Sugar and Society in the Caribbean: An Economic History of Cuban Agriculture by RamiroGuerra y SanchezReview by: B. S. KeirsteadThe Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science / Revue canadienne d'Economique etde Science politique, Vol. 30, No. 4 (Nov., 1964), pp. 640-641Published by: Wiley on behalf of Canadian Economics AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/139549 .

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640 Canadian Journal of Economnics and Political Science

positive fellow-feeling among its scattered peoples. Its demise was followed by the independence, in rapid succession, first of Jamaica and then of Trinidad and Tobago. Barbados may soon join the procession, leaving the unfortunate Leewards and Windwards as tiny dependencies floating uncertainly in the eastern Caribbeal.

The idea of a wider West Indian union linking the British, French, and Dutch territories, has been suggested at various times, and recently advocated, in the form of a Caribbean economic community, by Dr. Eric Williams, Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago. Yet as Sir Harold Mitchell observes, since the relatively homogeneous British islands found it impossible to dwell together in amity, it is difficult to envisage a more successful grouping of small territories separated by history, language, customs, and laws, as well as by the waters of the Caribbean Sea. Moreover, the commercial advantages to this cluster of economic rivals are debatable.

Through tlheir varying colonial policies Britain, France, and the Netherlands transplanted to their West Indian possessions their own liberal institutions: elective parliaments, impartial courts, a politically neutral public service, and a free press. Despite all that can be said of shortcomings, bitterness, and the legacy of slavery, few will disagree with the author's view that the govern- ments of these territories compare favourably with those of neighbouring independent republics in the Caribbean and in Central and South America.

The chief strength of this book lies in the intrinsic interest of the comparative likenesses and differences on which he touches. Its main weakness is its brevity. In a two-lhundred-page study largely based on secondary sources and covering three centuries of rule by three imperial powers, much is inevitably left unsaid and many paragraphs could well be expanded into chapters or mono- graphs. It may be hoped that various scholars will feel moved to undertake more elaborate analyses of many questions posed with tantalizing succinctness by Sir Harold Mitchell.

ELISABETH WALLACE

Universitv of Toronto

Sugar and Society in the Caribbean: An Economic History of Cuban Agricul- ture. By RAMIRO GUERnA Y SANCHEZ. Caribbean series 7. New Haven, London: Yale University Press [Montreal: McGill University Press]. 1964. Pp. xliv, 218. $5.00.

IT is curious that this collection of newspaper articles, written in the early 1920's and first published in book form in 1927, should now be reissued in the Yale Caribbean Series. This series contains such scholarly works, among others, as Douglas Hall's Free Janwica, and M. G. Smith's Kinship and Com- mnunity in Carriacou. It would be fatally easy to dismiss this book in a few disdainful lines. It is not scholarly, despite the claims of the editor. Historically, it is biased almost beyond credibility. One would never guess from reading these essays that Havana remained, even after the Convention of 1823, the chief port of entry and market for slaves in the new world. To one who has just been reading the detached and scientific analysis of Elkins' Slavery in

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Reviews of Books 641

America, the account of the latifundium system in the Dutch and British islands, as compared with Cuba, leaves much to be desired in the way of economic analysis. Passion and patriotism will not be enough to satisfy the critical economic historian. The large-scale, slave-worked Barbadan planta- tions of the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries met an expanding market. It was a labour-intensive industry. As sugar prices declined, the Barbadan economy adjusted, after serious depression, in the direction of manumission, small holdings, and a more varied and diversified agriculture.

In Cuba, by contrast, original settlement, after the native Arawaks had been liquidated in the usual manner of the conquistadors, was by younger sons of Spanish gentry and imported negro slaves. The latter, once they embraced Christianity (God help them if they did not), were protected by a series of Royal proclamations which protected the family, provided for certain minimum legal rights never permitted in the southern states, manu- mission, and small holdings. Thus Cuba developed as a small holders' paradise, growing tobacco, coffee, cocoa, cattle, some sugar, and a magnificent rum. Dr. Guerra presents it as a real paradise of the liberal middle-class yeoman farmer. It is a little hard to reconcile this picture with the various revolts or rebellions, culminating in the terrible seven years' civil war and the cruelty with which it was fought. Twenty years after came the great Rebellion and the Spanish-American War, Cuban independence, then the United Fruit Company, the American highly capitalized latifundium (a large-scale capital intensive sugar plantation usually with mill attached), Batista, fascism, tor- ture, the police state, corruption, great fortunes for the few "insiders," and misery, destitution, prostitution and degradation for the Cuban masses.

Perhaps this account, which I have permitted to assume some of the emotional colour of Dr. Guerra's writing, will explain wlhy the Yale University Press has reissued this book in translation at this time. What British planters did to Barbados in the seventeenth century, the American sugar companies did to Cuba in the twentieth. Batista was their boy. The reluctant yeoman of the Cuban provinces had to be mastered as a few years before the coloureds of Alabama and Mississippi had to be mastered. Now Mr. Castro has carried through a revolution. The American latifundium, as a Cuban institution, has been ended. It is far from clear what the new regime can put in its place. Hate is a poor adviser, and it seems at the moment that Premier Castro has little positive to support him.

The publication of this book of 1927 explains the origin and economic meaning of that hate. It is not a contribution to the solution of the problems of the United States and Latin America. But it is an explanation of a political phenomenon which has had profound effects on contemporary American politics. In the present state of American public opinion it is a useful and courageous act by the Yale University Press to publish this book. While its emotional impact today may be important, innocent readers should be warned that it is not very reliable as a source-book of Cuban history.

B. S. KEMSTEAD

University of Toronto

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