Development of history writing of the

Caribbean

Higman identifies three stages in the development ofhistory writing in the Caribbean:

The period from Columbus to about 1900From 1900 to 1950

The period after 1950


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Much of the history written before 1900 came from the hands

of European men, representatives of the imperial powers,

members of the ruling class and down to the middle of the

nineteenth century, the slave-owning class.

Thus, from the time of the Spanish settlement, the regions

history has been written from a Eurocentric and androcentric

perspective.

Some of these writers, especially in the Spanish territories,were creoles (born in the Caribbean), but a large proportion

were outsiders especially until about 1750 after which more

creoles began to play a role in the production of histories


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In the earliest decades of European colonization, the writers of

histories found very little of what they considered history to write

about as they saw the indigenous inhabitants as being without

history

Many of the earlier histories were very broad studies in geographic

terms, but later political developments led to greater

specifications and a more parochial approach to history writing

Another significant feature of Caribbean history writing before

1900 was the essentially amateur status of the historians: most of

them earned their living from other sources and few had any

formal training in history as a discipline


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By the end of the 1800s, however, there was the emergence

of a professional academic class in Europe and the United

States associated with the production of history as a

discipline

This class of historian was to be especially important in the

next period

For the British Caribbean, the majority of these historians

came from what can be described as the Golden Triangle

of the Universities of London, Oxford and Cambridge.


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From the late eighteenth century up to the Second World War,

these historians were trained as classicists studying Greek and

Latin.

As Oxford trained classicists, they emphasised the study ofancient literature, and on learning and reading than on actual

research.

The subject matter was mainly related to politics and empire.

Hence early historical writing possessed a narrow perspective

and disregard for all cultures and history that did not emerge

from the classical tradition.


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Africans in the Caribbean were negatively construed by

persons such as Thomas Carlyle (Occasional Discourse

on the Nigger Question) and James A. Froude

In Occasional Discourse, Carlyle describes the freed

people as living lives of indolent pleasure: Sitting

yonder with their beautiful muzzles up to the ears in

pumpkins, imbibing sweet pulps and juices, their teeth

ready for every new work, and the pumpkins cheap as

grass while the sugar crops rot around them, because

labour cannot be hired, so cheap are the pumpkins.


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James Anthony Froude was an English historian

educated at Oxford and widely read in the classics

He was influenced by Carlyle In 1888 his book, The English in the West Indies or the

Bow of Ulysses was published

He wanted to inspire in the British public an enthusiasm

for the colonial ideal


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J.J. Thomas and Froudacity

John Jacob Thomas wrote a rebuttal to Froudes The English

in the West Indies called Froudacity: West Indian Fables byJames Anthony Froude

Thomas was a black Trinidadian intellectual

He was outraged by Froudes inaccuracies, racist arguments

and poor methodology


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Thomas saw Froudes book as a scheme to thwart the

political aspirations of the West Indies

The aim, according to Thomas, was to deter the British

authorities from granting any degree of elective locallegislature to any of the colonies not yet having such an

advantage. To effect this project, an argument was needed

that targeted the composition and character of the

inhabitants


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Thus the argument was made that the African population was

from its past history and actual tendencies, a standing menace

to the continuance of civilization and religion.

It was felt that an immediate catastrophe, social, political, andmoral, would most assuredly be brought about by the granting

full elective rights to dependencies thus inhabited.

As granting such elective rights would lead to political

domination by the blacks, their was the belief too that theywould elect a predominantly black legislature, which would then

proceed to pass retaliatory laws against their white fellow-

colonists.


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Thomas quotes from Froude [speaking on his voyage out to the

West Indies] to show his biases:

There was a small black boy among us His parents must have

been well-to-do, for the boy had been to Europe to be educated.

The officers on board and some of the ladies played with him as

they would play with a monkey. He had little more sense than a

monkey, perhaps less, and the gestures of him grinning behind

gratings and perching out his long thin arms between the barswere curiously suggestive of the original from whom we are told

now that all of us came. The worst of it was that, by being lifted

above his own people, he had been taught to despise them.


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Thomas reply sought tear apart Froudes claims:

Verily, it requires an eye rendered more than microscopic by

prejudice to discern the difference between the gambols of

juveniles of any colour under similar conditions. It is true that

it might just be the difference between the friskings of white

lambs and the friskings of lambs that are not white.

The difference among black educated men in deportmenttowards their unenlightened fellow-blacks, can be proved to

have nothing of that cynicism which often marks the bearing

of Englishmen in an analogous case with regard to their less

favoured countrymen.


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Thomas also showed how poor Froudes

methodology was

He quotes from Froudes account of his trip to St.Vincent:

I did not land, for the time was short, and as a

beautiful picture the island was best seen from thedeck. The characteristics of the people are the same

in all the Antilles, and could be studied elsewhere.


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Similarly, Thomas highlights that in Grenada, Froude landed,

drove 3 or four miles to visit a gentleman, and then returned

to his ship.

On the way back, as he journeyed in his carriage, Froude tells

us that he had the opportunity to peer into peoples homes

and was astonished to observe signs of comfort, and even

signs of taste armchairs, sofas, side-boards with cut-glass

upon them, engravings and coloured prints upon the walls.

Thomas says, as a result of this examination he has

written paragraph upon paragraph about the peoples

character and prospects in the island of Grenada.


