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Nature, Place & People of the Caribbean
by J. Siry

"The river and the forest were like presences, and much more powerful than you. You felt unprotected, an intruder . . . . You felt the land taking you back to something that was familiar, something you had known at some time but had forgotten or ignored, but which was always there. You felt the land taking you back to what was there a hundred years ago, to what had been there always.”

 — V.S. Naipaul, A Bend in the River

This class is divided into five parts:

1. The geological, geographical, & biotic setting: “Islas des Encantadas” or paradise
2. The Invasions: ecological & ethnic transformations of two continents.
   
3. The dominant elements in the transformation:
   
4. Revolution: “liberté. egalité and fraternité” & minority rights doctrines.
   
5. The Legacy of fracture, hate & fear:
   1. Contemporary social problems
   2. Environmental challenges

   Historical Dates

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The geological, geographical, & biotic setting:

Covering over one million square miles are stretched more than 7,000 islands with over thirty six million people, the Caribbean basin is among the world's few places populated by so many nations and inhabited by such a fusion of cultures.

Keen & Haynes, A History of Latin America place the Caribbean and its history into the larger settlement and development of Latin America. They comment on the current political goulash of social patterns that characterize the region and have good chapters on the Mayans, Cuba, Mexico and Guatemala, among other nations. To their political analysis the course ties the region to bio-cultural differences, ethnic diversity and geographical variety in the Caribbean, Central America, and Mexico.

Crosby index and overview, thesis as opposed to theme, and critical details.

Latin American Historical Atlas.

IMF data mapper.

geomorphology of the greater & lesser Antilles: volcanism & plate tectonics.

The geography is such that you want to be able to place the mountains, or cordilleran boundary regions in relation to their adjacent coastal plains, because what grows in the lowlands is not the same as the cultivars and plantation crops in the highlands.

There is a notion of geography as destiny, called geographical determinism that accounts for the dominant coastal harbors as gateways to both Europe and the Americas and their interior river valleys versus mountain barriers. This for example accounts for the historical and strategic importance of Havana, Cartagena, Portobelo, Vera Cruz, and Port o Spain.

Graphical view of the growth of population from 1950 to projected population by continent.

Demography

The density of population: Where the people live.

Darker shades are densest populations, from most to least densely populated they are:
black, red, brown, amber, yellow, with very light yellow as least densely populated.

For Caribbean island nations who rank, 8th, 19th, 24th, 25th, 30th, and 31st in 2010 comparated to the world's other densely populated nations their particular area and population see these charts other island nations can be found at: population and size by IPOAA Magazine.

The Caribbean's place in the world:

The United States was $52,620; was the US GNI per capita, PPP

Rank	place	Density	per capita income	island	Continent or
#	Country	per square mile	in 20-12 13, US $ dollars:	√ = yes	Region
1,	Singapore,	11,744	$54,010	√	Asia
2,	Gaza strip,	7,600	$4,990		Mideast
3,	Malta,	3,032	$24,490	√	S. Europe
4,	Bangladesh,	2,304	$1,870		Asia
5,	Maldives,	2,250	$8,750	√	Indian Ocean
6,	Bahrain,	2157	$40,230	√	Asia
7,	Taiwan,	1547	na,	√	Asia
8,	Barbados,	1542	$15,080	√	Caribbean
9,	Mauritius,	1430	$13,280	√	Indian Ocean
10,	S. Korea,	1191	$25,720		Asia
11,	Tuvalu,	1063	$5,440,		Pacific Ocean
12,	San Marino,	1013	na,		S. Europe
13,	Netherlands,	963	$42,890		W. Europe
14,	Lebanon,	921	$17,080		Mideast
15,	Japan,	860	$36,440	√	Asia
16,	Belgium,	856	$35,960		W. Europe
17,	Rwanda,	846	$1,130		Africa
18,	Marshall Is.,	802	$4,100	√	Pacific Islands
19,	St. Vincent,	787	$10,160	√	Caribbean
20,	India,	756	$5,080		South Asia

23,	El Salvador,	723	$6,410		C. America
24,	St. Lucia,	655	$10,260	√	Caribbean
25,	Trinidad,	642	$25,480	√	Caribbean

28,	Philippines,	633	$5,740	√	Pacific Islands
29,	U. Kingdom,	618	$35,620	√	W. Europe
30,	Haiti,	608	$1,640	√	Caribbean

31,	Jamaica,	606	$8,420	√	Caribbean
32,	Germany,	590	$42,860		W. Europe

Cuba, by comparison the largest island by area in the Caribbean, has 249.9 people per square mile. In 2011 Cuba reported a $6,051 per capita income for its 11,276,053 people by the census taken that same year.

Data for 2000, for current data on GDP and NNI/PPP see: The World Bank's: World Development Indicators.

Geography as destiny, or biogeographical determinism.

Are these islands the oasis of hope or archipelago of destiny?

Coasts as boundaries or bridges?

