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Lowenthal, the Caribbeanist

Elizabeth Thomas-Hope

To cite this article: Elizabeth Thomas-Hope (2022) Lowenthal, the Caribbeanist, Landscape
Research, 47:4, 496-507, DOI: 10.1080/01426397.2021.1878490

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Published online: 17 Feb 2021.

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LANDSCAPE RESEARCH
2022, VOL. 47, NO. 4, 496–507
https://doi.org/10.1080/01426397.2021.1878490

Lowenthal, the Caribbeanist

Elizabeth Thomas-Hope
Department of Geography and Geology, The University of the West Indies, Mona Campus, Mona, Jamaica

ABSTRACT KEYWORDS
For David Lowenthal, the Caribbean was not simply an academic inter­ Lowenthal; West Indies;
est, it was a passionate personal concern for a place, its people, its Caribbean; islands; identity;
geographical history and heritage—and the return of that heritage pluralism; perception;
when stolen (a concern that also applied to other parts of the world). heritage
His enormous library was as weighted with novels by Caribbean authors
as by history and geography texts, and they formed the basis of his book,
West Indian Societies, the culmination of many years of detailed observa­
tion and investigation of the (non-Hispanic) Caribbean. Lowenthal’s
works on the Caribbean were to become significant reference points in
interpretations of societal institutions and practices in the Caribbean and
its diaspora and in the development of important new areas of research,
such as environmental and landscape perception, islands and conserva­
tion and heritage studies.

David Lowenthal became pre-eminently known as one of the foremost world authorities on landscape
and heritage studies; it was the principal reason for him being elected a Fellow of the British Academy
in 2001. Among his early publications were his book on landscape conservation based on the work of
George Perkins Marsh (Lowenthal, 1958), and, much later, his magisterial work, The Past is a Foreign
Country (1985), revised and re-written as The Past is a Foreign Country Revisited (2015) for which he won
the British Academy Medal in 2016. His papers on environmental perception had also become well
known in the 1960s and, at that time, further defined Lowenthal’s scholarship. So although our
conversations were undoubtedly about the Caribbean when I first met Lowenthal in 1968 at the
American Geographical Society (AGS) in New York City, where he was then a research associate, it was
his publications on environmental and landscape perception that had first grabbed my attention.
As a graduate student in the USA at the time, I had an emerging interest in the impact of
the environment as perceived and experienced, and Lowenthal’s paper, ‘Geography, Experience
and Imagination: towards a geographical epistemology’ (1961a),1 as well as his edited work,
Environmental Perception and Behaviour (1967), were of particular fascination to me. It was clear
that, as Lowenthal emphasised in his writings, perception did not emerge or exist in a vacuum.
Rather, perceptions were formed by historical experience, fashioned by selective memory, and
further moulded by geographical realities. In the case of the Caribbean, these geographical realities
were, foremost, those of territorial size and the experiences and feelings associated with ‘islandness’.
This included the nature of the separation and connectedness to other places, and they were to
become central issues in Lowenthal’s discourses on the West Indies (later to be more commonly
termed ‘the Caribbean’ and I use the two terms interchangeably in this article).2 These issues became
significant aspects of my own interpretations of societal behaviour in the Caribbean—whether in
relation to migration decisions or environmental management. At the time I met David Lowenthal
my research included the perceptions and experiences of the young child’s journey to school in

CONTACT Elizabeth Thomas-Hope elizabeth.thomashope@uwimona.edu.jm

© 2021 Landscape Research Group Ltd
 LANDSCAPE RESEARCH 497

Jamaica for my master’s thesis at Pennsylvania State University, followed by the selection of my
doctoral topic at Oxford on the role of perception and the environment in Caribbean migration.
I gained innumerable insights for my own work from his publications and our conversations at that
time (though he would sometimes frown quizzically at my inclusion of quantitative techniques in my
research methodology!).
Lowenthal’s interest in the Caribbean had begun when he was a student at Berkeley where he
selected the British, Dutch and French Guianas as the study area for his M.A. thesis (Lowenthal,
1950).3 Although his supervisor, the famed geographer, Carl Sauer (1889–1975) would usually have
his students conduct their field research in a Latin American country, Lowenthal did not feel that he
was sufficiently conversant in Spanish, whereas he did speak French along with some German. These
three neighbouring South American countries that were chosen provided him with a laboratory for
the study of societies with differing, though parallel, historical backgrounds and racially diverse
populations. The indigenous peoples of the three Guianas retreated to the inland, highland region
while coastal areas became populated by European colonisers with African (former slave) and Asian
(former indentured) labour. Further, he was not just interested in the racial composition of the
Guianas, but that race was consistent with the status and power differentials that existed in the three
countries. Lowenthal was later to observe this replication of difference throughout the Caribbean
region comprising what he referred to as, ‘ . . . eleven million people in around 50 different societies,
each one different from the other yet with common bonds’ (Lowenthal, 1972, p. xiii). This experience
of insularity intersecting with differing, but parallel histories was to become a motif of the region
which he described throughout his writings and this marked the beginning of his fascination with
islands.

