Robinson, Leona
SYP 4453
Professor Koppelman
26 October 2019
Many Caribbean islands that we visit today and vacation to were once colonized, whether
it was the British, U.S. or the Europeans. Now that some of those islands have been decolonized,
many people - the general public - do not think to wonder why and how, or the impacts of being
decolonized. Particularly, in the island of Jamaica how was the economy and people shaped after
its decolonization?
In this literature review I will discuss and research the effects in the economy of Jamaica
since its decolonization from Britain. Within the economy there are a few, but not limited to,
subgroups that were directly affected because of the decolonization, which are gender (gender
roles), migration, and trade (imports and exports). The sources will be grouped together based on
the subgroup that it addresses.
After Jamaica’s decolonization, the “mainland was a traditional safety valve for
emigrants fleeing stagnant economies, but restrictive U.S. laws had sharply curtailed West Indian
access to it. Greater West Indian access to Britain had offset some of these losses, but in the
wake of 1958 race riots in Nottingham and London’s Notting Hill neighborhood, Parliament
reduced immigration to a trickle. This damaged island economies” (Parker 2008, pg. #). This
showed how far Jamaica’s separation and independence from Britain reached, into the United
States, although it was through the process of Jamaicans fleeing, and trying to migrate because of
the fall out in their economy.
“Many ideologies of the Jamaican man were based on what was taught to them or what
they saw from the white men. the notion of masculinity was also central to the construction of
colonial ideologies of citizenship. Centered on the free white male individual, this version of
masculinity was rooted in the bourgeois patriarchal family, Caribbean deviation from the white
bourgeois norm of the patriarchal family was used to deny full political freedom to former
slaves” (Thame 2011, pg. #). This article gives a glimpse into how their gender roles were
established, and still upheld today in Jamaica, because even now if women had a child out of
wedlock, or frequently had different partners, the British and Europeans would see it as black
men not being able to rule their families (Thame 2011). This put a certain standard on these men
as having to be dominant.
Trade was a big part of Jamaica’s income. “sugar accounted for 90 per cent of the value
of Jamaican output, and over half was exported via Kingston (Gardner 1873; Pitman1917;
Burnard 2002). Kingston also maximized its returns from other trading links. By adding to the
triangular run the trade of the thirteen British colonies in North America, variety was
legitimately introduced into the commodities—lumber, casks, flour, and ground provisions—
handled by Kingston, and the volume and value of its trade were enhanced (Pitman 1917)(Clarke
2006).”(Citation?) Once Jamaica was free from Britain it became harder for Jamaica to trade,
because Britain was no longer controlling them and their funds. Jamaica has reached out to the
World Bank, because “Public debt fell below 100% of GDP in 2018/19 and is expected to
decline below 60% by 2025/26, in line with the provisions of the Fiscal Responsibility Law. The
rate of unemployment also fell to a historic low of 7.8% in April 2019, which is almost half the
rate at the start of the reform program (World Bank). Also “In 2013, Jamaica launched an
ambitious reform program to stabilize the economy, reduce debt, and fuel growth, gaining
national and international support (World Bank).” Jamaica has been trying to get back on track
since their freedom.
In conclusion, I plan on bringing all of these different parts, or subgroups together, by
explaining how each was affected by the economy, whether it was good or bad. From there I can
show that they are all connected even though they were affected differently. None of these are
parallel from the economy of Jamaica since their decolonization, but they are all tied together.
Bibliography
Barriteau, Eudine. 2001. The Political Economy of Gender in the Twentieth-Century Caribbean.
International Political Economy Series. Palgrave.
Charmaine Crawford. 2019. “Decolonizing Reproductive Labor: Caribbean Women, Migration,
and Domestic Work in the Global Economy,” no. 1: 33.
Clarke, Colin G. 2006. Decolonizing the Colonial City : Urbanization and Stratification in
Kingston, Jamaica. Oxford Geographical and Environmental Studies. Oxford: OUP
Oxford.
