Abstract
The outbreak of World War One fueled a groundswell of poetic writing in Jamaica, Trinidad, Grenada, and elsewhere in the British Caribbean. While many of the region’s established authors published works of war verse, the outpouring of war-themed poetry emerged from soldier-poets and civilian writers outside of the elite class of professional writers. This chapter offers the first sustained treatment of Anglophone Caribbean war verse, examining previously uncited poems culled from newspapers, archives, and autograph books. It argues that war poetry functioned as a form of public claims making during and after the war years, allowing writers from the colonial peripheries to render visible their place in the British Empire and to (re)negotiate their relationship to the metropole.
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Notes
- 1.
“The Catholics of the Contingent Will Attend Mass at St. Patrick’s,” Port of Spain Gazette, September 16, 1915, 3; “Special Service for the Contingent,” Port of Spain Gazette, September 16, 1915, 3.
- 2.
“Recruiting in Demerara,” Port of Spain Gazette, September 5, 1915, 11; “Late Demerara News,” Port of Spain Gazette, September 7, 1915, 2; “Recruiting in Barbados,” Port of Spain Gazette, September 9, 1915, 2; “Saturday’s Patriotic Meeting,” Port of Spain Gazette, September 17, 1915, 11; “British Guiana Contingent,” Port of Spain Gazette, September 17, 1915, 11.
- 3.
Herbert V. Harris, “We’re Coming Mother England,” Port of Spain Gazette, September 26, 1915, 4.
- 4.
McDonald, Songs of an Islander; Roberts, Pierrot Wounded; Webber, Glints from an Anvil. For a critical analysis of Webber’s poetry, see Cudjoe, Caribbean Visionary, 24–37.
- 5.
Featherstone, “Colonial Poetry,” 173.
- 6.
Howe, Race, War and Nationalism; Phillips, “Go Ahead England,” 343–350. For an important exception to this trend, see Smith, Jamaican Volunteers, 36–37, 42–43, 55–56, 134, 138–139.
- 7.
Donnell, Twentieth-Century Caribbean Literature, 11.
- 8.
Baugh, West Indian Poetry, 5.
- 9.
Ashcroft, Griffiths, and Tiffin, Empire Writes Back; Bhabha, “Of Mimicry and Man,” 85–92; Braithwaite, Contradictory Omens; Innes, “Politics of Rewriting,” 56–77.
- 10.
On the history of education in the British Caribbean, see Campbell, Young Colonials; Ruby Hope King, “Jamaica Schools Commission,” 88–108; Rush, Bonds of Empire, 21–46; and Turner, “Socialisation Intent,” 54–87.
- 11.
Jamaica, Registrar-General’s Department, Census of Jamaica and Its Dependencies, 10; Trinidad, Registrar-General’s Department, Census of the Colony of Trinidad and Tobago, 22.
- 12.
Engerman, Mariscal, and Sokoloff, “Evolution of Schooling,” 103.
- 13.
Putnam, Radical Moves, 128–129.
- 14.
Ruby Hope King, Images in Print, 21–22.
- 15.
Rush, Bonds of Empire, 35–40; Warren, “Last Syllable of Modernity.”
- 16.
Edmondson, Caribbean Middlebrow, 24–32; Putnam, Radical Moves, 123–152.
- 17.
Edmondson, Caribbean Middlebrow, 24–32.
- 18.
Low, “Publishing Histories,” 208.
- 19.
Baugh, West Indian Poetry, 6.
- 20.
Brown, West Indian Poetry, 19–38; Burnett, Penguin Book, lii–liii. However, Burnett does acknowledge that among British Caribbean poets “loyalty to Britain was not felt to be incompatible with loyalty to one’s native soil.” Burnett, Penguin Book, liii.
- 21.