Working and living in the Caribbean

From 1956 to 1957, David Lowenthal was given the opportunity to retain his position at the AGS
along with the acceptance of a Fulbright Fellowship tenable at the University of the West Indies,
Mona Campus, Jamaica. While there, he lectured in the history department and also acted as
a consultant to the Vice Chancellor, Sir Philip Sherlock. With reference to this visit, in a recent talk
with the archaeologist, Yannis Hamilakis, Lowenthal told him:
. . . the two greatest places I had taught were my first teaching experience in the ’50s at Vassar College
[New York] . . . The second place that was so special was Jamaica because I was not only teaching there, but
I was part of something called the Institute of Social and Economic Research, which embraced geography,
history, anthropology, sociology, economics. There was a group of maybe a dozen of us from different fields but
because we were all working on small islands we all worked together, and we all understood that in order to
understand a place, you have to look at it broadly, you have to encompass all of these so-called different subject
matters. They’re different, yes, but they really require an overview that means you have to dabble in all of them.
(Lowenthal & Hamilakis, 2017, p. 6)

Lowenthal’s research on the region continued after his return to New York and the AGS, facilitated
this time by a Rockefeller Foundation grant (1960–62). The late 1950s and early 1960s were a critical
juncture in Caribbean history, when the island societies of differing sizes, with differing landscapes
and differing histories, were in various stages of transition from colonial status to political indepen­
dence, beginning with Jamaica in 1962. Therefore, many of Lowenthal’s observations concerning
Jamaica and other islands were of colonies struggling politically for independence from colonial rule.
In addition to the political ferment of that time, Lowenthal’s years in Jamaica came when
theoretical frameworks for explaining the complexities of Caribbean social structures were being
advanced by Caribbean sociologists and anthropologists. They were being hotly debated by scholars
in the region and abroad. From one perspective, there were the proponents of social stratification
and the interconnections between colour and class, originally developed by Fernando Henriques
(1953) for Jamaica and by Lloyd Braithwaite (1953) for Trinidad and Tobago on the stratification that
had developed among Creole groups. By Creole groups, they were referring to Caribbean-born
498 E. THOMAS-HOPE

persons mostly of African and mixed African-European racial descent. The explanations of both these
authors were consistent with those of Raymond Smith (1956) for Guyana (formerly British Guiana).
A different perspective, advanced by Michael Garfield Smith (1965), was based on the concept of
cultural pluralism, maintaining that the fundamental social divisions were embedded in the societal
culture. The Plural Society theory focused on the definition previously advanced by J. S. Furnivall in
the South East Asian context with special reference to Indonesia, as a society comprising two or more
racial or ethnic groups with distinct cultures who mixed only in the economic sphere (Furnivall,
1939). Michael Garfield Smith recognised that in the Caribbean, despite the cultural differences of
each ethnic group reflected in family systems, language and religion, they shared a single political
system with all groups controlled by the dominant colonial power. So once the colonial power
withdrew, the groups were not held together by the marketplace (as Furnivall opined) but by
a political institution, the post-colonial state.
Lowenthal, who was a friend and colleague of Michael Garfield Smith both at UWI and later
throughout their years at University College London, recognised and repeatedly emphasised in his
publications the association between race/ethnicity and cultural differences as being of paramount
significance in Caribbean societies. Furthermore, he saw these societal factors as interacting with
insular geographies to influence Caribbean particularities of identity and personality, with each
island society maintaining a separate identity and sense of itself. As he noted, ‘Each West Indian
island has its special features, a unique self-image, and a particular view of the others. Large and
small islands are equally conscious of individuality’ (Lowenthal, 1972, p. 8). Yet, he concluded, ‘ . . . for
all their social and cultural pluralism, they are strong partisans of social unity’ (Lowenthal, 1972,
p. 322). He suggested that the archipelagic mindset of islanders was not so much parochial as flexible
because, although never formally united and seldom co-operating, ‘West Indians do not require
unity to be uniquely themselves’ (Lowenthal, 1972, p. 323).

