Cold War in a Hot Zone

The United States Confronts Labor and Independence Struggles in the British West Indies

Gerald Horne

"I regard this book as a major contribution to regional scholarship about the Caribbean, pointing toward a little-understood area of U.S. global policy and its effects."
—Paul Buhle, Departments of History and American Civilization, Brown University

Beginning just before the start of World War II and ending during the Cold War, Gerald Horne's masterful examination of British Guiana and the British West Indies details the collapse of British colonial structures and the corresponding rise of U.S. regional influence. Horne reveals the realities of race and color in the Caribbean under colonial rule, while the colonizers-Britain, France, Germany, Japan, and the United States-battled each other for hegemony on the world stage.

Horne seamlessly weaves a variety of untapped archival sources-including personal correspondence and newspaper stories from three continents-with a wide range of scholarly publications, journals and memoirs to illustrate an important, yet underexamined, regional history in a global context.

Highlighting the centrality of the "labor question" in relation to colonial rule, Cold War in a Hot Zone is a compelling exposé of the racial dimensions of U.S. foreign policy and anti-communist initiatives during WWII and the Cold War that followed.

Reviews

"Cold War in a Hot Zone is a masterful examination of British Guiana and the region known historically as the British West Indies. Utilizing the voices of well-situated historical actors, Gerald Horne gives witness to the collapse of British colonial structures and the corresponding rise of U.S. regional influence. Strikingly, this book reveals the intense level and infusion of race and color under colonial rule, even as British, French, German, Japanese, and American colonial powers fought each other for hegemony. Horne paints a compelling expose of U.S. foreign policy and anti-communism, especially the racial dimensions associated with the Cold War, highlighting the centrality of the so-called labor question in relation to colonial rule, making a new and original contribution to the literature. Each chapter is compelling, yet the whole is greater than the sum of its parts."
—Joseph Wilson, Professor of Political Science and Director of the Graduate Center for Worker Education, Brooklyn College

"Cold War in a Hot Zone is extremely well researched and surprisingly lively…The author’s documentation of the racism on American military bases in the region is solid…he gives us many intriguing details."
—Foreign Service Journal

"Horne details a comprehensive history of the political and economic struggles of the islands and traces the collapse of British colonialism and the rise of U.S. influence in the Caribbean. Horne’s extraordinary expose, rich with historical data on the political parties, their leaders, and their federations, reads like an encyclopedia on ‘everything you would ever want to know’ about these islands, and should serve as a main text for Caribbean history, politics, and economics of the region from the 1930s to the end of the Cold War."
—Multicultural Review

Introduction

Chapter 1 Early Organizing
Chapter 2 Big Islands/Big Problems
Chapter 3 The Labor of War
Chapter 4 When Labor Organizes
Chapter 5 Militant Jamaica
Chapter 6 Washington Confronts the West Indies
Chapter 7 Labor Will Rule?
Chapter 8 Cold War in a Hot Zone
Chapter9 The Left Retreats
Chapter 10 Small Islands/Huge Impact
Chapter 11 Militant British Guiana
Chapter 12 Barbados vs. British Guiana
Conclusion
Epilogue

About the Author(s)

Gerald Horne is Moores Professor of History and African-American Studies at the University of Houston.

Subject Categories

Latin American/Caribbean Studies
Labor Studies and Work
African American Studies