Dependency and Socialism in the Modern Caribbean: Superpower Intervention in Guyana, Jamaica, and Grenada, 1970-1985

Was the Anglophone Caribbean condemned by its colonial history to permanent conditions of dependency and by the Cold War geopolitical realities to international interventionism? In Dependency and Socialism in the Modern Caribbean Euclid Rose focuses upon the efforts made by the English-speaking Caribbean - through case studies that compare and contrast the political economies of Guyana, Jamaica and Grenada - to break out of the legacy of colonial dependency and underdevelopment through the implementation of a Caribbean brand of socialism. The work considers the Caribbean’s adoption of Fabian-style socialism as an alternative to capitalist development and how these socialist policies were impacted by differences in infrastructure capacity, economic and social resources and political agendas. It highlights the pivotal role of race and class, and the hitherto little studied impact of religion, on the region’s political economy. Moreover, the study calculates the impact of the global economy upon Caribbean socio-economic conditions, and the ideological, geopolitical and strategic implications of the Cold War and the Caribbean’s socialist alignment on the nature, character and intensity of British and American interventionism in the region. A useful read for political economists in search of a greater understanding of the postcolonial political economy of the Caribbean and Latin America.