Writing on the Caribbean: major themes of Lowenthal’s works

In addition to many specialist articles were David Lowenthal’s books on the Caribbean. The first of
these was an edited collection, The West Indies Federation: Perspectives on a New Nation (1961b) in
which his own contribution was a chapter entitled “The Social Background of the West
IndianFederation” (1961c). Lowenthal assessed the attempt, and finally the failure, to establish
a federation of states even within a single colonial and linguistic bloc—the British West Indies. He
saw clearly the implications of history and geographical insularity and, in particular, the sense of
separateness from each other, as stronger than the connections to each other—issues that ulti­
mately destroyed the Federation. Each prospective island or mainland state had been economically
and administratively linked more closely to London, than to its neighbours within the Caribbean
region.
Then came Lowenthal’s seminal, single-authored work, West Indian Societies (1972) which was the
culmination of his many years of detailed observation and assessment of views and commentaries
on the non-Hispanic Caribbean. Drawing on a wide range of sources—including literary and journal­
istic—he carried out an intense scrutiny of Caribbean societies which, for many Caribbean scholars,
was the work by which he was especially known. He aimed in this book to ‘ . . . explain how the West
Indies and their people became what they are, to show what makes them unique or ordinary, and to
describe how they get on with one another and with the world outside’ (Lowenthal, 1972, p. 1).
This publication was followed by a four-volume anthology, West Indian Perspectives: Slaves, Free
Men, Citizens; The Aftermath of Sovereignty; Consequences of Class and Colour; Work and Family Life,
co-edited with Lambros Comitas (Lowenthal & Comitas, 1973). Throughout the four volumes the
relationship between the histories, societal structures and institutions and, beyond those, the
economic and political structures that emerged, were repeatedly highlighted. At the same time,
the themes of identity, belonging and alienation were also articulated.
 LANDSCAPE RESEARCH 499

Throughout Lowenthal’s Caribbean publications of the 1960s and 1970s, interconnected themes
can be identified, each of them complex and sometimes even paradoxical. The themes most evident
in his works were: identity—island versus region; plurality—race manifested in culture, class and
social status; alienation and belonging, manifested in attitudes to land and migration.

Island/national versus regional identity

Historically fractured by the emergence of colonial enclaves, and geographically fragmented by its
archipelagic formations, when the Caribbean came to be perceived from outside as a region its
peoples themselves lacked a regional identity. Lowenthal went so far as to conclude that in the
Caribbean, even within a single colonial enclave, such as the former British West Indies, regionalism
was divisive. ’Each island is jealous of the others’ he noted and, as compared with other archipelagic
states worldwide, in the Caribbean, ‘ . . . physical insularity not only aggravates inter-island differ­
ences; it also intensifies a sense of belonging within each island, whatever its size.’ Each island has its
unique self image and, for the most part ‘ . . . it is every island for itself’ (Lowenthal, 1961c, p. 68).
The attempt made to establish a federation of former British West Indian colonies reinforced
parochialism rather than encouraged regionalism. Yet, significantly, this parochialism was not
a reflection of attachment to place or to the integration of ethnic groups within a single colony.
Even the apparent economic benefits of federation to the smallest and poorest islands were not
deemed (by them) to compensate for the loss of self-determination that would ensue if such
a political entity were to become established. The concept of freedom associated with the idea of
independence was guarded, whatever the economic cost or disadvantage (Lowenthal, 1961b). Fear
of domination and the threat to sovereignty, rather than true attachment to island of birth and
residence, were the underlying factors that militated most against the emergence of a Caribbean
regional identity. It was Lowenthal and Clarke’s view that, most importantly: ‘West Indian parochi­
alism is based on entrenched suspicion, even fear, of neighbours as competitors, rivals, or agents of
sedition’ (Lowenthal & Clarke, 1980, p. 295).
Lowenthal came to the conclusion that Caribbean islands’ focus on sovereignty was only the
latest of many contributing factors to the prevailing parochialism. In this context, he raised the
question of how Caribbean territorial particularism could be explained and was of the view that this
was not in the main based on social or cultural differentiation. National versus regional identity was
historically rooted in geographical isolation and colonial dependence (Lowenthal, 1984). Quoting
Philip Sherlock, he wrote: ‘Caribbean waterways have linked Europe with Latin America, Spain with
the Philippines, New England with California. They have divided the Caribbean countries, shore from
shore, and island from island’ (Parry & Sherlock, 1956, p. vi, as cited in Lowenthal, 1972, p. 11). But
Lowenthal and Clarke later stated, ‘It is the islanders themselves who have insisted on the separation;
they saw metropolitan exhortations to centralise as threats to their independence’ (Lowenthal &
Clarke, 1980, p. 295). Lowenthal concluded that:
For West Indians the island really is a world – but it is not the only world . . . Worlds of origin, Europe, African,
Asian, represent a widely shared cluster of heritages. And as great migrants, few West Indians lack close relations
with other Caribbean communities . . . . Still more, few West Indians do not have family overseas. Islanded by race
or by culture, these emigrants continue to play an important role in Caribbean life, both through material
support and by providing windows on other worlds and ways. Even with local autonomy, West Indians are less
apt to view their island as the world than the world as an island, in which their own insular experience plays
a small but significant role. (Lowenthal, 1984, p. 118)

