The Caribbean in the Wider World, 1492–1992: A Regional Geography

by Bonham C. Richardson

• ISBN13: 9780521351867
• ISBN10: 0521351863
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1992-01-31
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

On the eve of the quincentenary of Christopher Columbus's epic voyage, this major new textbook survey explains how the region'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 As European power has waned in the Caribbean, it has been replaced by the geopolitical domination of the United States.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.

Author Biography

Bonham C. Richardson is Professor of Geography at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University

Table of Contents

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.