Empire's Crossroads: A History of the Caribbean From Columbus to the Present Day

Carrie Gibson's Empire's Crossroads: A History of the Caribbean from Columbus to the Present Day provides an excellent overview of more than 500 years of Caribbean history, as the ambitious title indicates. What stood out in Gibson's analysis is her broader definition of 'Caribbean,' including at times Central America (especially British Honduras and Belize, but also Guatemala, Nicaragua, and Panama) and South America's Spanish-speaking countries like Venezuela and Colombia. Her move to include, albeit marginally, these circum-Caribbean mainland societies is wise because, as her title suggests, the Caribbean is a crossroads of various imperial powers, thereby connecting the histories of the entirety of Latin America and the Caribbean.

Gibson also manages to delve deeper into the context of the Iberian peninsula and Mediterranean in the early parts of the book (such as the island conquests and antecedents of the Caribbean colonies, particularly the Canary Islands and the Atlantic islands, such as Madeira), devotes ample attention to the Haitian Revolution (as well as the Age of Revolution more generally for the Caribbean), the rise of chattel slavery, and covers the various developments of Caribbean history from colonialism to independence. Gibson's analysis weakens when her chronological history reaches the 20th century, partly due to the brevity of her chapters on complex political history in some islands, such as Haiti under the Duvaliers. In addition, she uses the word "voodoo" instead of the less pejorative Vodou, to describe the religion. By no means does the author subscribe to racist notions of Haitian Vodou, but the pejorative connotations are problematic to use in a general history.

One supposes by necessity Gibson's text would eventually have to leave out the details or a serious study of all aspects of 20th century Caribbean history down to specific islands, but she excels in weaving together the broader strokes of the Caribbean region's common themes, interconnections, and problems wrought by colonialism, tourism, the World Wars, the Cold War, inequality, and ethnic and racial divisions. Inclusion of the mainland "Caribbean" also enhances her argument and the shared political, social, and economic histories of the area. For instance, how can one tell the history of the British West Indies without discussing the Panama Canal, the rise of the banana industry, and West Indian migrant laborers in Central America or Cuba? Or the rise of Black Power in Trinidad without discussing Rastafarianism, the US Black Freedom Struggle, and the declining conditions across the Anglophone Caribbean?

The case of Garvey's UNIA is an excellent example of the author's talent to connect the Panama Canal, Caribbean migrant laborers, and immigrants in the US to show how the Caribbean cannot be understood as islands or mainlands in isolation. How can one properly understand the history of the Caribbean without placing the Haitian and Cuban Revolutions in a pan-Caribbean perspective, or, indeed, a Latin American perspective, as the case of Haiti in the anti-colonial movements of Venezuela, Colombia, and even Mexico emerges? In sum, Gibson accomplishes her goal in showing how the Caribbean is also one of the first sites of modernity, globalization, and the rise of consumers and industrial revolutions in western Europe. Gibson deserves accolades for that, as well as demolishing the myth of the Caribbean paradise that remains so pervasive to this day.