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3.67 AVERAGE
3.67 AVERAGE
3.5 stars. A sweeping historical fiction, with each chapter focusing on a different Caribbean island and characters. There were connecting threads between some of the stories and time periods but overall it still felt a bit disjointed which made it hard to really feel connected to the stories. Near the back half of the middle and into the end, it started to drag for me and I just wanted to finish it. Overall I enjoyed it but it could have been shorter.
Never been able to read another Michener novel, but this one kept me interested from woe to go.
adventurous
challenging
emotional
informative
inspiring
reflective
relaxing
tense
medium-paced
adventurous
emotional
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
relaxing
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
Not quite as linear as some of Michener's other books but that's understandable considering the breadth of geography and culture he was trying to cover. Liked how at the end it all tied together again.
As much as it makes me feel like I’m turning into my mother, it must be said, I love how James Michener’s books richen the understanding of the high points of long complicated history of place through a historical narrative. In Caribbean he does so by dedicating each chapter to a different time and place interweaving interesting fictional characters with true tales of the time. This book piqued my curiosity of the area and I will be digging further into several topics presented.
I've never thought of Michener as someone with any great mastery of prose. Certainly, no memorable lines, passages, or even few pages. And, aside from his first work, Tales of the South Pacific, he never has managed any truly memorable characterizations, much less atmosphere or imagery. The one thing he can do well is tell a story. In Caribbean, he doesn't let the reader down in this regard, at least not for the first three fifths of the book. But, alas, the novel moves away from strictly historical fiction to a contemporary setting, and the result is leaden. The fictional island of All Saints utterly lacks in appeal. And why would Michener think that pages and chapters devoted to cricket would ever hold people's interest? Worse, the attempt at throwing in a spy thriller twist on All Saints comes off as ludicrous. Finally, there are the last couple of chapters on the Hindu and Haitian scholars and their rendezvous with destiny. All the pomposity Michener feeds into academe, frankly, is almost vomit worthy. Overwhelmingly trite, this book, as it does a checklist of all the races and nationalities in the region.. It feels like it was written by some condescending orthodox establishment limousine liberal from the 1970s, with an office in the census bureau.
Very interesting. I love James Michener, he helps you get an understanding of history at the same time it's entertaining.
informative
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
5/5 Stars
"Selected bits of a long, complex, and fascinating history."
James Michener
"Caribbean"
*******
Of the book:
669 pps of prose/16 chapters~41 pps/ chapter. (On average, about 400 pages shorter than the average Michener novel.)
The tiny print in this edition makes it read more like it is about 1300 pages. Or, about the length of any three novels.
From the outset, Michener lets us know that he will only deal with a subset of all of the countries in the Caribbean, owing to constraints of space and time. (The Bahamas is an interesting place, but Michener excludes because it is not technically part of the Caribbean. He does explain why he made this choice, although almost every other classification of Caribbean countries includes Bahamas.)
It is true that there are so many of these countries with such a long and complicated history, that each of them could have been a book in its own right. And in that case, Michener would have had to write another dozen multi-generational sagas and I don't think that any normal human being has that much in them.
The author gives us a subset of all of the islands that make up the Caribbean, and of the subset each has a limited fraction of time.
THEMES***
Seems like in prehistory so much happened that is completely the same and far away places.
1. There is human sacrifice in the Mayan empire, and also in what later became Israel. (I can't figure out for the life of me why so many unrelated people independently conclude that nature needs human blood to take its course.)
There is a Temple in both places, and there are priests.
2. The secular government and the religious government are codependent in some way. (Prehistoric and current Israel .)
3. Some people live peacefully on an island, and then much harsher conquering people come along to slaughter them. (It has been before with the Maori slaughtering Moriori. But, in this case it is the Caribs slaughtering the Arawaks.)
One Empire conquers another, and they see fit to make use of the Men of Words (clergy, scholars) that are already there. Much earlier, it was the Romans making use of Greek scholars. In this case, it appears to be the Aztecs making use of Mayan priests.
4. Some advanced society exists somewhere for hundreds of years and then, it auto-catalytically collapses. (Han Dynasty. Tang Dynasty. Countless others.)
CHAPTERS***
(Synopsis of each chapter.)
1. Exposition of peaceful Arawaks and their conquest by the much more violent Caribs. (Dominica.)
2. Brief exposition of sophisticated Mayan culture/astronomy as seen through the eyes of conquered Mayans at the tail end of the crumbling Aztec empire. (Mexico.)
