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16 - The Caribbean region: crucible for modern world history

from Part Four - Crossroads regions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 May 2015

By
Alan L. Karras
Edited by
Jerry H. Bentley ,
Sanjay Subrahmanyam  and
Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks
Jerry H. Bentley
Affiliation:
University of Hawaii, Manoa
Sanjay Subrahmanyam
Affiliation:
University of California, Los Angeles
Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee
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Summary

The Caribbean colonies were, and ought to remain, central-not just to scholars of the Western Hemisphere in the early modern world, but also to world historians who can see in this region a microcosm of encounters and exchange that would be replicated time and time again over the next several centuries. After Columbus's voyages both symbolically and historically opened up the Caribbean area to European exploration and settlement, Spanish settlers crossed the ocean and occupied the Greater Antilles. Violence certainly became part of popular perception of the Caribbean region in many European metropoles. Just as pirates dominate modern popular consciousness about the Caribbean region, the association between sugar and slavery dominates the work of historians. The Caribbean region generally disappears from world history after the plantation economy reaches full speed and the last pirates are eradicated. In seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Europeans fought many wars with each other in the Caribbean, as the colonies were dragged into parent countries' conflicts.

Keywords

early-modern silver tradecalico-printingChina's cotton revolutiontechnological transitionsEuropean exceptionalismporcelain prints
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge World History , pp. 393 - 414
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2015

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References

Further reading

Beckles, Hilary and Shepherd, Verene (eds.), Caribbean Slave Society: A Student Reader (Kingston: Ian Randle Publishers, 1991).Google Scholar
Blackburn, Robin, The Making of New World Slavery, From the Baroque to the Modern: 1492–1800 (London: Verso, 1997).Google Scholar
Blackburn, Robin The Overthrow of Colonial Slavery, 1776–1848 (London: Verso, 1988).Google Scholar
Cateau, Heather and Pemberton, Rita (eds.), Beyond Tradition: Reinterpreting the Caribbean Historical Experience (Kingston: Ian Randle Publishers, 2006).Google Scholar
Columbus, Christopher, The Four Voyages, Cohen, J. M. (trans.) (New York: Penguin Classics, 1992).Google Scholar
Crosby, Alfred W., The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1972).Google Scholar
Curtin, Philip, The Atlantic Slave Trade: A Census (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1970).Google Scholar
Curtin, Philip The Rise and Fall of the Plantation Complex: Essays in Atlantic History (Cambridge University Press, 1990).Google Scholar
Deerr, Noel, The History of Sugar (London: Chapman & Hall, 1949–50).Google Scholar
Dubois, Laurent, Avengers of the New World: The Story of the Haitian Revolution (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2004).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dunn, Richard S., Sugar and Slaves: The Rise of the Planter Class in the English West Indies, 1624–1713 (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1972).Google Scholar
Emmer, P. C., The Dutch in the Atlantic Economy, 1580–1880: Trade, Slavery and Emancipation (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1998).Google Scholar
Exquemelin, A. O., The Buccaneers of America (New York: DigiReads, 2010).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Higman, B. W., A Concise History of the Caribbean (Cambridge University Press, 2011).Google Scholar
Karras, Alan L., Smuggling: Contraband and Corruption in World History (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2010).Google Scholar
Karras, Alan L., Sojourners in the Sun: Scots Migration to Jamaica and the Chesapeake, 1740–1820 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1992).Google Scholar
Knight, Franklin, The Caribbean: The Genesis of a Fragmented Nationalism (Oxford University Press, 1978).Google Scholar
McNeill, J. R., Mosquito Empires: Ecology and War in the Greater Caribbean, 1620–1914 (Cambridge University Press, 2010).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Palmié, Stephan and Scarano, Francisco (eds.), The Caribbean: A History of the Region and Its Peoples (University of Chicago Press, 2011).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rediker, Marcus, Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea: Merchant Seamen, Pirates, and the Anglo-American Maritime World (Cambridge University Press, 1987).Google Scholar
Richardson, Bonham, The Caribbean in the Wider World, 1492–1992: A Regional Geography (Cambridge University Press, 1992).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shepherd, Verene, Slavery without Sugar: Diversity in Caribbean Economy and Society since the Seventeenth Century (Gainesville, FL: University of Florida Press, 2002).Google Scholar
Shepherd, Verene, Brereton, Bridget and Bailey, Barbara (eds.), Engendering History: Caribbean Women in Historical Perspective (London: Palgrave McMillan, 1995).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sheridan, Richard, Sugar and Slavery: An Economic History of the British West Indies, 1623–1775 (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974).Google Scholar
Stinchcombe, Arthur, Sugar Island Slavery in the Age of Enlightenment: The Political Economy of the Caribbean World (Princeton University Press, 1995).Google Scholar
Tarrade, Jean, Le Commerce Colonial de la France á la fin de l'Ancien Régime (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1972).Google Scholar
UNESCO, General History of the Caribbean, 6 vols. (London: UNESCO, 1997–2011).Google Scholar
Williams, Eric, Capitalism and Slavery (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1994).Google Scholar
Williams, Eric, From Columbus to Castro: A History of the Caribbean, 1492–1969 (New York: Vintage, 1984).Google Scholar

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