648
AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST
[
77,19751
The Unappropriated People: Freedmen in
the Slave Society
of
Barbados.
JEROME
S.
HANDLER. Baltimore
&
London: Johns
Hopkins University Press, 1974. xii
+
225
pp., figures, map, tables, index.
$10.00
(cloth).
Reviewed by
FRANKLIN
W.
KNIGHT
Johns Hopkins University
The free, Afro-American population in
the context
of
the slave and post-slave
societies of the New World has gained
considerable recent scholarly attention. The
free people
of
color,
as
they were called in
the literature, performed a vital, though
curiously ambiguous and clearly misunder-
stood, role in the social, political, and
economic evolution
of
Tropical America.
The Unappropriated People
is the first full
length treatment devoted
to
this role in one
society, and is accomplished with superb
historical skill, creditable narrative elegance,
and a commendable sensitivity toward the
subject. The work utilizes an extremely wide
variety
of
sources, including personal wills,
estate records, contemporary travel ac-
counts, recently published monographs, and
derives additional support from the author’s
obvious delight in Barbadians and his im-
mense familiarity with the geography
of
the
island.
Handler’s thorough description
of
the
free Afro-Barbadian society is skillfully in-
terwoven against the general background
of
an island’s history dominated by the sugar
plantation economy. The author examines
the origins
of
the free colored segment and
intelligently assesses within the limitations
of the available sources, the proportional
volume
of
manumissions prior to the total
abolition
of
slavery in 1834. He weighs the
various factors which either facilitated or
inhibited the expansion
of
civil rights
to
the
free, non-white; describes the Afro-
Barbadian role in the local militia (where,
unlike the United States
of
America, freed-
men bore arms and shared many
of
the
privileges of the white stratum); points out
the correlation between occupation, wealth,
and property; and traces the appeal, interest
in, or neglect
of
the various religious and
educational institutions during the period.
Extremely valuable observations abound
throughout the study. Useful cross-refer-
ences to the other English Caribbean
colonies indicating areas
of
comparison or
contrast further enhance the study. Manu-
mission rates in Barbados did not significant-
ly vary from those
of
other high African
importation and labor intensive areas from
Mexico and Peru in the sixteenth century
to
Brazil and Cuba in the nineteenth century.
Barbadian law and custom accentuated dis-
criminatory practices against the non-white
sector during the nineteenth century, and in
sharp contrast
to
the development in
Jamaica, the Barbadian society more rigidly
defined and excluded the non-white from
among the elite. The reluctant expansion of
civil rights by the planter-dominated As-
sembly resulted from a combination
of
internal agitation and the external prevailing
influences
of
reform coming from the metro-
polis. On the other hand, Handler shows that
the affinity
of
the Afro-Barbadian for
legitimate avenues
of
grievance resolution
derived largely from their modest propor-
tional representation (a mere 7.4%
of
the
total non-white group, and a mere
33.0%
or
the total free group)
as
well as their social-
ization within norms established by the
dominant white, mainly planter, group.
The Unappropriated People
is a major
contribution to Caribbean historiography. It
is thoroughly researched, clearly written,
balanced in judgment, and persuasively
judicious where the data are often in-
adequate, incomplete, or contradictory.
Handler has beautifully illuminated the in-
tricate relationship between class, occupa-
tion, and society in the plantation Caribbean
and has provided a solid model for further
efforts, perhaps on a regional basis. But
more important, he has set an extremely
high standard for all succeeding work in this
field.
Migrants in
Aruba:
Interethnic Integration.
VERA
M.
GREEN. Assen, The Netherlands:
Van Gorcum, 1973. 137 pp., maps,
2
ap-
pendices, selected bibliography.
$1
5.00
(paper).
Reviewed by
JAMES
W.
GREEN
University
of
Wisconsin, Green Bay
Each new book on the Caribbean con-
firms the extraordinary cultural diversity
of
the region, and Green’s book on the island
of
Aruba is no exception. Her work is part
of a series of ambitious and scholarly studies
centering on the activities
of
the Dutch in
the West Indies. Although Dutch colonial
holdings are few, research in these territories
has been growing steadily, and as Green
points out, that research suggests a variant of
Caribbean life that has been overlooked by
our preoccupation with the more numerous
English and Spanish speaking islands.
Aruba is part
of
the Dutch ABC group,
which includes Bonaire and Curacao, and is
