|
Caribbean Islands DOMINICA
COUNTRY PROFILE: Dominica
Dominica is the most mountainous island in the Caribbean. The
land rises in places straight from the sea, towering to high peaks.
This rugged landscape is softened somewhat by the luxuriant forests
that coat the hills and give the island its distinctive verdant
beauty.
After nearly 3,000 years of human habitation, Dominica, known
to many as "the Nature Island of the Caribbean," is one of the few
places where untouched primary tropical forests can still be found.
More than in most islands, this rugged terrain has guided the
course of Dominica's history. The steep mountains and deep valleys
provided the early Carib Indians with a natural fortress against
European colonizers, making Dominica one of the last islands to be
fully colonized. These same features later provided a safe haven
for escaped slaves. Since then, the struggle between man and
mountain has significantly affected the direction and pace of
Dominica's development by determining the location and cost of
roads, farms, and buildings.
The island's first settlers were the Arawaks, an Indian people
from the Orinoco region of South America, who arrived in Dominica
and the neighboring islands of Martinique and Guadaloupe about
1,000 years B.C. (see The Pre-European Population, ch. 1). These
first known settlers lived peacefully until they were almost
completely decimated by the more aggressive Carib Indians, who
arrived in Dominica in 900 A.D.. In the late 1980s, there were no
known living descendants of the Arawaks in Dominica, but the Carib
population numbered about 1,500.
Some 593 years after the Caribs settled in Dominica,
Christopher Columbus first sighted the island on his second voyage
to the New World. Unaware that the Caribs had already named the
island Waitukubuli ("Tall is her body"), Columbus renamed it
Dominica, after the Spanish word for Sunday, the day of his
arrival, November 3, 1493.
For the next 200 years, no European power was able to conquer
Dominica. The determined and often violent resistance of the
island's Carib inhabitants was a major deterrent to colonization.
As the Spanish empire grew in the 1500s, Dominica became
increasingly important but only as a point for collecting wood and
water. The island's resources were abundant, but attacking Caribs
put the mariners at great risk. Only in the year 1627 when the
French standard was raised did a European power claim the island as
an occupied possession. Fifty years later, following repeated
hostilities between the French and English over the island's
ownership, a treaty was signed between the two countries declaring
Dominica a neutral territory to "be inhabited by the savages to who
[sic] it has been left . . . ."
Long years of battle against French and English settlers and
diseases contracted from these adversaries took their toll on a
once defiant people until the Carib population was reduced
drastically from a high of 5,000 in the year 1647 to just 400 in
1730. At this point, permanent settlers from Europe and other
island colonies began to move into Dominica in increasing numbers.
French settlers were the first to establish themselves on
Dominica, extracting timber and commencing small-scale farming. As
more land was cleared, the French met labor needs by bringing in
African slaves, who were already in the other West Indian colonies.
In addition to working the plantation fields, these slaves were
permitted to establish provision gardens and to raise small stock.
Much of this produce was sold at Sunday markets where slaves from
neighboring plantations gathered to socialize and trade. Many
slaves saved the income from these sales and used it to buy their
freedom from the estate owners. This practice led to the early
establishment of a group of free black inhabitants known either as
"Afranchis" or "mulatre," many of whom later owned small estates
and slaves. This unique mix of slave plantations owned by Europeans
and Africans, existing alongside small garden plots and farms
cultivated by escaped slaves, freed slaves, and Carib Indians,
charted a markedly different colonial course for Dominica compared
with that of the sugar colonies of Barbados and Jamaica. In these
other islands, classic slave plantation structures became
entrenched around large-scale sugar cultivation, which delayed the
emergence of the system of small-scale, peasant farming that still
characterizes Dominica's agriculture.
The evolution of this mixed agricultural sector was interrupted
between 1756 and 1763 by the Seven Years War between Britain and
France. After several battles, the British finally occupied
Dominica in 1761, and two years later, in the Treaty of Paris, the
French ceded the island to Britain.
Under this new European power, several changes occurred that
greatly affected Dominica's future. The British introduced a system
of colonial government in which the authority of the crown was
vested in an administrator who had responsibility for defense, the
treasury, law and order, and religion. British planters, merchants,
and professionals were appointed to serve in a local assembly or
legislature that sat as an oversight body to the administrator.
