Background
History
The Caribs, who supplanted the Arawaks on Dominica, called the island Waitikubuli, (‘tall is her body’). Columbus sighted it on 3 November 1493, a Sunday (hence the current name), but the Spanish took no interest in the island. It was fought over by the French, British and Caribs. In 1660, the two European powers agreed to leave Dominica to the Caribs, but the arrangement lasted very few years; in 1686, the island was declared neutral, again with little success. As France and England renewed hostilities, the Caribs were divided between the opposed forces and suffered the heaviest losses in consequence. In 1763, Dominica was ceded to Britain, and in 1805, possession was finally settled. Nevertheless, its position between the French colonies of Guadeloupe and Martinique, and the strong French presence over the years, ensured that despite English institutions and language the French influence was never eliminated.
During the 19th century, Dominica was largely neglected and underdevelopment provoked social unrest. Henry Hesketh Bell, the colonial administrator from 1899 to 1905, made great improvements to infrastructure and the economy, but by the late 1930s the British Government’s Moyne Commission discovered a return to a high level of poverty on the island. Assistance to the island was increased with some emphasis put on road building to open up the interior. This, together with agricultural expansion, house building and use of the abundant hydro resources for power, contributed to development in the 1950s and 1960s.
In 1939, Dominica was transferred from the Leeward to the Windward Islands Federation; it gained separate status and a new constitution in 1960, and full internal autonomy in 1967. The Commonwealth of Dominica became an independent republic within the Commonwealth in 1978. The Dominica Labour Party dominated island politics after 1961, ushering in all the constitutional changes. Following Independence, however, internal divisions and public dissatisfaction with the administration led to its defeat by the Dominica Freedom Party in the 1980 elections. The DFP Prime Minister, Miss (now Dame) Mary Eugenia Charles, adopted a pro-business, pro-United States line to lessen the island’s dependence on limited crops and markets. She was re-elected in 1985 and again in 1990, having survived an earlier attempted invasion by supporters of former DLP premier, Patrick John.
In 1995 Dame Eugenia retired at the age of 76, having led her party since 1968. The general elections won by the United Workers Party (UWP) and Mr Edison James was sworn in as Prime Minister. The general elections in 2000 gave the Dominica Labour Party (DLP) 42.9%, the UWP 43.4% and the DFP 13.6% of the vote. The DLP and DFP formed a coalition and on 3 February Mr Rosie Douglas was sworn in as Prime Minister. However, the country was stunned by his death, aged 58, in 2000. He was replaced by his deputy, Pierre Charles, who also died suddenly in January 2004. Charles was replaced by Roosevelt Skerrit, who became the world’s youngest Prime Minister at age 31. He contested and won a close General Election on 5 May 2005.
Economy
Owing to the difficulty of the terrain, only about a quarter of the island is cultivated. Nevertheless, it is self-sufficient in fruit and vegetables and agriculture contributes about 20% to gross domestic product. The main products are bananas (the principal export), coconuts (most of which are used in soap and cooking oil production), grapefruit, limes and other citrus fruits. The opening up of the European market in 1992 affected Dominica’s banana industry. Together with the other Windward Islands producers it has to compete with the large exporters from the US dollar areas, mainly in Latin America. Other crops are under development: coffee, cocoa, mango, citrus and root crops such as dasheen, to diversify away from bananas.
Manufacturing industry is small but takes advantage of locally generated hydroelectricity. Dominica Coconut Products (DCP) is Dominica’s largest business. Labour intensive electronic assembly plants, data processing and clothing manufacturing are being encouraged for their foreign exchange earnings potential. Tourism is being promoted with the emphasis officially on nature tourism. Total stayover visitor arrivals are around 79,000 a year. The aim is for the development of sustainable long-term niche tourism projects.
People
The island’s mountainous terrain discourages the creation of large estates and so there are many small farmers. In Dominica, over 2,000 descendants of the original inhabitants of the Caribbean, the once warlike Caribs, live in the Carib Territory, a 3,700-acre ‘reservation’ established in 1903 in the northeast. There are no surviving speakers of the Carib language on the island. The total population is otherwise almost entirely of African descent, of whom about 29% live in the parish of St George, around Roseau. Other parishes are more sparsely populated. The parish of St John, in which Portsmouth (the second largest town) is situated contains only about 5,000 people, or 7% of the population.
Like St Lucia, Dominica was once a French possession and although English is the official tongue, most of the inhabitants also speak Kwéyòl (French-based patois). In the Marigot/Wesley area a type of English called kokoy is used; the original settlers of the area, freed slaves, came from Antigua and are mostly Methodists. Catholicism predominates, though there are some Protestant denominations and an increasing number of fundamentalist sects, imported from the USA.
Culture
Popular culture reflects the mixture of native and immigrant peoples. While most places on Dominica have a Carib, a French or an English name, the indigenous Carib traditions and way of life have been localized in the northeast, giving way to a dominant amalgam of Creole (French and African) tradition. Dominicans are proud of their local language, which is increasingly being used in print. A dictionary was published in 1991 and updated in 2004 by the Konmité pou Etid Kwéyòl (Committee for Creole Studies). You can get hold of this at the FrontLine Bookshop, Independence St, Roseau.
There is a thriving music scene, helped by the WICE recording studio in Dominica. Popular local bands include WCK, First Serenade and Midnight Groovers, who you can often catch at discos and nightclubs. Midnight Groovers is led by Phillip ‘Chubby’ Mark, known as the ‘King of Cadence-Lypso’. Anthony Gussie leads his band Black Affairs Plus, and sings in French, English, Kwéyòl and Kokoy.
Books
The best known of Dominica’s writers are the novelists Jean Rhys and Phyllis Shand Allfrey. Rhys (1894-1979), who spent much of her life in Europe and wrote mainly about that continent; only flashback scenes in Voyage in the Dark (1934), her superb last novel, Wide Sargasso Sea (1966, which was made into a film in 1991), her uncompleted autobiography, Smile Please, and resonances in some of her short stories draw on her West Indian experiences. Allfrey published only one novel, The Orchid House (1953); In the Cabinet was left unfinished at her death in 1986. Allfrey was one of the founder members of the Dominica Labour Party, became a cabinet minister in the short-lived West Indian Federation, and was later editor of the Dominica Herald and Dominica Star newspapers. The Orchid House was filmed by Channel 4 (UK) in 1990 for international transmission as a four-part series.
For a history of the island, by Lennox Honychurch (ISBN 0-333-62776-8).
