The West Indies - Life World Library

The West Indies - Life World Library (1965) by Carter Harman – Time-Life International
ISBN: None
Condition: Good

The West Indies, 1965. Sun, sea, sugar, rum, colonial leftovers, newly independent nations, islands of wildly different character and enough political complexity to make the phrase “Caribbean paradise” look just a little under-researched.

Published by Time-Life International as part of its ambitious Life World Library series, Carter Harman’s The West Indies is a lavishly illustrated survey of the Caribbean at a moment when the region was changing rapidly and, in many places, redefining itself after centuries of colonial rule.

And if ever there were a part of the world that proved geography has a sense of humour, it is the West Indies.

Dozens of islands.

Different languages.

Different colonial histories.

Different economies.

Different political systems.

All scattered through the Caribbean Sea in a manner suggesting somebody dropped the map before the ink dried.

In 1965, the region was in transition.

Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago had gained independence only a few years earlier, in 1962.

Barbados would follow in 1966.

Other islands remained under British, French, Dutch or American control.

Some were becoming nations.

Some were still dependencies.

Some were deciding what they wanted to become.

And all of them had inherited layers of history involving empire, slavery, plantations, migration and trade that were not going to disappear merely because a flag changed.

So although this may look at first glance like a cheerful illustrated book about palm trees, it is actually a rather interesting historical document.

There are, admittedly, quite a lot of palm trees.

Time-Life photographers were unlikely to travel to the Caribbean and ignore them.

They would have been dismissed.

The islands themselves offer almost unfair visual material.

White beaches.

Mountain interiors.

Dense forests.

Volcanoes.

Fishing villages.

Harbours.

Sugar plantations.

Colourful towns.

And seas possessing shades of blue that would look suspicious if reproduced badly in a modern brochure.

But behind the scenery sits a much more complicated story.

The Caribbean economy had been shaped for centuries by plantation agriculture.

Sugar dominated many islands.

Bananas, coffee, cocoa and other crops followed.

Tourism was increasingly important, but had not yet reached the enormous scale familiar today.

Cruise ships existed, certainly, but the modern floating shopping centre containing several thousand passengers, eighteen restaurants and an artificial climbing wall had not yet become the standard method of visiting six countries without properly entering any of them.

Travel in the 1960s retained a certain seriousness.

You boarded a plane.

You arrived somewhere.

You stayed there.

Revolutionary.

Jamaica provides one of the most fascinating parts of the story.

Newly independent, culturally distinctive and already producing music, literature and political ideas with influence far beyond its size, it was entering a new phase of national life.

Kingston was expanding.

Tourism was developing.

Reggae, as the world would later know it, was only beginning to emerge from ska and rocksteady.

Bob Marley was still a young musician rather than an international icon printed on posters in student bedrooms everywhere.

In other words, the cultural future was already brewing, but nobody had yet packaged it into a greatest hits album.

Trinidad and Tobago offered a different mixture.

Oil.

Industry.

Carnival.

Calypso.

A deeply multicultural population shaped by African, Indian, European and other influences.

It too had only recently become independent and was working out what modern nationhood would look like.

And then there were the smaller islands.

Barbados.

Grenada.

St Lucia.

Dominica.

Antigua.

Montserrat.

St Vincent.

The Bahamas.

And many others.

Each with its own history, landscape and identity, despite the persistent tendency of outsiders to treat “the Caribbean” as though it were a single large beach with several airports.

It is not.

This is one of the useful things a book like this reminds us.

Islands separated by relatively small stretches of water can have completely different political systems, languages, religions, economies and cultural traditions.

People living twenty miles apart may have inherited entirely different empires.

Europe really did travel a very long way to complicate things.

The colonial history naturally looms large.

Britain.

France.

Spain.

The Netherlands.

And later the United States.

Everyone seems to have had a go.

Plantations created enormous wealth for colonial powers while enslaved Africans endured generations of brutality.

Indentured labourers later arrived from India and elsewhere.

Those movements of people created the extraordinarily diverse Caribbean societies visible today.

Food, language, religion, music and identity all bear the marks of that history.

This makes the cheerful tropical scenery rather more interesting once you understand what happened underneath it.

