2024
ISBN 978-3-031-55543-5
EBook ISBN 978-3-031-55544-2
‘Juxtaposition of slavery in the British Caribbean and the Holocaust in Nazi Germany and Poland has been rarely attempted. Colin Clarke demonstrates their comparability as manifestly racist, male-dominated regimes under colonialism/occupation, with forced labour resulting in massive loss of life. The book relies on in-country personal exploration of each regime, described separately then expertly combined in a concluding synthesis.’
— Elizabeth Thomas-Hope, Professor Emerita, University of the West Indies, Jamaica
‘This thought-provoking book, juxtaposing the Holocaust with British Caribbean slavery, considers how mechanisms of differential incorporation and the absence and removal of civil liberties have led to the dehumanization and death of racially targeted populations. In the context of ascendant populism and growing international tensions, it provides an invaluable reminder of the human costs of antisemitism, racism, colonialism and occupation.’
— Michael Fleming, Director of the Institute of European Culture, Polish University Abroad (PUNO), UK
This book compares the systems of exploitative race relations associated with two racist regimes – slavery in the British colonial Caribbean and forced labour in the Holocaust in Germany and the Nazi-occupied lands in Europe. Although each system was introduced by expansionist European powers, through racist enslavement, transportation, dehumanisation and the destruction of human life, the construction and operation of sugar plantations by African and Creole slave labour for the export of tropical products in the period 1650 to 1838 was different from the mass murder of Jewish and Gypsy civilians with the intention of creating a forced-labour regime and colonial-style ethnic cleansing during the Second World War. Though differentiated in time and place, the four principal common denominators that make feasible the detailed comparison of British Caribbean slavery and the Holocaust in Europe are racism, colonialism/occupation, slavery/forced labour, and death. Juxtaposition of these two companion studies will reveal comparisons and contrasts previously unexplored in the field of race relations under colonialism and the Holocaust.
Colin Clarke is Emeritus Professor of Geography at Oxford University, UK and an Emeritus Fellow of Jesus College; from 1998 to 2001 he was Head of Oxford University’s School of Geography and the Environment.