Ingram, K. E. 1997. Jamaica. Vol. Rev. ed. World Bibliographical Series. Santa Barbara, Calif:
ABC-CLIO.
Joseph, Celucien L. 2018. “Towards a Caribbean Political Theology of Emancipation and
Decolonization: A Comparative Analysis of Four Caribbean Theologians.” Black
Theology: An International Journal 16 (2): 148.
Parker, Jason C. 2008. Brother’s Keeper : The United States, Race, and Empire in the British
Caribbean, 1937-1962. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Oyedola, David A., and Olaoluwa A. Oyedola. 2015. “The Relevance of Cultural Heritage in
Remaking a New Africa.” Journal of Pan African Studies 8 (6): 85–106.
Thame, Maziki. 2011. “Reading Violence and Postcolonial Decolonization through Fanon: The
Case of Jamaica.” Journal of Pan African Studies, no. 7: 75.
Leona,
You are narrowing down your topic, but this review is incomplete. You only draw on three
sources – not organizing multiple sources into groups. There are several sources listed in the
bibliography that are not mentioned in the review. In the final paper, your literature needs to be
more thorough, and show the arguments that different scholars make about the most important
changes in Jamaica’s economy and society after decolonization.
The material you are introducing jumps around chronologically, from trade in the colonial
period, to migration in the 1960s or 1970s, to the economic situation in Jamaica in recent years.
It is not clear how each of them help answer your research question directly. Make sure you are
reading your sources carefully and drawing only directly relevant information and evidence from
them. I would try to focus on the first few decades after decolonization. You will have to read
some more history to have a clear sense of what was going on in Jamaica at that time (general
history will also help you write your context/background section).
See specific comments in the marginal notes. Come to office hours again if you are stuck or want
some more guidance!
Grade: 75%
Robinson, Leona
SYP 4453
Professor Koppelman
27 September 2019
Research Question:
Many Caribbean islands that we visit today and vacation to were once colonized, whether
it was the British, U.S. or the Europeans. Now that some of those islands have been decolonized,
no one thinks to wonder why and how, or the impacts of being decolonized. This paper will
examine how the economy, gender, and gender roles of those islands were affected positively
and negatively during and after their decolonization.
Justification:
My question is related to this course on global social change because showing the impact
of the decolonization of these islands will show that it impacted other parts of the world as well,
not only the island and the colonizer. I think it is important for us to understand this subject
because often times we just take it as no big deal that certain places decolonize. I do not think we
give it much recognition because we think they are doing “fine”, but we never sit back and think
how their lives, and economy was really affected.
Bibliography
Barriteau, Eudine. 2001. The Political Economy of Gender in the Twentieth-Century Caribbean.
International Political Economy Series. Palgrave.
Charmaine Crawford. 2019. “Decolonizing Reproductive Labor: Caribbean Women, Migration,
and Domestic Work in the Global Economy,” no. 1: 33.
Pemberton, Rita, Debbie McCollin, Gelien Matthews, and Michael Toussaint. 2018. Historical
Dictionary of Trinidad and Tobago. Vol. New edition. Historical Dictionaries of the
Americas. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.
Roopnarine, Jaipaul L., and Derek Chadee. 2016. Caribbean Psychology : Indigenous
Contributions to a Global Discipline. Washington, DC: American Psychological
Association.
Verstraeten, Soraya P.A., Hans A.M. van Oers, and Johan P. Mackenbach. 2016.
“Decolonization and Life Expectancy in the Caribbean.” Social Science & Medicine 170
(December): 87–96.
Leona,
This is a good start. You have an interesting question that is clearly relevant to the course. Above
you will see that I included some suggestions on how to sharpen your question a bit.
All of your sources are valid academic sources, but only three of them seem directly relevant to
your topic (and the one on life expectancy is not that directly connected). You will have to find
some sources that really speak to the question of gendered changes in the economy – as I can
clearly see with the one on migration and domestic work.
