How Britain Underdeveloped the Caribbean: A Reparation Response to Europe's Legacy of Plunder and Poverty

by Hilary McD Beckles

“The modern Caribbean economy was invented, structured and managed by European states for one to achieve maximum wealth extraction to fuel and sustain their national financial, commercial and industrial transformation.” So begins How Britain Underdeveloped the A Reparation Response to Europe’s Legacy of Plunder and Poverty as Hilary McD. Beckles continues the groundbreaking work he began in Britain’s Black Reparations for Caribbean Slavery and Native Genocide. We are now in a time of global reckoning for centuries of crimes against humanity perpetrated by European colonial powers as they built their empires with the wealth extracted from the territories they occupied and exploited with enslaved and, later, indentured labour. The systematic brutality of the transatlantic trade in enslaved Africans and the plantation economies did not disappear with the abolition of slavery. Rather, the means of exploitation were reconfigured to ensure that wealth continued to flow to European states. Independence from colonial powers in the twentieth century did not mean real freedom for the Caribbean nations, left as they were without the resources for meaningful development and in a state of persistent poverty. Beckles focuses his attention on the British Empire and shows how successive governments have systematically suppressed economic development in their former colonies and have refused to accept responsibility for the debt and development support they owe the Caribbean. 

Genres: History

292 pages, Paperback

Published November 24, 2021

Reviews

[Katlen (therosepetals__) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Inspired by the Walter Rodney’s How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, Beckles traces British exploitation and plunder of the Caribbean. From slavery, indentureship, and the continued economic plantation model, Beckles shows how Britain sustained a racist wealth-extraction colonial system in the Caribbean. He also documents the resistance of the colonized, from slavery to 1930s worker rebellions. Police, a tool of white supremacy, brutally repressed the masses. Yet the uprisings in the 1930s against the empire played a major role in dismantling the system. Beckles declares, “The West Indies, where the mighty empire began, had signaled to the world that a small axe could fell the mightiest tree. The British government was determined, with cloak-and-dagger diplomacy, to punish them for their audacity.” This punishment would come in the form of Britain halting social and economic advancement strategies in the region and denying its debt.

I recommend this book for its historical analysis because I believe looking to the past will help us address our current issues. Beckles is asking the right questions. I am just not satisfied with his reparation response. While I agree with Beckles highlighting Britain’s debt to the Caribbean, I don’t believe “only a reparation response can resolve this crisis.” Unlike Walter Rodney, Beckles does not address the capitalism system. We need more than capital funding, we need systemic change. We need a revolution. As Fanon says, we also need the European masses to “wake up” and pursue freedom and justice for all.

[Gill]

On the reading list from the excellent Heirs of Enslavement podcast series.