Summary
The narrator says that the Antigua she grew up in is very different from the Antigua that tourists see now. This is partly because it is no longer under English colonial control. She argues that what the English did—take over and enslave so much of the world's population—was worse than what any natural disaster could do, and bitterly denounces their colonialism.
She attempts to paint a picture of the Antigua she knew, anyway. All the streets were named after English maritime criminals. There was the Government House, the library on High Street, and the Department of the Treasury. There was also Barclays Bank, which was started by slave traders who soon switched to banking so that they could get even richer. There was the Mill Reef Club, started by North Americans who wanted to live in Antigua but wanted nothing to do with Antiguans, so the only Antiguas allowed to go there were servants. She remembers her fellow Antiguans thinking these people were pigs, as strangers in someone else's home who refused to have anything to do with their hosts.
She tells stories about terrible people who lived in Antigua: a doctor who would make black Antiguans wash dirt off their skin and make sure they didn't smell before he would look at them; a headmistress of a girls' school who forbade any girls born out of wedlock from enrolling, which served its purpose in keeping black children out. At the time, Antiguans did not recognize that this was all racism. They simply thought these people were abhorrently ill-mannered, almost like animals, and often felt superior to them. They had thought the English were supposed to be civilized, and so they wondered if, maybe, these piggish people weren't real English at all.
Kincaid laments that the only language she has to speak of colonialism, this crime that was forced upon her people, is English—the language of the criminals themselves. She feels that the language of the criminal can only explain the crime from the criminal's point of view. It cannot fully contain the horror, injustice, and humiliation felt by the colonized people.
She remembers various other things about growing up in colonial Antigua, including celebrating the long dead Queen Victoria's birthday every year and the whole island going crazy over preparing for English Princess Margaret's visit. During this period, life in Antigua revolved entirely around England.
Next, Kincaid asks a chilling question: have white readers ever wondered why the only thing people like her seem to have learned from them is how to imprison, murder, and govern badly? She recounts the colonial crimes that established these acts as normal—Europeans coming in to take what did not belong to them, robbing and imprisoning people. When these former colonists look back on the places they used to rule now, with people doing the same things to themselves that used to be done to them, they certainly think that it is just these uncivilized people being incapable of maintaining law and order. They will forget their part in the whole setup.
She ends this section by reminding readers that people like her from former colonial nations like Antigua are so hesitant to be called capitalists because it is what the colonizers were: cruel and commanding. They cannot bring themselves to embrace this idea that was so important to the people who ruled and imprisoned them.
Analysis
The first section of A Small Place focused on decrying tourism in modern-day Antigua. This section now shifts its critical focus to colonialism, a defining feature of Antigua's past that Kincaid argues is responsible for much of the island nation's current strife. Antigua had been continuously occupied by Europeans from the 1600s until its independence in 1981, and this historical background provides context for Kincaid's personal stories and critiques.
This section uses blatant, accusatory language to discuss colonialism. Kincaid does not hide her thoughts behind flowery, equivocating prose; she makes it clear that she believes European colonialism was the worst evil inflicted upon the world, and that the occupiers can never be forgiven for the ruthless way they took what was not theirs and enslaved, murdered, and imprisoned everyone in their path. Her accusing tone serves to create a mood of outrage, as well as to heighten the sense of discomfort instilled in the first chapter as readers consider where they fit into this history of injustice.
Though this section still speaks more generally about Antigua's colonial history, readers begin to get a better sense of Kincaid's own Antigua and what it was like to grow up in it. She provides a mental map of the places she knew, outlining the buildings and streets of her Antigua that were so influenced by British rule. She also highlights the troubling fact that, at the time, Antiguans did not realize that the way the foreigners on the island treated them—the doctor, the headmistress, the people who own the Mill Reef Club—was racist. She, along with the other Antiguans around her, attributed this maltreatment to poor manners instead.
This created cognitive dissonance in the minds of Antiguans: on one hand, they were taught to believe that England was an ideal place of beautiful traditions and civilized people who were the pillar of humanity, and yet, on the other hand, the Englishmen they interacted with were rude, poor-mannered, and sometimes outright cruel. Kincaid remarks that in order for these two contradicting perspectives to coexist, some Antiguans managed to convince themselves that these people were not truly English at all, or they would not be so terrible. It was only later, as Kincaid grew up and colonial rule reached its end, that she realized this idealized perspective of England was instilled by the colonial government in order to manipulate Antiguans.
Kincaid uses colonialism to explain why there is such strife in developing countries like Antigua today. She insists that colonizing nations' brutal rule did not set a sound example of governance for native people, resulting in disordered, poorly governed societies after achieving independence. In addition, chaos such as imprisonment and murder are learned behaviors left behind in these former colonies by the colonizers. This explains why the developing nations that struggle the most are almost always places that were once ransacked by colonialism, now left to try to function on their own. The worst part of this, she claims, is that people in these imperialistic nations today see this struggle and attribute it to some inherent inability in the native people themselves—they do not realize the role they played in creating this dysfunction.