Plurality
Lowenthal was deeply influenced by Michael Garfield Smith’s emphasis on cultural pluralism, but
went further in his analysis so as to integrate class and culture, which both Smith and Braithwaite
were inclined to separate. He emphasised the combined importance of class, colour and all aspects
500 E. THOMAS-HOPE

of culture in Creole societies. Cultural plurality was highlighted by Lowenthal (1972) in terms of the
law, family and religion. His view was that at the root of the societal dissonance was the plural society
whereby, ‘different segments of the population, divided by class, race, religion, language, and other
criteria, tend to adhere to divergent and often antithetical behaviour and goals’ (Lowenthal, 1961b,
p. 72). Among these ‘other criteria’ were education and economic status, both closely associated with
race and class. Relating to the pre-Independence period in Jamaica, he noted: ‘To say “I am poor” is
almost the same as to say “I am black”’ (Lowenthal, 1961c, p. 87).
Additionally, there were the cultural differences between Creoles (Caribbean-born persons of
European and African descent) and East Indians (Caribbean-born persons of Indian descent) which
Lowenthal addressed. He observed that Indian-Creole segregation depended only partly on cultural
difference, stating: ‘Physical and social distance, as much as cultural distinctiveness, sustains the
negative stereotypes, which in turn validate segregation’ (Lowenthal, 1972, p. 162). But whatever the
components of ethnic difference, he emphasised that the specific island context—in particular the
proportion of Indians to Creoles (related to the varying demands for Indian indentured labour once
slavery had been abolished)—influenced the extent to which such separation occurred.
In the context of the plural society, a theme that all the former colonies shared, and that Lowenthal
explored, was that ‘Caribbean attitudes, racial and other, do not exist in a vacuum; they occur within
the context of specifically West Indian social and cultural institutions’ (Lowenthal, 1972, p. 2). As he
pointed out, to understand the nature of the social order, one must recognise that racial variations in
the region span the plurality of Jamaican society, the stratification of Trinidad, and the dominance of
white minorities in Martinique and other French West Indian colonies. Further, the cultural implications
of race, with the close but separate positioning of different racial groups in some cases and the mixing
in others, reflected the complexity and significance of race in the colonies historically, as well as in
variously shaping the societies as they emerged from their colonial past.
Writing with reference to the ‘host of continuing problems’ seen to be facing the post-colonial
Caribbean—foreign economic domination and population pressure, ethnic stress and black-power
revolts, the petty tyranny of local rulers and an agonising dependence on expatriate culture—
Lowenthal and Comitas indicated that for those very reasons ‘ . . . the West Indies constitute an
exceptional setting for the study of complex social relations. The archipelago is a set of mirrors in
which the lives of black, brown, and white, of American Indian and East Indian, and a score of other
minorities continually interact’ (Lowenthal & Comitas, 1973, p. i). Undoubtedly, Lowenthal never
attributed the ‘West Indian problem’ to be that of over-population, contradicting the commonly held
view in Europe at that time: ‘It matters less’ he stated, ‘how many West Indians there are than what
they are’ (Lowenthal, 1961c, p. 67).

Alienation and belonging

Colonisation in the Caribbean was intense and thorough. In Lowenthal’s words, ‘The West Indies
were early and thoroughly Europeanized, and the European colonial heritage (including slavery)
transcends territorial boundaries’ (Lowenthal, 1972, p. 12). Colonisation became then, as much
a state of mind as a political situation of European ascendancy. This introduced another theme in
Lowenthal’s Caribbean work, namely that of alienation and lack of ownership of both their physical
resources and their legacy, including legacy as cultural heritage. In turn, this added a further
dimension to the experience and understanding of identity. As he put it, ‘Race and colour are crucial
to the larger West Indian identity. But’, he added, ‘it is not a world West Indians feel they own’
(Lowenthal, 1972, p. 12).
People’s weak sense of attachment to their Caribbean birthplace (the consequence of an ambig­
uous sense of identity) was also a thread that ran through Lowenthal’s writings on the Caribbean,
with the exception of the case of Barbuda. The slaves never legally owned land in the sense of
possessing title deeds; and as the slaves (and also the indentured workers from India and China) were
not regarded as citizens of the West Indies they, likewise, did not consider themselves to be truly
 LANDSCAPE RESEARCH 501

