The Caribbean: A History of the Region and its Peoples

摘要

History and geography have combined to create extremely complex societies in the Caribbean region. No other region of the world experienced the artificial demographic and ecological transformations that the Caribbean went through after the accidental arrival of Christopher Columbus in 1492. During the succeeding centuries immigrants from around the globe generated unique and baffling hybrid cultural forms across the region. At the same time, imported fauna and flora completely revolutionised cultivation, ecology and culture. As a result, studies that treat the Caribbean as a unified region, although relatively few in number, have been of extraordinary importance in understanding the basic characteristics of the region's singularly unusual history and inordinately complex culture. Stephan Palmie and Francisco Scarano's large edited volume, divided into seven sections and with 39 chapters written by 40 authors, comprises a welcome contribution to the literature.