Changing Colonial Policies and Discourses on Peasants and the Environment in the British Caribbean from the late 1800s to the 1940s

 

Lawrence S. Grossman

Department of Geography

Virginia Tech

This presentation focuses on the environmental policies and discourses of colonial officials on the British Caribbean islands of St. Vincent and Jamaica from the late 1880s to the 1940s. Its primary goal is to critically examine two related assumptions inherent in the concept of “regional discursive formations” in relation to the environment. One assumption is that colonial officials’ discursive frameworks exhibited continuity over long periods of time. The other assumption indicates that local traditions and political-economic conditions within a particular region were the primary forces shaping official environmental discourses. This presentation indicates that colonial concerns about environmental problems associated with peasant agriculture in the British Caribbean have changed considerably over time. In the latter part of the 1800s, resident officials in the Caribbean frequently expressed alarm about the impacts of peasants on forests resulting from squatting on forest lands, shifting cultivation, and charcoal making. Such official concerns were typically accompanied by pejorative and racist views about villagers. In contrast, official concerns about degradation in the region declined significantly after the turn of the century. Official interest in environmental problems did not re-emerge until the latter part of the 1930s, when the British Colonial Office in London directed all colonies in the empire to focus on ameliorating the perceived empire-wide “menace” of soil erosion. This presentation highlights the critical roles of the Colonial Office in London and the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew in influencing environmental policies and discourses in the region and also considers the importance of changing state-peasant relationships and patterns of land distribution on colonial official environmental concerns.