There is a stereotype that European powers did little to improve the housing of those they colonized. The late colonial experience of Barbados probes and challenges this view. In a poor and isolated colony dominated by conservative white planters, a miserly colonial administration had for decades done little or nothing to improve housing. Faced with local unrest and international pressure from the United States, however, and enabled by Colonial Development funds as well as a levy on sugar exports to Britain, it developed a range of government (public) housing programs in the 1940s. By 1960, the colony had directly improved housing for about 30 percent of the island's population. Its building program was efficiently run, but influenced by a rising group of nationalist politicians, its financial viability was undermined by a lax approach to rent collection. The policy shift from miser to spendthrift reflects the growing vulnerability of colonial rule.
Abrams: Papers of Charles Abrams, Dept. of Manuscripts and Archives, John M. Olin Library, Cornell University (on microfilm)
2.
CO: Colonial Office Records, Public Record Office, London
3.
Crane: Papers of Jacob Crane, Dept. of Manuscripts and Archives, John M. Olin Library, Cornell University
4.
HHFA: Records of the Housing and Home Finance Agency, U.S. National Archives
5.
Leland S. Burns and Leo Grebler, The Housing of Nations: Analysis and Policy in a Comparative Framework (London: Macmillan, 1977), 86-86.
6.
Robert Home, Of Planting and Planning: The Making of English Colonial Cities (London: E and FN Spon, 1997), 85–116.
7.
Ghana, Report of the Commission Appointed to Enquire into the Manner of Operation of the State Housing Corporation (Accra: Government Printer, 1968); Thomas Klak, “Contextualizing State Housing Programs in Latin America: Evidence from Leading Housing Agencies in Brazil, Ecuador, and Jamaica,” Environment and Planning A 25, no. 5 (1993): 653–76; Katharine Coit, “Politics and Housing Strategies in the Anglophone Caribbean,” in Brian C. Aldrich and Ravindar S. Sandhu, eds., Housing the Urban Poor: Policy and Practice in Developing Countries (London: Zed, 1995), 17; CO, W. M. Woodhouse, Housing Programme, Jamaica, Jan. 1948, typescript, 14 [137/881/69182/36]; CO, W. M. Woodhouse, “Notes and Comments on the Present Housing Agencies [in Jamaica],” typescript, Dec. 1953 [1031/1685]; David M. Anderson, “Corruption at City Hall: African Housing and Urban Development in Colonial Nairobi,” Azania 36-37 (2002): 138-54; and A. Rose, Report of the Commission of Enquiry into Alleged Corruption or other Malpractices in Relation to the Affairs of the Nairobi City Council, December 1955–March 1956 (Nairobi: Government Printer, 1956).
8.
William M. Macmillan, Warning from the West Indies: A tract for Africa and the Empire (London: Faber, 1936), 54-54; A. J. R. O'Brien, Chief Medical Adviser to the Colonial Office, Minute, July 1936, reprinted in Stephen R. Ashton and S. E. Stockwell, eds., Imperial Policy and Colonial Practice, 1925–1945 (London: HMSO, 1996), 248; J. Campbell, financial adviser to the Colonial Office, Minute, May 23, 1938, in Ashton and Stockwell, Imperial Policy, 60; and Malcolm MacDonald, Secretary of State for the Colonies, Memorandum, June 1938, in Ashton and Stockwell, Imperial Policy, 61.
9.
CO, Grattan Bushe, Governor, to G. H. Hall, Secretary of State for the Colonies, March 22, 1946 [28/333/9].
10.
CO PRO, “Housing in Barbados: Report of a Committee,”Aug. 1943, 1, typescript [28/330/6].
11.
Colonial Office, West India Royal Commission, Report (London: HMSO, 1945), Cmd.6607, 174-174.
12.
H. J. Lampe, “Statistics on Housing and Disease [in the Caribbean],” in Caribbean Commission, Central Secretariat, ed., Aspects of Housing in Caribbean (Port of Spain: Caribbean Commission, 1951), 23–51.
13.
W. M. Woodhouse, “Housing in the West Indies,”CoronaVII, no. 6 (1955): 227-227.
14.
Kenneth Ross Bain, Low Income Housing: Report of a Visit to the West Indies to Investigate Housing Schemes for Wage Earners in the Low Income Group, Jan.–March (Suva: Government Press, 1958), 4-4.
15.
Paul Blanshard, Democracy and Empire in the Caribbean (New York: Macmillan, 1947), 46-46.
