Franklin W. Knight

It is often said that people who are born on islands have a different perspective of the world and of themselves. And contrary to the normal expectation, this is not necessarily an insular, myopic view. Although the British Isles tend to provide the exception that proves the rule, island peoples tend to be cosmopolitan, hospitable and gregarious. Island people are accustomed to arrivals and departures - sometimes unexpected arrivals and departures. The act of perpetual arriving and departing communicates a basic notion of interdependence, of another place intimately linked with the mother-island. It is as though island folks internalised from birth and experiences the metaphorical implication of that famous sonnet by the English cleric, John Donne (1572-1631) that"every man is a peece of the Continent, a part of the maine". (sic)

As Derek Walcott has expressed in so many ways, Caribbean peoples are indelibly moulded by their geography and their history. More than most other places in the world, the Caribbean was fashioned by a history that in many ways was unique, and uniquely complex. More than most places in the world, Caribbean peoples have had to live and internalise multiple images and multiple realities - and make a harmony out of them.

Complexity, plurality and struggle lie deeply embedded in the heart of the Caribbean existence. That partly explains why the Jamaican national motto, emblazoned on its coat-of-arms, is "Out of Many One People!" and in Trinidad, it is, "Together we Aspire. Together we Achieve!".

The history of the Caribbean, like the history of most of the world's peoples, graphically illustrates the acute problems and the intimidating challenges, the enormous successes and the dismal failures of diverse individuals and groups. But it goes beyond that, well beyond that. The history of the peoples of the Caribbean also manifest the inspirational rewards derived from broadening the conventional parameters of our reality and looking constantly beyond the constraining horizons of our daily lives.

The peoples of the Caribbean were intrepid pioneers of necessity, and innate revolutionaries before it was fashionable to be revolutionaries. They have forever been pragmatic and eclectic - and to the dismay of outsiders, not easily definable. What makes a person Caribbean? What are the essential characteristics of Caribbeanness?

History, it can be reasonably assumed, is the record of what groups of individuals have known and believed at different times about their past and their reality. History is also the way that groups and individuals have used their knowledge and their beliefs to serve their interests and aspirations. As such, history encompasses the entire corpus of underlying presuppositions that have conditioned groups and individuals to consider their knowledge to be relevant, and their beliefs to be true.

No community, therefore, regardless of its physical size or the sophistication of its social organisation, is without its particular history. Caribbean people should find a sense of history to be especially relevant in their lives. They are products of their past and present realities.

What is important about this notion of history - and it is a notion that pervades the better examples of Caribbean scholarship - is that the manifestation and the recovery of this type of history is not simply restricted to the evaluation of extant documents.

That is precisely why, across the region, the outstanding examples of Caribbean historical scholarship are found in social, economic and cultural history rather than in political and military history. That is why Caribbean scholars always reconcile continuity and change.

That is also why it is so easy to refute the myopic and awfully ethnocentric statement of John Parry in 1956 in A Short History of the West Indies. "The recorded history of the West Indies," he wrote, "does not grow gradually, as most Old World histories grow, out of a more remote mythological or archaeological past. It begins abruptly with a definite event: the arrival of the first European discoverers in Columbus' fleet in 1492. The present aspect of the islands has been shaped largely by events which took place after that date."
Thus could one historian banish the long history and pervasive influence of the original inhabitants of the Caribbean - the Tainos (Arawaks), Guanahuatebeys, and Caribs.

It is important to note that John Parry did not lack the interdisciplinary skills to evaluate the archaeological and sociolinguistic evidence of the pre-Hispanic past of the Caribbean. Parry was not unduly biased against the peoples of the Caribbean. He had lived there, taught there, loved the region, and was an acclaimed historian. The important point is that, even had he got all the relevant knowledge, it would not have mattered to him. With his narrow European lens he simply could not come to terms with unusual societies distorted by a brutal colonial experience. Parry also failed to overcome the inbred ethnocentricity that pervaded those European writers of the Caribbean since the time of Columbus that viewed the region merely as a side stream of European societies and empires.

The Caribbean means different things to different people.
Ethnic, linguistic, political and geographical maps do not necessarily coincide when one speaks of the Caribbean. A melange of peoples, and languages, and islands of varying geographical dimensions - as well as enclaves of the mainland - the region constitutes a proscenium to the hemisphere and an important prologue to modern history.
That represents both a challenge and an opportunity and wise leaders can differentiate between the two. Knowledge is power. The more perfect the knowledge of a people and an area, the better the decisions about those people and that area will be.

A good case can be made that, despite the superficial differences, the Caribbean represents a single culture area no more variegated than any other cultural area. France, Spain, England, Canada, or the United States are culturally just as variegated as the Caribbean. The Caribbean world needs to recognise this diversity and convert it to a source of strength. That would give real meaning to e pluribus unum - out of many, one.

DJ Jigga ruled supreme at Heineken Green Synergy

Heritage Week or Halloween?

Alton Ellis a true gentleman — Roger Steffens