3. Christopher Columbus went back to Spain as a prisoner because after his foray onto Hispaniola.....he did a lot of bad things. (Mass murder of indigenous people. Arbitrary execution of political opponents. Pilfering. Nepotism. [p.74])
4. Even though it seems to be forgotten, Spain was initially the largest naval power, although they were displaced over a relatively short period of time by England. (How many people know that Jamaica used to be a Spanish colony?) The English dealt in statecraft and left behind functioning self-governing colonies, but the Spaniards were extremely poor at this and left behind corrupt basket cases.
5. Barbados is a place that started out mostly black almost from the very beginning, and somehow they never saw fit to separate from The Crown for almost four centuries (although that is expected to change by the end of 2021). As it is a smaller place, after slavery was finished black people and white people had to stay there and work things out together. (No place to hide, as in much bigger places.)
6. Lots of movement of people and goods--and therefore pirates-- as the great naval powers of the time (Holland, Spain, Britain) worked on defining what their role would be in that part of the New World. This chapter is worth it in its own right because it undoes the mythology created by movies such as pirates of the Caribbean.
7. Jamaica/St. John. The relationship between the African slaves and the whites was quite different because the latter were only 8% of the population of the island. (And this led to 50 slave rebellions just between five Islands, with all Islands experiencing at least one rebellion).
Sugar and rum were the main exports there. The English on West Indian islands still participated in Parliament (as a result of purchasing the seats from "rotten boroughs"), and since they had representation for their taxation then they did not have their own version of the American revolution. Denmark was also in on the game.
England misfired on the task of chasing Spain out of the Caribbean (cholera, yellow fever, and inept military leadership).
The reason that Canada became an English possession and Martinique went back to France was lobbying by the Sugar Interest in Parliament.
8. Exposition of the life of a naval captain, as given by the representative example of real life Horatio Nelson. Most of these men were glory seekers and depended on the dowry of their wives to finance them, because England did not pay them particularly well when they commissioned them.
9. French Caribbean. (Guadeloupe and Martinique. These are set up as a foil to Haiti.)
10. Haiti. A very long and bloody history, almost all of which was the responsibility of France. Even though Haiti is what it is, there's no reason it could not have been different. And the problems that they're having in current times go back many centuries.
11. Jamaica (again), but this time at the point of free colored rebellions leading into martial law. Pivotal-but-forgotten figure George Williams Gordon.
12. A MYTHICAL composite of several islands ("All Saints"), and a practical description of the Pre WWII caste system / extreme color prejudice that went therewith. (It's very similar actually to what happened in India.) A representative population of 29,000 people with 12 different castes. (1=all white and from England-->12= all Negroid blood.)
13. Brief expedition of Trinidad Indians, one of whom goes on to become a professional scholar. (13 years in a PhD program.) Subplot of an immigration scam to the US.
14. Accurate details of the tenents of Rastafarianism. Discussion of what is going to fill the void after the end of colonialism. Pan-Africanism? Caribbean unity? Who are the good blacks? Light skin elite? Where does everyone else fit?
15. The Cuban Infestation of Miami. Michener tries to put a positive spin on the excessive Cuban immigration to the United States after Castro took over, but the situation that we have is: idiots in the United States government getting involved in something that does not concern them and bringing an invasive population to the United States.
16. Continuing poverty of Haiti, as well as the resting point of most of the other countries featured in current times.
THOUGHT QUESTIONS***
1. Population replacement is a thing that has been going on for a very long time. It is beyond me why people in this day and age torture themselves over Native American population replacement when this is far from the first time that it has happened.
2. Yes, there have been black people outside of Africa that have replaced indigenous populations. (That's the story of almost all of the Caribbean.)
3. Some countries are naturally very skilled at statecraft, and others are very poor at the same.
Primo: Spanish colonies have had a very hard go of statecraft, but the groundwork for their inability to do such was laid down 500 years ago (p.96): Even before they came to the United States to try to only look for gold, they made the same mistakes in the Caribbean islands before and did everything except bring practical men of skills to help build a future country. (p.67)
Secundo: French colonies had a mixed record. The smaller places such as Guadalupe and Martinique turned out to be successful colonies - although they were relatively simpler projects. Tenfold larger Haiti was a much more ambitious project at which they failed miserably.
Tertio: the English colonies were much more successful at all scales.
4. The bitter religious conflict of one generation is the literary entertainment of the next. (Ch. 4.) Here, it was English Protestants against Spanish/English Catholics. (But, it's before been Huguenots versus Papists. Or Hasidim versus Mitnagdim.)
