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 As European power has waned in the Caribbean, it has been replaced by the geopolitical domination of the United States.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.
List of illustrations; Acknowledgements; 1. The creation of the Caribbean; 2. A colonised environment; 3. Plantations and their peoples to 1900; 4. The American century; 5. Economic dependency; 6. Human migrations; 7. Resistance and political independence; 8. Towards a geography of Caribbean nationhood; Bibliography.
' … highly original synthesis and interpretation of regional history, regional social and economic trends, and, regional environmental issues. The book is stimulating, well-crafted and the author's style is lucid and refreshingly free from technical jargon and stodgy prose … highly recommended.' Caribbean Review of Books