citizens. In Lowenthal’s view, denied possessions and citizenship, West Indians after Emancipation
remained as alienated from the West Indies as they had been during slavery. Lowenthal cited the
literary icon, George Lamming, stating: ‘“The lan’ come to look like a tyrant in their eye, an’ they
decide to burn whatever memory hol’ them to the plough.”’ The tragedy was, as Lamming said of his
fictional island, that ‘“San Cristobal was the only home they know, an’ it was no home”’ (Lamming,
1958, p. 69, as cited in Lowenthal, 1961d, p. 3).
Land had a different meaning to the planters than it did to the plantation workers. The owners of
plantations, whether resident or absentee (as many were), only thought of land in the Caribbean as
a means of accumulating profits, thus it was only considered by them as a source of wealth.
Lowenthal suggested that the apparent denial of the importance of the land to the former popula­
tions of imported slaves and their descendants masked real feelings towards the land. It missed the
desire for ownership of land on the part of the landless majority, though not necessarily solely for
economic reasons. ‘The values placed on land not only transcend the economic dimension; they
frequently run counter to it’, wrote Lowenthal (1961d, p. 5). He also noted that in Jamaica, family land
was often wastefully and inefficiently used; multiple ownership restricted development and no one
troubled to put money or effort into soil from which so many others might reap the fruits. ‘The
quality of the land is so bad, and freeholds so small, which these persons have purchased, that it is
almost an impossibility that they can reap any produce from them, and this the settlers know well;
I was informed by them they wished only for homes where they could not be troubled, and that they
might have the liberty of working where they might choose for their livelihood’ (Lowenthal,
1961d, p. 5).
Land ownership was often an escape route away from agriculture, not an avenue towards it, the
prime connotation being to secure freedom. Therefore, in addition to freedom and security, land
ownership was understood and portrayed by Lowenthal to be associated with individual prestige—
as a mark of gentility, of general esteem, of social success. In this vein, he commented, ‘The
acquisition of a piece of land is for the small farmer a sign of his ascent into a higher social class’
(Lowenthal, 1961d, p. 5). This undoubtedly emphasised the paradox of identity in the Caribbean
(mentioned above); for, on the one hand, insularity increased island identity versus regional identity,
but even at the island level, there was apparently only an ambivalent attachment to the country. Yet,
despite the lack of a sense of belonging to the island of birth, nevertheless, people yearned for
ownership of land to give them a sense of freedom from planters, as well as some measure of
economic security and status.
It became evident by the time of political independence of countries in the Caribbean, when
citizens could make their own voices heard, that the role of the land in all that it symbolized—
freedom, pride, social emancipation of the individual, continuity, solidarity, sovereignty—had
‘acquired greater dignity and even a certain desired degree of glory’ (Lowenthal, 1961d, p. 4).
Lowenthal raised similar considerations as being important in the identification of land with national
independence or sovereignty. ‘However barren, useless, or pestilential a tract may be, the passion for
sovereignty renders it precious . . . This identification of land with man’s deepest desires is no less
passionate for being sometimes political’ (Lowenthal, 1961d, p. 6). The symbolic worth of land to
those persons who lived on the land in the Caribbean, unquestionably outweighed its economic
value. As Lowenthal stated with regard to the islands, ‘ . . . dirt was cheap, . . . but land was the land,
priceless, perennial and a symbol of some inexplicable power’ (Lowenthal, 1961d, p. 7).
Back to researching on the Caribbean in the late 1970s, Lowenthal in collaboration with Colin
Clarke 1977, examined slave practices in Barbuda and, in particular, explored the island’s reputation
as a slave breeding colony (Lowenthal & Clarke, 1977). Foremost was that their research provided
evidence, beyond doubt, that the notion of the island having been a slave breeding nursery was
a myth. Their research also led them to conclude that, in contrast to the general Caribbean
experience as indicated above, the Barbudans appeared to ‘manifest a sense of identity and an
attachment to locality that stem from traditions reaching back over two centuries’ (Lowenthal &
Clarke, 2007). On the eve of Emancipation, members of the Codrington family—the lessees of
502 E. THOMAS-HOPE

