THE BRITISH WEST INDIES

Press, Volume CV, Issue 31030, 9 April 1966, Page 4

THE BRITISH WEST INDIES

History of the British West Indies. By Sir Alan Burns. Allen and Unwin. 808 pp. Maps and Index. When the first edition of this book appeared in 1954 it rapidly established itself as the only major work dealing with the whole Caribbean area from the first European .contact —the arrival of Columbus—down to the year 1900. In this revised edition the author, Sir Alan Burns, himself a distinguished colonial civil servant, has added a final chapter which brings the tale up to 1965. The emphasis throughout is on the British colonies in the area—on the struggles between the rival European Powers for sovereignty in the early period and on the slow uncertain evolution towards self-government in more recent times. But this is far from a dry constitutional history and Sir Alan Burns has done justice to both the brutality and the romance of the period of exploration, slavery and piracy. Here, in the wider setting of the times, is told again how Drake looted Cartagena, how in the next century Jamaica had one “tippling house” to every ten men on the island, and how Morgan sacked Panama and was arrested after “divers barbarous acts.” It was not till 1908 that the famed Spanish doubloon ceased to be legal tender in the British West Indies. Natural disasters have also played a larger

part in the history of the Caribbean Islands than in most parts of the world. Hurricanes, earthquakes, tidal waves and fire have all taken their toll. Sir Alan Burns has included an appendix describing the formation of hurricanes and the ravages they have caused. In the last three centuries an average of 355 severe storms a year have been recorded in the West Indies. Fire has been a continual threat in the largely wooden towns of the islands. Castries in St. Lucia was razed in 1927 and again in 1948. Georgetown in British Guiana suffered disastrous fires in 1945, 1947 and 1951.

Two themes dominate the new chapter added for this edition—the increasing inter-

est by the United States in its “near south” after the opening of the Panama Canal, and the evolution towards independence and federation among the British colonies. Federation has been discussed for more than a century but so far the scatter of tiny islands have reached little agreement among themselves as to the form it should take. More encouraging is the realisation that in spite of the turbulent past and present uncertainties “. . . the standard of living in the West Indies is higher than the standard of living in India or China . . .

and in most of the countries of Africa. The West Indies is not a poor community; it is in the upper bracket of world income."