Pump of the Gulf Stream and isolated land forms of the Antilles archipelago

The red colored, nearly elliptical arrow on the graphic roughly charts the Atlantic gyre responsible for European sailing ships to reach Africa and the Americas; we call the western wall of this gyre "the Gulf Stream."

Unity of biotic communities supporting Turtles, Mangrove forests, Manatees, & Manioc

The Invasions: The ethnic identity of Caribbean and Latin American peoples.

 

Alfred Crosby, Germs, Seeds and Animals

Arawaks & Columbus

Know the sequence and the causes in its creation of these people or institutions:

Plantations, mining, & commerce

The biocultural context of Europe in the Indies
Cortez & Pizarro
African Slavery
The dominant elements in the transformation: The rise and fall of slavery in the Caribbean.
European culture, technology, and religion

Don't confuse bicultural with biocultural:
bicultural means of two different cultures, see Du Bois.
biocultural, refers to those aspects of culture influenced by biology such as, food sources, herding, agriculture, fishing, diet, diseases, morbidity rates, and mortality; see Crosby.

Crosby index

Dates

Ethno-history, ecology and biogeography:

Latin American Historical Atlas
Amerindian depopulation
African enslavement & stamina

"The facts about Columbus have always been known. In his own writings and in all his actions his egoism is like an exposed deformity; he condemns himself.

V. S. Naipaul.

 

V. S. Naipaul's observations & criticisms of slavery, culture, & behavior are examined in his travel narrative The Middle Passage. As a native of Trinidad, but of East Indian origins, Naipaul as an author of some acclaim and a perfect example of an Oxford educated, child of the Empire's indenture program to bring Indian workers to the Caribbean sugar islands and a deeply observant person of Asian heritage.

Naipual, born in 1932, studied under J.R.R. Tolkein at Oxford in the 1950s. He moved to London in 1954. In December of that year, Henry Swanzy, a producer of a BBC weekly program called Caribbean Voices, hired Naipaul as presenter. A generation of Caribbean writers had debuted on Caribbean Voices.

Geopolitical reality of the United States' illusion of “free security” is 1

Three protective oceans until 1945
militia dependent until 1917
small defense costs until 1940
naive diplomacy of isolationism, withdrawal, fear

bravado, exclusivity, interventionism.

Ideological: National greatness coupled to the mission to promote liberty is 2

Thomas Paine, Common Sense, (1776)
Renaissance -- humane reason & utopianism
Protestant Reformation -- moral mission
Enlightenment -- republican virtue & romantic sensibility
Essential tension between domestic liberty & strong central govt.

Economically inevitable: Ideas & ideals triumph as part of laissez faire beliefs is 3

humanitarian problem solving
self-determination for subject peoples
aid & intervention: economic, social, and political expansion
Open Door Policy (Asia, 1899-1900)
“the firm conviction, even dogmatic belief, that America’s domestic well-being depends upon such sustained, ever-increasing overseas economic expansion.”
“The control of policy making by the industrialists and financiers”

Pragmatic expansionism: revolutionary & counter-revolutionary power is 4

Manifest Destiny ( John L. O’Sullivan, 1839)
natural right
America's Protestant mission to Christianize and civilize the world

Mexican War, 1846-48.

geographical determinism
population growth
political stability (necessity)

The Spanish-American War, 1898.

geopolitical expansionism: Admiral Mahan
widespread popular unrest in Cuba
political stability of the island allegedly in our interests

Imperialism for the sake of national security;

elimination of rivals inequality of power based on culture & technology is 5

1803 Purchase of Louisiana from Napoleon Bonaparte of France.
1819 Adams-Onis Treaty by which Spain ceded Florida (La. to Atlantic) to US.
1846-1848 Mexican War, ended with Treaty of Guadaloupe-Hidalgo.
1850s filibustero -- US filibusters try to seize Caribbean & Central American countries.
1896-98 Spanish American War cedes Philippines, Puerto Rico & Cuba to US.

* compare to older dates concerning international intervention.

Jamaica
Xaymaca is an Arawak word meaning: land of wood & water

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Definitions | Syllabus | Nations of the region | Jamaica Case Study | Chronology | Vocabulary | Five parts

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Contemporary Voices in the Caribbean

Olin Library

Among the sources for this class are:

Derek Walcott, Antilles.
Gordon K. Lewis, Main Currents in Caribbean Thought.
Alfred Crosby, Ecological Imperialism.
Carl Ortwin Sauer, The Early Spanish Main.
Carl Ortwin Sauer, Sixteenth Century North America.
W. E. B. Du Bois, The Negro.
Octavio Paz, The General and His Labyrinth.
V. S. Naipaul, A Way in the World.
V. S. Naipaul, The Middle Passage.
Grahame Greene, The Comedians.
Juno Diaz, The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Woa.
Jamaica Kincaid, A Small Place.
Eduardo Galeano, The Open Veins of Latin America.