“The Barclay brothers, who started Barclays Bank, were slave-traders. That is
how they made their money. When the English
outlawed the slave trade, the Barclay brothers went
into banking. It made them even richer.”(Kincaid 25-26)
Learning about the origins of Barclays bank disturbed me. I found out that the founders of one of the banks used so often was founded on the dispossession of Africans and their forced transfer to the Caribbean. The author uses irony to show how despite how Barclays shifted from slave trade to banking, it was still involved in the dispossession, humiliation, and racism against their descendants in British colonies. Barclays Bank is a metaphor for the fact that while things may change on the outside, the inner machinations of oppression stay the same.
Barclays supported other forms of oppression after slavery, including South African Apartheid, collaborating with the Nazis during the Holocaust, the aforementioned colonialism in Antigua, and Zimbabwean Whites’ dispossession in 2000, some of which we studied and others which we have not. Kincaid did not mention these roles in the oppressing of minorities, but had she done so, she would have found a connection between the many traumas of minority groups and figured out the corporate nature of the oppression of not just Antiguans but all peoples, regardless of race.
-Zachary Rosman
I think the metaphor you made about the Barclays Bank fits well with the overall theme of British occupation in Antigua. Kincaid made it extremely clear that even when the British left, what was left was corruption, chaos, and disorder. While the British were operating on ideals of modernization and enlightenment, they left the people of Antigua in their scheme of oppression, permanently branding them.
To add on to the impact that Kincaid had in her writing, there was the mention that Europeans were shocked to find out that corruption had taken over the island. They were the ones who taught them how to be greedy and put success over your morals. After the foreigners came in then left, more foreigners came to do their fancy projects with their fancy currency and the island got wrapped up in this illusion that the island would progress but no longer really their land because the foreigners own most of the land of the small place.