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1900 1950

Caribbean history-writing in the first half of the twentieth

century was marked by a growing prominence of a local

community of amateur historiansThey were, however, greatly overshadowed by the work of

overseas academic history-writers

The local writers concerned themselves with the details of their

own territories and often had nationalistic purposes

The overseas historians tended to give prominence to the

Caribbean only insofar as it contributed to the larger history of

empires or the Atlantic World


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Caribbean history, in the academic mould of history

writing, was cast very much as a part of European

imperial history

There was little concern for the nature and

development of the creole society

These academic historians continued to be mainly male

and white The local historians were a more racially diverse group,

but most were of the middle class and few had

university degrees


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Post 1950

In this third period, the production of Caribbean histories

increasingly became the work of professionals in Caribbeanacademies

The teaching of Caribbean history as a part of the school

curriculum became common for the first time, and largely

displaced the teaching of European historyCaribbean students started to write doctoral dissertations on

Caribbean subjects first in metropolitan universities, but by

the 1960s more and more at Caribbean institutions


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The racial, ethnic and class origins of the students

became more diverse (although it was still weighted

towards the middle classes)

By the 1980s, there were more female students thanmales, although men continued to dominate teaching

Decolonization was associated with the establishment of

universities and this influenced the production of

histories

Anti-colonialism and nationalist ideologies contributed to

nationalist and locally-oriented history writing in these

universities


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This was a reaction to the history that had been written by the

dominant for the dominated

Local writers perceived the need to create history that wouldbe a history of dissent against this subjective viewpoint

This gave rise to new tropes emerging in the writing of

Caribbean history related to resistance and subversiveness For example, a common trope is the referencing of Caliban and

Prospero


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Rather than portraying the Caribbean as an extension of

the European experience, historians sought to portray

the Caribbean as separate societies possessing

distinctive lives of their own Caribbean historians were urged to specify those

characteristics of the region that give it particularity and

commonality to see what is authentically Caribbean

This was manifest in Brathwaites The Development of

Creole Society in Jamaica


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The New Social History

The new social history is based on the understanding that

each country writes its own history in its own way.

New perspectives and legitimising structures needed to be

adopted in order to appreciate the individual history of

each country.

The new structures include looking at the way that thepast influences the present and understanding the past on

its own terms.


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Oral History Writing and the Caribbean

Oral sources are important in social history.

Oral testimonies are the recollections of participants in

and/or eyewitnesses to historical events.

On the other hand, oral traditions do not necessarily

originate in the time of the respondent but are really

transmitted ways of understanding and repeating aspects

of the past.

Oral history is important as it reflects the actual words,

patterns and thought patterns of the interviewees.


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Strengths of Oral Tradition/Testimony

Oral tradition/testimony provides information on events,

values, ethics, ideals, morals, collective thinking and opinions. The use of oral tradition/testimony enables a balanced

interpretation of the past by looking equally at the common

man and the elite. According to John Tosh, Ordinary people

are offered not only a place in history, but a role in the

production of historical knowledge with important political

implications.


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Oral tradition/testimony supplies information on everyday life

not usually found in public documents.

Oral tradition/testimony gives alternate perspectives and can

reveal new data not found in written documents

Oral tradition/testimony gives an insider view of history.

According to Tosh, The memories of the colonised are an

essential corrective to the written sources which so often

reflect the view from the district commissioners veranda or

the mission compound.


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Their Weaknesses

In oral tradition/testimony, the chronological ordering ofevents is frequently absent.

Oral traditions/testimonies are usually subjective.

Oral tradition/testimony can be altered by altered by recentideas/subsequent experience/media/nostalgia.

Oral tradition/testimony can be modified by the influence ofthe interviewer to suit expectations. This may be reduced byincreasing the number of interviewers and by annotations ofcircumstances of collections


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Oral tradition/testimony can be negatively impacted by

memory, with the loss of specific details, dates

Oral testimony/tradition alters overtime with retelling and

rewording, especially in light of the needs of each society.

According to Tosh, Unlike primary documentary sources, oral

tradition does not convey the original words and images from

which the historian may be able to recreate the mental world

of the past.


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The Need for a Historical Philosophy

Caribbean thinkers have often argued that Caribbean

intellectuals must realise that the Caribbean contextwill require them to apply their disciplines in specific,

relevant ways.

Writer and historian C. L. R. James critiqued much ofthe way in which the Caribbean historians have

explained the regions past.


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Historiography and Literary History

Historical methodology today generally insists a movement

away from emotive exposition and writing on the grounds that

it may lead to bias.

However, C. L. R. James insists that bias is inevitable.

In the Black Jacobins he points out that even in the writing of

history one needs to state, where relevant, the emotive

descriptions that qualify historical incidents. James is critical of historical accounts that seek to objectively

present these cruel realities and in this genre of exposition,

downplay, the experiences being described.


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Critiquing the Caribbean Perspective

Eric Williams use of overly emotional language has

been critiqued by Gordon Rohlehr.

Rohlehrs concern is that an exaggerated over-

emotive presentation and selection of facts may ruin

the legitimacy of historical narrative, particularly thatof Eric Williams.


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William Green argues that revisionist historians may

tell only one side of the story and in their way are

limited by their own biases.

In effect, Green argues that current historical trend in

the Caribbean runs the risk of bias in telling the story

from an internal viewpoint.


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END

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Writing in the Diversified Caribbean