16.
Lampe, “Statistics.”
17.
L. M. De Syllas, Report on Preliminary Housing Survey of Two Blocks of Chapman's Lane Tenantry, Bridgetown (June–July 1944) (Bridgetown: Advocate Co., 1944), 2-2.
18.
“Housing in Barbados,” 2.
19.
Ibid.
20.
CO, Howard Humphreys and Sons, “Main Drainage of Bridgetown, Barbados,”Nov. 16, 1945, typescript [28/333/3].
21.
CO, Barbados, Annual Report of the Chief Medical Officer for the Years 1939–40 and 1940–41 (Bridgetown: Advocate Co., 1942), 23-23 [31/131].
22.
Humphreys and Sons, “Main Drainage.”
23.
Barbados, Annual Report of the Chief Medical Officer, 23-23.
24.
De Syllas, Report,2-2.
25.
Major G. St. J. Orde Browne, Labour Conditions in the West Indies (London: HMSO, 1939), 56-56.
26.
Mark R. Watson and Robert B. Potter, “Housing and Housing Policy in Barbados: The Relevance of the Chattel House,”Third World Planning Review15, no. 4 (1993): 373–395; “Housing in Barbados,” 2–3; and Home, Of Planting and Planning, 107, 108. See Jill and Jimmy Walker, Jill's Walker's Barbados (Welches Plantation, Barbados: Best of Barbados, 2002), for illustrations and a discussion of chattel- house architecture.
27.
CO, Evidence of Major Chase, Proceedings of the West India Royal Commission, Sixth Session held at Bridgetown, Barbados, Jan. 23, 1939, 42, typescript [950/566]; conversation with Jimmy Walker.
28.
Lampe, “Statistics.”
29.
Louis Redman, “Proposal for Rural-Scale Housing in Barbados” (paper presented at the 27th International Conference of Housing, Planning and Building. January 1976), typescript, 32-32.
30.
“Housing in Barbados,” 5.
31.
Ibid., 2.
32.
Ibid.
33.
Nigel Bolland, The Politics of Labour in the British Caribbean: The Social Origins of Authoritarianism and Democracy in the Labour Movement (Oxford: James Currey, 2001).
34.
Macmillan, Warning.
35.
Colonial Office, West India Royal Commission, Report; and Howard Johnson, “The British Caribbean from Demobilization to Constitutional Decolonization,” in Judith M. Brown and William Roger Louis, eds., The Twentieth Century: The Oxford History of the British Empire (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1999), 597–622.
36.
Howard Johnson, “The West Indies and the Conversion of the British Official Classes to the Development Idea,”Journal of Commonwealth and Comparative Politics15, no. 1 (1977): 55–83.
37.
Ibid.; Ashton and Stockwell, Imperial Policy, lxxv; and D. G. M. Rampersad, “Colonial Economic Development and Social Welfare: The Case of the British West Indian Colonies, 1929–1947” (unpublished PhD diss., Oxford University).
38.
D. J. Morgan, The Origins of British Aid Policy 1924–1945, vol. 1 of The Official History of Colonial Development (London: Macmillan, 1980), 76–77.
39.
Bolland, Politics of Labour, 279-279, 291-291.
40.
“Report of the Commission Appointed to Enquire into the Disturbances which took place in Barbados on the 27th July 1937 and subsequent days,” Barbados, Nov. 2, 1937, 4, 26; Governor Mark Young to W. Ormsby-Gore, Bridgetown, Jan. 1938, Despatch No. 355; and CO, Ormsby-Gore to Young, London, February 8, 1938 [28/321/12].
41.
Rampersad, “Colonial Economic Development,”64-64.
42.
Ibid., 72, 132.
43.
Ibid., 72, 133.
44.
Gordon K. Lewis, The Growth of the Modern West Indies (London: MacGibbon and Kee, 1968), 226-226.
45.
Quoted in Bolland, Politics of Labour, 288-288.
46.
Quoted in F. A. Hoyos, Grantley Adams and the Social Revolution (London: Macmillan, 1974), 45-45.
Mark Watson and Robert Potter, “Housing Conditions, Vernacular Architecture, and State Policy in Barbados,” in Robert B. Potter and Dennis Conway, eds., Self-Help Housing, the Poor, and the State in the Caribbean (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1997), 41–42.
51.
Browne, Labour Conditions, 56-56; Colonial Office, Annual Report on Barbados for the Year 1947 (London: HMSO, 1948), 38; and Barbados, Annual Report of the Chief Medical Officer, 23.
