The Caribbean: A Brief History

Gad Heuman's 2nd edition The Caribbean: A Brief History is the latest general history of the Caribbean I recently read. Perfect for students, Heuman's 2nd edition includes extensive recommended readings and a broad overview of nearly every aspect of Caribbean history in a short text. Heuman added much more to this edition on the indigenous Caribbean societies, and focuses on social history, emphasizing subaltern agency, culture, slavery, gender, race, and labour. Like Carrie Gibson's work, Heuman also places the Cuban Revolution into a broader Caribbean context, but the book is stronger on the non-Hispanic Caribbean, especially Jamaica and the British West Indies. While giving a whole chapter to the Haitian Revolution and another for the Cuban Revolution, Heuman's work is overall much more informative and inclusive of the non-Hispanic Caribbean, and Haiti after the 1804 is rarely part of the narrative, despite brief discussion of US occupations in the Greater Antilles.