Passing the Torch? Anglo-American Encounters in the British West Indies and Negotiating White Supremacy, c. 1865–1914

• Published in: Journal of world history Vol. 34; no. 1; pp. 15 - 45
• Main Author: Goodall, Alex
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Honolulu University of Hawai'i Press 01.03.2023; University of Hawaii Press
• Subjects: 19th century; 20th century; Accounts; British imperialism; Colonialism; Crises; Earthquakes; Embargoes & blockades; Geopolitics; History; Identity politics; Natural disasters; Postcolonialism; Race; Rapprochement; Sociability; Sovereignty; Tourism; Travel industry; United States foreign relations; White supremacy; World War I; United States; United Kingdom; Caribbean Islands; Venezuela; British West Indies; United Kingdom > UK; Jamaica; United States > US
• DOI: 10.1353/jwh.2023.0001
• ISSN: 1045-6007; 1527-8050

This article explores encounters between U.S. tourists and British imperial actors in the British West Indies in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Drawing on published traveller accounts from the period, it argues that literary cross-fertilization and practices of colonial sociability encouraged shared understandings of the Caribbean framed around visions of global white supremacy. Although these supported the Anglo-Saxonist project that underpinned the geopolitical rapprochement between the two powers between the 1890s and First World War, there were also tensions and disagreements, especially over which nation was best placed to defend the racial order in the Caribbean in the new century. As the volume of U.S. tourists grew, these disagreements became clearer, as revealed in the accounts given of the aftermath of the diplomatic crisis that followed the Kingston earthquake of 1907. Traveller accounts on the ground contrasted with efforts in Washington and London to resolve the crisis amicably. In this sense, the cultural politics of inter-imperial sociability did not always perfectly align with geopolitical imperatives. KEYWORDS: British West Indies, Anglo-American relations, history of tourism, U.S. expansion, imperial encounters.