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Book Synopsis
This book is about Jock Campbell’s role in the shaping of British Guiana (Guyana) towards the end of Empire. Campbell, the head of the Booker Company which owned most of the sugar plantations in colonial Guyana was a reformer whose Fabian social beliefs drove him to secure major benifits for sugar workers in teh 1950s and 1960s. Clem Seecharan explores the fascinating interplay between Campbell’s programme of reforms and the doctrinaire Marxism of Guyana’s charismatic politician, Cheddi Jagan. Fed by his notion of `bitter sugar’ and an unrelenting hostility to Booker, Jagan exploited the loyalty of Indian sugar workers to foment instability on the plantations and thus undermined Campbell’s mission to alleviate the colony’s bitter plantation legacy. Seecharan provides a rigorous analysis of Campbell – a complex, progressive contradictory and passionate man – and his work in turbulent British Guiana, marked by nationalist stirrings, mobilisation doe decolonisation, the fragmenting of Jagan’s nationalist coalition and descent into racial hatred and violence.

Sweetening Bitter Sugar: Jock Campbell - The Booker Reformer in British Guiana 1934-1966

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    A Paperback by Clem Seecharan

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      View other formats and editions of Sweetening Bitter Sugar: Jock Campbell - The Booker Reformer in British Guiana 1934-1966 by Clem Seecharan

      Publisher: Ian Randle Publishers,Jamaica
      Publication Date: 30/12/2004
      ISBN13: 9789766371937, 978-9766371937
      ISBN10: 9766371938

      Description

      Book Synopsis
      This book is about Jock Campbell’s role in the shaping of British Guiana (Guyana) towards the end of Empire. Campbell, the head of the Booker Company which owned most of the sugar plantations in colonial Guyana was a reformer whose Fabian social beliefs drove him to secure major benifits for sugar workers in teh 1950s and 1960s. Clem Seecharan explores the fascinating interplay between Campbell’s programme of reforms and the doctrinaire Marxism of Guyana’s charismatic politician, Cheddi Jagan. Fed by his notion of `bitter sugar’ and an unrelenting hostility to Booker, Jagan exploited the loyalty of Indian sugar workers to foment instability on the plantations and thus undermined Campbell’s mission to alleviate the colony’s bitter plantation legacy. Seecharan provides a rigorous analysis of Campbell – a complex, progressive contradictory and passionate man – and his work in turbulent British Guiana, marked by nationalist stirrings, mobilisation doe decolonisation, the fragmenting of Jagan’s nationalist coalition and descent into racial hatred and violence.

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