Barbuda—praised the slaves’ steadfast attachment to the land and to Barbuda. The point was further
made that, ‘Barbuda’s residents seem always to have believed themselves its owners’ (Lowenthal &
Clarke, 2007, p. 151). This presents a situation in striking contrast to the ambivalent attachment to
home that was observed earlier in larger, more resourceful Caribbean lands.
Emigration was the other major factor that Lowenthal identified in terms of the contradictory
feelings of alienation and belonging deeply embedded in the persistent state and mentality of neo-
colonialism. The apparent willingness of some islanders to sell all they owned for passage money to
emigrate, led him to conclude that, ‘It is not really their land they are leaving, but the landlord,
labourless among his empty acres’ (Lowenthal, 1961d, p. 3). However, views and behaviours relating
to emigration were also paradoxical. On the one hand emigration provided an escape from the
plantation system that prevailed long after slavery, but the wish to leave was usually tempered by
the intention to later return with acquired material possessions and the ability to purchase land. For
these reasons, the desire to own land could, for the most part, only be achieved by leaving their
island for a while to gain work elsewhere and then return.
Lowenthal noted that West Indians had achieved sovereignty only to find, like the slaves
emancipated a century before, that ‘they gained the appearance without the substance of freedom’
(Lowenthal, 1972, p. 223). They were left more dependent than ever on the great powers, especially
the USA and, he pointed out, the cultural and psychological dominance of the respective metropo­
lises among all Caribbean social classes, continued long after constitutional independence. Artists
and writers who migrated, whether to London, Paris or Amsterdam and later New York and Toronto,
were known to ‘ . . . find a psychological and spiritual refuge in the metropolitan milieu of words and
ideas, philosophy and world affairs’ (Lowenthal, 1972, p. 216). On account of this, emigration
deprived the Caribbean of artistes, just as large-scale movements from the islands among the
working class undermined village and rural community relationships. ‘When too many people
leave’ Lowenthal remarked, ‘ . . . the remainder lose both social nexus and self-respect, and life
becomes altogether less rewarding’ (Lowenthal, 1972, p. 223).
Emigration, Lowenthal (1972) further assessed, was a corollary of the absentee spirit, with Europe
continuing to attract those who were ambitious, energetic, and impatient with, or fearful of, local
conditions. He recognised that emigration vitally affected the homelands and communities left
behind; and that moving in the opposite direction, the importation of overseas goods and values
continued to deeply influence the Caribbean way of life, adding to dependence on the outside
world. Further, the need to leave the West Indies—sometimes intended for only a brief period but
often times extending much longer, even for a lifetime, had a lasting impact on the community left
behind as well as on the emigrants themselves. One impact of residence abroad on the emigrants
was that it altered ideas of nationality along with those of race. Personal and national identities were
therefore challenged and new forms of regional cohesiveness emerged.
While abroad, the migrants tended to concentrate residentially in their own national groups yet,
as Lowenthal (1972) noted a wider Caribbean nationalism also emerged among migrants abroad.
They sought support among other West Indians in their new and alien world where homesickness
fostered the discovery of common backgrounds, problems, and aspirations. These shared experi­
ences encouraged a sense of West Indian unity. Quoting from the novelist, Donald Hinds, he
concurred that the migration experience was, ‘“slowly but steadily making breaches in the walls of
insularity thrown up by each island and territory”’ (Hinds, 1966, p. 208, as cited in Lowenthal, 1972,
p. 229).
A further paradox in emigration, identified by Lowenthal, was the way in which the emigrant
experience affected ideas about class structures. ‘Migration to Britain has contributed largely to
undermining the nature of West Indian class consciousness’ he stated, ‘ . . . as also new perceptions of
color are basic to the West Indian emigrant experience’ (Lowenthal, 1972, p. 223). However, the
aspiring migrant may use the overseas experience as a path to status in the old system if he/she
should return to the Caribbean. Some attitudes brought back from abroad bring about change, but
most buttress the status quo and the economic, social and political realities of neo-colonialism.
 LANDSCAPE RESEARCH 503

Lowenthal devoted an entire chapter of his West Indian Societies to the theme of Emigration
and Neo-Colonialism. He was unambiguous in his evaluation of emigration and external depen­
dence being ‘cardinal facts of West Indian life’, and continued ‘ . . . Residence abroad and the
inflow of metropolitan goods and ideas widen local horizons,’ but whatever the drawbacks of
this situation, ‘ . . . the reality is that they are so endemic in the Caribbean that West Indian
society now largely accommodates them. They are not spasmodic events but part of the
enduring institutional structure’ (Lowenthal, 1972, p. 248).

The Caribbean in Lowenthal’s later work and interests

David Lowenthal transcended traditional disciplinary boundaries and brought together history,
landscape, society and environmental perception and developed heritage studies in their own
right (Thomas-Hope, 2019). The Caribbean found resonance in many of the themes which he
explored and developed in his later research and civic engagement, as indicated below.

Island studies
Fascination with islands was summed up by Lowenthal himself when researching Barbuda in the late
1970s. He stated: ‘Lessons derived from the West Indies in general, and Barbuda in particular, throw
light on the causes and consequences of island fragmentation as a world-wide phenomenon, and
help us assess the virtues of insular autonomy’ (Lowenthal & Clarke, 1980, p. 293). Much later, in
reminiscing over his career with Hamilakis in 2017, he stated:
I thus became tremendously excited by island studies, small society studies, the way that each small
society would develop its own outlook on things, its own sense of particularity, its own sense of
individuality, and that each island also, if it were small, was apt to be a place in which people had to
be polymaths. In a small society, nobody just does one thing; people do a whole range of things, and this
fascinated me as a way of life that was completely unlike anything I’d experienced in America or in
Continental Europe. (Lowenthal & Hamilakis, 2017, p. 3)

In that conversation, he indicated that when he went to live in Britain in 1972, he still remained
involved with Caribbean studies, but then began working with others who were dealing with the
Scottish islands for example, Orkney and Shetland and the Hebrides, or else with Mediterranean
islands—Sicily and Sardinia, Malta, Crete. ‘So all of these things became another realm of comparison
and contrast for me’ (Lowenthal & Hamilakis, 2017, p. 5). Additionally, the characteristics of island­
ness and insularity were evident to Lowenthal even in Britain. Lowenthal commented:
Well, in a way, Britain was like the Caribbean. Britain is in many ways a small island. I know it has 60 million
people, but still it behaves like a small island in which each group, each institution has its own little band of
devotees and important people, and they behave like a little place in which secrecy matters, the difference
between insiders and outsiders matters, and you know right away that you’re an outsider. So, that was one big
difference that I began to focus on. The other big difference was the sense of the past which [in Britain] was so
clearly unlike that in the United States at that time and I am talking about the ‘60s and ’70s. The American public
generally were very uninterested in the past. The past was something you got over. We think about the future,
we don’t deal with the past, that’s done. (Lowenthal & Hamilakis, 2017, p. 4)

