A Brief History of the Caribbean

Description

This comprehensive volume takes the reader and student through more than five hundred years of Caribbean history, beginning with Columbus’s arrival in the Bahamas in 1492.

A Brief History of the Caribbean traces the people and events that have marked this constantly shifting region, encompassing everything from economic booms and busts to epidemics, wars, and revolutions, and bringing to life such important figures as Sir Francis Drake, Blackbeard, Toussaint Louverture, Fidel Castro, the Duvaliers, and Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

This superbly written history, revised and updated, with new chapters that reflect the islands’ most recent social, economic, and political developments, is a work of impeccable scholarship. Featuring maps, charts, tables, and photographs, it remains the ideal guide to the region and its people.List of Tables
List of Maps
Preface
Part One: The Caribbean Under Spanish Rule
1. The Enduring Environment and the First Islanders
2. Discovery of the Islands
3. Pirates Fight for Spanish Gold
4. Spain’s Caribbean Colonies
Part Two: Northern Europeans Come to Stay
5. The Dutch Empire
6. Settlement of the Lesser Antilles
7. The Buccaneers of Jamica, Saint-Domingue, and the Bahamas
8. War and Piracy, 1665-1720
Part Three: The Sugar Empire
9. Sugar Rules the Islands
10. The World of the Slaves
11. England and France Struggle to Control the Islands
12. Runaways and Rebels
Part Four: The Abolition of Slavery and the Challenges of Freedom
13. The British Colonies
14. The Spanish Islands Fight for Freedom
15. Hispaniola and the Leeward Islands
Part Five: Poverty and Progress in the Caribbean Since 1914
16. Cuba During the 20th Century
17. The Dominican Republic and Haiti
18. Colonialism’s Mixed Blessings
19. The British Colonies Gain Independence
20. Jamaica, Trinidad, Barbados, and the Bahamas Since Independence
21. The English-Speaking Eastern Caribbean States

Appendix: Maps
Notes
Suggestions for Further Reading
Photo Credits
Index

Jan Rogozinski is the author of Caste, Power, and Law: Social Conflict in Fourteenth-Century Montpellier; Honor Among Thieves: Captain Kidd, Henry Every, and the Pirate Democracy in the Indian Ocean; and A Brief History of the Caribbean: From the Arawak and the Carib to the Present. He earned an MA and a PhD from Princeton University, and has taught history courses at universities in Cambridge, Chicago, Miami, and New York. He lives in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.US

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