Examines changes in enslaved women's working lives as planters sought to increase birth rates to replenish declining laboring populations. Establishes that enslaved women in Jamaica experienced a considerable shift in their work responsibilities and their subjection to discipline as slaveholders sought to capitalize on their abilities to reproduce. Enslaved women's reproductive capabilities were pivotal for slavery and the plantation economy's survival once legal supplies from Africa were discontinued.
Reviews several books on Cuban history before 1959. American Sugar Kingdom: The Plantation Economy of the Spanish Caribbean 1898-1934, by César Ayala; Insurgent Cuba: Race, Nation, and Revolution, 1868-1898, by Ada Ferrer; Pleasure Island: Tourism and Temptation in Cuba, by Rosalie Schwartz.;
The importance of immigrant workers in Cuba's sugar and tropical fruit industries between independence and revolution is examined. The later anti-immigrant sentiment is also examined. SUBJECT(S); Chronicles the economic and political factors responsible for the migration of nearly 200,000 Caribbean immigrants - from Jamaica, Haiti, Puerto Rico, Barbados, Grenada, Aruba, and Curacao - to Cuba in the 1920's and 1930's
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
370p, Embodies research in England and the West Indies. Author states that slavery was the most important cause of the decline of West Indian agriculture in the eighteenth century. (JSTOR)
Cambridge [Cambridgeshire] New York: Cambridge University Press
Location:
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
609 p, Dr. Watts shows how the initial European vision of a land of plenty has been replaced by an awareness of the geographic and ecological fragiliaty of the area, and explains how the exploitative agricultural systems of the colonial and recent West Indies have not adjusted to the demands of the environment. An enormous array of historical, biological and literary sources are marshalled in support of Dr Watts' analysis, which is likely to remain the standard work on the subject for many years to come.;
