Empire's Crossroads

November 17, 2014
Gibson, a former journalist for the British newspaper, the Guardian, offers a thoroughly-researched and meticulously-detailed history of the Caribbean. In its vivid descriptions, Gibson's book is a powerful indictment of the sad story of colonialism and equally powerful commentary on the savagery of slavery. Ever since the arrival of Columbus in 1492, Caribbean lands have been variously dominated by the colonial French, Portuguese, English, and Dutch empires. Thus, it has also been the site of wars over political control and natural resources, massive revolts (particularly by slaves), and revolutions. Because the Caribbean has historically been a microcosm of competing national interests, Gibson helpfully provides enough international history to place the region's experience firmly in a global context. For instance, she shows how in the 20th century the Cold War reached deep into the region, with the Cuban missile crisis a prime example. Gibson unblinkingly describes the challenges facing the region, among them Haiti's efforts to rebuild after the 2010 earthquake, Cuba's need to replace the economic support it lost upon the Soviet Union's collapse, and the West Indies's need to manage the economic distortions and contradictions inherent in the invasive tourist industry. Gibson demonstrates a deep affection for the region and captures its rich, complex history.

October 1, 2014
How 500 years of European rule in the Caribbean helped determine the patterns of "human malfeasance" repeated globally to the present day. In an ambitious work bringing together fragmented histories of more than 20 different islands across an area of 3,000 miles, journalist Gibson, a scholar of the Spanish Caribbean trained at Cambridge University, finds in the unifying theme of a colonial heritage the sobering legacy of exploitation, greed and inequality. A drive for "grain, gold and God" seized the first Portuguese explorers, while Christopher Columbus, infused in the work of Marco Polo, was so certain that he could navigate a passage to the East that when he landed at "San Salvador," he was sure he had struck Polo's Cipango-Japan. Yet this was not a land of Oriental splendor but rather islands occupied by humble indigenous peoples; nonetheless, "desire would triumph over reason," which became a recurrent theme for hundreds of years. Sugar production-rendered profitable by the Portuguese and Genoese on the Atlantic islands of Madeira and the Canaries-was quickly established in these new colonies of the West Indies, along with tobacco, salt, coffee, cacao and, later, cotton. The distinctive and organized indigenous people were enslaved, killed by new diseases or converted, and new plants and animals were introduced, including farm animals, grapes and wheat (in addition to all manner of insects and microbes). A globalized factory system was thus put into place on Hispaniola, Cuba, Barbados and elsewhere, and the use of indentured servants was discarded in favor of African slaves. The hunger for luxury goods created a "growing global commodity chain" that would define the region, spurring world warfare and revolution once inequality between the haves and have-nots grew unsustainable. Bolstered by her travel experiences in St. Martin, Trinidad, Guyana and other places, Gibson delivers a useful, manageable history of the region. Judicious chronicles of individual islands (Haiti, Cuba) emerge from a larger, bleak picture of an "invented paradise."

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Starred review from October 15, 2014

Independent historian Gibson's nonfiction debut is a marvelously rich and inclusive panorama of five centuries of Caribbean history. The author characterizes the Caribbean region as a global crossroads (hence the title) where Africans, Asians, Europeans, and indigenous peoples collided and intermingled to form syncretic creole societies. The Spanish, French, British, and Dutch battled rebels and rival empires as they built exploitative colonial economies powered by slavery and sugar plantations, followed by 20th-century interventions and eventual profiteering by American interests. Also spotlighted is the disconnect between the poverty and joblessness gripping the largely Afro-Caribbean islanders and the walled-off enclaves and luxury cruises that sustain the complacent fantasy of the Caribbean as a playground for mostly white tourists. Gibson is judicious in her sympathies, decrying the region's persistent homophobia and corruption while highlighting the cultural vitality of the calypso musicians and the nuances of Cuba's decades-long communist experiment. Omission of the islands' indigenous past proves only a minor shortcoming in a work that brings fresh energy, assurance, and insight to an area that is not often the focus of historians. VERDICT Gibson's study is sure to gratify academics, history buffs, and anyone intrigued by the Caribbean's colorful, volatile, and multifaceted societies.--Michael Rodriguez, Hodges Univ. Lib., Naples, FL

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

December 15, 2014
With such variegated histories, the islands of the Caribbean would seem to defy a unified treatment, yet Gibson identifies themes common to large ones, such as Hispaniola, and small ones, such as Montserrat. Since discovered by Columbus in 1492, these places have experienced a colonization process involving investors searching for minerals and profitable crops, finding labor to extract or cultivate them, and defending their wealth against European rivals. Prominent in Gibson's able account, therefore, is slavery. Its adoption in lieu of indentured labor, slave revolts rumored or actual, slavery's abolition in the 1800s, and contemporary race relations on the islands run chronologically through Gibson's work. Alongside her stark descriptions of the slave economies, Gibson recounts geopolitical events that have periodically wracked the Caribbean Sea, from wars galore in the 1700s to the Cold War, as well as the supplanting of European suzerainty by American influence, expressed today more by cruise ship than by gunboat. Sympathetically attuned to the hard actualities of life in ostensibly paradisiacal tropics, Gibson delivers a fine, faceted history for general-interest readers.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)