One of the main byproducts of the growing interest in Atlantic history has been the increased attention paid to the history of the Caribbean. Rather than regarding the Caribbean islands as adjuncts of the American mainland or of the major European colonizers, it is now seen as important that the Caribbean be considered worthy of becoming the center of scholarly interest. Recent works more frequently deal with particular areas of the Caribbean as well as component parts of the Caribbean, either of all the islands or the colonies of specific European powers.

Of recent works, The Caribbean edited by Stephan Palmie and Francisco Scarano, provides a quite useful volume. The editors, professor of anthropology and social sciences at the University of Chicago and professor of history at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, have put together 39 essays plus a general introductory essay, covering the time from the area's geographical evolution to the date of publication, covering just about all areas of the Caribbean.

As in all such collections of essays, the basic strength of the volume is in the choice of authors. The editors have chosen a list that is generally of very high quality, with distinguished scholars from the Caribbean, the United States, and Europe. Most of the essays are between 11 and 15 pages. The methodological tastes of the editors are indicated by there being only one quantitative graph to go with its eight maps and 65 illustrations, with none of the author's being particularly quantitative in approach.

One of the major virtues of this volume is in the chronological division of the essays. Unlike many volumes on the Caribbean, which generally provide most coverage of the periods of settlement and slavery, this book has roughly a similar number of pages on the post slavery period, including the twentieth century, as it has on the slave era. The Introduction provides a useful description of the topics and issues to be covered in the volume. In addition to the bibliographies contained within each essay, the book includes a twelve-page general bibliography as well as a ten-page glossary of terms. The coverage of the different islands provides a basis for numerous comparisons of changing economic and cultural patterns, while details are given concerning unique events, such as the Haitian and the Cuban Revolutions, which helped to shape world events, not just the Caribbean.

Recent single-authored works that are basically similar in coverage, albeit shorter, are B.W. Higman, A Concise History of the Caribbean (2011) and Frank Moya Pons, History of the Caribbean (2007), while the six-volume, UNESCO, General History of the Caribbean (1997–2010), remains of considerable use. The multiauthored UNESCO volumes cover a wide range of topics, including an almost one thousand page volume on the “Methodology and Historiography of the Caribbean.” The book being reviewed has some advantages in coverage over the Higman and Moya Pons books, as befits its being almost twice their length, while it benefits in contrast with the UNESCO volumes by being considerably shorter.

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