The Lesser Antilles in the Age of European Expansion

Description

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.   Cover THE LESSER ANTILLES IN THEAGE OF EUROPEAN EXPANSION CONTENTS MAPS AND ILLUSTRATIONS TABLES ACKNOWLEDGMENTS INTRODUCTION NOTES PART ONE Europe and Indigenous Peoples 1 Columbus Was a Cannibal ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS NOTES 2 Visions of Cannibals NOTES 3 After the Encounter NOTES PART TWO War and Imperial Rivalries 4 The Black Caribs of St. Vincent NOTE NOTES 5 English Settlement in the Lesser Antilles during War and Peace, 1603–1660 NOTES 6 Redcoats and Slaves in the British Caribbean NOTE NOTES 7 Crisscrossing Empires Ships, Sailors, and Resistance in the Lesser Antilles in the Eighteenth Century NOTES PART THREE Migration, Trade, and the Transatlantic Economy 8 Europe, the Lesser Antilles, and Economic Expansion, 1600–1800 NOTE NOTES 9 Opportunity and Mobility in Early Barbados NOTES 10 The British Transatlantic Slave Trade before 1714 NOTE NOTES 11 “Jesus Christ Was Good, but Trade Was Better” NOTES 12 Citizens of St. Eustatius, 1781 NOTES PART FOUR Slavery 13 Ameliorating Slavery NOTES 14 Free Coloreds and Slaves in Revolutionary Guadeloupe NOTE NOTES 15 The Slaves and Free Coloreds of Martinique during the Age of the French and Haitian Revolutions NOTES PART FIVE Abolition and Emancipation 16 Beyond and Below the Merivale Paradigm NOTE NOTES 17 “Birth-Pangs of a New Order” NOTE NOTES 18 The Long Good-bye AFTERWORD NOTES CONTRIBUTORS INDEX