Book Reviews -Swithin Wilmot, Rupert Charles Lewis, Walter Rodney's intellectual and political thought. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1988. xvii + 298 pp. -Peter Wade, Robin D. Moore, Nationalizing blackness: Afrocubanismo and artistic revolution in Havana, 1920-1940. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1997. xiii + 322 pp. -Matt D. Childs, Ada Ferrer, Insurgent Cuba: Race, nation, and revolution, 1868-1898. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999. xiii + 273 pp. -Luis Martínez-Fernández, Joan Casanovas, Bread, or bullets! Urban labor and Spanish colonialism in Cuba, 1850-1898. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press,1998. xiii + 320 pp. -Gert J. Oostindie, Oscar Zanetti ,Sugar and railroads: A Cuban history, 1837-1959. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998. xxviii + 496 pp., Alejandro García (eds) -Kelvin Santiago-Valles, Teresita Martínez-Vergne, Shaping the discourse on space: Charity and its wards in nineteenth-century San Juan, Puerto Rico. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1999. xv + 234 pp. -Rosemarijn Hoefte, Madhavi Kale, Fragments of empire: Capital, slavery, and Indian indentured labor migration in the British Caribbean. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998. 236 pp. -Catherine Benoît, Jean Benoist, Hindouismes créoles - Mascareignes, Antilles. Paris: Éditions du CTHS, 1998. 303 pp. -Christine Ho, Walton Look Lai, The Chinese in the West Indies 1806-1995: A documentary history. The Press University of the West Indies, 1998. xxxii + 338 pp. -James Walvin, Roger Norman Buckley, The British Army in the West Indies: Society and the military in the revolutionary age. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1998. 464 pp. -Rosanne M. Adderley, Howard Johnson, The Bahamas from slavery to servitude, 1783-1933. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1996. xviii + 218 pp. -Mary Turner, Shirley C. Gordon, Our cause for his glory: Christianisation and emancipation in Jamaica. Kingston: The Press University of the West Indies, 1998. xviii + 152 pp. -Kris Lane, Hans Turley, Rum, sodomy, and the lash: Piracy, sexuality, and masculine identity. New York: New York University Press, 1999. lx + 199 pp. -Jonathan Schorsch, Eli Faber, Jews, slaves, and the slave trade: Setting the record straight. New York: New York University Press, 1998. xvii + 367 pp. -Bonham C. Richardson, Bridget Brereton ,The Colonial Caribbean in transition: Essays on postemancipation social and cultural history. Barbados: The Press University of the West Indies; Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1999. xxiii + 319 pp., Kevin A. Yelvington (eds) -Ransford W. Palmer, Thomas Klak, Globalization and neoliberalism: The Caribbean context. Downloaded from Brill.com10/04/2021 09:55:14AM via free access New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 1998. xxiv + 319 pp. -Susan Saegert, Robert B. Potter ,Self-help housing, the poor, and the state in the Caribbean. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1997. xiv + 299 pp., Dennis Conway (eds) -Peter Redfield, Michèle-Baj Strobel, Les gens de l or: Mémoire des orpailleurs créoles du Maroni. Petit-Bourg, Guadeloupe: Ibis Rouge, 1998. 400 pp. -Donald R. Hill, Louis Regis, The political calypso: True opposition in Trinidad and Tobago 1962- 1987. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1999. xv + 277 pp. -A. James Arnold, Christiane P. Makward, Mayotte Capécia ou l aliénation selon Fanon. Paris: Karthala, 1999. 230 pp. -Chris Bongie, Celia M. Britton, Edouard Glissant and postcolonial theory: Strategies of language and resistance. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1999. xiv + 224 pp. -Chris Bongie, Anne Malena, The negotiated self: The dynamics of identity in Francophone Caribbean narrative. New York: Peter Lang, 1999. x + 192 pp. -Catherine A. John, Kathleen M. Balutansky ,Caribbean creolization: Reflections on the cultural dynamics of language, literature, and identity., Marie-Agnès Sourieau (eds) -Leland Ferguson, Jay B. Haviser, African sites archaeology in the Caribbean. Princeton NJ: Markus Wiener; Kingston: Ian Randle, 1999. xiii + 364 pp. -Edward M. Dew, Peter Meel, Tussen autonomie en onafhankelijkheid: Nederlands-Surinaamse betrekkingen 1954-1961. Leiden NL: KITLV Press, 1999. xiv + 450 pp. -Edo Haan, Theo E. Korthals Altes, Koninkrijk aan zee: De lange vlucht van liefde in het Caribisch-Nederlandse bestuur. Zutphen: Walburg Pers. 208 pp. -Richard Price, Ellen-Rose Kambel ,The rights of indigenous people and Maroons in Suriname. Copenhagen: International work group for indigenous affairs; Moreton-in-Marsh, U.K.: The Forest Peoples Programme, 1999. 