Order and Place in a Colonial City
Patterns of Struggle and Resistance in Georgetown, British Guiana,1889-1924
Description
The elites saw the city's markets and streets as dirty, filled with dangerous non-white crowds. The poor saw these public places as sites of play and livelihood. De Barros shows how these opposing views set the stage for a series of petty disputes and large-scale riots. The "little traditions" of Georgetown's multi-racial and multi-ethnic urban poor helped create a creole view of public spaces, articulated in the course of struggle. By uncovering the popular cultural patterns that underlay much of this unrest, De Barros demonstrates both their place within a larger West Indian cultural paradigm and the emergence of a peculiarly Guianese ritual of protest.
Reviews
"Order and Place in a Colonial City makes a valuable contribution to an understanding of a place often allowed to slip into the margins of both Caribbean and Latin American history. It is based on very thorough research in the relevant archives and libraries, particularly the repositories in Guyana, and as a result offers access to a great deal of original material of considerable interest to scholars in a range of fields." Barry Higman, History Program, Australian National University