Summary:
Columbus ‘discovered’ the Caribbean, not North America, and it was in the Caribbean that the Amerindians first felt the effects of European steel, gunpowder and (deadlier by far) microbes. The region became a pawn in the European struggle for empire and, later, a significant player in the developing Atlantic economy. Its economic importance rested on a substructure of African slavery, which provided labour for the numerous plantations across the region. However, slaves resisted slavery and, ultimately, the Abolitionist cause was carried successfully, initially in the British parliament and gradually elsewhere. Emancipation did not provide solutions to the ancillary ills of servitude – poverty, exploitation, inequality – and protest and resistance to colonial rule (whether British, Spanish, French, Dutch or Danish) continued. In the twentieth century, the United States largely replaced the old European powers as the dominant player in the area, and sought to intervene when it perceived its interests were threatened.



Gad Heuman is an expert guide to this history, dwelling not only on the political and social struggles but also providing a sense of the development and flowering of Caribbean culture.

• Fresh, new history of the Caribbean, drawing on the fruits of recent research
• Gad Heuman is one of the foremost experts on the history of the Caribbean
• Offers political, social and cultural perspectives

Table of Contents:
The Amerindians and the European patterns of settlement
Sugar and slavery
Slavery, work and the slaves' economy
Neither black nor white
The plantation world
Slave resistance
The Haitian revolution
The abolition debates
Race, racism and equality
From slavery to freedom
Riots and resistance in the aftermath of emancipation
The Africanization of the Caribbean
The American century
Labour protests and the 1930s
The revolutionary Caribbean
Contemporary themes
The cultures of the Caribbean

About the Author(s):
Gad Heuman is Professor of History and has served as Director of the Centre for Caribbean Studies at the University of Warwick. His publications include Between Black and White and The Killing Time. He is the editor of the journal Slavery & Abolition.

Readership:
Undergraduate students of history

Reviews: