fer suggestions beyond emphasizing by implication how important it is to
understand the particularities of each individual place. Yet this profoundly
commonsensical point-the danger of the sweeping regional generalization
-is probably more important at the end of the twentieth century than it
was at the end of the nineteenth. And it was certainly a problem then as I
try to show in the chapters that follow.

If I have indeed been successful in writing a book of both academic and
practical interest for the Caribbean region, or even if I have not, I have a
great many direct and indirect debts to acknowledge here. The great bulk of
the primary material in this study comes from information I located and re-
searched in London-area archives during academic year 1986-87. The re-
search would have been impossible without the generous support from
grants from both the Committee for Research and Exploration of the Na-
tional Geographic Society in Washington, DC, as well as a grant from the
Geography and Regional Science branch of the United States National Sci-
ence Foundation. I am also grateful to the research-study leave programme
at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University which provided a year
with half salary so that I could pursue this work.

These funds from various sources allowed my wife and two daughters
and me to live in the London area for a year. The librarians and staff at the
various archives that I mention preceding the bibliography were exception-
ally helpful. Perhaps more important was the opportunity to interact with
fellow Caribbeanists while I was in London and to talk with them infor-
mally and frequently about what I was finding in the archives. Hilary
Beckles from UWI Cave Hill had an appointment at the Institute of Com-
monwealth Studies paralleling my stay in London, and we had numerous
opportunities for conversations over lunch. Caribbeanist colleagues Peter
Fraser and Clem Seecharran provided stimulating company on an almost
daily basis as they were also pursuing their own research projects at the Pub-
lic Record Office. As always, David and Mary Alice Lowenthal were both
encouraging and generous.

The decade-long lag between the research period and the published
book requires explanation. First, I wrote another book during the period; it
was published in 1992. Second, I have published a series of academic ar-
ticles, beginning in 1989, from this same research material. These articles
do not duplicate the information I provide in this book. Rather, they ex-
plore byways of some of the issues I discuss here. I would like to thank vari-
ous editors and journal referees for poring over this written material and
helping to improve it and thereby indirectly helping me write material for

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