5. Dutchmen show up again and again in Michener books: as farmers and later statesmen (in his chronicle of South Africa); as traders and seafarers (this book); as a colonized people; as colonizers.
6. How do people so often self-organize into a couple of warring tribes? In this book, we have Cavaliers versus Roundheads acting in the same way that current Democrats and Republicans do against each other.
7. Michener has explored the theme several times of: Some people go from Point A to Point B and they recreate a snapshot of the first place in the second that outlasts the first. Here we have Royalists in Barbados outliving the original monarchy in England. (Michener wrote an entire book about Dutchmen arriving in South Africa in the 17th century and continuing that life for the next four centuries.)
It was more of the same when he talked about the feelings of the upper crust of the islands (in the chapter dealing with the fictitious All Saints). Those people considered themselves English--not British--because they had come there before the formation of the United Kingdom.
8. Trade, rent seeking and lobbying have been going on for a very long time. I don't think there's a government in the world that can-- or wants to-- bring it under control.
9. So much of history seems completely fortuitous: Who would predict a Spanish army of 3000 only losing 200 of their own against an English military of 28, 000-- which lost 18,000. Who would have expected the loss of 85% of European troops on Haiti owing to yellow fever? Slaves on Barbados had to learn to work with the white people there, because they were together in close proximity. Larger islands do not have that opportunity to learn that.
10. (pps.420,424). For the life of me, I don't know why anybody believes in this concept of Pan-African unity. Many of these chapters show black people divided against each other. (What on Earth was Marcus Garvey on about?)
-In the case of Haiti, it was slaves against free blacks.
-In the case of Jamaica, The Maroons captured slaves and returned them to White owners. And for some reason or another Maroons took an interest in Black rebellion - - by massacring black rioters. (Maroons had lived outside of colonial Jamaican Society for at least a couple of centuries--not even speaking English.)
11. Then, as now (and since the beginning of the written word), Men of Words stake out positions in a conflict not because they know the participants, but because a situation exists into which they can insinuate themselves in the role of angels. (In the blacks' corner: Darwin / Spencer/Huxley/ John Bright/John Stuart Mill; In the whites' corner: Thomas Carlysle / Charles Dickens/Charles Kingsley / Alfred Tennyson.)
12. The Caribbean was a place where many battles between Distant Powers were fought out because that was the safest place to do it. Cavaliers and Roundheads in Barbados. Royalists and Rebels in Guadeloupe, 144 years later. Lots of naval warfare between France, Spain and England (as a substitute for more costly land wars in the mother countries.)
13. Treaties sorting out who got what were completely fortuitous, and though it is what it is there's no reason that it might not have been different. Louisiana might have been for Spain. Canada might have been all for France in exchange for several Caribbean islands all for England.
14. Indians show up in this Michener book (Ch 13) in the same way that they showed up in his other book on South Africa ("Covenant"): initially brought in as slaves, ultimately becoming merchants, too good to marry black people, with a strong sense of cultural heritage, and slowly persistent in their rise to the top. (They economically overtook Afro-Trinidadians many decades ago. Economic power>>Political power.)
15. (p.502). "Social change/justice" has a long pedigree, and it is always a topic for academic elites-played over the head of people that they claim to lead but want no part of. American academia is a vector to transfer the stupidity from one place to the next.
16. Ch. 14. It seems like the most prolific innovators-- in the field of bizarre religions, that is-- are black people. Here, we get a taste of Rastafarianism. (Of course, I have read about Hebrew Israelites, with which this mishegoss has significant links.) One of the characters in my last book (a book of stories about female prisoners) was a Rastafarian and she said that she was tired of their being stereotyped as jobless, weed-smoking bums.
I can say that she has an uphill battle on her hands.
17. Neutrality and non-alignment are the best choice, and the US government has not been able to figure that out since World War I. In this book, it shows those fools getting involved with Cuba and bringing in the current Cuban infestation--most particularly with the Mariel boat lift. ("Minnesotan Somalis" are not new and the stupidity of Congress is the direct explanation for the existence of Ihlan Omar.)
18. ACLU is always and everywhere bad news.
19. Cautionary tales for black revolutionaries:
a. The Castro Revolution passed black people in Cuba by. So much for that.
b. Michener asks the uncomfortable question (p.619): "If Haiti had been an independent, self-governing Republic rule only by blacks since 1804, and if it had achieved so pitifully little for its people, what did that say about the ability of blacks to govern?"
20. A bit of Economics. The resource curse actually happened to black people in the Caribbean long before it happened to blacks in Africa. Sugar in one case, and oil in the other.