You are also still looking at the region of the Caribbean as a whole. As you find more sources, it
might be a good idea to narrow down to a few more specific cases. Colonization and
decolonization was quite different in different islands, so it will be hard to analyze the whole
region together with enough detail.
Nevertheless, I think you are in a good place to move forward with this, so keep searching for
sources and reading more about the topic – this will be the most effective way to start narrowing
down the focus and preparing the literature review.
Grade: 85%
Robinson, Leona
16 November 2019
SYP 4453
Professor Koppelman
I.
Title
Post-colonial Jamaica and Their Economy
II.
Introduction
•
Within the economy there are a few, but not limited to, subgroups that were
directly affected because of the decolonization in Jamaica, which are status,
migration, and trade (imports and exports). This topic is important because it
gives a glimpse of how a majority of islands, specifically Jamaica was left off
once they decolonized from one of the more successful countries at the time
(Britain).
•
Jamaica’s economy became worse off after their decolonization from Britain,
which in turn affected their migration, trade, and status.
•
I will be using evidence based on what authors wrote about the history of
Jamaica, what it was like during their colonization, and based on the aftermath of
them separating from Britain.
III.
•
Background/Context
“On May 5, 1494 Christopher Columbus, the European explorer, who sailed west to get
to the East Indies and came upon the region now called the West Indies, landed in
Jamaica” (The 2018).
•
“In the wake of the West Indian labor rebellion of 1937-38, Britain began a process of
gradual decolonization of the region. In 1944, Jamaica was granted a degree of
democratic self-government which was progressively extended over the next two
decades, culminating in the granting of independence in 1962“(Clarke 2006, pg 416).
•
“By 1954, there were over one thousand commercial establishments owned by the
Chinese. In 1970 the number amounted to 7 percent of Jamaica’s population. In 1982,
this fell to 2 percent as many migrated to Canada and the United States of America”
(History 2019).
•
“Due to its extreme poverty for the many in the middle of great wealth for the
few, Jamaica was the most unequal place yet studied in the pre-modern world” (Burnard
2019).
IV.
A summary of your revised literature review
•
Literature group 1 is mostly about how trade in Jamaica was affected, showing
the before and after decolonization and how that affected the economy. When
Jamaica was still a part of Britain, Jamaica was receiving more money through
their exports, once they separated, they were struggling to have things imported
for their people. “Since the 1950s, exports had not been sufficient to cover the
cost of imports, and so the country relied on inflows of foreign investment and
tourism to make up for a chronic trade deficit. Despite the health per capita
growth rate, unemployment increased from 12 percent in 1960 to 24 percent in
1972”(Biddle 1989, pg. 418).
•
Literature group 2 is about the migration that occurred after the decolonization of
Jamaica and how that affected the economy. Jamaica’s separation and
independence from Britain reached, into the United States, which made it hard for
them to migrate to the U.S. because Jamaica’s economy was on a low. It also
worked the other way around that the Jamaicans that did migrate to other places
affected the economy because that was less income for them. “Mainland was a
traditional safety valve for emigrants fleeing stagnant economies, but restrictive
U.S. laws had sharply curtailed West Indian access to it…this damaged island
economies” (Parker 2008, pg. #143).
•
Literature group 3 is about status and how they were affected and how it affected
the economy. “Many ideologies of the Jamaican man were based on what was
taught to them or what they saw from the white men. The notion of masculinity
was also central to the construction of colonial ideologies of citizenship. Centered
on the free white male individual, this version of masculinity was rooted in the
bourgeois patriarchal family, Caribbean deviation from the white bourgeois norm
of the patriarchal family was used to deny full political freedom to former slaves”
(Thame 2011, pg. #78). This affected the economy because this made the men in
Jamaica to remain in power and not really allowing women to go out and work
for money, which would help the economy grow.
V.
