The Caribbean - HEUMAN GAD

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.