The Lesser Antilles in the Age of European Expansion [Hardcover]

Robert L. Paquette (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 13, 1996

This collection offers the only single-volume treatment in English of the Lesser Antilles from the time of Columbus to the abolition of slavery.  The essays show how the Lesser Antilles emerged in the 17th and 18th centuries as among the most densely populated and advanced economic zones in the world and how they served as stepping-stones for the expansion of the slave-based plantation system in the Americas.   

 

Editorial Reviews

Book Description

"This superior set of splendidly edited and introduced essays is interdisciplinary, cross-cultural history at its best.  Although intellectually sophisticated and focused on difficult problems, the essays are clearly written, free of jargon, and accessible to students and general readers as well as invaluable for specialists."--Eugene D. Genovese

This collection offers the only single-volume treatment in English of the Lesser Antilles from the time of Columbus to the abolition of slavery.  The essays show how the Lesser Antilles emerged in the 17th and 18th centuries as among the most densely populated and advanced economic zones in the world and how they served as stepping-stones for the expansion of the slave-based plantation system in the Americas.   

Contents

Part I: Europe and Indigenous Peoples

1. Columbus Was a Cannibal: Myth and the First Encounters, by William F. Keegan

2. Visions of Cannibals: Distant Islands and Distant Lands in Taino World Image, by Louis Allaire

3. After the Encounter: Disease and Demographics in the Lesser Antilles, by Kenneth F. Kiple and Kriemhild C. Ornelas

Part II: War and Imperial Rivalries

4. The Black Caribs of St. Vincent: A Reevaluation, by Michael Craton

5. English Settlement in the Lesser Antilles during War and Peace, 1603-1660, by John C. Appleby

6. Redcoats and Slaves in the British Caribbean, by Andrew O'Shaughnessy

7. Crisscrossing Empires: Ships, Sailors, and Resistance in the Lesser Antilles in the Eighteenth Century, by Julius S. Scott

Part III: Migration, Trade, and the Transatlantic Economy

8. Europe, the Lesser Antilles, and Economic Expansion, 1600-1800, by Stanley L. Engerman

9. Opportunity and Mobility in Early Barbados, by Alison F. Games

10. The British Transatlantic Slave Trade before 1714: Annual Estimates of Volume and Direction, by David Eltis

11. "Jesus Christ Was Good, but Trade Was Better": An Overview of the Transit Trade of the Dutch Antilles, 1634-1795, by P. C. Emmer

12. Citizens of St. Eustatius, 1781: A Historical and Archaeological Study, by Norman F. Barka

Part IV. Slavery

13. Ameliorating Slavery: The Leeward Islands Slave Act of 1798, by David Barry Gaspar

14. Free Coloreds and Slaves in Revolutionary Guadeloupe: Politics and Political Consciousness, by Anne Pérotin-Dumon

15. The Slaves and Free Coloreds of Martinique during the Age of the French and Haitian Revolutions: Three Moments of Resistance, by David Geggus
Part V. Abolition and Emancipation

16. Beyond and Below the Merivale Paradigm: Dominica's First 100 Days of Freedom, by Michel-Rolph Trouillot

17. "Birth-Pangs of a New Order": Special Magistrate John Anderson and the Apprenticeship in St. Vincent, by Roderick A. McDonald

18. The Long Good-bye: Dutch Capitalism and Antislavery in Comparative Perspective, by Seymour Drescher

 

About the Author

Robert L. Paquette is Publius Virgilius Rogers Professor of American History at Hamilton College in Clinton, New York.  He is the author of Sugar Is Made with Blood: The Conspiracy of La Escalera and the Conflict between Empires over Slavery in Cuba, which won the Elsa Goveia Prize in Caribbean history.  Stanley L. Engerman is John H. Munro Professor of Economics and professor of history at the University of Rochester.  Among the many books he has coauthored or coedited are Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery, which won the Bancroft Prize, and British Capitalism and Caribbean Slavery.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 395 pages
• Publisher: University Press of Florida; 1st edition (October 13, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 081301428X
• ISBN-13: 978-0813014289
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.4 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,961,147 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)