The New West Indian Guide (NWIG) is a scholarly fully open access journal on the Caribbean, featuring English-language articles in the fields of anthropology, art, archaeology, economics, geography, geology, history, international relations, linguistics, literature, music, political science and sociology, and includes the world’s most complete review section on Caribbean books.

This issue includes an article by Oscar Webber, “An Intolerance of Idleness: British Disaster ‘Relief’ in the Caribbean 1831–1907” examining the concerns that informed British responses to some of the most devastating nature-induced disasters in this period. Though the damages wrought by these events always necessitated some form of humanitarian relief, the survival of labor regimes and the plantation economy always remained the paramount concern of British officials. Matthew Robertshaw’s “Kreyòl anba Duvalier, 1957–1986: A Circuitous Solution to the Creole Problem?” discusses the unexpected progress of Haitian Creole during the Duvalier presidencies. By the time Jean-Claude Duvalier fell from power in 1986 the status of Creole had improved markedly, so much that it had become typical for Haitians to use the language, along with French, in virtually all contexts. A research note by Richard Price & Christopher D.E. Willoughby, “A Harvard Physician’s Reports on an 1857 Visit to the Saamaka” presents documents by Jeffries Wyman regarding his visit to Saamaka and Saa Kiiki Ndyuka in Suriname. According to the authors, Wyman’s brief account suggests that Saamakas’ attitudes toward outside visitors remained remarkably stable, from the time of the 1762 peace treaty until the Suriname civil war of the 1980s.