Verdict: A very time consuming read, however strongly recommended.
New Vocabulary:
Agouti
Manioc
Croton
Coney
Carom shot
Propitiatory
Stela/stelae
Vista
Aperture
Gibbet
Caballero
Chandler
Clinker (-built)
Carvel (-built)
Strake
Peculator
Frigate
Hie(d)
Choler
Cockade
Weskit
Verger
Unguent
Collop
Muscovado
Boucanier/buccaneer
Filibustering (original meaning of the word)
Barbados
Canoa
Saturnalia
Woolding
Spar (shipping)
Cutlass
Ratoon
Puncheon
Stentorian
Baronetcy
Fife
Hied (hie)
Ramparts
Malefactors
Hogshead
Navy braid (insignia)
Croton
Fustian
Creole (both the French AND English usages)
Rapier
Traduce
Peccary
Stanchion
Aiguillette
Gauleite
Papiamento
Carrel
A lot of words heretofore-unknown-to-be from the Carib language. (Cannibal. Hurricane. Canoe. Cigar. Barbecue.)
"Selected bits of a long, complex, and fascinating history."
James Michener
"Caribbean"
*******
Of the book:
669 pps of prose/16 chapters~41 pps/ chapter. (On average, about 400 pages shorter than the average Michener novel.)
The tiny print in this edition makes it read more like it is about 1300 pages. Or, about the length of any three novels.
From the outset, Michener lets us know that he will only deal with a subset of all of the countries in the Caribbean, owing to constraints of space and time. (The Bahamas is an interesting place, but Michener excludes because it is not technically part of the Caribbean. He does explain why he made this choice, although almost every other classification of Caribbean countries includes Bahamas.)
It is true that there are so many of these countries with such a long and complicated history, that each of them could have been a book in its own right. And in that case, Michener would have had to write another dozen multi-generational sagas and I don't think that any normal human being has that much in them.
The author gives us a subset of all of the islands that make up the Caribbean, and of the subset each has a limited fraction of time.
THEMES***
Seems like in prehistory so much happened that is completely the same and far away places.
1. There is human sacrifice in the Mayan empire, and also in what later became Israel. (I can't figure out for the life of me why so many unrelated people independently conclude that nature needs human blood to take its course.)
There is a Temple in both places, and there are priests.
2. The secular government and the religious government are codependent in some way. (Prehistoric and current Israel .)
3. Some people live peacefully on an island, and then much harsher conquering people come along to slaughter them. (It has been before with the Maori slaughtering Moriori. But, in this case it is the Caribs slaughtering the Arawaks.)
One Empire conquers another, and they see fit to make use of the Men of Words (clergy, scholars) that are already there. Much earlier, it was the Romans making use of Greek scholars. In this case, it appears to be the Aztecs making use of Mayan priests.
4. Some advanced society exists somewhere for hundreds of years and then, it auto-catalytically collapses. (Han Dynasty. Tang Dynasty. Countless others.)
CHAPTERS***
(Synopsis of each chapter.)
1. Exposition of peaceful Arawaks and their conquest by the much more violent Caribs. (Dominica.)
2. Brief exposition of sophisticated Mayan culture/astronomy as seen through the eyes of conquered Mayans at the tail end of the crumbling Aztec empire. (Mexico.)
3. Christopher Columbus went back to Spain as a prisoner because after his foray onto Hispaniola.....he did a lot of bad things. (Mass murder of indigenous people. Arbitrary execution of political opponents. Pilfering. Nepotism. [p.74])
4. Even though it seems to be forgotten, Spain was initially the largest naval power, although they were displaced over a relatively short period of time by England. (How many people know that Jamaica used to be a Spanish colony?) The English dealt in statecraft and left behind functioning self-governing colonies, but the Spaniards were extremely poor at this and left behind corrupt basket cases.
5. Barbados is a place that started out mostly black almost from the very beginning, and somehow they never saw fit to separate from The Crown for almost four centuries (although that is expected to change by the end of 2021). As it is a smaller place, after slavery was finished black people and white people had to stay there and work things out together. (No place to hide, as in much bigger places.)
6. Lots of movement of people and goods--and therefore pirates-- as the great naval powers of the time (Holland, Spain, Britain) worked on defining what their role would be in that part of the New World. This chapter is worth it in its own right because it undoes the mythology created by movies such as pirates of the Caribbean.
7. Jamaica/St. John. The relationship between the African slaves and the whites was quite different because the latter were only 8% of the population of the island. (And this led to 50 slave rebellions just between five Islands, with all Islands experiencing at least one rebellion).
