Land, Territory and Identity in the Deterritorialized, Transnational Caribbean

Abstract

This chapter outlines the 'crisis of identity', which has been identified for the Caribbean region and especially for the island of Jamaica, and highlights the related themes of exile, marronage, migration and adventure. It explores the seemingly contradictory processes of Caribbean creolization and invention. Despite S. W. Mintz's preoccupation with the absence of Caribbean regional and national identities, his work on the region also richly portrays a process of creolization and cultural invention. In addition to the fracturing of Caribbean regional identity, Mintz has identified 'the prevailing absence of any ideology of national identity that could serve as a goal for mass acculturation' as a defining feature of the region. The British Virgin Islands, like Montserrat, is also a British Caribbean territory. The Atlantic slave trade provided the main basis of New World plantation labour from the early sixteenth century to the late nineteenth century.