Description
Book SynopsisThe first book on women's political history in Belize,
From Colony to Nation demonstrates that women were creators of and activists within the two principal political currents of twentieth-century Belize: colonial-middle class reform and popular labor-nationalism.
Trade Review"Macpherson succeeds brilliantly... [Her] book is the first significantly new contribution to Belizean historiography in decades. Much as Bolland, Ashdown, and Shoman overturned an earlier model of official history, Macpherson has both built upon and revised interpretations received from them. Belizean women emerge in her account as central political actors in their own right, often taking up mobilizations abandoned by male workers or sustaining popular movements when male leadership was timid, compliant, or divided... One informant, in recounting her youthful confrontation with a British governor declared, "I was never a coward woman." Macpherson's history accords such steadfast determination a central role in Belize's emergence as an independent nation, and does so with meticulous research and profound empathy for her subjects."-American Historical Review American Historical Review "Macpherson brings an innovative, unapologetically revisionist perspective to her project, offering the first work to theorize the political subjectivities of women in Belize and thereby significantly raising the theoretical stakes of the historiography of Central America's understudied Caribbean coast."-Michael Stone, Hispanic American Historical Review -- Michael Stone Hispanic American Historical Review "Macpherson provides a voice to the women of Belize engaged in the twentieth-century struggle for independence, an underappreciated political struggle still underway a quarter century after the establishment of the nation-state of Belize."-Michael J. Pisani, Latin Americanist -- Michael J. Pisani Latin Americanist "With her grounded research and deep interest in the subject, Anne Macpherson provides detailed insight into the political life of actors and actresses of the Belizean national movement."-Dorothee Marie-Louise Dopfer, Iberoamericana -- Dorothee Marie-Louise Dopfer Iberoamericana
Table of ContentsContents
List of Illustrations
List of Maps
List of Tables
Acknowledgments
List of Abbreviations
Introduction: “Never a Coward Woman”
1. The Making of a Riot: Women, Wages, and War on the Home Front, 1912-1919
2. A Fragile Peace: Colonial Reform, Garveyism, and the Black Cross Nurses, 1920-1930
3. Hurricane from Below: Popular Protests, the Labourers and Unemployed Association, and the Women’s League, 1931-1941
4. Modernizing Colonialism: Development, Discipline, and Domestication, 1935-1954
5. A New Paterfamilias: The Creation and Control of Popular Nationalism, 1949-1961
6. Negotiating Nationalist Patriarchy: Party Politics, Radical Masculinity, and the Birth of Belizean Feminism, 1961–1982
Conclusion: Gender and History in the Making of Modern Belize
Notes
Bibliography
Index
