ABSTRACT

This chapter demonstrates the importance of a substantial body of indigenous, Anglophone Caribbean development scholarship for wider debates in IPE. Often ignored – even by the more ‘critical’ parts of the field – as a peripheral region of little interest, sugar slavery, the colonial plantation system and indentureship once placed the Caribbean at the heart of the global economy. There has long existed a rich tradition of genuinely critical political economy analysis in the region that illuminates its postcolonial development problématique and, by implication, that of other places too. We trace the rise and fall of this distinctive literature up to the neoliberal period, and discuss its enduring significance in light of both the stark developmental challenges faced by the region today and exciting new directions in feminist and postcolonial thinking that can potentially enrich the field by providing a deeper understanding of the evolution of the GPE and the position of the Caribbean within it.