This alliance of British property, wealth, and political power
created a system of government that excluded the French planters
from participating in the governance of the island. The result was
increased tension between the growing number of British settlers
and the French planters, who continued to be important to the
export earnings of the colony. The freed slaves, black estate
owners, and the large slave population remained completely excluded
from involvement in political and economic discussions and decision
making.
Another significant development of this period that still
affects land ownership patterns in Dominica was the distribution
and sale of large tracts of land to British citizens resident in
Britain. A land tenure system of absentee ownership rapidly became
entrenched, and speculation by the owners kept good agricultural
land out of production.
Beginning with the 1770s and continuing for the next sixty
years, events throughout the world caused rapid and major changes
in the island's colonial status. The 1775 declaration of war by the
North American colonies against Britain disrupted a thriving trade
that had developed between the colonies and Dominica in wood, rum,
horses, cattle, and other items. In 1778 France took advantage of
British difficulties in America to reclaim several British colonies
in the West Indies, including Dominica; however, only a few later,
in 1784, control of Dominica returned to the British through terms
of the Treaty of Versailles. Finally, the Abolition of Slavery Act
was passed in the British Parliament in 1833 and became law in
Dominica on August 1, 1834. These events thrust Dominica firmly
into the period of open struggle for an end to crown colony rule.
In 1832 three black members were elected to the Dominican House
of Assembly, and by 1838 there was a black majority. Dominica
became the only island in the British West Indies where white rule
was successfully challenged. Political tensions grew rapidly as
legislators began to press for laws promoting the welfare of the
newly liberated citizens of the island. When legislators attempted
to extend voting rights to freed persons without property, the
conservative British merchants and professionals, by then organized
into a political party, countered with a call for the creation of
a single executive council comprising nineteen elected
representatives and nine members appointed by the crown. Following
elections conducted under the rules limiting voting rights to those
of property, the blacks lost control of the government. As a
result, they increased agitation against crown colony rule and
launched a campaign that advocated the removal of the land tax and
called for a special investigation by the British government into
the affairs of the colony.
In response to this challenge, the British attempted, for the
first time, to meet the social and infrastructure needs of the
island. Roads were built through the mountainous interior,
agriculture was supported with research, extension services, and
training, and agro-industry was begun with the processing of lime
juice for export to Britain. By the start of World War I,
sufficient goodwill toward Britain had been re-established to
encourage locals to volunteer for service in the British army.
The event that singlehandedly thrust Dominica into the modern
era was the publication of the Moyne Commission Report in 1939. The
Commission itself had been formed in response to riots that erupted
throughout the British West Indies in the late 1930s. The report
exposed the primitive conditions of the colonies and called for a
comprehensive economic development program (see Labor
Organizations, ch. 1). During the next twenty years, Dominica
experienced what many of that generation refer to as "the good old
days," when British aid, trade, and investment boosted local living
standards, created jobs, trained public servants, and provided
education and health facilities.
The expectations of workers and farmers rose with the advent of
roads, radios, and newspapers. In the 1950s, demands for better
work conditions, higher farm prices, and more land for farming
began a period of popular social and political activism that led to
the formation of trade unions and political parties representing
the interests of workers and small farmers on the one hand and
business interests on the other. The 1961 election of a government
led by Edward Oliver Leblanc, a small farmer and agricultural
extension worker, marked an important turning point in Dominica's
history. Leblanc was the first person without links to the city-
based ruling elite to ascend to government leadership in Dominica.
The political platform of his Dominica Labour Party (DLP) was
very simple--"it was time for the little man to begin enjoying the
fruits of his labour." Leblanc had first come to prominence as a
member of the Federal Party, which represented Dominica in the
short-lived West Indies Federation, and subsequently led the DLP to
electoral victories in 1965 and 1970 (see The West Indies
Federation, 1957-62, ch. 1). In 1967 he negotiated Associated
Statehood with Britain, a constitutional status essentially one
step removed from political independence, which made the Dominica
government responsible for all aspects of state except external
affairs and defense. Although Leblanc resigned as premier in 1974
for reasons of health, the DLP, under Premier (the pre-independence
title for head of government) Patrick John, won the next general
election in 1975 and led Dominica to political independence in
1978.
Data as of November 1987
|