52.
Crane, T. O. Lashley, “Barbados,” in Summary and Proceedings of the Aided Self-Help Housing Workshop, San Juan, Puerto Rico, Oct. 14–17, 1953, 44-44, typescript [Box 4]; and CO, “Memorandum on Housing Experiments in Barbados,” July 1943, typescript [28/330/6]. Orde Browne suggested that rents for the first government housing in Barbados were “approximately” the same as for slum accommodation, so it may have been its inconvenient location that deterred many families. Browne, Labour Conditions, 23.
53.
Bain, Low Income Housing,4-4.
54.
U.K. Information Service, Housing and Town and Country Planning in the United Kingdom Dependencies (London: UKIS, 1960), 11-11.
55.
Colonial Office, Development and Welfare Organisation in the West Indies, Housing in the West Indies (Bridgetown, Barbados: DWOWI, 1945); CO, K. W. Blackburne, “Housing Improvement with Limited Funds,” Development and Welfare Organisation, Bridgetown, Nov. 1946, typescript [1042/255]; CO, William M. Woodhouse, “Housing in Certain British West Indian Territories: Note,” July 1949, Bridgetown, typescript [859/245/1]; and Development and Welfare in the West Indies, Report of the British West Indies Housing Conference, Barbados, June 25–29, 1951 (Bridgetown: DWWI, 1951). Despite nominal variations in author- ship, all of these documents were probably drafted by Woodhouse. By the mid-1950s, the influence of the DWO on planning and housing policy in the region had waned and was soon forgotten. See Peter H. M. Stephens, “Planning in the West Indies,” Town and Country Planning XXV, no. 12 (1957): 508.
56.
CO, Frank Stockdale, Comptroller, Development and Welfare Organisation, to T.I.K. Lloyd, Assistant Under-Secretary of State, June 25, 1944 [318/471/6, No.1], reprinted in Ashton and Stockwell, Imperial Policy, 178.
57.
Kenneth Blackburne, Lasting Legacy: A Story of British colonialism (London: Johnson, 1976); and Howard Johnson, “The Anglo-American Caribbean Commission and the Extension of American Influence in the British Caribbean, 1942–1945,” Journal of Commonwealth and Comparative Politics XXII (1984): 180–203.
58.
Caribbean Commission, Aspects of Housing; Jacob Crane, “Workers' Housing in Puerto Rico,” International Labour Review XLIX, no. 6 (1944): 608–28; Jacob L. Crane and R. E. McCabe, “Programmes in Aid of Family Housebuilding: ‘Aided Self-Help Housing,’ ” International Labour Review LXI, no. 4 (1950): 1–18; and Richard Harris, “ ‘A Burp in Church’: Jacob L. Crane's Vision of Aided Self-Help Housing,” Planning History Studies 11, no. 1 (1997): 3–16.
59.
Colonial Office, Development and Welfare in the West Indies, 1950 (London: HMSO, 1951), 78-78; Colonial Office, Development and Welfare in the West Indies, 1950 (London: HMSO, 1952), 60; and Lashley, “Barbados,” 47. See also Woodhouse, “Housing in the West Indies,” 229; and Crane, K. W. Blackburne [Governor, Leeward Islands] to Jacob L. Crane, Feb. 22, 1952 [Box 4].
60.
“Housing in Barbados,” 14–15.
61.
Barbados, Report of the Committee Appointed by His Excellency the Governor to Advise on the Utilization of the Pine Estate for Housing and Slum Clearance (Bridgetown: Advocate Co., 1946), 3-3, 4-4.
62.
Ibid.; and Blackburne, “Housing Improvement,” 1–3, including a cover letter to governors from J. S. Macpherson, Comptroller, Development and Welfare in the West Indies.
63.
Barbados, Housing Authority of Barbados, First Annual Report April 1, 1956–March 31, 1957 (Bridgetown: The Authority, 1957), preface.
64.
West India Royal Commission, Report, 177-177; Colonial Office, Development and Welfare Organization in the West Indies, Housing in the West Indies, 25; Woodhouse, “Housing in Certain West Indian Territories,” 4, 17; and “Housing in Barbados,” 14–15.
65.
Woodhouse “Housing in Certain West Indian Territories,” Appendix A6.
66.
Barbados, Housing Authority of Barbados, Fourth Annual Report, April 1, 1959–March 31, 1960 (Bridgetown: The Authority, 1960), 12-12, 13-13.
