This major textbook survey, first published in 1992, explains how the Caribbean's present geography is intimately tied to the past. The Caribbean was Europe's first colony, its landscapes transformed to produce tropical staples and its decimated aboriginal populace replaced with African slaves. As European power has waned in the Caribbean, it has been replaced by the geopolitical domination of the United States. Professor Richardson examines this colonisation and recolonisation of the Caribbean during the past half millennium, portraying a region victimised by natural hazards, soil erosion, over population and gunboat diplomacy. Most importantly, he explains the ways in which Caribbean peoples have reacted and adapted to their external influences. No other single survey of the region provides equivalent breadth - ranging from aboriginal ecologies to today's narcotic traffic - or harnesses so effectively elements of the past to illuminate the present.

South East Asia has for many centuries occupied a pivotal position in the wider Asian economy, linking China and the Far East with India and the Middle East, and since the early 1500s the region has also played a major role in the world-economy. South East Asia in the World-economy is a textbook survey of the area's interaction with these wider regional and international structure. Professor Chris Dixon demonstrates how this region's role has undergone frequent and profound chance as a result of the successive emergency and dominance of mercantile, industrial and finance capital. He shows how the region has developed as a supplier of luxury product, such as spices; as a producer of bulk primary products; and how, since the mid 1960s, it has become a major recipient of investment and a favoured location for European and American markets. The author examines how these phases in the evolution of the international economy have been reflected in the relations of evolution of the production and in the spatial pattern of economic activity. He also discusses how the progressive integration of South East Asia in the world-economy has established the dominance of a small number of core areas and produced a pattern of uneven development throughout the region. In a concluding chapter, Chris Dixon explores the prospects for South East Asia in the 1990s in the light of the restructuring of the world-economy.