Igniting The Caribbean’s Past: Fire in British West Indian History by Bonham C. Richardson (review)

200 TheLatinAmericanist Spring 2006 Igniting The Caribbean’sPast: Fire in British WestIndian History . By Bonham C. Richardson. Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 2004, p. 233, $19.95. This book provides a missing piece that connects the protest of the independenceand post-independenceera to the protests of the slavery periods in British West India. The book provides continuityto the forms of expressionchosen by those seemingly without a voice. In the introduction,the author does an excellent job of outliningthe limitationsof the work. The use of the historical incidentsdiscussedin the book demonstratesthe author’stremendous attentionto the period. The author interprets some incidents in a manner that, in my opinion, stretched the significance of their association, but nevertheless are necessary and effective in provokingthought. The major themeof the book centerson the numerous applications , destructiveand constructive,of fire in the Eastern Caribbean . Fire is portrayed in its most destructive capacity as a rival to the natural disasters of hurricanes and volcanic activity. While the magnitudeof the destructioncaused by fires in any one instant is not as widespread and scarcely approximates that caused by hurricanes, their frequency.and the causal role of human agents make firea subjectworth studying.Richardson seeksto provide a unique identityfor fire in the Eastern Caribbean. The work is largely descriptiveand as such, in my opinion, missed an opportunity to make the point of the uniqueness of fires in the Caribbean, a stated objective of the book. A comparative analysis would have allowed for a much clearer picture of the core/periphery relationship between Great Britain and the colonies that Richardsonalludesto throughout the book.This doesnot reduce the importanceof the observations;fires in the tiny islands of the Eastern Caribbean have accompanied major changes prior to, during and since the period covered by Richardson.This book should open up what might be an enduring debate as to the role fire plays as a means of protest in the region. Richardson does a greatjob at intertwiningthe political climate of the period,capturingthe shiftsof dominancein the region from the British to the Americans. The hurried dismissal of the Americans that came to help afterthe 1907Earthquakein Jamaica is argued to signify the recognition on the part of the British, French and Germansthat the Americanswere the dominant military power in the region (p. 16;p. 189).While this is not a cause or the result of fire in the region, it is interestingthat the change Book Reviews 201 in the Caribbean was manifested in the way the offer, acceptance and subsequent rejection of assistance were portrayed. In my opinion, the hasty voluntary withdrawal by the Americans, after assistingto bring under control the 1895blaze that destroyed Port of SpainTrinidad,may be used to indicatethat they too sensedthe changingtide and were trying to avoid the perception of trying to undermineBritish effectivenessin the colonies. The book sketches the use of fire from the discovery of an isolated island to the developmentof industries. This allows the reader to follow the use of fire as a tool first to create a habitable environment;the French seamen burning the dense vegetationof St Croix thought it would allow the land to breathe thereby eliminating the foul air that could be the source of illness @. 27). The absence of heavy equipment made fire the most feasible tool for the large-scaleland clearingthat was necessary to createhabitable and cultivatablespaces. Fire as a part of celebrationsand protest in an unjust society sparked the kind of legislationthat, Richardson argues, were put in place in much of the Eastern Caribbean.These restrictive acts sought to limit the potential for accidental disasters. The death penalty for persons found guilty of settinga deliberatefire, while extreme by today’s standards,echoesthe fears and seriousnessof the problem. This section captures the major theme of the book. Fire as a tool of human agency,be it for cooking, lightinga path, doing a fire dance or echoing the discontent of a people, depicts constructive and destructive applications. Richardson makes his biggest contribution by examining the sugar cane protest fires. The distinctionmade between the burning of bagasse houses and the burning of factories is an important one that signifies a consciousness of the repercussions of the willful destruction. The tradition of...