Commonwealth and Foreign
THE WEST INDIES AND THEIR PROBLEMS-I
By SIR CHARLES HOBHOUSE
THE WEST INDIES (from which I have lately returned) is to most people a geographical expression for a group of islands lying somewhere off the S.E. coast of U.S.A. They form, in fact, a semi-circle stretching from Florida to Vene- zuela and are the Eastern boundary of the Caribbean Sea. Our share of them is confined to a group, the Bahamas, lying to the North of Cuba, to another group, terminating in Trinidad a few miles from Venezuela, and to Jamaica lying due South of Cuba and about 500 miles distant from the nearest British island. Separating these groups from each other are the larger islands of Cuba, Hispaniola and Puerto Rico. The French islands of Guadeloupe and Martinique are intermingled with our Leeward group. The length of the whole chain is about 2,500 miles. Great is the diversity of ownership, of soil, of product, of altitude, of humidity, and of Government in these interesting lands.
Here the Elizabethan adventurers grew rich on the spoils of Spanish and French trade, here the sugar was grown which founded the fortunes of many a great family in England and France, here Rodney annihilated the French fleet under de Grasse, here Nelson lost an arm, and missed that fleet of de Villeneuve which a few weeks later he destroyed at Trafalgar. The islands flickered again into nineteenth-century history through the abolition of slavery, for which £16 millions were paid to the planters, a good deal less than a half the sum they were really entitled to receive. West India vanished then from European story for a hundred years, but the discovery and use of oil has resuscitated their political importance and restored their economic fortunes. Though as yet Trinidad is the only island in which oil has been found, the vital need of protection for the sole imperial source of supply, and the exactly corresponding danger of destruction of that supply, has thrown a very high light on the strategic value of our West Indian possessions. Assuming that others may be no better informed than I myself was of their place in Empire economy, I am outlining below a few basic facts necessary to a proper understanding of our association with these islands.
There is no indigenous race or language surviving in any of them. The first historical people, the Caribs, patriots and intractable savages, were practically exterminated by Spaniards, French and English alike. The casual visitor like myself sees no sign of them. Friends, however, tell me that they have left an " atmosphere " behind, noticeable in their successors, alike from Africa or Asia. Today Africans, French, British, East Indians and Chinese occupy their places. English is the natal, official, and business speech of all the British islands, but it is tempered by a patois of French or English mixture. More recently Hindustani is pushing its way to recognition. There is therefore no native tradition of culture, of religion, or of Government. There are no native arts to imitate, to preserve or to destroy. On the surface at least Anglican, Catholic, Presbyterian, or Hindu propaganda struggle for the conscience and formal allegiance of the population. Cathedrals, churches and chapels testify to the activities and success of the rival creeds. Temples and Mosques, though less frequent, are not wanting. Music, and generally very sweet music, is the foundation of all services. How much, apart from the music, there is to the religious attendance and belief is difficult to say, and while all the differing Christian religions maintain schools where religious as well as secular instruction is given, a very great proportion of the mothers are unmarried and large numbers of the children in all the islands are illegitimate.
But whatever the faith or the god, it, like the adherents, has been imported. For two hundred years of their life the islands were never long in continuous ownership, and the unceasing change of authority, law, language and custom has left imperishable marks on the soul and body of all their peoples. Each group, often each island, has the para- phernalia of separate Government. Sometimes it is com- plete, as in Bermuda, a strip twenty miles long by two wide, with two houses of Parliament, a Speaker and a Mace. Sometimes the Governor controls the local Assembly : sometimes he has to obey its impulses. There is a patch- work of management resulting from the days when com- munication with Britain itself was difficult and dilatory, and with the neighbouring islands hardly less so. A habit, a tradition of self-reliance and consequent self-satisfaction, exists in every island. This prevents an amalgamation of services and personnel, a unification of outlook, a standardisa- tion of endeavour and result which must be brought about if the islands are to hold their own in a modern world of which they are not yet wholly part.
Financially they are reasonably sound. American Pro- hibition, North American and European visitors, the dis- covery of oil in Trinidad have been and are contributing in great, if temporary, measure to that solvency. Their permanent wealth depends on the profitable sale of the cocoa, coconut, bananas, coffee, nutmegs, grape-fruit and sugar, which they collectively produce. Each and all of these products are confronted by a network of foreign quotas and tariffs or of Empire preferences and subsidies which simultaneously fill the producer with hope or despair. Now the State in the B.W.I. is merely the collective planter or peasant, and its future is not too bright. Like the individual, it is threatened by the common agricultural troubles of falling prices and increasing wage bills. Crops seem to be liable to and suffer from every disease of germ or fungus that Nature can devise. The internal market does not expand, the cost of repairs and machinery grows larger.
A social change, moreover, is in process. Plantations are being condensed into limited companies under managers, or subdivided for peasant proprietorship. While the latter process should make for stability of government, and the former for improvement of cultivation, they will benefit the next more than the present generation. The recent labour troubles in most of the islands caused not only danger to life and machinery but a consideration of grievances which was indeed overdue. Reason, after a short outburst of violence and fear, has on the whole prevailed, and security and quiet exist. But the permanent danger which remains is an economic fall in prices. With the exception of oil there is no industry apart from agriculture, if indeed oil can be properly considered an industry, in any of the islands worth considering. So long as treaties and trade agreements maintain prices and sale quantities, both Government and cultivators, large or small, can pay interest, even discharge loans, and improve holdings. But let prices sag, as they show signs of doing (the competition which makes them shrink comes largely from others of our own Colonies), and away goes the ability in every island, save Trinidad, to be self-supporting. And Trinidad deserves for other than commercial reasons further and separate consideration.
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