Dr Imaobong Umoren

This course is available on the MA in Asian and International History (LSE and NUS), MA in Modern History, MSc in Empires, Colonialism and Globalisation, MSc in History of International Relations, MSc in International Affairs (LSE and Peking University), MSc in International and Asian History, MSc in International and World History (LSE & Columbia) and MSc in Theory and History of International Relations. This course is available with permission as an outside option to students on other programmes where regulations permit. This course uses controlled access as part of the course selection process. For information on controlled access courses, including eligibility, application processes, deadlines, and departmental contact details, please refer to the Controlled Access Courses webpage.

How to apply: Students should write a short statement supporting their application to take a course. The Teacher Responsible will assign places on the course and their decision is final.

Deadline for application: Week 0 Friday at 12pm of Autumn Term. Please note, students should prepare for the seminar in week 1 by completing the prescribed essential readings.  

For queries, please contact Dr Imaobong Umoren.

One of the first regions in the world to be colonised by western powers the contemporary Caribbean is shaped indelibly by this historical legacy and continues to be informed by the various examples of neo-colonialism in both the sovereign and non-sovereign territories. This course introduces students to the origins and diverse range of neo-colonialism in the Hispanic, Anglophone, Francophone, and Dutch Caribbean and its ties to hierarchies of race, class, capitalism, gender and geography in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. It aims to expand students’ knowledge of the wide range of neo-colonial practices and policies in the Caribbean from an economic, political, social, and cultural standpoint. Students unfamiliar with Caribbean history will at the start of the course learn about the origins of conquest, colonialism, and slavery in the region from the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries. Next students will engage with the twinned rise of US imperialism and neo-colonialism in the Caribbean through an examination of the US’ role in Cuba, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic. The post-war period was critical to the reformed relationship that French Caribbean territories had with France and students will critically engage with the 1946 vote for departmentalisation and its legacies. Other topics the course will explore include citizenship and politics in the non-sovereign territories, the limits of constitutional decolonisation and Black Power movements, tourism, tax havens, Golden passports (Citizenship by investment), development, the climate crisis and reparations.

20 hours of seminars in the Autumn Term.

This course has a reading week in Week 6 of Autumn Term.

One 2000-word annotated bibliography.

• Adlai Murdoch, H ed., The Struggle of Non-Sovereign Caribbean Territories: Neoliberalism Since The French Antillean Uprisings of 2009 (Rutgers University Press, 2021).
• Bishop, Matthew Louis, The Political Economy of Caribbean Development (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013).
• Bonilla, Yarimar, Non-Sovereign Futures: French Caribbean Politics in the Wake of Disenchantment (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015),
• Childers, Kristen Stromberg, Seeking Imperialism’s Embrace: National Identity, Decolonization, and Assimilation in the French Caribbean (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016),
• Franczak Michael, Global Inequality and American Foreign Policy in the 1970s (2022)
• Getachew, Adom, Worldmaking After Empire: The Rise and Fall of Self-Determination (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2020).
• Hudson, Peter James. Bankers and Empire : How Wall Street Colonized the Caribbean. (Chicago, 2017)
• Manjapra, Kris, Black Ghost of Empire: The Long Death of Slavery and the Failure of Emancipation (London, 2022)
• Maurer, Bill, Recharting the Caribbean: Land, Law, and Citizenship in the British Virgin Islands (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1997).
• Navarro, Tami, Virgin Capital: Race, Gender, and Financialization in the US Virgin Islands (State of New York University Press, 2021).
• Ogle, Vanessa, ‘Archipelago Capitalism: Tax Havens, Offshore Money, and the State, 1950s–1970s’, The American Historical Review 122, no. 5 (1 December 2017)
• Ogle, Vanessa, ‘“Funk Money”: The End of Empires, The Expansion of Tax Havens, and Decolonization as an Economic and Financial Event’, Past & Present 249, no. 1 (1 November 2020): 213–49.
• Ortiz, Angel Israel Rivera and Aarón Gamaliel Ramos, eds., Islands at the Crossroads: Politics in the Non-Independent Caribbean (Kingston: Ian Randle, 2001).
• Sheller, Mimi, Island Futures: Caribbean Survival in the Anthropocene (2020)
• Taiwo, O Olufemi, Reconsidering Reparations (London, 2022)
• Wilder, Gary, Freedom Time: Negritude, Decolonization, and the Future of the World (Durham: Duke University Press, 2015)

Course participation (25%).

Essay (75%, 5000 words) in Winter Term Week 1.