Bonds of Empire

Abstract

Abstract In the first half of the twentieth century Britishness was an integral part of the culture that pervaded life in the colonial Caribbean. Caribbean peoples were encouraged to identify with social structures and cultural values touted as intrinsically British. Many middle-class West Indians of color duly adopted Britishness as part of their own identity. Yet even as they re-fashioned themselves, West Indians recast Britishness in their own image, basing it on hierarchical ideas of respectability that were traditionally British, but also on their own expectations of racial and geographical inclusiveness. Britain became for these Caribbean people the focus of an imperial British identity, an identity which stood separate from and yet intimately related to their strong feelings for their tropical homelands. Moving from the heights of empire in 1900 to the independence era of the 1960s, this book argues that middle-class West Indians used their understanding of Britishness to establish a place for themselves in the British imperial world, and to negotiate the challenges of decolonization. Through a focus on education, voluntary organization, the challenges of war, radio broadcasting, and British royalty it explores how this process worked in the daily lives of West Indians in both the Caribbean and the British Isles. This book thus traces West Indians' participation in a complex process of cultural transition as they manipulated Britishness and their relationship to it not only as colonial peoples but also as Britons.

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