Catalogue Search | MBRL
Are you sure you want to remove the book from the shelf?
{{itemTitle}}
5,190
result(s) for
"Barbados"
Sort by:
Errol Walton Barrow and the postwar transformation of Barbados : the late colonial period
Beginning in the 1920s, Barbadians and other British West Indians began organizing politically in an international environment that was marked by a severe capitalist economic and financial crisis that intensified in the 1930s. The response in the British Caribbean during the 1930s was in the form of rebellions that demanded colonial reform. The ensuing struggles resulted in constitutional and political changes that led to decolonization and independence. In Errol Walton Barrow and the Postwar Transformation of Barbados: The Late Colonial Period, Hilbourne Watson examines the contradictory process through the lens of political economy and class analysis, informed by an internationalist historical perspective that centres the concerns and interests of the working class. Britain freed the colonies in ways that reflected its own subordination to US hegemony under the rubric of the Cold War, which served as the geopolitical strategy for liberal internationalism. Watson's analysis concentrates on the roles played by the labour movement, political parties, capitalist interests, and working-class and other popular organizations in Barbados and the British Caribbean, with support from Caribbean-American groups in New York that forged alliances with those black American organizations which saw their freedom struggles in an international context. Practically all the decolonizing (nationalist) elites in Barbados and other British Caribbean territories endorsed a British and American prescription for decolonization and self-government based on territorial primacy and at the expense of a strong West Indian federation that prioritized the working class. This move sidelined the working class and its interests also set back the struggle for self-determination, liberty and sovereignty. Watson situates the role Errol Barrow played in the transformation of Barbados in the wider Caribbean and international context. His study draws on archival records from Britain and Barbados, interviews and other sources, and he pays close attention to how the racialization of social life around nature, culture, history, the state, class, gender, politics, poverty and other factors conditioned the colonial experience. -- back cover.
Book
Biomedical Ambiguity
Steadily increasing numbers of Americans have been diagnosed with asthma in recent years, attracting the attention of biomedical researchers, including those searching for a genetic link to the disease. The high rate of asthma among African American children has made race significant to this search for genetic predisposition. One of the primary sites for this research today is Barbados. The Caribbean nation is considered optimal because of its predominantly black population. At the same time, the government of Barbados has promoted the country for such research in an attempt to take part in the biomedical future.
InBiomedical Ambiguity, Ian Whitmarsh describes how he followed a team of genetic researchers to Barbados, where he did fieldwork among not only the researchers but also government officials, medical professionals, and the families being tested. Whitmarsh reveals how state officials and medical professionals make the international biomedical research part of state care, bundling together categories of disease populations, biological race, and asthma. He points to state and industry perceptions of mothers as medical caretakers in genetic research that proves to be inextricable from contested practices around nation, race, and family.
The reader's attention is drawn to the ambiguity in these practices, as researchers turn the plurality of ethnic identities and illness meanings into a science of asthma and race at the same time that medical practitioners and families make the opaque science significant to patient experience. Whitmarsh shows that the contradictions introduced by this \"misunderstanding\" paradoxically enable the research to move forward.
eBook
Empire and nation-building in the Caribbean
This original and exciting book examines the processes of nation building in the British West Indies. It argues that nation building was a more complex and messy affair, involving women and men in a range of social and cultural activities, in a variety of migratory settings, within a unique geo-political context. Taking as a case study Barbados which, in the 1930s, was the most economically impoverished, racially divided, socially disadvantaged and politically conservative of the British West Indian colonies, *Empire and nation-building* tells the messy, multiple stories of how a colony progressed to a nation. It is the first book to tell all sides of the independence story and will be of interest to specialists and non-specialists interested in the history of Empire, the Caribbean, of de-colonisation and nation building.
eBook
Quaker Community on Barbados
Prior to the Quakers' large-scale migration to Pennsylvania, Barbados had more Quakers than any other English colony. But on this island of sugar plantations, Quakers confronted material temptations and had to temper founder George Fox's admonitions regarding slavery with the demoralizing realities of daily life in a slave-based economy-one where even most Quakers owned slaves. Gragg shows how the community dealt with these contradictions as it struggled to change the culture of the richest of England's seventeenth-century colonies.
