Robert BuddanA NUMBER OF recent issues have conspired to motivate this article.First, we begin a new year with the weight of the economy heavy on our minds. Government seems resolved to get the private sector active to restore the international credibility of the post-election economy. Second, Robert Stephens' Gleaner article of December 27, 2002 points to a great opportunity for Jamaica to develop its Historic Triangle of Port Royal, Kingston and Spanish Town which would spur on the economy. Mr. Stephens is a most visionary private sector leader. Third, The Gleaner has decided to run a series of articles on Jamaica's first 500 years, making us look at our (economic and social) potential. Fourth, economist Dennis Morrison has raised a central question that lies at the heart of economic development the ability of our leading economic class to create development.
There is a link between all of these. Port Royal, Kingston and certain other parishes have provided evidence from the last 500 years of the great potential of the Jamaican economy. The missing ingredient to sustainable development has been a developmental class. Port Royal, Kingston and Spanish Town continue to present us with great potential for development, but the question remains, do we have the economic class capable of taking the lead?
There have been four periods of great economic opportunity for Jamaica.
PORT ROYAL, 1660-1692
Rebecca Tortello summed up Port Royal's 30-year economic pre-eminence: "by the late 17th century the town had developed into the most important commercial centre in the English colonies. Port Royal's location in the middle of the Caribbean made it ideal for trade." It still does. But it lacked a developmental class. It was a town of small artisans. More importantly, it was a military city of adventurers and pirates who saw military rather than trading advantages in the town's location. As Miss Tortello reminds us, it was a town of gambling, drinking and whoring. It was not a place of industry. Even on the day of the great earthquake, the pastor left his sermon at St. Peter's Church to go drinking at a tavern.
KINGSTON, 1720-1780
Kingston became a great harbour city made wealthy by trade, particularly trade in slaves, sugar and supplies for plantations. A wealthy merchant class developed. Kingston became a major port city in the Americas. In fact, historian Trevor Burnard found evidence that Kingston was wealthier than the wealthiest emerging colonial cities in North America like Philadelphia and Charleston. There were Kingston families that were among the richest in the Caribbean and North America. As Miss Tortello tells us, one of the first Chambers of Commerce in the New World was founded in Kingston in 1774.
Yet, Kingston's merchant class was not a developmental class. There were signs of entrepreneurship developing but the merchants worked mainly on commission to British merchants and absentee businessmen who gradually became dominant after 1750. Kingston merchants traded in slaves and goods for the plantations. The profits were sent to or spent in England. The Kingston merchants had a concept of promoting estates but no vision of national development.
THE PLANTATION ECONOMY, 1750-1800
Kingston merchants, English absentee plantation owners, and the English monarchs' business in the slave trade, turned Jamaica into Britain's leading sugar colony between 1750 to the end of the century, surpassing Barbados. Parishes like St. James and Westmoreland became wealthy. Sugar and slaves were such big business that Jamaica imported the most slaves and exported the most sugar. This was the high point of the plantation economy.
It was in these three periods that the earliest opportunities for Jamaica's development were laid. Development was hurt by natural disasters like the Port Royal earthquake and the earthquake/great fire of Kingston in 1907. But even worse, in no case did Jamaica have a nationally-oriented development class like Barbados had. As a result, Port Royal did not have the capacity to rebuild after the earthquake and the city slipped away into the shadows of history. Kingston's high life and the plantations came crashing down after the Sugar Duties Act of 1846. This Act opened up competition in the sugar market which the local planters and merchants failed to successfully compete in. In fact, from the Navigation Act of 1651 to the Sugar Duties Act of 1848, the Jamaican economy existed under favourable protection. Once that protection was removed, the planter class sank.
A period of crisis set in. The money fuelled by the sugar revolution was sent back to Britain to assist in that country's industrial revolution. There was no reinvestment in Jamaica and no Jamaican industrial revolution. Also, while the 'white dominions' of Australia and New Zealand were being given self-government in the 1840s, the British refused to grant greater self-government and broader civil and political rights to the 'black colonies' in the West Indies. The opportunity for industrial development and greater democracy was passed over.
One economist estimated that the average rate of economic growth of Jamaica between Emancipation in 1838 and the island wide labour riots of 1938 was zero. During that period also, rather than more representational government, the planter class chose to abolish the island's assembly in preference to direct rule from Britain, fearing black demands for more rights after the Morant Bay Rebellion. This period marked a critical failure of the leading economic and political classes to modernise economy and politics.
INDUSTRIALISATION-BY-INVITATION, 1950S TO 1960S
This was the fourth period of economic development. Investments in newly discovered bauxite, the development of manufacturing, and the creation of an industrial policy by the state for the first time finally came under PNP and JLP governments. These governments made the greatest positive difference in the last fifty years in social, economic and political progress compared to what the colonial governments and pirate/planter/merchant classes achieved in the previous 450 years. The political class rather than the economic classes made this difference.
The Jamaican economy was one of the fastest growing economies in the world in these decades. But most of this growth was sponsored by the state and foreign investment, not the domestic economic class. Once again, protectionism and dependence on the state sheltered the local business class. But when this class was asked to be more independent and developmental, it failed to spur on growth.
A STRATEGY FOR THE PRESENT
This brings us to the present. Port Royal, Kingston and Spanish Town owed their historical development to piracy, slavery and sugar. In none of these cases was there a developmental class converting the opportunities into sustainable development. Capital was not reinvested for long-term development. These are precisely the cities that have since decayed. They failed to industrialise and commercialise the way Philadelphia and Charleston have.
But these very sites have great historical value for immediate redevelopment. Today the global and national cultural markets have huge potential that would make these zones the focus of truly national development in a way they never did before. Our historic capitals have made others wealthy. They can now be our capitals of capital. The question that must be asked based on Robert Stephens' experience with trying to raise capital and Dennis Morrison's statement about class leadership is, do we have an economic class that can revive these areas as zones of future development or must we (and will this class) continue to rely on the state to plan, raise capital and provide infrastructure for development?
While we await a response from the private sector, we encourage the state to play its role. Mr. Stephens believes, and I agree, that the Urban Development Corporation (UDC) needs to bring together its plans for the redevelopment of Kingston, Port Royal and Spanish Town into one rather than separating each as is the present approach. Second, the UDC needs to develop an exciting marketing plan to sell to the private sector. It does not have to start this from scratch. Robert Stephens and Pragma already have the nuts and bolts worked out. The truth is that the private sector should develop its plans to take to the government. But since it lacks initiative, the UDC should take the lead.
The role of the state comes together in this kind of project under Prime Minister Patterson and Dr. Vin Lawrence. The role of the private sector comes together under Mr. Stephens and far-sighted private sector investors. They must form the core of a visionary group of public and private sector leaders. Many successful countries operate according to a national mission shared by influential state and business leaders. It is their will rather than impersonal market forces that shape long-term development. The Prime Minister has jump-started the redevelopment project for Kingston under Dr. Lawrence. Mr. Stephens' timely article reminds us of the need for an integrated approach. Let us hope that Dr. Lawrence's report in January will be as bold and ambitious as the Historic Triangle requires.
Robert Buddan is a lecturer in the Department of Government, UWI, Mona. E-mail: rbuddan@uwimona.edu.jm Þ.
