Doing historical research on the smaller islands of the Caribbean has always been something of a challenge. Aside from the British government’s determination to ‘migrate’ files that might cause it embarrassment, until recently official buildings offered little protection from the ravages of natural disasters. On Dominica, for example, much local documentation was destroyed in Hurricane David in 1976 and in the fire that burned down the Court House in 1979. In the 1980s, the national archive was an unlit and unventilated cellar under the police station in the main town, Roseau. You collected a large key and a torch from the public library across the road and were left to explore on your own. Nothing was catalogued: blue books and other volumes were shelved haphazardly. A proper repository was built some years ago but many documents didn’t reach it. Lennox Honychurch – author of the book under review – happened to notice a truck at a landfill site dumping boxes of official papers, cleared from Government House during refurbishment in 1991: he rescued what he could. It always needs somebody to take an interest, and on those small islands there has often just been one person who has collected the documents, saved the artefacts, copied out material before the paper rotted, and written the first (and sometimes last) historical works. In many cases, that one person has been on hand to welcome researchers and show them the local ropes. That ‘one person’ has sometimes been an outsider: two of Dominica’s neighbouring islands, Grenada and St Lucia, owe their first histories to the Catholic fathers Raymond Devas and Charles Jesse, both of whom spent the majority of their years in the Caribbean. But sometimes it’s been an islander: Jesse’s work was continued by St Lucian-born Robert Devaux, an engineer by trade, author of several books, including a very substantial history of the island; and St Vincent’s complex indigenous and colonial history was for decades the preserve of the Vincentian veterinarian, I. A. Earle Kirby.

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多米尼加的战斗栗色

在加勒比较小的岛屿上进行历史研究一直是一个挑战。除了英国政府决心“迁移”可能导致其尴尬的文件外，直到最近官方建筑几乎没有为自然灾害的破坏提供保护。例如，在多米尼加，1976年的戴维飓风和1979年的大火烧毁了许多当地文献。1980年代，国家档案馆是主镇警察局下一个没有照明，通风不畅的地窖。 ，罗索。您从马路对面的公共图书馆收集了一把大钥匙和一个火炬，然后独自探索。什么都没有分类：蓝皮书和其他书籍被随意地搁置了。几年前建立了一个适当的存储库，但是许多文档都没有。Lennox Honychurch（正在撰写这本书的作者）偶然发现一辆卡车在垃圾填埋场倾倒了几箱正式文件，这些文件在1991年整修期间从礼宾府清除了：他尽了一切可能。它总是需要有人引起兴趣的，在那些小岛上，通常只有一个人收集文件，保存手工艺品，在纸张腐烂之前复制材料并写出第一批（有时是最后一部）历史著作。 。在许多情况下，一个人会来欢迎研究人员并向他们展示当地的绳索。那个“人”有时是局外人：多米尼加的两个邻近岛屿格林纳达和圣卢西亚，都归功于其天主教徒雷蒙德·德瓦斯（Raymond Devas）和查尔斯·杰西（Charles Jesse）的最初历史，他们两个人大部分时间都在加勒比海度过。但是有时它是岛民：杰西的工作由出生于圣卢西亚的罗伯特·德沃克斯（Robert Devaux）继续进行，他是贸易工程师，着有多本著作，其中包括该岛的悠久历史。圣文森特复杂的土著和殖民历史是数十年来文森特时期兽医IA Earle Kirby的保存地。