Empire’s Crossroads: A Historical past of the Caribbean from Columbus to the Current Day

Ever since Christopher Columbus stepped off the Santa Maria and introduced that he had arrived within the Orient, the Caribbean has been a stage for projected fantasies and competitors between world powers. In Empire’s Crossroads, historian Carrie Gibson presents a vivid, panoramic view of this advanced area and its wealthy, vital historical past.

That fateful touchdown in 1492 quickly launched a savage competitors for West Indian territory that will final centuries. Gibson compellingly traces the ups and downs of European imperial enlargement—together with the primary money crops, failed settlements, and pirating on the open seas—however she additionally brilliantly describes each day life on the islands. Creole societies sophisticated conventional concepts about class and race, and by the tip of the eighteenth century, plantation slaves in Saint-Domingue had launched the Haitian Revolution, the world’s solely profitable slave revolt. As European management of the Caribbean loosened over the subsequent 150 years, America was on the rise, ushering in a brand new period of international affect and the start of the tourism trade that also thrives right this moment. Extremely multi-faceted and approachably written, Empire’s Crossroads encompasses the narratives of greater than twenty islands and reinterprets 5 centuries of historical past have been underappreciated for much too lengthy.