History Of The Caribbean

A compelling account of Caribbean history from colonization to slavery and revolution, through the tumult of hurricanes and climate change.

An “illuminating” survey of Caribbean history from pre-Columbian times to the twenty-first century (Los Angeles Times). Combining fertile soils, vital trade routes, and a coveted strategic location, the islands and surrounding continental lowlands of the Caribbean were one of Europe’s earliest and most desirable colonial frontiers. The region was colonized over the course of five centuries by a revolving cast of Spanish, Dutch, French, and English forces, who imported first African slaves and later Asian indentured laborers to help realize the economic promise of sugar, coffee, and tobacco. The Caribbean: A History of the Region and Its Peoples offers an authoritative one-volume survey of this complex and fascinating region. This groundbreaking work traces the Caribbean from its pre-Columbian state through European contact and colonialism to the rise of U.S. hegemony and the economic turbulence of the twenty-first century. The volume begins with a discussion of the region’s diverse geography and challenging ecology and features an in-depth look at the transatlantic slave trade, including slave culture, resistance, and ultimately emancipation. Later sections treat Caribbean nationalist movements for independence and struggles with dictatorship and socialism, along with intractable problems of poverty, economic stagnation, and migrancy. Written by a distinguished group of contributors, The Caribbean is an accessible yet thorough introduction to the region’s tumultuous heritage which offers enough nuance to interest scholars across disciplines. In its breadth of coverage and depth of detail, it will be the definitive guide to the region for years to come. Praise for The Caribbean “The editors of this volume have successfully assembled a survey of historical and contemporary issues which serves as an excellent introductory text for newcomers to the region, as well as a resource for more experienced researchers searching for a concise reference to any historical period.” —Journal of Caribbean History “This collection provides an engaging introduction to the history of a region defined by centuries of colonial domination and popular struggle. In these essays readers will recognize the Caribbean as a garden of social catastrophe and a grim incubator of modern global capitalism, as well as of people’s continuous attempts to resist, endure, or adapt to it. Scholars and students will find it to be a very useful handbook for current thinking on a vital topic.” —Vincent Brown, professor of history and of African and African American studies, Duke University

In Empire's Crossroads, Carrie Gibson offers readers a vivid, authoritative and action-packed history of the Caribbean. For Gibson, everything was created in the West Indies: the Europe of today, its financial foundations built with sugar money: the factories and mills built as a result of the work of slaves thousands of miles away; the idea of true equality as espoused in Saint Domingue in the 1790s; the slow progress to independence; and even globalization and migration, with the ships passing to and fro taking people and goods in all possible directions, hundreds of years before the term 'globalization' was coined. From Cuba to Haiti, from Dominica to Martinique, from Jamaica to Trinidad, the story of the Caribbean is not simply the story of slaves and masters - but of fortune-seekers and pirates, scientists and servants, travellers and tourists. It is not only a story of imperial expansion - European and American - but of global connections, and also of life as it is lived in the islands, both in the past and today.

More centrally focused on the Caribbean than any other survey of the region, Caribbean History examines a wide range of topics to give students a thorough understanding of the region's history. The text favors a traditional, largely chronological approach to the study of Caribbean history, however, because it is impossible to be entirely chronological in the complex agglomeration of often disparate historical experiences, some thematic chapters occupy the broadly chronological framework. The author creates a readable narrative for undergraduates that contains the most recent scholarship and pays particular attention to the U.S.-Caribbean connection to more fully relate to students.

Examines the economic history of the Caribbean, and is the first analysis to span the whole region.

The islands of the Caribbean are remarkably diverse, environmentally and culturally. Ranging from low limestone islands to volcanic islands with mountainous peaks, from rainforests to desert habitats, they are home to a mosaic of indigenous communities and to the descendants of Europeans, Africans, and Asians. Yet this diversity has become homogenized, for both the tourist and the historian. For instance, it was assumed that every new prehistoric culture had developed out of the culture that preceded it. Furthermore, the overly simplistic distinction between the "peaceful Arawak" and the "cannibal Carib," which forms the structure for James Michener's Caribbean, still dominates popular notions of precolonial Caribbean societies. This book documents the diversity and complexity that existed in the Caribbean prior to the arrival of Europeans, and immediately thereafter. The diversity results from different origins, different histories, different contacts between the islands and the mainland, different environmental conditions, and shifting social alliances. Organized chronologically, from the arrival of the first humans - the paleo-Indians - in the sixth millennium BC to early contact with Europeans, The Caribbean before Columbus presents a new history of the region based on the latest archaeological evidence. The authors also consider cultural developments on the surrounding mainland, since the islands' history is a story of mobility and exchange across the Caribbean Sea, and possibly the Gulf of Mexico and Florida Straits. The result is the most up-to-date and comprehensive survey of the richly complex cultures who once inhabited the six archipelagoes of the Caribbean. -- from back cover.

A concise and authoritative history of the entire region covering the larger nations of the Bahamas, Cuba, Jamaica, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico and Trinidad and Tobago as well as the smaller islands of the Eastern Caribbean and the French, British, and Dutch territories.