Towards a Theory of West Indian Economic Development

Abstract

by Marietta Morrissey* The former British West Indies1 have received much attention from economists, sociologists, historians. These scholars have examined a wide range of hypotheses and propositions, but important phenomena have gone unexamined. West Indian economic development, for example, has been simply equated with Western capitalist evolution. And, more recently, scholars have ascribed West Indian underdevelopment to the influence of Western imperialism. But social science has failed to describe fully or to explain the unique character of West Indian economy. Up to this point we find that social scientists with a non-Marxist materialist and historical viewpoint have treated West Indian development most seriously. Prominent in West Indian studies, as in few other world areas, are scholars for whom the conflicts of economically defined groups are a motive force of history. Two distinct perspectives on the definition of these groups and the nature of their conflicts within and outside their nations and the region are provided by those I would term traditional materialist historians and by Caribbean advocates of a dependency perspective, or Caribbean structuralists. In the section that follows, the major propositions and assumptions of these two approaches to West Indian economic development are reviewed, focusing on their conceptual weaknesses. In the following section evidence from the 1846 to 1880 period of Jamaican history will be presented that challenges both the traditional materialist and dependency analytical strategies. Finally, I will suggest the contours of an alternative, Marxist theory of West Indian economic development.