From the arrival of the first Europeans in the region until the 1930s, plantations brought unprecedented wealth to Old World owners and led to bloody wars on both sides of the Atlantic over control of the lucrative sugar market.In this comprehensive volume, Moya Pons explores the history, context, and consequences of the major changes that marked the Caribbean between Columbus' initial landing and the Great Depression. He investigates indigenous commercial ventures and institutions, the rise of the plantation economy in the 16th century, and the impact of slavery. He discusses the slave revolts and struggles for independence, seen by European landowners not as a matter of human or political rights but as an expensive interruption of their profit flow. ""History of the Caribbean"" traces the fate of a group of small islands whose natural resources transformed them first into some of the wealthiest places on earth and then into some of the poorest.This book intertwines the socioeconomics of the Caribbean with Atlantic history in a captivating narrative that will fascinate a general audience and provide new insights for specialists.

From the arrival of the first Europeans in the region until the 1930s, plantations -- building their fortunes on sugar, and to a lesser extent on cotton, indigo, tobacco, coffee, and bananas -- brought unprecedented wealth to Old World owners, effected a fundamental shift in the landscape and economy of the Caribbean and the Atlantic world, saw the enslavement of first indigenous populations and then imported Africans, and led to bloody wars on both sides of the Atlantic over control of the lucrative sugar market. In this comprehensive volume, Frank Moya Pons explores the history, context, and consequences of the major changes that marked the Caribbean between Columbus' initial landing and the Great Depression. He investigates indigenous commercial ventures and institutions, the rise of the plantation economy in the 16th century, and the impact of slavery. He discusses the slave revolts and struggles for independence, seen by European landowners not as a matter of human or political rights but as an expensive interruption to their profit flow. History of the Caribbean traces the fate of a group of small islands whose natural resources transformed them first into some of the wealthiest places on earth and then into some of the poorest. This book intertwines the socioeconomics of the Caribbean with Atlantic history in a captivating narrative that will fascinate a general audience and provide new insights for specialists.

This updated and expanded edition extends the narrative from 1990 to the first decade of the present century, beginning with the collapse of the Dominican economy. In addition to the electoral fraud and constitutional reforms of 1994 and the return administration of Leonel Fernandez, the updated chapters focus on financial crises, the economic reforms of the 1990s, the free trade agreement with the United States, and party politics. They also take account of the recent Dominican electoral processes, the colossal and fraudulent banking crisis of 2002-2004, and the perpetuation of corruption as part of Dominican political culture.

While the Spanish brought their religion, language, values, and traditions to the island to form the cornerstone of the Dominican culture, a later influx of Germans, Irish, Italians, and Sephardic Jews from the Dutch Caribbean and Lebanon added further variety. Traditional histories of the island have long overlooked the influence of black Africans on the national heritage, although this rich cultural legacy is evident in many areas. And while there has been ample discussion of the indigenous Taino people, very few of them survived over the centuries, and they left a lesser lasting imprint, limited to agriculture, diet, language, and religion.This distinctive cultural amalgam provides the backdrop for this book, which has become a classic text in the Dominican Republic. It is the first book to acknowledge creolization as the dominant feature of Dominican culture. The contributors are Dominican scholars and journalists, and they have also served as diplomats, university professors, museum directors, and artists.