General history of the caribbean. volume iii

Volume III of the General History of the Caribbean looks at various aspects of slave societies in the region from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries. Throughout the tortuous history of the Caribbean nothing exceeded in fundamental importance the twin experiences of slavery and the plantation system. Together these two overlapping experiences constituted the paramount defining episode of Caribbean social reality. The collective changes introduced by the Europeans during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries represented an intricate series of transformations that permanently altered every facet of the region. Prior to the sugar revolutions Caribbean societies were European 'settler colonies', each sharing common characteristics. After the sugar revolutions sweeping changes were made, not least in the demographic structure of the colonies. The growth of the slave system and the transatlantic slave trade, the slave economies and social structure, the place of the Maroon communities, political control within slave society, and forms of resistance together with creolization and religious beliefs are all part of this transformation process. After four hundred years a combination of internal and external forces over a long period finally brought the collapse of the Caribbean slave system and the abolition of slavery.