The sense of the past and heritage at home and abroad

In March 1996, in the year his book, Possessed by the Past: The Heritage Crusade and the Spoils of
History (Lowenthal, 1996) was first published (republished in paperback in 1998), Lowenthal made
his last visit to the Caribbean where he participated in a conference organised by Barry Higman and
me at UWI Mona, on Heritage Tourism and Development in the Caribbean. Quite aside from the
conference, my memory recalls David showing his usual delight for the simple things of the
504 E. THOMAS-HOPE

Figure 1. David Lowenthal in Jamaica, 1996. Photo credit: E. Thomas-Hope.

Caribbean. Each morning he would insist on picking his own oranges from the tree in the garden for
breakfast (Figure 1).
Heritage tourism could be seen as having a clear economic objective by commodifying the
material and cultural legacies from the past. Indeed, since the past did not represent a world to
which West Indians felt an emotional attachment, it could even have an alienating effect. Indeed,
Possessed by the Past brought into focus the issue of a lack of the Caribbean sense of ownership of
their past. Lowenthal quoted V. S. Naipaul who claimed that heritage gets transmitted only in
countries where, ‘“ . . . men cherish the past and think of passing on furniture and china to their
heirs. Everywhere else [referring to the colonised world] . . . the past can only cause pain”’ (Naipaul,
1979, p. 152 as cited in Lowenthal, 1996, p. 23). One reason for this view was that conquerors and
colonisers persuaded others that they had no proper patrimony. In a similar vein, Lowenthal also
quoted from Jamaica Kinkaid who attacked the (British) colonisers of the Caribbean who built
schools and libraries where, ‘“ . . . you distorted or erased my history and glorified your own”’
(Kinkaid, 1988, p. 31 as cited in Lowenthal, 1996, p. 23). Lowenthal concluded that, to reconvert
lost legacies into national heritage today is very hard.
Yet he also wrote that, in contrast to those views, there was evidence of a Caribbean sense of
belonging to the past through the feeling of owning anything of which one was a part. This even
applied to the small plot of land on which a person was born which, although producing little
economically was, nevertheless, valued as ‘family land’, not to be sold but for ‘heritage going down.
It must go to children and grandchildren, right down the line . . . One need not be royal to reap riches
from a legacy handed down’ (Lowenthal, 1996, p. 32). This sense of the past constructed within the
 LANDSCAPE RESEARCH 505

crucible of the emerging creole culture, became owned and valued by recent and current genera­
tions of Caribbean people. Even the vessels (made for example, from the calabash or clay) and
artefacts of slave and post-slave society became the material symbols of heritage to which people
could relate and, along with aspects of creole culture, are used today as heritage tourist items. This
was consistent with Lowenthal’s definition of heritage as the contemporary use of the past. He
argued that the use of heritage was not only for economic purposes but also had cultural aims with
the heritage agenda belonging to all, including the man on the street, and not any more confined to
the privileged few. In order to remain relevant, heritage required that the people that created it
should own and control it, stating that ‘To secure the past to our present lives, we must feel that its
legacies have become our very own’ (Lowenthal, 1996, p. 23).
Lowenthal was passionate about countries ‘owning’ their history, in other words evidence of what
mattered to them, the people, from their past. This was demonstrated in Lowenthal’s view of the
documentary sources for the Barbuda research in which he and Colin Clarke had engaged. These
were the Codrington Papers, held in London, and scheduled for auction (December 1980). Despite
Lowenthal’s subsequent campaign to raise funds for purchasing them when they came up for sale,
so that they would be returned to Antigua and Barbuda, the agents were outbid. He also became
involved with other situations of advocacy, such as the return of the Elgin Marbles from the British
Museum to Greece and similar concerns.

