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A History of the Caribbean from Columbus to the Present Day
by Carrie Gibson
Ever since Christopher Columbus stepped off the Santa Maria onto what is today San Salvador, in the Bahamas, and announced that he had arrived in the Orient, the Caribbean has been a stage for projected fantasies and competition between world powers. In Empire's Crossroads, British American historian Carrie Gibson traces the story of this coveted area from the northern rim of South America up to Cuba, and from discovery through colonialism to today, offering a vivid, panoramic view of this complex region and its rich, important history.
After that fateful landing in 1492, the British, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Danish, and even the Swedes, Scots, and Germans sought their fortunes in the islands for the next two centuries. Some failed spectacularly: a poorly executed settlement in Panama led the Scots to lose their own independence to England. The Spaniards were the first to find prosperity, in Mexico but also along the islands. In Hispaniola, Cuba, and Puerto Rico, they built grandiose cathedrals and extracted shipfuls of gold and silver, which English, French, and Dutch pirates were happy to seize. But precious metals weren't a sustainable export - the colonizers needed something that was, and they would need hordes of slaves to cultivate it.
The Caribbean's first cash crop, one indigenous to the New World, was tobacco, and it, along with sugar, spurred expensive new addictions back in Europe. Gibson argues that immaterial exports were just as important. No other region of the world has experienced such a vibrant mixing of cultures, religions, and peoples--Africans, Europeans, Asians, and Amerindians created amazingly dynamic Creole societies that complicated traditional ideas about class and race. By the end of the eighteenth century, seventy thousand free blacks and mulattos lived in the British islands alone, and it was in the Caribbean that the world's only successful slave revolt took place - sparking the meteoric rise of Napoleon's black counterpart, Toussaint L'Ouverture, and the Haitian Revolution.
The Caribbean island of St. Eustatius had been the first to recognize the United States as a nation, but the Americans were soon vying for their own imperial stronghold in the West Indies, attempting to control Cuba and backing influential corporations, most notably United Fruit. In the twentieth century, most of the islands broke from the imperial traditions that had lorded over them for four centuries: this would be the explosive age of decolonization and "banana republics," of racial riots and négritude, of Cold War politics and tourist crowds.
At every step of her expansive story, Gibson wields fascinating detail to combat the myths that have romanticized this region as one of uniform white sand beaches where the palm trees always sway. Evocatively written and featuring a whole cast of cosmopolitan characters, Empire's Crossroads reinterprets five centuries of history that have been under-appreciated for far too long.
"A panoramic view of this complex region and its rich history." - Publishers Weekly
"An ambitious work bringing together fragmented histories of more than 20 different islands across an area of 3,000 miles... bolstered by her travel experiences in St. Martin, Trinidad, Guyana and other places." - Kirkus
"[A] sharp, gripping new overview of the region's history... Empire's Crossroads is a great read about some fantastically absorbing - and to many people, little-known - history... An exceptionally impressive debut." - Literary Review
"Gibson manages to weave 500 years of complex history into a brilliantly coherent and thematic narrative.... [A] strikingly assured debut." - The Observer (UK)
"[An] epic history of the Caribbean... vivid and thought-provoking." - The Spectator (UK)
"Carrie Gibson has written a judicious, readable and extremely well-informed account of a part of the world whose history is seldom acknowledged. Too many people know the Caribbean only as a tourist destination; she takes us, instead, into its fascinating, complex and often tragic past. No vacation there will ever feel quite the same again." - Adam Hochschild, author of To End All Wars and King Leopold's Ghost
"Required reading for everyone with a fascination for the Caribbean; recommended for all who wish to acquire one." - Peter Chapman, author of Bananas: How the United Fruit Company Shaped the World
"Who knew that King James (the Bible one) was one of history's first anti-smoking activists? Who could have guessed in advance that tourist promoters would turn a desolate isle in Haiti, the hemisphere's poorest nation, into 'paradise' behind a chain link fence? In Empire's Crossroads, Carrie Gibson shows how seemingly isolated anecdotes, in the right hands, can be used to form a mosaic that shows us the meaning of history." - T.D. Allman, author of Finding Florida
"Empire's Crossroads skillfully shows the complexity of the Caribbean and its striking ability to adapt to and push back against the forces that have shaped the region." - Michele Wucker, author of Why the Cocks Fight: Dominicans, Haitians, and the Struggle for Hispaniola
This information about Empire's Crossroads was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Carrie Gibson completed a Ph.D. at Cambridge University focusing on the Spanish Caribbean in the era of the Haitian Revolution, and for many years she also worked as a journalist for the Guardian. She has traveled widely across the West Indies, and spent many months researching in archives there, including in Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Dominican Republic. She currently splits her time between New York City and London.
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