Reshaping history

A REVIEW BY LISA ALLEN-AGOSTINI

THE USA and the West Indies have history with each other. The regions, both considered “New World” territories, were claimed, settled by and exploited for the financial benefit of Europeans. Both regions were changed irrevocably by the decimation of indigenous populations and the introduction of African chattel slavery with its concomitant financial systems.

Author and Newsday columnist Debbie Jacob notes in her latest book, Making Waves: How the West Indies Shaped the United States, that close geography has inevitably led to a shared history. However, she writes, “Our own history books seemed to suggest Caribbean islands had been nothing more than passive places waiting for the next colonial or neocolonial master to traipse through.” Her book is an attempt to redress this imbalance.

It’s largely a collection of biographical essays on historical and contemporary figures who were either born in the West Indies or had significant early experiences there before they became part of US history. In these essays Jacob creates a latticework of influence and action showing how the West Indies changed its men and women and how those people would then go on in turn to change the fate of the USA.

The first essay, on Peter Stuyvesant, traces how this Dutchman’s “swashbuckling past” with the Dutch West India Co in the Caribbean resulted in his “austere, uncompromising behaviour” as the governor of New Amsterdam, a Dutch colony that would become New York when he ceded it to the English in 1664.

Stuyvesant had been badly injured in trying to reclaim St Maarten from the Spanish years before. Jacob argues that Stuyvesant’s resulting sternness pushed Dutch settlers in New Amsterdam towards the British, who were threatening an invasion. When Britain took over, New York inherited not only Stuyvesant’s city but also religious freedom for its inhabitants. That would affect its fundamental character, separating it from its Puritan neighbouring states.

Among the book’s 30 essays are pieces on Tituba, the enslaved black woman who was pivotal in the Salem witch trials; Jean Baptiste Point du Sable, the founder of Chicago; George Washington, first US president; John Paul Jones, father of the US Navy; and Alexander Hamilton, US founding father.

Jacob takes on Kool Herc, a DJ seminal to hip hop; Sidney Poitier, the first black man to win an Academy Award for Best Actor; Geoffrey Holder, actor, dancer, artist and cultural phenomenon; Bob Marley, who brought Rastafari to worldwide prominence; and Fidel Castro, the socialist revolutionary who challenged US hegemony in the Caribbean.

The material in the collection is deeply researched and thoughtfully curated, but Jacob’s writing is lively and bright. Readers from mid-teens to adulthood would find it accessible and relevant.

Perhaps the next edition could include maps, as much of the storytelling is not

chronological and layers contemporary geography over the historical landscape; it was sometimes hard for me to follow as a reader unfamiliar with US history and a visual learner.

The book is a political enterprise. Jacob notes, “It has never really been the practice to recognise small islands as important contributors to US history.” In the light of the current US administration’s hostility to immigration and the value of immigrants – particularly from the “shithole countries” of the region – Making Waves could be a significant intervention. If the book could be condensed to a series of tweets – Donald Trump’s favourite literary medium – it might change history.

Making Waves: How the West Indies Shaped the United States

Published by Ian Randle Publishers, 2018