Birth Control in the Decolonizing Caribbean

Bourbonnais opens her monograph with a powerful sentence: “Rose Gordon wrote a letter” (1). As she begins to tell Rose’s story, we see that this is not a simple medical history of reproductive politics and practice. Nor is it a simple political history. Both comparative and transnational, hers is first and foremost a social history, as is made clear from the opening sentence of the book. As she traces how the working class negotiated control over their bodies, sexuality, and personal relationships, she also considers this question through a thorough discussion of class, race, and cultural representation. Her exploration of the controversial agendas and political discourses of the state, medical practitioners, and grassroots activists adds another aspect to her research as she carefully assesses the interplay between the working class and local, national, and international players. Finally, Bourbonnais adds a final stratum to her argument through an analysis of the region’s shift from colonialism to independence.Birth Control in the Decolonizing Caribbean examines forty years in the history of four colonial islands that once housed an elite white oligarchy within a European slave empire—Bermuda, Barbados, Jamaica, and Trinidad. These islands share a past of state-imposed oppression and racism while accepting the pull of anti-racist, nationalist, feminist, and labor movements (21). Such is the environment within which Bourbonnais situates her case study, documenting the rise of modern party politics surrounding the issues of reproduction, birth control, and sexuality. Her first chapter centers on the debates about birth control that developed in the region during the first two decades of her study; the two chapters that follow examine how those politics were put into practice. Readers may not be surprised by the conservative white elites’ advocacy of a harsh plan of social reform through eugenics. However, Bourbonnais also focuses on how family-planning associations and clinics finessed their interactions with the Colonial Office, local elites, working-class advocates and social workers, and those in the medical profession.The working class comes center stage in Chapter 3, revealing how it perceived and received the political platform that was thrust upon it. Chapter 4 adds a deeper economic approach by examining the availability of resources in the latter two decades of study, and analyzing decolonization and the change in the political arena from conflict and resistance to acceptance and application. In the strongest chapter of the book, Bourbonnais finds that local actors had genuine power to effect change through compromise. Furthermore, their advocacy provided for essential reproductive-welfare provisions and birth control as a right for the working class.Although the book often examines birth-control campaigns and reproductive politics from above, Bourbonnais is careful to maintain a connection with the working class throughout the book. As she shows, birth-control campaigns were not always meant to empower women; they were also a means to control women through compulsory sterilization programs and to advance, or at least acquiesce in, conservative agendas regarding motherhood, sexuality, and marriage. A common thread throughout the book is that the working class was in constant negotiation with these agendas and political platforms, rejecting some of them outright.Comparative histories are not always successful; they are often unbalanced in approach and execution. Such is not the case with Bourbonnais’ study. Exhaustively and impeccably researched in archives and special collections across the Atlantic, Bourbonnais visited no less than six countries for this study—an impressive feat. The finished history is an excellent interdisciplinary study that will make its mark within a multitude of historical discourses

Colonialism · Democracy · Empire · Grassroots · Nationalism · Oligarchy · Oppression · Political science · Politics · Racism · Sociology · Australian History and Society · Caribbean history, culture, and politics · Gender Studies · Historical Economic and Social Studies · Law

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