eBook
Drax of Drax Hall : how one British family got rich (and stayed rich) from sugar and slavery
While the British landed gentry were to profit from chattel slavery in the West Indies, the Plunkett-Ernle-Erle-Drax family of Dorset pioneered it. It all started when James Drax, one of the first settlers in Barbados in 1627, effectively founded the British sugar industry. For more than 200 years, the family enslaved up to 330 people at any time and became enormously rich. Today, the bloodline is unbroken, and former Tory MP Richard Drax heads the family from his vast Charborough Estate in Dorset. With physical assets worth at least £150m - not to mention the 621-acre sugar plantation in Barbados - he was the wealthiest landowner in the House of Commons. Unseated in 2024, he remains a hero amongst hard-right culture warriors for his refusal to make any reparations for his family's role in slavery. This is a history that lifts the lid on the family.
BOOK
Seasons of Misery
The stories we tell of American beginnings typically emphasize colonial triumph in the face of adversity. But the early years of English settlement in America were characterized by catastrophe: starvation, disease, extreme violence, ruinous ignorance, and serial abandonment.Seasons of Miseryoffers a provocative reexamination of the British colonies' chaotic and profoundly unstable early days, placing crisis-both experiential and existential-at the center of the story. At the outposts of a fledgling empire and disconnected from the social order of their home society, English settlers were both physically and psychologically estranged from their European identities. They could not control, or often even survive, the world they had intended to possess. According to Kathleen Donegan, it was in this cauldron of uncertainty that colonial identity was formed. Studying the English settlements at Roanoke, Jamestown, Plymouth, and Barbados, Donegan argues that catastrophe marked the threshold between an old European identity and a new colonial identity, a state of instability in which only fragments of Englishness could survive amid the upheavals of the New World. This constant state of crisis also produced the first distinctively colonial literature as settlers attempted to process events that they could neither fully absorb nor understand. Bringing a critical eye to settlers' first-person accounts, Donegan applies a unique combination of narrative history and literary analysis to trace how settlers used a language of catastrophe to describe unprecedented circumstances, witness unrecognizable selves, and report unaccountable events.Seasons of Miseryaddresses both the stories that colonists told about themselves and the stories that we have constructed in hindsight about them. In doing so, it offers a new account of the meaning of settlement history and the creation of colonial identity.
eBook
Sodium and potassium excretion in an adult Caribbean population of African descent with a high burden of cardiovascular disease
Background
High sodium diets with inadequate potassium and high sodium-to-potassium ratios are a known determinant of hypertension and cardiovascular disease (CVD). The Caribbean island of Barbados has a high prevalence of hypertension and mortality from CVD. Our objectives were to estimate sodium and potassium excretion, to compare estimated levels with recommended intakes and to identify the main food sources of sodium in Barbadian adults.
Methods
A sub-sample (
n
= 364; 25–64 years) was randomly selected from the representative population-based Health of the Nation cross-sectional study (
n
= 1234), in 2012–13. A single 24-h urine sample was collected from each participant, following a strictly applied protocol designed to reject incomplete samples, for the measurement of sodium and potassium excretion (in mg), which were used as proxy estimates of dietary intake. In addition, sensitivity analyses based on estimated completeness of urine collection from urine creatinine values were undertaken. Multiple linear regression was used to examine differences in sodium and potassium excretion, and the sodium-to-potassium ratio, by age, sex and educational level. Two 24-h recalls were used to identify the main dietary sources of sodium. All analyses were weighted for the survey design.
Results
Mean sodium excretion was 2656 (2488–2824) mg/day, with 67% (62–73%) exceeding the World Health Organization (WHO) recommended limit of 2000 mg/d. Mean potassium excretion was 1469 (1395–1542) mg/d; < 0.5% met recommended minimum intake levels. Mean sodium-to-potassium ratio was 2.0 (1.9–2.1); not one participant had a ratio that met WHO recommendations. Higher potassium intake and lower sodium-to-potassium ratio were independently associated with age and tertiary education. Sensitivity analyses based on urine creatinine values did not notably alter these findings.
Conclusions
In this first nationally representative study with objective assessment of sodium and potassium excretion in a Caribbean population in over 20 years, levels of sodium intake were high, and potassium intake was low. Younger age and lower educational level were associated with the highest sodium-to-potassium ratios. These findings provide baseline values for planning future policy interventions for non-communicable disease prevention.
Journal Article