67.
Colonial Office, Annual Report on Barbados for the Year 1949 (London: HMSO, 1950), 34-34.
68.
CO, D. A. Percival, Note on the Economics of Present-Day Housebuilding in the British West Indies,” cyclostyled [859/245/1].
69.
Blanshard, Democracy and Empire, 47-47; Jacob L. Crane and R. E. McCabe, “Programmes in Aid of Family Housebuilding: ‘Aided self-help housing,’ ” International Labour Review LXI, no. 4 (1953): 1–18; HHFA, Philip W. Bourne, Housing Study for the Republic of Haiti, Washington, DC, Oct. 1948, typescript [RG 207, Box 600, South America]; United Nations Department of Social Affairs, “Building Materials,” in Caribbean Commission, Aspects of Housing, 75–77; West India Royal Commission, Report, 177–78, 187; Blackburne, “Housing Improvement,” 3; Woodhouse, “Housing in Certain West Indian Terriorities” 17; Development and Welfare in the West Indies, Report, 1951, 16–17; Development and Welfare in the West Indies, “British West Indian Housing Conference,” in Caribbean Commission, Aspects of Housing, 81–82; Edwin Horn, The West Indian Report of a Survey on Housing (Barbados: Development and Welfare Organisation, 1958), 8; Abrams, G. A. Atkinson, “Report on a Visit to the United States of America and Puerto Rico to Study Tropical Housing and Building,” Building Research Station Note No. D198, Garston, Watford, Sept. 1952, typescript [Reel 46]; C. Y. Carstairs, “Architecture in the Tropics,” Corona, V, no. 8 (1953): 307; George A. Atkinson, “Aided Self-Help—Its Application to the Housing of Tropical Peoples,” in United Nations, “Housing in the Tropics,” Housing and Town and Country Planning Bulletin 6 (U.N.: New York, 1952), 47–53; U.K. Central Office of Information, The West Indies: A Nation in the Making (London: UKCOI, 1957), 45; and U.K. Information Service, Housing and Town and Country Planning, 26. For general discussion, see Richard Harris, “The Silence of the Experts: ‘Aided Self-Help Housing,’ 1939–1954,” Habitat International 22, no. 2 (1998): 165–89.
70.
Woodhouse, “Housing in Certain West Indian Terriorities”4-4, 7-7; Woodhouse, “Housing in the West Indies,” Corona, VII, no. 6 (1955): 228; and “Help Yourself” [editorial], Barbados Advocate, May 11, 1952.
71.
Caribbean Commission, Aspects of Housing, 130–132; Colonial Office, Annual Report on Barbados for the Year 1949, 34.
72.
Abrams, Charles Abrams, “Meeting with Prime Minister and Public Works,” Barbados, 1963, Handwritten notes, 8-8 [Reel 19].
73.
Barbados, Housing Authority of Barbados, First Annual Report, preface.
74.
Conversation with Bernard Howell, Clinketts, October 12, 2003. Jalousie windows consist of overlapping louvers of wood or glass that can be opened with a crank or turn screw. They are difficult to seal but provide excellent ventilation.
75.
Mark R. Watson and Robert B. Potter, Low-Cost Housing in Barbados: Evolution or Social Revolution (Kingston, Jamaica: University of West Indies Press, 2001), 92-92.
76.
Colonial Office, West India Royal Commission, Report, 213–214.
77.
Ibid., 96.
78.
Hoyos, Grantley Adams, 182-182.
79.
CO, [Development and Welfare Organization,] “Compiled from replies to Housing Questionnaire enclosed with Comptroller's Circular,”63/51, 1951 [859/245/1].
80.
Barbados, Housing Authority of Barbados, First Annual Report,8-8.
81.
Ibid., preface; and Barbados, Social Welfare Department, Third Annual Report, Apr. 1, 1953–March 31, 1954 (Bridgetown: The Advocate Co., 1955).
82.
Lashley, “Barbados,”45-45.
83.
Barbados, Social Welfare Department, Third Annual Report; Barbados, Housing Authority of Barbados, Annual Reports, 1960–1965.
84.
Barbados, Housing Authority, First Annual Report,8-8.
85.
Barbados, Housing Authority of Barbados, First Annual Report, 1957, preface.
86.
“Low Cost Housing in Barbados: Some Aspects of the Work of the Barbados Housing Authority,”Colonial Building Notes48 (Oct. 1956): 1-1.
87.
