A Small Place...Jamaica Kincaid

Research the island of Antigua.  Give an analysis of Antigua’s history and culture.  Where do you see evidence of this in the text?  Use quotes in your answer.

Antigua and Barbuda, known as Wadadli and Wa’omoni prior to Christopher Columbus, are two islands located in the Eastern Caribbean. They are known for heir multitude of beaches as well as being a popular tourist location rich in Creole culture and sugarcane history.

Antigua was majorly cultivated by Sir Christopher Codrington in 1684. Originally, the island was meant to be a land of pure sugar-cane cultivation. Codrington came to Antigua in hopes that, this island would support the large-scale growth of sugar-cane that was evident throughout the rest of the Caribbean. By mid 18^th century there were more than 150 cane-processing windmills, of which there are currently about 100 still standing and being used as houses, bars, tourist stops, etc.

            Most of the Antiguan heritage is laced with traces of African lineage brought over to be used as workers in the sugarcane fields. History has revealed, however, that the ancestry of the Antigua inhabitants dates all the way back to two and a half millennia before Christ. The Siboney or “stone people”, who were Meso-Indians are dated as the inhabitants of Antigua as far back as 2400 B.C. The remnants of their culture are found in the crafted stones and shells that are found around the island. After this civilization, came the Arawaks, of who were an agricultural society and dwelled on the island of Antigua from about 35-1100 A.D. The aggressive Caribs, who were inhabited throughout the Caribbean, then took over the Antiguan area.

            The first contact with Antigua dates back to Christopher Columbus in 1493, where in passing he named it after the saint of Seville, Santa Maria la Antigua. Due to the resistance from the Caribs, Antigua escaped European settlement for almost a century after its discovery. However, this came to an end in 1632 when Englishmen from St. Kitts create a settlement there. France, Spain, and England each played a hand in the fight for the control of Antigua’s soil, because they each wanted to be in charge of the sugarcane industry. Antigua’s high profits when it comes to the production of sugarcane made it most valuable to colonizers as well as put them at an advantage over the other islands. When slavery was abolished and Antigua became emancipated, the sugarcane industry began to dwindle for Antigua, which forced them then and now to rely on tourism to support the majority of the island’s income.

            The African influence is great in the island’s culture through the music and most notably the celebration of Carnival. However, the British influence can not be denied as Antigua has adopted many of the traditional British sports and religion. Jamaica Kincaid draws a correlation to this influence on pages 23 and 24 of the novel, “They don’t seem to know that this empire business was all wrong and they should, at least, be wearing sackcloth and ashes in token penance for the wrongs committed, the irrevocableness of their bad deeds, for no natural disaster imaginable could equal the harm they did…they should never have left their home, their precious England, a place they loved so much, a place they had to leave but could never forget. And so everywhere they went they turned it into England; and everybody they met they turned English. But no place could ever really be England, and nobody who did not look exactly like them would ever be English, so that you can imagine the destruction of people and land that came from that.”

Antigua and Barbuda’s History and Culture. 1996-2008. InterKnowledge Corp. New York, NY. http://www.geographia.com/antigua-barbuda/aghis01.htm

Culture of Antigua and Barbuda. 2009. Advameg, Inc. http://www.everyculture.com/A-Bo/Antigua-And-Barbuda.html