Preface

• Author: Anthony J. Payne
• Profession: Professor of Politics, University of Sheffield, UK. He is the author of several books on Caribbean politics and international relations
• Pages: 9-10

Origins and Establishment 1961–73: The Vision of an Economic Community | ix

I published the first edition of this book with Manchester University

Press many years ago in 1980. It was based on my doctoral thesis and

constituted my first ever book on the politics, political economy and

international relations of the Caribbean. The book was only ever

published in hardback format and the truth is that it was never effectively

marketed in the Caribbean region itself. I am very pleased therefore

that Ian Randle has given me this opportunity to re-publish the core of

the book specifically for a Caribbean readership. I would like to thank

him too for all he has done for academic publishing in the region.

The original structure and text of the book have been largely retained,

with adjustments only where some observations have obviously been

rendered out-of-date. I have also added a completely new chapter (in

Part III) that seeks to bring the CARICOM story more or less up to the

present and includes discussion of the move to a single market and

economy. I hope therefore that the book will indeed stand as a genuine

political history of the formation and subsequent development of

CARICOM over the period from 1961 to early 2007.

I have made many friends and acquired many debts in many years of

involvement in the study of the Caribbean and I will not seek to name

them all here. But there is one person whom I should mention and

thank publicly. He is Professor Gladstone ‘Charles’ Mills, former

Professor of Government, Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences, and

much else at the University of the West Indies campus at Mona in Jamaica.

Charles has now passed away, but I still remember him so well. He

looked after me when I first came to UWI in 1975 to begin research for

my PhD and he retained a constant interest in what I was doing, greeting

me warmly and offering unstinted and invaluable assistance every time I

Preface