Jamaican Harvest was produced as an educational film, intended for non-theatrical distribution, and as with many of the Gaumont-British Instructional films, additional teaching notes – the ‘G.B.I. Film Handbook’ – were provided in support of the film.

The Handbook, which catered for Jamaican Harvest and another Frank Bundy West Indian picture, Grape-Fruit, noted that this ‘is one of a series designed to show representative activities and products of the British West Indies’ (G.B.I. Film Handbook, 1938, 4). Bundy and two other cameramen had undertaken a six month tour ‘with the blessing of the West India committee’ in 1936, which was initially intended to produce 14 separate films (Daily Gleaner, 15 August 1936, 23). These initial lofty ambitions, which included producing two versions of each film for theatrical use and for schools, do not appear to have been realised. The Journal of Education in 1939 listed Jamaican Harvest alongside Tropical Lumbering, Pleasure Trove in Trinidad and Petroleum in Trinidad as one of four educational films relating to the West Indies, but it was also one of the earliest films, as its opening title notes, to be ‘approved by the Royal Empire Society’ (Journal of Education Vol. 71, 107).

In a letter to The Times in June 1938, Archibald Weigall, the Chairman of Council for the Royal Empire Society, explained that the society ‘has recently formed a committee, in consultation with the well-known producers of educational films, the Gaumont-British Instructional Limited’. When the Geography Committee at Monthly Film Bulletin reviewed Jamaican Harvest, it considered the film as a teaching aid for geography, yet Weigall had grander aspirations and viewed the role of the Committee in political terms. He argued that ‘Democracy is in peril because its ideals are hard to formulate and difficult to realise’, and a knowledge of the Empire – ‘our past, our present, our hopes for the future’ – seems ‘essential if the British Empire is to survive in the world of to-day’ (The Times, 9 June 1938, 10).

‘The urgent need’, wrote Weigall, ‘is to present the story of the Empire as a whole in the most vivid and comprehensive manner to boys and girls … in order that as they grow older they have a reasoned foundation for their political faith’. Weigall suggested that ‘for this purpose, the obvious medium is film’, in particular ‘a series of short teaching films, embodying the technique of the moving diagram and the moving map combined with moving pictures’.

The Film Handbook outlined the likely exhibition sites and pedagogical role of Jamaican Harvest, suggesting that it could be used either as a ‘classroom film in Senior, Central and the middle forms of Secondary schools’ or as ‘a background film for general educational purposes in Adult Evening Institutes, Continuation Schools, Public Libraries and Museums and at meetings of clubs and other organisations’ (G.B.I. Film Handbook, 1938, 2). Monthly Film Bulletin explained that there was a sound and mute version for hire and suggested that the film would be suitable ‘for children of ten and over’ (MFB, 1940, 100).

The Film Handbook listed a series of questions – ‘describe the growth of the tree and draw pictures to illustrate important stages of the growth’ – that students could address after viewing the film. The handbook also provided information about Jamaica, noting that less than 2 per cent of the population was white, that bananas account for ‘over half the total value of exports’ and that the crop is ‘often uncertain owing to the danger of hurricanes’ (G.B.I. Film Handbook, 1938, 4-5).

Jamaican Harvest, intended as a pedagogical tool endorsing the continuation of the Empire to British audiences, was filmed and released at a time of enormous worker unrest in the Caribbean. The unrest in Jamaica reached its apex in May and June 1938, as strikes by dock labourers escalated to violent protests across plantations and towns. The Times explained these strikes in economic terms, stating that ‘where 100 labourers are required, close upon 2,000 are there clamouring for employment’. ‘Many of that class who are given work for three weeks are compelled to remain idle for six months or more’ the paper added, ‘This is the main cause of discontent in the island, and upon discontent agitators feed. Conditions are equally bad among the middle class’ (The Times, 21 May 1938). The strikes and protests were also however a clear attack on the Empire and on British colonialism, and out of this civil strife grew organised labour movements and, in particular, West Indian nationalism.