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Liberty and Equality in Caribbean Colombia, 1770-1835. Aline Helg. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004. Pp. xiv, 363. Illustrations. Maps. Notes. Bibliography. Index. $59.95 cloth; $22.50 paper.
This book, following on the author's well-received Our Rightful Share: The Afro-Cuban Struggle for Equality, 1886-1912 (1995), contains some of the best historical writing on colonial and early independence Caribbean Colombia yet produced. Helg employs a highly useful comparative framework, and the reader is frequently shown points of convergence and divergence between developments in the region and other parts of the Americas, most notably Venezuela, the dominant Andean region in Colombia, Brazil, Cuba, and Haiti, among others. It is meticulously researched, and is sure to be widely read.
The book is open, however, to a couple of objections, and by far the most fundamental of these concerns the very framing of Helg's central questions: Why, she asks, "did Caribbean Colombian lower classes of color not collectively challenge the small white elite during this process [of early nation-formation]? Why did race not become an organizational category in the region? Why did the Caribbean Coast integrate into Andean Colombia without asserting its Afro-Caribbeanness?"...