Race relations and Caribbean studies in the UK

From a more applied perspective, Lowenthal took with him from his Caribbean experience the awareness
of the political significance of race in the United Kingdom as a consequence of the immigration from
Anglophone Asia, Africa and the West Indies in the 1950s and 1960s. Based on his position at the AGS, he
was able to intermittently work for the Institute of Race Relations, London, between 1961 and 1969, with
the AGS and IRR becoming the joint sponsors of his book West Indian Societies (1972).
His interest and involvement with the mainly West Indian element of race relations in Britain—a
very prominent societal issue at that time—continued in his new post as a Professor in the
Department of Geography at University College London (1972–1985). Lowenthal’s particular con­
tribution came with his engagement with Caribbean scholars and others in the UK to establish the
Society for Caribbean Studies. As a Research Fellow at the University of London at that time, I had the
opportunity to work closely with him on the steering committee to launch the new association at its
first conference held at the University of York in 1975, where he was elected the first President. As
conference organiser, I made an authentic rum punch for the reception, much to David’s delight who
insisted that it become a feature of the Society’s annual conference. The conference highlighted the
work of British and Caribbean academics and, more importantly, community groups and activists in
Britain. It still continues to this day and has had a major impact on the expansion and development
of Caribbean studies in the UK.

Quest for the unity of knowledge

Various interpretations of all that Lowenthal observed in the Caribbean were embedded in the discursive
balancing of unity with diversity. The paradoxes implicit in the Caribbean situation fittingly resonated in
many aspects of this discourse. Evident were the contrasting perspectives of ‘those who seek to unify and
those who cleave to diversity’, between which the ‘balance shifts over time in response to social and
political circumstances’ (Lowenthal, 2019, p. 2). In their more universal context, some of the apparent
contradictions inherent in Caribbean societies were pertinent to, and included in, what became
Lowenthal’s last book Quest for the Unity of Knowledge (2019), completed shortly before his death and
published posthumously. His chapter on “Island Polymaths” discussed holistic insights from science on the
one hand and literature on the other, suggesting that, ‘insular experience in close-knit communities
generates collaborative mindsets and skills that foster ecologically sustainable behaviour and insights’
506 E. THOMAS-HOPE

(Lowenthal, 2018, p. 4). Many of these may appear different from the accepted and unified global view of
contemporary wisdom. In Barbuda, for example, ‘land tenure and land use reflect community solidarity
and respect resource limits. Communal ownership of land and shifting cultivation, condemned by out­
siders as backward and inefficient are in fact well adapted to the local environment’ (Lowenthal, 2018,
p. 86). The chapter on “Purity and Mixture” also incorporated the Caribbean situation. Lowenthal remarked
that, in contrast to most parts of the world where ‘race mixing is so routinely censured, it is a surprise to
find it ever championed’ (Lowenthal, 2018, p. 114). Nevertheless, demography and social need in the
colonial Caribbean led to a mixed-race norm, even the accepted ideal, so that ‘The “real mix-up” Creole is
the quintessential West Indian’ (Lowenthal, 2018, p. 116).

Conclusion
Lowenthal’s interest in the Caribbean spanned around six decades and, although his active research
on the region was chiefly from the late 1950s to the early 1970s, the themes that he identified as
characterising the region then are no less relevant today. Issues relating to identity, plurality and
social stratification, alienation and belonging still prevail, despite political sovereignty. Struck at first
by its complexity, and recognising that the Caribbean eluded ethnic, social, or cultural general­
isation, he was led to state that it was: ‘ . . . a place but not a people’ (Lowenthal, 1961c, p. 1). In the
end, however, he came to the view that ‘The ferment of self-discovery makes the West Indies an
exhilarating place’ (Lowenthal, 1972, p. 322).
Quite apart from the scholarly accolades that David Lowenthal most deservedly received, I am
moved to finally reflect on him as a guide, an inspiration and a friend to many scholars of the
Caribbean based in the UK as well as in the region. Together with his wife, Mary-Alice, herself with
her own Barbadian family connections, their warm hospitality was legendary. Evening dinner was
a heady mix of ribaldry, double entendre and serious thought-provoking conversation—and this
kept going right to the very end of his ninety-five years. David Lowenthal’s relationship with the
Caribbean was notably one of engagement, not simply observation. His life-long connection with the
region was testimony to his genuine and lasting love both for its people and the place, and was
undoubtedly an essential part of his long, scholarly and personal journey. For me, our meeting at the
AGS was the beginning of what became a close and enduring 50-year collegial friendship.

Notes
1. This was later included in his edited book with Martyn Bowden (1967), Geographies of the Mind.
2. The Caribbean is referred to in Lowenthal’s books in the nomenclature of the time—namely ‘the West
Indies’—principally implying the French, Dutch and English colonial and post-colonial territories in the
Caribbean region.
3. The former British and Dutch Guianas were renamed Guyana and Suriname, respectively, when they became
independent. French Guiana, which is not independent, is a Department of France.

Disclosure statement
No conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor
Elizabeth Thomas-Hope holds a doctorate from Oxford University, is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society (FRGS)
and currently President of the Commonwealth Geographical Bureau. She has held appointments at universities in the
USA, in the United Kingdom, and the University of the West Indies (UWI). At UWI, she was the first James Seivright Moss-
Solomon (Snr.) Professor of Environmental Studies, and Director of the Centre for Environmental Management. She is
currently Professor Emerita at the UWI.
 LANDSCAPE RESEARCH 507

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