Even rum suddenly acquires several hundred years of economic context.

Though it remains rum.

The photographs now have an additional charm because so many everyday scenes have become historical.

A street that looked unremarkable in 1965 may now contain cars worth collecting.

A hotel presented as modern may have long since disappeared beneath a much larger hotel.

A wooden fishing boat may represent a way of life transformed by tourism and development.

A shop sign can become more interesting than the monument beside it.

Vintage books are excellent at this.

The photographer carefully frames a famous building.

Sixty years later the reader says, “Never mind that, look at the bus.”

And quite right too.

Transport alone can absorb a surprising amount of attention.

Old taxis.

Brightly painted buses.

Ships in harbour.

Aircraft from an era when flying still involved dressing as though you might unexpectedly be invited to meet the governor.

Nobody boarded in pyjama bottoms carrying a neck pillow the size of a sheep.

Civilisation had standards.

The book also captures the early growth of mass tourism.

For many North American and European travellers, the Caribbean was becoming increasingly accessible.

Hotels were being developed.

Beaches were being promoted.

Air travel was expanding.

The islands were beginning to be sold internationally as holiday destinations.

But this was before online reviews.

Before package holiday comparison sites.

Before anyone could complain publicly that their sea-view room contained only 37% visible sea.

If the hotel was disappointing, you wrote a letter.

Possibly several weeks later.

By which point you had calmed down.

There was dignity in inconvenience.

Carter Harman approaches the region in the broad, explanatory manner characteristic of the Life World Library.

History.

Geography.

Politics.

Economics.

Culture.

Daily life.

All are assembled into one volume with the reassuring conviction that the world can indeed be understood if somebody selects enough good photographs and labels the maps properly.

This was the golden age of international reference publishing.

No embedded adverts.

No cookie banners.

No article suddenly stopping halfway through because you have reached your monthly limit.

You bought the book.

The whole book appeared.

What an astonishing business model.

The physical format is part of the appeal too.

Time-Life books were made to be substantial.

They belonged on shelves.

Preferably shelves containing several neighbouring countries.

A row of Canada, China, The Low Countries, Tropical Africa and The West Indies created the immediate impression that the owner possessed a sophisticated international outlook.

Whether they had actually read all of them was between them and their conscience.

A strategically placed globe completed the effect.

For the modern reader, The West Indies works on several levels at once.

It is geography.

It is colonial and post-colonial history.

It is social history.

It is tourism history.

It is photography.

And it is an accidental record of a Caribbean world standing on the threshold of enormous cultural, economic and political change.

Some islands would become independent.

Some would remain territories.

Tourism would expand dramatically.

Music from the region would conquer the world.

Migration would reshape Britain, North America and elsewhere.

And towns photographed as relatively quiet places in 1965 would become major international destinations.

The future was arriving.

It was just doing so under exceptionally good weather.

Obviously, this is not a modern guide to the West Indies.

Do not rely on it for ferry timetables.

Do not assume every hotel remains open.

Do not use the population figures without checking.

And if it describes somewhere as “unspoilt by tourism”, there is a reasonable chance somebody has since built three resorts, a marina and a duty-free jewellery shop on it.

But that is precisely why the book is interesting.

It captures the region before much of that happened.

A moment when newly independent nations were establishing themselves, colonial structures were changing, tourism was growing and the Caribbean was beginning to take on the modern identities now familiar worldwide.

Condition: Good. A vintage copy showing the usual signs of age and previous ownership expected from a book published in 1965, but remaining in good overall condition and perfectly suitable for reading, collecting or placing on a coffee table while pretending that your next trip to Barbados is being undertaken for serious historical research.

A lovely addition to a collection of Caribbean history, West Indian studies, Time-Life books, vintage geography, colonial history, travel or mid-century photography.

Also ideal for anyone who likes tropical islands but prefers not to deal with airport security, sunscreen, mosquitoes or the horrifying discovery that the hotel bar charges £14 for something served inside half a pineapple.

Sold by Crappy Old Books, where the Caribbean remains sunny, the maps remain gloriously out of date, and all-inclusive still means the entire book.

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