Reproducing the British Caribbean: Sex, gender, and population politics after slavery by Juanita De Barros (review)

In her most recent book, Reproducing the British Caribbean, Juanita De Barros explores the politics of reproduction and public health in the immediate post-slavery Caribbean. Covering the period from the abolition of slavery in 1834 to the 1930s labour riots, De Barros demonstrates how racial and gendered discourses of Afro-Caribbean men and women, and to a lesser extent Indo-Caribbean peoples, shaped colonial concerns and policies around the size and the health of the population. In addition, this well researched book tracks not only how these discourses informed the policies and programs on infant and maternal welfare that developed in the British Caribbean colonies of Jamaica, Trinidad and Guyana, but also how various local actors contributed to these initiatives.

De Barros begins by examining popular debates around population between the abolition of slavery in the British Caribbean (1834) and the 1850s cholera epidemic that spread throughout the region. Abolitionist and colonial officials had hoped that emancipation would bring about the “natural increase” of the population following abolition. However, by the late 1840s and 1850s, the high mortality rate signaled to them that the population was in decline, despite the ending of slavery, and that abolition had failed to uplift the population.

The same racial and gendered attitudes that shaped perceptions of abolition also informed how colonial officials and elites attempted to address the perceived population decline. As part of their efforts to ensure a continued source of labour, colonial officials initiated programs to tackle infant mortality, what they discussed as one of the major causes of the post-slavery population decline. Attitudes around the perceived high rate of infant mortality amongst the Afro-Caribbean population, as De Barros shows, drew upon long-standing racializations of Black women as bad mothers and Black men as neglectful fathers. Such attitudes were also informed by nascent ideas around medicine and public health.

De Barros considers the involvement of colonial officials, physicians and researchers, nurses and midwives from Britain and other parts of the empire, but also locally, in the shaping and development of policies around population and reproduction. She explores the efforts of colonial officials to introduce a state-sponsored midwifery program to train local midwives, who then provided educational programs on pregnancy and infant care to poor Caribbean women. In addition to state-sponsored efforts, middle-class and elite women of African descent were also involved in baby-saving leagues that sought to educate poor non-White women on modern and hygienic child-rearing practices.

Understandings of race and sexuality were intrinsic within these programs, as De Barros reveals. For instance, recruiters purposely sought out single, “less attractive” White British nurses, women they saw as “nonsexual,” to train non-White midwives in the British Caribbean islands. These desexualized British nurses were thought to stand as symbols of colonial authority and righteousness, in contrast to the overt sexualized imaginings of Black and Coloured women that they would train. As De Barros shows, these British nurses were “enmeshed in the nets of imperial power” and were necessary instruments of empire.

British and Caribbean people were not the only ones concerned with the “crisis” in population decline or involved in efforts to find a solution. Working with a growing class of creole physicians and middle-class professionals, American physicians and researchers targeted tropical diseases, including hookworm and malaria, as well as venereal disease as a means of curbing high mortality and poor health in the island, especially amongst the young. However, despite the advancements in medicine, these officials continued to blame population decline and the state of health on the familial and sexual practices of poor Caribbean peoples. As De Barros shows, up into the 1930s and the West India Commission, racialized and gendered attitudes around sex and reproduction continued to inform discussions and the solutions proposed to address these concerns around the size and health of the population.

This book makes a most welcome contribution to the study of...