Small Worlds: Childhood and Empire

Abstract

There are no historical studies and—despite the concern of social sciences with Caribbean families—few scholarly works that have focused on childhood and child rearing. Yet attitudes to children, child care, and child rearing reveal many of the values and philosophies that underpin social organization and may be seen as a litmus test of (formal and informal) social provision. This article examines the narratives of Caribbean colonial childhoods, arguing that they reveal social principles that are essentially egalitarian, a social world characterized by order and respect and an organization of family life modeled on inclusive and communitarian principles. These village-based childhoods not only contrasted with the colonial view of West Indian social organization but also proved a bedrock of social pride, an antidote to the lack of social provision, and an idiom through which Caribbean migrants could both converse and survive in the world beyond the Caribbean.