Reviews - Colin A. Palmer, Eric Williams & The Making of the Modern Caribbean (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006), pp. xii+354, $34.95, hb.

Abstract

of political participation, economic progress and social uplifting and, in fact, found their own ways to construct their own notions of citizenship on a daily basis (p. 170). The reality of the plural society could not be avoided. Individually and collectively these three studies constitute monumental contributions to the historical literature. Although most pertinent to the history of the Dominican Republic, they offer highly sophisticated insights into the complex process of state formation and nation-building. Turits demolishes the concept of Sultanistic regimes based on the case study of Rafael Trujillo. Peguero illustrates how Trujillo effectively blended military culture with civilian popular culture to reconstruct society. Martínez-Vergne demonstrates that the discourse of state and nation had roots way back in the nineteenth century and that Dominican nationhood and culture resulted from the unstable dynamic reciprocity of class, race, colour, condition and international circumstances.