Empire's Crossroads
The Caribbean From Columbus to the Present Day
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- £6.99
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- £6.99
Publisher Description
In Empire's Crossroads, Carrie Gibson offers readers a vivid, authoritative and action-packed history of the Caribbean. For Gibson, everything was created in the West Indies: the Europe of today, its financial foundations built with sugar money: the factories and mills built as a result of the work of slaves thousands of miles away; the idea of true equality as espoused in Saint Domingue in the 1790s; the slow progress to independence; and even globalization and migration, with the ships passing to and fro taking people and goods in all possible directions, hundreds of years before the term 'globalization' was coined.
From Cuba to Haiti, from Dominica to Martinique, from Jamaica to Trinidad, the story of the Caribbean is not simply the story of slaves and masters - but of fortune-seekers and pirates, scientists and servants, travellers and tourists. It is not only a story of imperial expansion - European and American - but of global connections, and also of life as it is lived in the islands, both in the past and today.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Gibson, a former journalist for the British newspaper, the Guardian, offers a thoroughly-researched and meticulously-detailed history of the Caribbean. In its vivid descriptions, Gibson's book is a powerful indictment of the sad story of colonialism and equally powerful commentary on the savagery of slavery. Ever since the arrival of Columbus in 1492, Caribbean lands have been variously dominated by the colonial French, Portuguese, English, and Dutch empires. Thus, it has also been the site of wars over political control and natural resources, massive revolts (particularly by slaves), and revolutions. Because the Caribbean has historically been a microcosm of competing national interests, Gibson helpfully provides enough international history to place the region's experience firmly in a global context. For instance, she shows how in the 20th century the Cold War reached deep into the region, with the Cuban missile crisis a prime example. Gibson unblinkingly describes the challenges facing the region, among them Haiti's efforts to rebuild after the 2010 earthquake, Cuba's need to replace the economic support it lost upon the Soviet Union's collapse, and the West Indies's need to manage the economic distortions and contradictions inherent in the invasive tourist industry. Gibson demonstrates a deep affection for the region and captures its rich, complex history.
