Overview

The sun and sea. Apart from this heliotropism, what is there in common between the three and a half million tourists of the Bahamas and the historic Castroism of Cuba, between France’s `American’ departments of Guadeloupe and Martinique and Britain’s erstwhile colonies of Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica, St Kitts and Nevis…or the Virgin Islands; between the mainland coasts of Venezuela, Colombia, Mexico, the United States and the archipelago; between Port-au-Prince, Haiti’s capital eaten into by its shanty towns and San Juan, the capital of Puerto Rico, that non-incorporated US dependency? From one point of view, very little, just part of geographic arc, a line of dots, some 4,000 km long between the two American continents, and the same sea. From another view point, there is much in common – traits drawn from a shared history which is still interwoven with the present. In this contradiction the Caribbean offers a kind of shorthand for the wider world, with its own blend of a `North’ and `South’. Emerging Caribbean presents a unique tableau of the Caribbean Basin today, of the Greater Caribbean, a geography which is both systematic and synthetic, one which does not fail to engage with the essential elements of its history. So, amongst the 25 double-page, full-colour plates one finds maps as different in their subject matter as environmental hazards and natural disasters, the postcolonial pathways to political independence, fiscal havens and illegal trafficking, and information technology networks. A detailed analysis is supported by cartographic rigour in the quest to embrace and grasp this intricate mosaic of cultures both historically and geographically, including its particular events and situations. From the age of sugar to that of globalized exchange, this first ever cross-disciplinary study of the Caribbean Basin identifies both the profound fracture lines and points of convergence of this `Mediterranean’ of the Americas. As a work of reference it is accessible to a family readership as well as providing a handbook for curious travellers, secondary school and university students.

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