ABSTRACT
Colonialism, with all its subaltern protest and revolt and nationalist agendas, was sustained in large measure by its unifying cultural actions and ideas (see Panday 1982; Fanon 1967; Spivak 1986; Mazrui 1990; Said 1993). In the Caribbean instance this dynamic, paradoxical, and sometimes contradictory process provided it with an advanced multiculturalism as well as a working agenda of ethnic democratisation. There is consensus, furthermore, that cricket culture was the site, a complex field of action, where West Indians articulated in a sophisticated way their anti-colonial philosophies within the political parameters of an aggressive egalitarian, multi-ethnic, nationalist project (Patterson 1969; Cashman 1989; Stoddart 1989; Beckles 1995; Beckles and Stoddart 1995). Yet, specific contests in the cultural relations of Empire, as well as post-colonialism, such as those found in the history of English versus West Indian cricket, have not received detailed systematic attention.