Colonial Office, Development and Welfare in the West Indies, 1955–1956 (London: HMSO, 1957), 106-106.
88.
The following two paragraphs are based on the overlapping information reported in “Low Cost Housing in Barbados: Some Aspects of the Work of the Barbados Housing Authority,” Colonial Building Notes 48 (Oct. 1956); Barbados. Housing Authority of Barbados, First Annual Report, 3–4; Fourth Annual Report, 15, 19–20, 23; Fifth Annual Report, 12; and Seventh Annual Report, 29. These reports were based on summary descriptions provided by Jimmy Walker.
89.
Watson and Potter, Low-Cost Housing in Barbados, 79–80; Colonial Office, Annual Report on Barbados for the Years 1956 and 1957 (London: HMSO, 1959), 59; Barbados. Housing Authority of Barbados, First Annual Report, 7; and Colonial Office, Development and Welfare in the West Indies, 1955–56, 106. Its labor force included many temporary and part-time workers.
90.
Estimated from Colonial Office, Annual Report on Barbados for the Years 1960 and 1961 (London: HMSO, 1962), 64-64, by comparison with the count of 57,946 households on the island that was reported in the 1960 census. For reasons that are unclear, the Annual Report estimates the percentage to be 26. The actual percentages would depend on whether assisted households were the same size as those that were not assisted.
91.
Colonial Office, Annual Report on Barbados for the Years 1956 and 1957, 59-59.
92.
Abrams, “Report to the Barbados Government and the Barbados Housing Authority on Land Tenure, Housing Policy and Home Finance,” New York, May 5, 1963, typescript, 9, 10.
93.
Abrams was already working on his influential work, Man's Struggle for Shelter in an Urbanizing World (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1964). For a biography, see A. Scott Henderson, Housing and the Democratic Ideal: The Life and Thought of Charles Abrams (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000).
94.
Abrams, “Report to the Barbados Government,”13-13.
95.
CO, S. B. Brandford, Auditor-General, “Report on the Audit of the Accounts of the Housing Authority for the Year Ended on the 31st March, 1966,” 3, in Barbados. Housing Authority of Barbados, Tenth Annual Report (Bridgetown: The Authority) [31/136].
96.
Watson and Potter, Low-Cost Housing in Barbados, 96-96.
97.
Abrams, Report to the Barbados Government, 14-14.
98.
Barbados, Housing Authority of Barbados, Fourth Annual Report, 27-27.
99.
Barbados, Housing Authority of Barbados, First Annual Report, 15-15.
100.
Barbados, Housing Authority of Barbados, Fourth Annual Report, 28-28.
101.
Barbados, Housing Authority of Barbados, Fourth Annual Report, (Bridgetown: The Authority, 1960), 43-43, and Appendix B, 47.
Jimmy Walker, personal communication, Sept. 23, 2003, and conversation, Madley, July 23, 2004.
107.
Bain, Low Income Housing, 10-10.
108.
Abrams, “Report to the Barbados Government”; and Singapore, Housing and Development Board, Annual Report, 1961 (Singapore: Government Printing Office, 1964), 19.
109.
Jamaica, Sugar Industry Labour Welfare Board, Annual Report, 1950 (Kingston, Jamaica: The Board, 1951), 3-3.
110.
Thomas Klak, “What Causes Arrears in Government Housing Programs: Perceptions and the Empirical Evidence from Jamaica,”Journal of the American Institute of Planners58, no. 3 (1992): 336–345.
111.
W. M. Woodhouse, “Notes and Comments on the Present Housing Agencies [in Jamaica]”, 3-3.
112.
CO, Trinidad and Tobago, Report of the Planning and Housing Commission for the Year 1947 (Port of Spain: The Commission, 1947), 5-5 [298/190]; Report...for 1954; and Report...for 1964.
113.
West Indies Development and Welfare Organisation, Report of... Conference, Appendix II, 4.
114.
Richard Harris and Godwin Arku, “Housing and Economic Development: The History of an Idea” (unpublished manuscript, McMaster University, July 2004).
115.
Development and Welfare in the West Indies, “Report of the... Conference,” 10.
116.
Woodhouse, “Housing Programme, Jamaica”, 3-3; Woodhouse, “Notes and Comments,” 1–4. In Jamaica, such influence preceded World War II. See, for example, CO, Jamaica Association of Sanitary Inspectors, “Submission to the Chairman and Members of the West India Royal Commission, November 14, 1938, 1, typescript [950/211].
