From Columbus to Castro by Eric Williams, is a definitive work about a profoundly important but neglected and misrepresented area of the world. Quite simply it’s about millions of 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. From 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 systematic degradation of labor in the region. This erudite work should not be ignored.
