Empowering a Peasantry in a Caribbean Context: The Case of Land Settlement Schemes in Guyana, 1865-1985

Carl B. Greenidge, Empowering a Peasantry in a Caribbean Context: The Case of Land Settlement Schemes in Guyana, 1865-1985, Kingston: The University of the West Indies Press, 2001, xxxii + 208 pp.Historians and social anthropologists have tended to view the Caribbean peasantry as developing primarily as a response of the emancipated peoples to the coercive methods of the planters, an approach that stresses the role of missionaries and emancipated people in the formation of a peasantry.1 In contrast to this general position, Douglas Hall and Sidney Mintz2 saw the peasantry, especially that in Jamaica, as evolving out of provision ground cultivation which developed during slavery, a phenomenon they termed the proto-peasantry. Few writers have examined the relationship between government policy and the Caribbean peasantry. Notable exceptions are Woodville Marshall, Veront Satchell, Marleen Hartley3 and Carl Greenidge, whose work is reviewed here.Greenidge's book (the revision and expansion of a working paper entitled, "Land Settlement Schemes in the Caribbean: Policies, Problems and Prospects", published January 1982), offers a "politicized" discussion of the peasantry in Guyana. The analysis spans the 120-year period from the partial imposition of crown colony rule in 1865 to 1985, the year that the author describes as the end of experimental colonization of land settlements.Cedric Grant of Clarke University in Atlanta, Georgia, in the foreword to the text, notes that "this book is clearly not written with Caribbean politicians in mind. But if [they] delve into this book, they like its mainstream readers will be rewarded" (p. xii). He states further that none of the several texts on land settlement schemes in Guyana "is as comprehensive as Greenidge's or as thoroughly or rigorously researched" (p. xii). But what really distinguishes this work from others, according to Grant, is that it "convincingly refutes the orthodox view" that Land Settlement Schemes (LSSs) failed. With this sort of endorsement one has high expectations of the work.In a well-written, methodical and concise introduction, Greenidge sets out his primary objective, namely to refute the view that LSSs in Guyana were essentially failures. This, he proposes, will be achieved through an "examination of the factors giving rise to the establishment of LSSs, their administration, evolution and consequences" (p. xxvi). He argues that the view that LSSs were failures results from the mistaken premise that they were established primarily to create and foster the growth of a peasantry (pp. xxv, 42). According to him, this was not the case. Several objectives, implicit and explicit, informed the establishment of these LSSs as time and circumstances prescribed. Greenidge argues that LSSs often served as social, political and economic palliatives to reduce unemployment, maintain the plantation economy, and obtain and retain voter support (pp. 24-27, 5, 159, 161). Greenidge points out thatUntil the most recent phases, that is, 1960-1980 and 1981-1985, the schemes were employed to restrain the geographical mobility of rural wage labour. During the late colonial and postcolonial periods (1948-85), land policy was directed to extending the cultivable margin, and labour policy was directed to land occupation for employment and strategic reasons. Indeed, it may be said that the policy was intended to hinder rural-urban drift. These were objectives reflected in the location and administration of the subsequent LSSs (p. xxv). He concludes that when these objectives are taken into consideration, then the schemes were successes rather than failures.Empowering a Peasantry consists of eight chapters, mostly divided according to themes and dates. The first chapter offers a brief overview and definition of the subject matter. The second chapter provides the societal and political climate in which the peasantry emerged in Guyana, as well as the early development of the peasantry itself. …