Week 13 Contextual Presentation
As Americans, we tend not to think about the history of the beautiful tropical destinations that we vacation to. We think about the amazing weather, pristine beaches, and exotic landscapes. These destinations are so much more than that, they are the home to so many people, and these people are forced to share their home with tourists year-round.
Tourism is the newest form of colonization that many nations in the Caribbean face. Jamaica Kincaid’s home of Antigua has been dealing with foreigners since 1493, when it was discovered by Christopher Columbus. Columbus was the one who gave Antigua its name, based off of the Church of Santa Maria de la Antigua in Spain. Antigua was colonized in 1632 by English settlers and remained a British possession for hundreds of years. Antigua became a profitable sugar colony for the British, and these profits were made from the labor of slavery. Initially the British tried using the native people of Antigua, but they quickly became malnourished and disease-ridden. British colonizers imported thousands of enslaved Africans instead to work for them. By the late 1700s, slaves outnumbered colonists 37,000 to less than 3,000, and were forced to live in extremely packed conditions. Any slaves that were suspected of revolting were brutally executed and tortured by slave owners. Eventually in 1834, slavery was abolished in England and its colonies.
The end of slavery in Antigua was a welcome change for those enslaved, but had some adverse affects on the economy. Labor for the sugar crops was harder to find, and natural disasters such as earthquakes and hurricanes left the economy in bad shape. Antigua went back to being a British colony in the late 1800s in hopes to regain stability. Antigua joined Britain’s Leeward Islands Colony, which was composed of several islands in the Caribbean, which was defederated in 1958. Antigua, still looking for stability, joined the West Indies Federation, which was dissolved in 1962. In 1967, Antigua adopted the status of being associated with the U.K, which meant they had complete internal control, but the U.K was responsible for external affairs. Antigua went through an independence movement throughout the 1970s, and was granted full independence in 1981. Since then, the government has gone through many scandals and the nation relies on tourism.
For a country that has waited so long to finally be independent, being forced to rely on tourism feels like the newest form of colonization. Antigua launched a program that lets people who buy properties of $400,000 or more to become citizens. This program basically allows foreigners to legally colonize and have influence in Antigua. “Yet there was the inescapable fact that the staff was largely brown-skinned and that the guests weren’t, a vestige of slavery throughout the Americas and a reminder of the system of apartheid that Ms. Kincaid derides in A Small Place” (The New York Times). Antigua is a nation that has dealt with colonization for hundreds of years and is still facing the effects of it today.
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/17/travel/antigua-jamaica-kincaid.html
https://www.britannica.com/place/Antigua-and-Barbuda/History