Garinagu Ethnogenesis and St Vincent's Black Caribs in the British Colonial Account

Abstract

Sir William Young's book An Account of the Black Charaibs in the Island of St. Vincent's has been the primary historical source about the Black Caribs' ethnogenesis and Vicentinian history for many years. This essay critically examines the book's historical inconsistencies and fabrications. Restating such claims in published works has shaped how the Black Caribs' present-day descendants, the Garinagu, have come to understand their ethnic origins and identity. This work contributes to a small body of critical interdisciplinary historiography that challenges the master narrative that British colonizers wrote about the Black Caribs and the ethnohistory of the Lesser Antilles.