{"product_id":"how-britain-underdeveloped-the-caribbean","title":"How Britain Underdeveloped the Caribbean","description":"“The modern Caribbean\neconomy was invented, structured and managed by European states for one\npurpose: to achieve maximum wealth extraction to fuel and sustain their\nnational financial, commercial and industrial transformation.” So begins \u003ci\u003eHow Britain Underdeveloped the Caribbean: A\nReparation Response to Europe’s Legacy of Plunder and Poverty\u003c\/i\u003e as Hilary\nMcD. Beckles continues the groundbreaking work he began in \u003ci\u003eBritain’s Black Debt: Reparations for Caribbean Slavery and Native\nGenocide. \u003c\/i\u003eWe are now in\na time of global reckoning for centuries of crimes against humanity perpetrated\nby European colonial powers as they built their empires with the wealth\nextracted from the territories they occupied and exploited with enslaved and,\nlater, indentured labour. The systematic brutality of the transatlantic trade\nin enslaved Africans and the plantation economies did not disappear with the\nabolition of slavery. Rather, the means of exploitation were reconfigured to\nensure that wealth continued to flow to European states. Independence\nfrom colonial powers in the twentieth century did not mean real freedom for the\nCaribbean nations, left as they were without the resources for meaningful\ndevelopment and in a state of persistent poverty. Beckles focuses his attention\non the British Empire and shows how successive governments have systematically\nsuppressed economic development in their former colonies and have refused to accept\nresponsibility for the debt and development support they owe the Caribbean. ","brand":"University of the West Indies Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57258920313176,"sku":"9789766408695","price":43.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"url":"https:\/\/agendabookshop.com\/products\/how-britain-underdeveloped-the-caribbean","provider":"Agenda Bookshop","version":"1.0","type":"link"}