The Tainos:
Rise & Decline
of the People Who Greeted Columbus
Author: Irving Rouse
Published: 1993

When Columbus arrived in the islands he did not discover them, the northern Caribbean islands had been discovered much earlier - and were still inhabited by -- the Taino people whose ancestral roots lay in South America. Subsequently, however, these Indians of the Caribbean and much of their culture were destroyed under European domination.

A Brief History
of the Caribbean:
From the Arawak and Carib to the Present
Author: Jan Rogozinski
Published: 2000

Book Description: The first complete history of the Caribbean islands--updated through the year 2000.

This comprehensive volume takes the reader and student through more than five hundred years of Caribbean history, beginning with Columbus's arrival in the Bahamas in 1492. A Brief History of the Caribbean traces the people and events that have marked this constantly shifting region, encompassing everything from economic booms and busts to epidemics, wars, and revolutions, and bringing to life such important figures as Sir Francis Drake, Blackbeard, Toussaint Louverture, Fidel Castro, the Duvaliers, and Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

This superbly written history, revised and updated, with new chapters that reflect the islands' most recent social, economic, and political developments, is a work of impeccable scholarship. Featuring maps, charts, tables, and photographs, it remains the ideal guide to the region and its people.

Columbus's
Outpost
among the Taínos:
Spain and America at La Isabela, 1493-1498
Author: Jose Maria Cruxent, Kathleen A. Deagan
Published: 2002

Synopsis: In 1493 Christopher Columbus led a fleet of 17 ships and more than 1200 men to found a royal trading colony in America. Columbus had high hopes for his settlement, which he named La Isabela after the queen of Spain, but just five years later it was in ruins. It remains important, however, as the first site of European settlement in America and the first place of sustained interaction between Europeans and the indigenous Tainos.

Kathleen Deagan and Jose Maria Cruxent tell the story of this historic enterprise. Drawing on their ten-year archaeological investigation of the site of La Isabela, along with research into Columbus-era documents, they contrast Spanish expectations of America with the actual events and living conditions at America's first European town.

Deagan and Cruxent argue that La Isabela failed not because Columbus was a poor planner but because his vision of America was grounded in European experience and could not be sustained in the face of the realities of American life. Explaining that the original Spanish economic and social frameworks for colonization had to be altered in America in response to the American landscape and the non-elite Spanish and Taino people who occupied it, they shed light on larger questions of American colonialism and the development of Euro-American cultural identity.

Puerto Rico:
The Trials of the
Oldest Colony in the World
Author: Jose Trias Monge
Published: 1999

Book Description: The island of Puerto Rico has a severely distressed economy, is one of the most densely populated places on earth, and enjoys only limited political freedom.. In this book a distinguished Puerto Rican legal scholar and former government official discusses the island`s century-old relationship with the United States and argues that the process of decolonization should begin immediately.

The Indigenous People
of the Caribbean
Author: Samuel M. Wilson
Published: 1999

This volume brings together nineteen Caribbean specialists in a general introduction to the indigenous people of that region. Writing for both general and academic audiences, contributors provide an authoritative, up-to-date picture of these fascinating peoples -- their social organization, religion, language, lifeways, and contribution to the culture of their modern descendants -- in what is ultimately a comprehensive reader on Caribbean archaeology, ethnohistory, and ethnology.

The authors are Samuel Wilson, Ricardo Alegria, Louis Allaire, Richard Cunningham, Birgit Faber Morse, Alissandra Cummins, Jay Haviser, Elizabeth Righter, Miguel Rodriguez, David Watters, Henry Petitjean Roget, William Keegan, James Petersen, Ignacio Olazagasti, Jose Oliver, Arnold Highfield, Vincent Cooper, Nancie Gonzalez, and Garnette Joseph.

From Columbus
to Castro:
The History of
the Caribbean 1492-1969
Author: Eric Williams (Author)
Published: 1984

Book Description: From Columbus to Castro: The History of the Caribbean is about 30 million people scattered across an arc of islands -- Jamaica, Haiti, Barbados, Antigua, Martinique, Trinidad, among others-separated by the languages and cultures of their colonizers, but joined together, nevertheless, by a common heritage. For whether French, English, Dutch, Spanish, Danish, or-latterly-American, the nationality of their masters has made only a notional difference to the peoples of the Caribbean.

The history of the Caribbean is dominated by the history of sugar, which is inseparable from the history of slavery; which was inseparable, until recently, from the systematic degradation of labor in the region. Here, for the first time, is a definitive work about a profoundly important but neglected and misrepresented area of the world.

Short Account
of the Destruction
of the Indies
Author: Bartolome De Las Casas, Nigel Griffin (Translator)
Published: 1999

Synopsis: Bartolome de las Casas was born in Sevilla in 1474. At the age of 18 he left Spain for the new world, where he managed his father's ranch and subsequently became a priest. After many years of witnessing the ravages and atrocities of Spanish colonial policy and experiencing the failure of his own attempts at the peaceful colonization of Cumana, he wrote a brief account of the destruction of the Indies in 1542. This work was investigated at the instigation of Charles V by a committee of lawyers and theologians, and the findings rejected. Colonial apologists also rejected las Casas' view that the Indian was by nature virtuous and peacable, but corrupted by an alien civilization. This book examines this work.

A Review: The truth can be painful: While De Las Casas may have had limited means for determining the indigenous population at the time of the arrival of Columbus, and though his book was indeed used by other European nations to cast the Spaniards in a bad light, there is ample evidence in this book and elsewhere of the unrelenting cruelty which was unleashed by Columbus and those who followed in his footsteps.

There is sufficient clarity and consistency in the writing of De Las Casas to clear up any lingering doubts one might have about the behavior of the conquistadoras. And one can ponder whether humanity can learn from this particularly dark page of history so long as the truth is painted over by continuing to celebrate the dominant story of heroism and adventure. - Reviewer: A reader from Santa Cruz, CA United States, July 12, 2000