This reissue of an 1894 pamphlet, with an excellent introduction by Guyanese historian Clem Seecharan, celebrates Joseph Ruhomon as the first Indian intellectual in British Guiana, now Guyana. He wrote at a time, Seecharan notes, when "self-deprecation was an instinct, . . . [and so] the construction of this essay was an admirable accomplishment". This work, Seecharan adds, "belongs to the Caribbean intellectual tradition".

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...