industrialisation programmes that were created by the governments of the British Caribbean after 1940 is written out. The story that has emerged, in all its permutations, does not stand up well to close investigation. This chapter will reconsider the dominant narrative by paying close attention to the chronology of events that led to colonies such as Trinidad creating their first pioneer industries legislation, and by evaluating the relative importance of a number of individuals and proposals to the eventual character of the Trinidad ordinances. The claim
fit enough to deploy, and I didn’t, people would say, ‘Oh, I didn’t expect to see you here, as there’s been a disaster,’ and I’d say ‘Well, they’re not asking for outside help’ – ‘Oh, they don’t need you anymore,’ they’d say to me. I’d think, ‘Well, actually, no they don’t.’ But there’s this idea that you’ve got to go, and as it’s become more industrialised and competitive, it’s very hard for agencies not to go when others are getting the publicity
imperial conquests were foreshadowing the twentieth century’s mechanised and industrialised total wars. Dunant himself anticipated the evolution of armed conflict towards total war in a collection of writings published at the end of his life, presciently entitled L’Avenir sanglant (the bloody future). We know what happened to humanitarian norms during what historian Eric Hobsbawm dubbed the ‘age of extremes’, with its colonial massacres, world wars, genocides
disability-adjusted life years caused by air pollution in 2010 was 7.6 per cent of all DALYs lost, higher than all twelve other risk factors, including malnutrition, smoking and high blood pressure. The damage to the planet’s physical environment is worsening, and the causes responsible, including urban growth, energy production, primary and secondary industrialised processes and the global spread of toxic chemicals, are increasing, not abating ( Landrigan et al
, industrialisation, legal protections and changes in family structures ( Moghadam, 2003 : 25). It is not necessarily displacement itself that causes change; contestations about gender may already be occurring. Scholars have critiqued descriptions of gendered changes during displacement that emphasise the need for modernity. Humanitarian actors have been critiqued as colonial for using European modernity as the stance from which the lives of ‘others’ are analysed ( Peace
This book produces a major rethinking of the history of development after 1940 through an exploration of Britain’s ambitions for industrialisation in its Caribbean colonies. Industrial development is a neglected topic in histories of the British Colonial Empire, and we know very little of plans for Britain’s Caribbean colonies in general in the late colonial period, despite the role played by riots in the region in prompting an increase in development spending. This account shows the importance of knowledge and expertise in the promotion of a model of Caribbean development that is best described as liberal rather than state-centred and authoritarian. It explores how the post-war period saw an attempt by the Colonial Office to revive Caribbean economies by transforming cane sugar from a low-value foodstuff into a lucrative starting compound for making fuels, plastics and medical products. In addition, it shows that as Caribbean territories moved towards independence and America sought to shape the future of the region, scientific and economic advice became a key strategy for the maintenance of British control of the West Indian colonies. Britain needed to counter attempts by American-backed experts to promote a very different approach to industrial development after 1945 informed by the priorities of US foreign policy.
approach to development with some long-standing laissez-faire principles. Two wider political issues made Colonial Office attempts to persuade the Caribbean colonies to follow its preferred routes to industrialisation difficult, however. The increasing political autonomy of governments in the Caribbean region meant that Britain could not merely instruct its West Indian possessions to follow its edicts. In addition, it became clear that in the post-war world, the US hoped to shape development across the Caribbean along lines that it found conducive to its own interests
’. ‘A great many are occasionally disabled who are never heard of,’ he noted, and were subsequently forced into dependency on poor relief ‘in consequence of injuries that no one ever hears of.’5 This book examines the lives and experiences of these people, men like James Jackson, who, until recently, were ‘never heard of’ in histories of industrialisation – the scarred, the mutilated, the ‘distorted’ and the impaired. The process of industrial growth in Britain after 1700, which gathered pace from the late eighteenth century, orchestrated changes in professional
to colliery owners than profit. Yet, beyond the political and rhetorical use to which he put them, Burt’s observations also raise important questions about the supposed consequences of industrialisation for ‘disabled’ people. As Burt’s recollections make clear, workers with impairments were not automatically forced from the mines 24 DISABILITY IN THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION during the Industrial Revolution but continued to work there in considerable numbers despite their injuries. If industrialisation was such a calamity for disabled people’s working lives, as
the European debate on suicide from the north-eastern corner of Europe, the geographical distance and especially socio-economic remoteness between Finland and the leading countries of modernisation presented Westerlund with a bird's eye view of the burning question of the connection between suicide and industrialisation, urbanisation, and modern society. Westerlund, like his contemporaries, acknowledged that suicide – the most repugnant of sins for over a thousand years – was a disease brought about by progress, a dark stain that signified a modern society. In this