From Columbus to Castro: The History of the Caribbean, 1492-1969

This book is about 30 million people scattered across an arc of islands - Jamaica, Haiti, Barbados, Antigua, Martinique, Trinidad, among others - seperated by the languages and cultures of their colonizers, but joined together, nevertheless, by a common heritage. For whether French, English, Dutch, Spanish, Danish, or - latterly - American, the nationality of their masters has made only a notional difference to the peoples of the Caribbean. The history of the Caribbean is dominated by the history of slavery; which was inseperable, until recently, from the systematic degradation of labor in the region. Here, for the first time, is definitive work about a profoundly important but neglected and misrepresented area of the world.