Jason C. Parker. 2008. Brother's Keeper: The United States, Race, And Empire in the British Caribbean, 1937-1962

Jason C. Parker. 2008. Brother's Keeper: The United States, Race, and Empire in the British Caribbean, 1937-1962. New York: Oxford University Press. xi, 248 pp. ISBN: 978-0-19533202-5. With the publication of this book, Jason C. Parker makes an authoritative contribution to the burgeoning literature on the United States and the decolonization of the British West Indies. In his pioneering book, Ambivalent Anti-Colonialism: The United States and the Genesis of West Indian Independence, 1940-1964 (1994), Cary Fraser acknowledged that his study could not be considered definitive but had instead been conceived "as a method of opening the subject to wider scrutiny" (p. 4) It is Parker's impressive achievement, fourteen years after the publication of Fraser's study, to significantly advance the examination of the complex tripartite relationships between the United States, the United Kingdom, and the British Caribbean in the process of decolonization. Central to this enterprise is his mastery of the extensive manuscript and archival sources located in twenty-two archives in seven countries. This has allowed him to reconstruct the changing metropolitan policies from multiple perspectives and focus attention on the contribution of "actors on the ground" to the shaping of those policies.