Colonial officials, military recruiters, and local elites frequently used the phrase “ancient and loyal colonies” to highlight the longstanding ties between Britain and her colonies in the Caribbean. For examples, see “Fine Function,” Daily Gleaner (Kingston), May 31, 1915, 14; “The Bahamas Contingent,” Daily Gleaner (Kingston), September 30, 1915, 6; “Enrolling Men for War Contingent From Jamaica,” Daily Gleaner (Kingston), October 8, 1915, 13; and Lucas, Empire at War, 359, 370.
- 22.
On the demographics of the BWIR, see “Contingent Committee’s Final Report,” The West India Committee Circular, February 5, 1920, 35. On the recruitment of BWIR soldiers in Panama, see de Lisser, Jamaica and the Great War, 95–99; Goldthree, “A Greater Enterprise”; and Hill, Who’s Who in Jamaica, 242. On the establishment of the BWIR, see London Gazette, October 26, 1915, quoted in Cundall, Jamaica’s Part in the Great War, 27.
- 23.
Howe, Race, War and Nationalism, 16–28; Rush, Bonds of Empire, 119–122.
- 24.
Featherstone, “Colonial Poetry,” 174–176.
- 25.
Breiner, Introduction to West Indian Poetry, 109.
- 26.
H. B. Monteith, “Britain’s Awakening,” Jamaica Times (Kingston), October 2, 1915, 8.
- 27.
Joseph Ruhoman, “For England,” Daily Argosy (Georgetown), June 29, 1915, 4.
- 28.
“The Song of Our Boys,” West Indian (St. George’s), September 19, 1915, 4.
- 29.
“Up, Trinidadians!” Port of Spain Gazette, November 2, 1915, 11.
- 30.
For allusions to Tennyson, see “Britain’s Myriad Voices Call,” West Indian (St. George’s), July 24, 1915, 4; and Poem on Masthead, West Indian (St. George’s), September 19, 1915, 4. The passage is from Tennyson’s “Opening of the Indian and Colonial Exhibition by the Queen, 1886,” Columbia University, http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00generallinks/tennyson/exhibition.html.
- 31.
On West Indian responses to the claim that World War One was a “white man’s war,” see “Big Recruiting Demonstration at Gayle Yesterday,” Daily Gleaner (Kingston), October 28, 1915, 13; “Men Who Try to Poison Recruiting,” Jamaica Times (Kingston), November 20, 1915, 15; Howe, “West Indian Blacks,” 29–30; and Martin, “African and Indian Consciousness,” 234.
- 32.
All volunteers for the BWIR were required to pass a literacy test until November 1916.
- 33.
The poems were written in the autograph book of Miss E. Burton, a nurse at Seaford War Hospital. I have identified 23 poems written by BWIR soldiers in the autograph book. Autograph Book by Miss E. Burton, IWM Misc. 200/292, Imperial War Museum, London.
- 34.
E.g., Private John Henry Lyken, “Miss Cavell’s Fate,” Autograph Book by Miss E. Burton, Misc. 200/292, Imperial War Museum.
- 35.
Private Jacob Stanislaus Cunningham, untitled handwritten poem, 1915, Autograph Book by Miss E. Burton, IWM Misc. 200/292, Imperial War Museum.
- 36.
Private Jacob Stanislaus Cunningham, untitled handwritten poem, 1915.
- 37.
“Wheeler, Leonard Richmond (1888–1948),” JSTOR Global Plants database, JSTOR, April 13, 2013, http://plants.jstor.org/stable/10.5555/al.ap.person.bm00045977.
- 38.
Kipling, “Mandalay,” 180–183.
- 39.
Wheeler, “Somewhere East of Suez,” 15.
- 40.
Wheeler, “Somewhere East of Suez,” 15.
- 41.
“Kaiser Out, Berlin Aflame,” Daily Gleaner (Kingston), November 11, 1918, 1.
- 42.
“How News of the Signing of Terms by Huns was Received Here,” Daily Gleaner (Kingston), November 12, 1918, 6; “Demonstrations in Country Parts,” Daily Gleaner (Kingston), November 12, 1918, 6, 14.
- 43.
“Our Day of Rejoicing,” West Indian Mail Edition (St. George’s), November 22, 1918, 1.
- 44.
“Germany Signs Armistice Terms,” Argos (Port of Spain), November 11, 1918, 3. Spelling as in original.
- 45.
Between 1915 and 1919, the BWIR sustained 1,876 causalities, which includes 1,001 soldiers who died due to sickness and 178 who were killed or died as a result of wounds. West Indian Contingent Committee Circular, May 29, 1919, 128.
- 46.
For lists of West Indian soldiers who died while serving in regiments other than the BWIR, see Cundall, Jamaica’s Part in the Great War, 105–121, 144–145; “The West India Regiment WW1 Losses,” Caribbean Roll of Honour, http://caribbeanrollofhonour-ww1-ww2.yolasite.com/west-india-regiment.php; and “Caribbean WW1 Casualties while Serving with Regular Army Units,” Caribbean Roll of Honour, http://caribbeanrollofhonour-ww1-ww2.yolasite.com/army-ww1.php.
- 47.
B. K., “The Vanguard of the Dead,” West Indian Mail Edition (St. George’s), August 29, 1919, 3.
- 48.
B. K., “The Vanguard of the Dead.” Punctuation as in original.
- 49.
B. K., “The Vanguard of the Dead.”
- 50.
B. K., “The Vanguard of the Dead.”
- 51.
Ashdown, “Race Riot, Class Warfare and ‘Coup d’état,’” 8–14; Martin, “Revolutionary Upheaval in Trinidad,” 313–326.
- 52.
Howe, Race, War and Nationalism, 181–199; James, Holding Aloft, 52.
- 53.
For a brief introduction to war poetry written by UNIA members, see Martin, African Fundamentalism, 182–188.
- 54.
On the UNIA’s initial support of the war effort, see Marcus Garvey, Universal Negro Improvement and Conservation Association and African Communities League to Rt. Hon. Lewis Harcourt, September 16, 1914, CO 137/705, file 41210, National Archives of the United Kingdom, Kew; “A New Society,” Daily Gleaner (Kingston), September 14, 1914, 4; “Meeting Held,” Daily Gleaner (Kingston), October 25, 1915, 14; and “From the Negro Improvement Society,” Jamaica Times (Kingston), November 13, 1915, reprinted in Robert A. Hill, Marcus Garvey, 163–164.
- 55.
Martin, African Fundamentalism, 183.
- 56.
“Black Troops on the Rhine,” Negro World (New York), April 2, 1921, 5; “Finds Negro Troops Are Orderly on the Rhine,” Negro World (New York), March 5, 1921, 7; “Lawless Government in Cuba,” Negro World (New York), December 6, 1924, 12.
- 57.
James, Holding Aloft, 66.
- 58.
Casimir, “Forgotten Heroes,” 3.
- 59.
Ernest E. Mair, “Hypocrisy,” Negro World (New York), July 29, 1922, 6.
- 60.
Ernest E. Mair, “Hypocrisy.”
- 61.
Ernest E. Mair, “Hypocrisy.”
- 62.
J. R. Ralph Casimir, “Dominica and Her Afric Sons,” Negro World (New York), February 4, 1922, 5.
- 63.
Casimir, “Forgotten Heroes,” 4.
- 64.
Casimir, “Forgotten Heroes,” 3-4; McCrae, “In Flanders Field,” 3.
- 65.
Lucas, Empire at War, 343.
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Acknowledgment
The research for this essay was funded by the Walter and Constance Burke Research Initiation Award at Dartmouth College and the Career Enhancement Fellowship from the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation. I am grateful to Tailour Garbutt and Bennie Niles, IV, for their valuable research assistance, which was funded by Dartmouth’s James O. Freedman Presidential Scholars Program. I would also like to thank K. Natanya Duncan for directing me to several poems in the Negro World.
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Goldthree, R.N. (2017). Writing War and Empire: Poetry, Patriotism, and Public Claims-Making in the British Caribbean. In: Puri, S., Putnam, L. (eds) Caribbean Military Encounters. New Caribbean Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-58014-6_4
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