By Junyuan Luo
This week we read the book A Small Place by Jamaica Kincaid. Jamaica Kincaid is Caribbean American writer focus on family relationships and her native Antigua. She mainly wrote about life experience in Antigua in the book A Small Place, which is a realistic portrait of the colony of Antigua. In my presentation, I focus on the history and impact of Antigua colony and the slavery.
In 1493, Christopher Columbus visit Antigua on his second voyage and named it Antigua for the church of Santa Maria de la Antigua in Seville, Spain. English settlers colonized the island in 1632 to seek wealth. They started plantations of tobacco but failed and then they found plantation of sugarcane was profitable. Antigua became known as the “gateway to the Caribbean” to English for its great location in the Caribbean. The spread of sugar plantations in the Caribbean created a huge demand for workers. The increasingly large demand for workers turned planters to buy enslaved men, women and children from Africa. Approximately 5 million African slaves were taken to the Caribbean, and nearly half of them were taken to the British Caribbean (2.3 million). Due to the slavery, the population of the Caribbean colonies changed. People born in Africa and their descendants became the majority in the place. The discrimination against their inferior “race” made their lives harsh. These slaves live in a miserable and overcrowded environment and may be abused or even killed by their masters without punishment.
Finally, the slavery was abolished and the enslaved people were freed or “emancipated” in the British Caribbean in 1834. However, the sugar price dropped dramatically than what it was in years past due to the increased use of cheaper and easier-sourced sugar beet in Europe. The economic conditions failed to improve because the best time of profitable sugar plantation has passed and no other cash crop can replace sugar.
Sources:
“Antigua.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 2020, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antigua.
Gaspar, David. “Antigua Colony.” The BritishEmpire, 2013, www.britishempire.co.uk/maproom/antigua.htm.
“An Introduction to the Caribbean, Empire and Slavery.” The British Library, The BritishLibrary, 7 Aug. 2017, www.bl.uk/west-india-regiment/articles/an-introduction-to-the-caribbean-empire-and-slavery.
Thank you very much for introducing the historical background of this novel. In fact, I still couldn’t accept the author’s writing language at the beginning. I think she is more radical. But after reading your popular science on local events, I can also understand the author’s mood very well. I think the horror of slavery is only more horrible than depicted on paper.