Evidence and Analysis
•
Class Status- In 1960, as in 1991 using the classic labour force as the basis, the
percentages would have been roughly 5 percent elite, 25 percent middle class, and
70 percent lower class (Clarke 1966: 169, table 2). This shows the expansion of
the middle class and the elite at the expense of the lower class since the end of the
colonial period—in spite of structural adjustment, as educational opportunity and
the immigration of those with higher qualifications acted in concert with the longterm growth of the bureaucracy and sophisticated service provision to create new
higher-class positions. (Clarke 2006, pg 71)
•
Migration- Migration has been a crucial, but declining, component of population
growth in Kingston over the last half century. In 1960, half the inhabitants of the
capital had been born elsewhere in the island; but by 1991, almost 70 percent of
the residents of the KMR had been born in the parishes of Kingston, St Andrew,
and St Catherine—an area, admittedly, larger than the metropolitan region itself.
Many small-town dwellers who work in Kingston choose to commute daily from
places as distant as May Pen and Mandeville (65 miles to the west), and
emigration to Canada and the USA, if feasible, is much preferred to migration to
the Kingston’s uncertain labour market. (Clarke 2006, pg 69)
•
Trade- I think trade was affected both positively and negatively from Jamaica’s
decolonization. Once Jamaica decolonized, they were able to get some sort of
income on their own to better the economy. “ Kingston…maximized its returns
from other trading links. By adding to the triangular run the trade of the thirteen
British colonies in North America, variety was legitimately introduced into the
commodities—lumber, casks, flour, and ground provisions—handled by
Kingston, and the volume and value of its trade were enhanced (H.E. 1918). This
piece of analysis will contribute to my overall argument because it will prove how
trade affected the economy.
VI.
Conclusion
•
The big picture that I want the reader to take away is how Jamaica’s economy
was affected by their decolonization from Britain. I also want the reader to see
how many different groups were specifically affected from the economy during
that period in time. This topic matters because it could possibly help other people
realize that everything is connected regardless if it is just one part being targeted.
Bibliography
Biddle, William Jesse, and John D. Stephens (1989). "Dependent Development and Foreign
Policy: The Case of Jamaica." International Studies Quarterly 33, no. 4: 411-34
Burnard, Trevor, Laura Panza, and Jeffrey Williamson. 2019. “Living Costs, Real Incomes and
Inequality in Colonial Jamaica.” Explorations in Economic History 71 (January): 55–71.
Clarke, Colin G. 2006. Decolonizing the Colonial City: Urbanization and Stratification in
Kingston, Jamaica. Oxford Geographical and Environmental Studies. Oxford: OUP
Oxford.
H. E. Egerton. 1918. “The Development of the British West Indies, 1700-1763. F. W. Pitman.”
The Economic Journal 28 (112): 435.
“History Notes: Information on Jamaica's Culture & Heritage.” 2019. The National Library of
Jamaica. The National Library of Jamaica. May 30.
Long, Edward 1774. The History of Jamaica Or, General Survey of the Antient and Modern
State of that Island: with Reflections on Its Situation, Settlements, Inhabitants ... In Three
Volumes. Illustrated with Copper Plates. Vol. 1. London: Printed for T. Lowndes
Parker, Jason C. 2008. Brother’s Keeper: The United States, Race, and Empire in the British
Caribbean, 1937-1962. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Thame, Maziki. 2011. “Reading Violence and Postcolonial Decolonization through Fanon: The
Case of Jamaica.” Journal of Pan African Studies, no. 7: 75.
“The History of Jamaica.” Jamaica Information Service. Accessed November 16, 2019.
https://jis.gov.jm/information/jamaican-history/.
Leona,
You are getting closer, but still have some serious work to do. Especially with respect to
your argument about trade, you don’t cite any sources about the post-colonial period. You also
need to make more explicit how decolonization had effects on gender relations and migration. As
it stands, you only state that things changed after decolonization. How did the shift from Jamaica
as a colony to an independent country matter? (It did, but you need to show how more clearly).
I have written a number of suggestions for areas where you need to clarify or add to
different parts of the paper. Look at them closely and come talk to me if you have questions in
developing this into the final paper.
Grade: 80%
Purchase answer to see full
attachment