The Black International and the Caribbean Diaspora

In her article in From Toussaint to Tupac, Lara Putnam begins with a notable observation, a large number of the seminal figures in early pan-African thought were from the Caribbean (among them Marcus Garvey, C.L.R. James, and Eric Williams). Putnam links this development to a specific historical moment--the post world war period--and a particular theme, movement. During this period a large number of people from the Anglophone West Indies migrated and moved throughout the Atlantic and circum-Caribbean, from Harlem to Venezuela. The common experiences of anti-black racism and colonial exploitation they encountered laid the ground work for organizations of mutual aid and international cooperation. Even as Afro-Caribbeans moved throughout the circum-Caribbean world, they remained tied together through the black press and interchange of perspectives and ideas.
Putnam's historical actors definitely fit the bill of black international thought laid out in the introduction, "at the core of black internationalism is the ideal of universal emancipation, unbounded by national, imperial, continental, or oceanic boundaries." Putnam, however, grounds this particular outpouring of black international and pan-African thought in a historically specific context in both space and time. The concept of black internationalism is productive in placing this movement in a broader framework, but Putnam resists the tendency to force events, ideas, and people to fit an established model. Her Caribbean internationalism remains historically specific.
While situating her work within the framework of black internationalism, Putnam also articulates the ways that the specific experience of the Caribbean diaspora shaped the articulation of black internationalism. Where ever they moved throughout the hemisphere, Afro-Caribbeans faced discrimination. Their continued interchange and sheer variety of ways in which they experienced discrimination led to the articulation of who was considered within the we who was under attack. Black Caribbean thinkers emphatically defined we as "the Negro race." (123)
Putnam's work is a clear example of the usefulness of concepts like black internationalism to historical inquiry but her work is also a reminder that concepts can never drive the narrative. Regional, historical, and chronological specificity must remain paramount in understanding the motivation and goals of individual historical agents.