Book Review : Inward yearnings : Jamaica’s journey to nationhood

Abstract

Could a native political elite’s diminished sense of its cultural identity and evasion of its civilisational association with Africa during the fall of the British Empire in the Caribbean become the compelling force that shaped a colony’s political destiny for the worse? Nationalist Jamaican scholars have long declared for the affirmative on this matter as it relates to their country’s experience with decolonisation. Their debunking claim – that far from being heroic anti-colonial leaders, Jamaica’s culturally-alienated and Eurocentric political elite was complicit in delaying the island’s passage to territorial statehood and were guilty of repressing alternative visions of Jamaican nationality – has long been at the centre of the Jamaican Fanonist critique of the brown and black middle class personalities that led the political movement to end colonial rule on the island.