206 pp., Fergus Mackay (eds) In: New West Indian Guide/ Nieuwe West-Indische Gids 74 (2000), no: 3/4, Leiden, 133-204 This PDF-file was downloaded from http://www.kitlv-journals.nl Downloaded from Brill.com10/04/2021 09:55:14AM via free access BOOK REVIEWS The Convict and the Colonel. RICHARD PRICE. Boston: Beacon Press, 1998. xviii + 285 pp. (Cloth US$ 27.50, Paper US$ 18.00) JEAN-PAUL DUMONT Anthropology Program George Mason University Fairfax VA 22030, U.S.A. <[email protected]> The setting is Martinique, the French West Indian island that the author vis- ited for the first time as an undergraduate in 1962. A well-known Caribbeanist, anthropologist Richard Price writes here a book that explodes the traditional confines of his field as he elegantly poaches into others' domains - the mystery writers', the biographers', as well as the cultural studies scholars'. The resulting blend makes for an enjoyable reading, even though what Price has to say is not entirely meant to cheer up the reader. The Martiniquan interpretations are complex, varied and changing to such an extent that there is no happy ending, no resolution in sight, only the assurance that there are more interpretations to come. Richard Price, happily supported by an impeccable taste for forceful illustrations, is indeed a master narrator under whose literary charms one can easily fall in this relatively short piece of work that draws heavily on his intimate knowledge of Martinique in the French West Indies. In and of itself the narrative holds together, in its detailed exploration of different inflections and contradictions in the implementation of modernization. Behind such a narrative there is a powerful cultural critique of imposed modernization and a devastating indictment of French colonialism in gen- eral, even though the book is securely anchored in incidents and events that occurred in Martinique. Price's narrative however leads him to a great many excursions outside of Martinique: to nearby French Guiana and its formidable penitentiary; to North Africa and its convicts; to black Africa, Downloaded from Brill.com10/04/2021 09:55:14AM via free access 134 New West Indian Guide/Nieuwe West-lndische Gids vol. 74 no. I & 2 (2000) its riflemen, its former slaves and a former ruler; and to France itself, at the center of the empire, yet at the periphery of Martinique. What interests Price is decidedly not far-off France, but Martinique realities qua part of the larger West Indian cultural ensemble. What the alliterative title of the manuscript suggests is a certain matter- of-fact, commonsensical unity, that of the island itself in its insular geogra- phy. But the title also suggests a powerfully contrastive tension. At the top of the social hierarchy, there is, ensconced in its successful status and estab- lished role, the "colonel," French of course, white, a beke (i.e. born in the West Indies from French parents), politically active and conservative, well- endowed and well-connected Maurice de Coppens, a rhum distillery owner, the very image of the French colonialist, who can get away with almost everything. At the bottom of the same social hierarchy there is a "convict," poor Medard Aribot, the very image of the trampled "colonized," a mar- ginal, a loser, a semi-trickster, a petty thief victimized by the system, a local member of the underclass. Events, which span most of the twentieth centu- ry, of course come and muddle everything. The colonel, now more or less forgotten, is killed in a post-electoral brouhaha on May 24, 1925. The con- vict, born in 1901, does not die before 1973, of natural causes, and has now been "discovered," as an original, and an artist, by the tourist industry as well as by intellectuals. Different Martiniquans "read" these historical events differently, negotiate different identities for these two characters. The same events and the same characters are those Price uses to illustrate what he calls "the seine of history" (pp.121-217), that is, in his own terms "to explore how one generation's powerful historical metaphors could so quickly become the next generation's trivial pursuit" (p. 157). As could be expected from Price's critical stance, the title, emblematic in its own right, reverses the colonial hierarchy, begins with the convict and relegates, as it were, the colonel to the end. After an initial prologue where Price "situates" himself on the Martinique scene, after a first chapter devoted to the evocation of "la guerre du Diamant" in which Colonel Coppens perished, after a second chapter focusing on Medard Aribot, a loner, a simpleton, a man of supernatural strength, an artistic genius, a gentle eccentric, and possibly a madman, Price proceeds to a broader reflection on what he calls, accurately, in my opinion, the "the- atre of marginality" that involves a "master narrative of loss" as well as a "current renegotiation of identities." And this is a theatre in which all Martiniquans