Order and Place in a Colonial City

by De Barros, Juanita

• ISBN13: 9780773524552
• ISBN10: 077352455X
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2003-04-01
• Publisher: McGill Queens Univ

Summary

Throughout the post-slavery Caribbean, former slaves and masters fought to determine the shape of the new free societies. Urban areas - with their growing populations and vibrant Afro-creole culture - were often the sites of these struggles. In Order and Place in a Colonial City Juanita De Barros explores the conflicting visions of public areas held by local political and economic elites and by non-white urban poor in Georgetown, British Guiana, demonstrating that the period of study was marked by class and racial tensions as the social and political landscape of the city changed significantly.The elites saw the city's markets and streets as dirty, filled with dangerous non-white crowds. The poor saw these public places as sites of play and livelihood. De Barros shows how these opposing views set the stage for a series of petty disputes and large-scale riots. The "little traditions" of Georgetown's multi-racial and multi-ethnic urban poor helped create a creole view of public spaces, articulated in the course of struggle. By uncovering the popular cultural patterns that underlay much of this unrest, De Barros demonstrates both their place within a larger West Indian cultural paradigm and the emergence of a peculiarly Guianese ritual of protest.

Author Biography

Juanita De Barros is assistant professor in the Department of History, Western Michigan University.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	xi
Introduction	3	(13)
The Garden City of the West Indies	16	(33)
Cesspool City: Sanitarianism in Colonial Georgetown	49	(19)
Order and Festivity in Georgetown	68	(28)
Hucksters, Markets, and the Struggle to Control Public Space	96	(18)
Hawkers and the Milk Industry	114	(24)
Riot and the Struggle to Control the Street	138	(30)
Conclusion	168	(5)
Notes	173	(52)
Bibliography	225	(24)
Index	249