Amy Spry Rush argues that middle-class West Indians embraced British cultural values because they viewed them as a means to become respectable, contributing members and leaders of their own societies, which were not limited to the Caribbean but also included the British Isles. West Indians adopted class and gender hierarchies, classical education, and high culture, the quintessence of Britishness, in order to achieve social and economic mobility within their colonial homelands and to shore up their place within the mother country. West Indians, particularly those migrating to the British Isles, discovered the racial exclusivity there as a less appealing component of Britishness. Caribbean migrants confronted and refashioned the idea that inhabitants of the foreign parts of the Empire could not be partakers of British culture. Although they embraced British class and gender hierarchies, they rejected hierarchical notions of race that excluded their participation in all aspects of British society and culture.

Spry Rush traces how Britishness, as an identity and set of values, shaped and informed the lives of middle-class West Indians to the extent that such individuals became active participants if not collaborators in extending the influence of the British imperial project. Through ten thematic chapters that span 1900–62 and focus on formal education through primary, secondary, and tertiary schools; informal education through radio broadcast services from the British Broadcasting Corporation; royal commemorative ceremonies and rituals; and voluntary and recruited service to the British wartime industries and armed forces during World Wars I and II, Bonds of Empire traces how both local and London-based officials used British institutions to create and maintain colonial loyalty to Britain. Spry Rush, however, concludes that Caribbean colonial populations did not simply accept the culture of their colonizer. In exchange for their loyalty to the crown, West Indians demanded equality with native Britons, which meant equal access to education, equal opportunities, racial inclusiveness, and, by 1962, self-governance.

Chapter 1 details educational initiatives by the British government in hopes of exposing the masses to basic British education: reading, writing, and arithmetic. Through the 1835 Negro Education Grant, the British government funded the construction and staffing of elementary and secondary schools throughout the region. This chapter is extremely helpful in demonstrating the scarcity of education throughout the West Indies before the 1920s, and it highlights predominately missionary and charity-led initiatives to provide education to the West Indian masses. Spry Rush correctly points out that British education initiatives served imperial motives of remaking colonists into the colonizer’s image. Patriotic songs like “Rule Britannia” and the routine salute to the Union Jack were standard parts of the West Indian curriculum. British heroes and heroines became West Indian heroes and heroines; sipping afternoon tea and playing or enjoying a game of cricket became West Indian pupils’ pastimes. Spry Rush concludes that West Indians were “taught to think of themselves not as conquered people, but also as conquerors, as Britons in their own right who shared with native Britons a proud heritage” (40).

It was this thinking process, Spry Rush argues, that led West Indians, who migrated to the British Isles between 1900 and 1950 and volunteered their services to imperial defenses during the two world wars, to demand equal inclusion. Tracing the establishment and activities of the League of Coloured Peoples, chapter 5 explores West Indians’ fight against racial discrimination in England. The league’s main mission was to attack traditional ideas that defined Britishness in opposition to the uncivilized and inferior colonized peoples. League members stressed that being British was about being fair, equal, and just, and discriminating against blacks was contrary to what it meant to be British. The league forged a colonial version of British identity; one that included racial equality.

Spry Rush defines the debates over educational reform in the 1940s and 1950s as continued negotiation and redefinition of West Indians’ ideas of Britishness and who ought to be considered Britons. The debates revolved around whether education should be reformed to serve the needs of the West Indian colonies more practically, as, from an imperial perspective, these were rural, agrarian societies. Prominent West Indians disagreed. They viewed British officials’ efforts to revamp schools’ curriculum as a sinister strategy to keep West Indians in a subordinate position. West Indian critics argued that classical British education would better prepare West Indians for entry into the wider European world and guarantee them advancement from their current humble positions. Protestors also resisted individual efforts, like those of Captain Cutteridge, who began publishing Caribbean textbooks that had a more local content. They viewed Cutteridge’s text that included Caribbean geography, instead of European geography, and African folktales as demeaning and limiting Caribbean people’s opportunities to gain access to the wider world. Spry Rush concludes that middle-class activists protested the inclusion of lessons about the Caribbean because they feared it would undermine their efforts to gain entry into British class structure.

This point, however, appears to be contrary to testimony Spry Rush also presents from teachers and education administrators who testified that the goal of education was to “develop the intellectual capacities of the child,” instead of simply preparing him or her for a particular job (92). Although Spry Rush introduces larger reasoning among West Indians that the goal of receiving a broad-based education, even if heavily steeped in British history, was to expand the horizons of pupils’ minds, she returns to her argument that West Indians protested revising the education curriculum to suit the Caribbean environment because it would thwart middle-class protestors’ desire to “solidify their place within a traditional British class structure they considered their own” (91). Middle-class West Indians saw the advancement of their own class “within the British political structure” as the way forward for the Caribbean (100).

It is with this latter point, West Indians’ continued desire to fit into British framework, that one sees a potential weakness of Bonds of Empire. Although Spry Rush states that the broader purpose of the book is not to look at how Caribbean identity was created in opposition to British identity, the reader nevertheless desires some discussion of how West Indians created their own identity for its own end. Indeed, Spry Rush argues that Caribbean identity was forged alongside British identity; however, one would appreciate a clearer sense of what exactly this Caribbean identity (that did not seek to fit into the British framework) looked like. It would also be helpful to see some discussion about the development of Caribbean patriotic nationalism and the move toward independence. Such an exposition would be particularly helpful in light of the author’s conclusion that West Indians’ identity was an integration of both Britain and the Caribbean and that claims to Britishness were therefore not “incompatible with local patriotism or even with some form of political nationalism” (7). One has a clear understanding of what Britishness meant and how West Indians displayed their loyalty to Britain, but it is not abundantly clear what a Caribbean identity or patriotism entailed. Notwithstanding this issue, Bonds of Empire makes a significant contribution to our understanding of how Caribbean people negotiated their identities, culture, and place of belonging in the complex transition from colonialism to independence.