Description: Seeds of Solidarity is a study of British Guiana amid a wave of Caribbean uprisings that brought modern politics to colonial spaces during the 1930s. It explores the historical power of a movement forged by people at the edges of empire during economic, political, and environmental crises. African- and Indian-Guianese youth, women, and men who worked on sugar plantations led a series of labor uprisings, despite attempts to turn these racialized communities against each other. Rather than erasing identities, their 'overlapping diasporas' signify how solidary can emerge without sameness, and how this process challenged the British Empire and reshaped Caribbean politics. This important work unites Caribbean history, African Diaspora and South Asian Diaspora studies, histories of racial capitalism and labor movements, gender studies, and the politics of colonialism and empire in the post-indenture period. It offers a model of resistance in today's era of deepening racial and economic inequality, fascism, and climate emergency.
Brief description: Nicole A. Burrowes is Associate Director of the Rutgers Advanced Institute for Critical Caribbean Studies and Assistant Professor of History at Rutgers University, New Brunswick.
Review Quotes: 'Seeds of Solidarity rewrites global labor history by uncovering the hidden dynamics and potentialities of multiracial working-class rebellion in Depression-era Guyana. The 1935 uprisings not only modeled cross-racial class solidarity but portended a revolutionary social order more just and democratic than the compromised independence which followed. A brilliant historian and breathtaking storyteller attentive to the culture, rhythms, and voices of the people, Nicole Burrowes is the true heir to Walter Rodney.' Robin D. G. Kelley, author of Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination