A massive hurricane in 1898 and a volcanic eruption on Saint Vincent in 1902 signaled the end of a moribund sugar industry in Barbados and the British Windward Islands. Sensing impending economic disaster and social and political disturbances in the wake of the catastrophic 1884 plunge in London sugar prices, in 1897 the British government appointed a high-powered commission to investigate the state of economic affairs in its West Indian colonies and to make appropriate recommendations. The report of these commissioners along with contemporary newspaper reports and archival accounts constitute the major sources for Bonham Richardson’s impressive study of the eastern Caribbean’s historical geography during the depression years of the late nineteenth century.

Central to the author’s analysis is the intertwining of economic and ecological factors on islands with a common political background. While planter control remained paramount, varying local physical landscapes influenced economic activities in significantly different ways. At one extreme was Barbados, which was almost completely enveloped by sugarcane; at the other end was Grenada, which boasted a viable cocoa economy that had virtually supplanted that of sugar. By tracing the environmental and sociological factors that precipitated the conditions that the commissioners addressed, Richardson provides us with a unique view of the ecological characteristics of the eastern Caribbean during the late nineteenth century. On islands where workers creatively used the highlands, and even some parts of the lowlands, to lessen their dependence on plantation agriculture, the depression’s impact tended to be less severe. Nevertheless, worker unrest throughout the area goaded the British government until it finally appointed the 1897 Commission. Richardson is at his best in persuasively arguing that the commission’s recommendations for the compulsory breakup of estates and official support for peasant proprietary rights represented more a response to worker unrest than a reflection of enlightened British policy initiatives.

Initially, planter hegemony on Saint Vincent conspired with an inadequate infrastructure to frustrate efforts toward land reform. Natural disasters proved to be the best ally of officials in finally inducing financially strapped planters to grudgingly agree to the government’s purchase of lands that were eventually parceled and sold in order to support peasant agriculture. On densely cultivated Barbados, reform engendered the consolidation of central factories and the modernization of a seemingly all-important sugar industry. Though Saint Lucia’s sugar output had decreased by the 1890s, its sugar industry had outstripped that of Barbados and Saint Vincent in terms of modernization, innovation, and efficiency. Nevertheless, on Saint Lucia peasant agriculture was already flourishing on lands left vacant by sugar producers.

Coming 70 years after emancipation, compulsory land reform proved inadequate to stem the title of worker discontent and political dissatisfaction that had increasingly become the norm in the British Caribbean (eventually finding full expression in the 1930s). The full import of occurrences of the late-nineteenth-century depression rests in the framework they established that allowed officials and individuals to articulate their vision for the future of islands in which they all had varying interests.

Richardson has made an enormously important contribution to the literature on the Caribbean by considerably raising the level of debate on late-nineteenth-century economic changes in the region. He has demonstrated a sound understanding of the intricate relationship between climate and political, economic, and social factors that helped define Caribbean societies. Further, his depiction of the characteristics of high-land-lowland agriculture and the manner in which planters successfully used waterways to promote their economic interests provides a useful framework for understanding the highly contested issues that were constant features of British Caribbean life. The clear insight he has brought to the complex ecological factors that helped fashion society and economy in the British Windward Islands has exposed the barrenness and unsuitability of the ideas and policies that informed the attitudes and behavior of officials responsible for governing the islands.