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By Sidney W. Mintz

Abstract

This paper offers a brief description of the history and sociology of the Caribbean region, against which to project a discussion of ethnicity or ethnic difference. The paper's contention is that Caribbean ethnicity, while certainly not unique, has a distinctive character because of the peculiar economic and political history of the region and the position of migrant labor within that history. Limited upward mobility in subtropical, colonial societies devoted mainly to largescale plantation agriculture probably had the effect of intensifying some aspects of ethnicity, rather than absorbing differences within a more monolithic class solidarity.

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