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The environmental history of the Caribbean has been strongly associated with the consequences of sugar cane agriculture and extreme weather phenomena. Consequently, other aspects of environmental change at play in the Caribbean region have remained less known. However, islands such as Anguilla, Barbuda, and Saint Barthélemy had no or very few sugar plantations. The fact that non-sugar producing islands had to find other ways of supporting themselves shaped their environmental history in ways that differed from that of the sugar islands. These alternative environmental histories deserve to be highlighted when presenting the historiography of the Caribbean. In this article, the island of Saint Barthélemy serves as a case study of an island where sugar cane agriculture was absent and tropical storms and hurricanes were of lesser consequence. In outlining the environmental history of Saint Barthélemy during the first decades of Swedish colonial rule, in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, the article shows that the Swedish takeover resulted in environmental changes. Sweden’s ambitions and expectations concerning the improvement of the island were initially high and much effort was put into the development of the economy. The rationale for the Swedish plans was to exploit the few and scarce resources of the island, but it was the harbour that became the most successful endeavour.

This chapter discusses the anti-fascist campaigns orchestrated by the International of Seamen and Harbour Workers (ISH) in Northern Europe during the 1930s. The organisation was a short-lived transnational radical coordinating umbrella body for communist-dominated/controlled trade unions of maritime transport workers established in 1930 during the ‘Third Period’ of the Communist International. The chapter explores the establishment of anti-war committees in Scandinavian harbours during the Manchurian Crisis in 1931–1932; the intensification of agitation and propaganda work of the Interclubs in the Scandinavian countries among German seamen. It highlights the intertwined relationship between local and national campaigns launched by the ISH and its sections in the Scandinavian countries and Comintern policies on a global level. Communist agitation and propaganda among the maritime transport workers was initially organised through the International Propaganda Committee of Transport Workers. There had been a vision of an umbrella organisation for radical maritime labour unions, that is a Red International of Water Transport Workers’ Unions.

Sjömännens och hamnarbetarnas international eller ISH grundades i Hamburg hösten 1930. ISH presenterade sig själv att vara sjötransportarbetarnas kampinternational med ambitionen att framstå som en radikal motpol till den Internationella transportarbetarfederationen ITF. Organisationen kontrollerades av kommunisterna och var en avdelning inom Röda fackföreningsinternationalen. ISH eftersträvade en global räckvidd men skulle verka på ett lokalt och nationellt plan. I de skandinaviska länderna utgjorde sjötransportarbetarnas röda fackföreningsopposition internationalens nationella sektioner vilka ansvarade för genomförandet av nationella och internationella aktioner, såsom strejker, blockader av fartyg och aktioner mot transport av krigsmaterial. Lika ökänd var fackföreningsoppositionen för sitt agerande inom de etablerade sjötransportarbetarförbunden när de försökte att utmanövrera den sittande förbundsledningen. Samtida socialdemokratiska observatörer svartmålade organisationen som en ”kristidsföreteelse” som byggdes på en ”dynghög”, vilket vittnar om den djupa klyfta som gick tvärs igenom arbetarklassen under 1920- och 1930-talet. Boken är den första studien om ISH och dess verksamhet i Nordeuropa, en global historia som utspelade sig i marginalen och utkanten av det politiska och fackliga etablissemanget.