Ordering Independence

In August 1962, Trinidad and Jamaica became the first territories in the Caribbean to gain independence from Britain. After four centuries of expansion and consolidation, the relinquishment of British imperial control was intended to mark a new era but the subsequent history of the region has been a troubled one. Ordering Independence analyses the conflicts and controversies which accompanied the gradual transfer of power away from British politicians and officials to locally elected representatives and includes coverage of disputes between the British government and Caribbean nationalists over regional integration, the Cold War, immigration policy and financial aid. The central argument of the book challenges those accounts which attribute the post-independence problems of the Anglophone Caribbean to the inadequacies of nationalist leadership and provides a new assessment of the failures of British policy. Based on research in British, Caribbean and American archives, Ordering Independence offers the first comprehensive account of the end of empire in Jamaica, Trinidad, Barbados, St. Kitts, Grenada and British Guiana.Introduction The Struggle for Independence 1947-1952 Ordering the Islands 1952-1958 The Triumph of Disorder 1958-1962 Order and Disorder Between Dependence and Independence 1962-1969 Conclusions Notes Bibliography Index