PETER HULME

Remnants of Conquest: The Island Caribs and Their Visitors, 1877-1998

Oxford University Press 2000 ISBN 0-19-811215-7     Hardback £50

In 1877 a US ornithologist stumbled across a small indigenous Caribbean population, the Caribs, still living in a remote part of the small island of Dominica. His account of his stay among the Caribs started a trickle of visitors which grew to a steady stream and is now in the full flood of mass tourism. Remnants of Conquest offers an account and analysis of these visitors’ writings as they struggle to understand the way of life a twentieth-century indigenous community, inhabitants of a postcolonial world.

The visitors who have followed the ornithologist’s footsteps include the novelist Jean Rhys, who was fulfilling a childhood ambition, a colonial official who expected to meet Red Indians in warpaint, a British naval officer who bombarded the Reserve with starshells, and an anthropologist who settled on the island with a Carib woman.

Through this close focus on a small place extensively written about, Remnants of Conquest raises crucial questions about postcolonial perceptions of indigeneity.

CONTENTS

List of Illustrations and Maps
Note on References
1. Visiting the Caribs
2. Northern Hunter and Dusky Carib: Frederick Ober and his Followers (1877-1907)
3. The Administrator's Fiat: Henry Hesketh Bell and the Establishment of the Carib Reserve (1900-1921)
4. Narrating the Carib War: Douglas Taylor and the Struggle over History (1930-1940)
5. The Return of the Native: Jean Rhys and the Caribs (1936)
6. Travellers and Other Transients: Patrick Leigh Fermor and his Followers (1945-1998)
Afterword
Acknowledgements
Chronology
Notes on visitors
Appendix: Original language quotations
Abbreviations
References
Index

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