Sugar and rum were the main exports there. The English on West Indian islands still participated in Parliament (as a result of purchasing the seats from "rotten boroughs"), and since they had representation for their taxation then they did not have their own version of the American revolution. Denmark was also in on the game.
England misfired on the task of chasing Spain out of the Caribbean (cholera, yellow fever, and inept military leadership).
The reason that Canada became an English possession and Martinique went back to France was lobbying by the Sugar Interest in Parliament.
8. Exposition of the life of a naval captain, as given by the representative example of real life Horatio Nelson. Most of these men were glory seekers and depended on the dowry of their wives to finance them, because England did not pay them particularly well when they commissioned them.
9. French Caribbean. (Guadeloupe and Martinique. These are set up as a foil to Haiti.)
10. Haiti. A very long and bloody history, almost all of which was the responsibility of France. Even though Haiti is what it is, there's no reason it could not have been different. And the problems that they're having in current times go back many centuries.
11. Jamaica (again), but this time at the point of free colored rebellions leading into martial law. Pivotal-but-forgotten figure George Williams Gordon.
12. A MYTHICAL composite of several islands ("All Saints"), and a practical description of the Pre WWII caste system / extreme color prejudice that went therewith. (It's very similar actually to what happened in India.) A representative population of 29,000 people with 12 different castes. (1=all white and from England-->12= all Negroid blood.)
13. Brief expedition of Trinidad Indians, one of whom goes on to become a professional scholar. (13 years in a PhD program.) Subplot of an immigration scam to the US.
14. Accurate details of the tenents of Rastafarianism. Discussion of what is going to fill the void after the end of colonialism. Pan-Africanism? Caribbean unity? Who are the good blacks? Light skin elite? Where does everyone else fit?
15. The Cuban Infestation of Miami. Michener tries to put a positive spin on the excessive Cuban immigration to the United States after Castro took over, but the situation that we have is: idiots in the United States government getting involved in something that does not concern them and bringing an invasive population to the United States.
16. Continuing poverty of Haiti, as well as the resting point of most of the other countries featured in current times.
THOUGHT QUESTIONS***
1. Population replacement is a thing that has been going on for a very long time. It is beyond me why people in this day and age torture themselves over Native American population replacement when this is far from the first time that it has happened.
2. Yes, there have been black people outside of Africa that have replaced indigenous populations. (That's the story of almost all of the Caribbean.)
3. Some countries are naturally very skilled at statecraft, and others are very poor at the same.
Primo: Spanish colonies have had a very hard go of statecraft, but the groundwork for their inability to do such was laid down 500 years ago (p.96): Even before they came to the United States to try to only look for gold, they made the same mistakes in the Caribbean islands before and did everything except bring practical men of skills to help build a future country. (p.67)
Secundo: French colonies had a mixed record. The smaller places such as Guadalupe and Martinique turned out to be successful colonies - although they were relatively simpler projects. Tenfold larger Haiti was a much more ambitious project at which they failed miserably.
Tertio: the English colonies were much more successful at all scales.
4. The bitter religious conflict of one generation is the literary entertainment of the next. (Ch. 4.) Here, it was English Protestants against Spanish/English Catholics. (But, it's before been Huguenots versus Papists. Or Hasidim versus Mitnagdim.)
5. Dutchmen show up again and again in Michener books: as farmers and later statesmen (in his chronicle of South Africa); as traders and seafarers (this book); as a colonized people; as colonizers.
6. How do people so often self-organize into a couple of warring tribes? In this book, we have Cavaliers versus Roundheads acting in the same way that current Democrats and Republicans do against each other.
7. Michener has explored the theme several times of: Some people go from Point A to Point B and they recreate a snapshot of the first place in the second that outlasts the first. Here we have Royalists in Barbados outliving the original monarchy in England. (Michener wrote an entire book about Dutchmen arriving in South Africa in the 17th century and continuing that life for the next four centuries.)
It was more of the same when he talked about the feelings of the upper crust of the islands (in the chapter dealing with the fictitious All Saints). Those people considered themselves English--not British--because they had come there before the formation of the United Kingdom.
8. Trade, rent seeking and lobbying have been going on for a very long time. I don't think there's a government in the world that can-- or wants to-- bring it under control.
9. So much of history seems completely fortuitous: Who would predict a Spanish army of 3000 only losing 200 of their own against an English military of 28, 000-- which lost 18,000. Who would have expected the loss of 85% of European troops on Haiti owing to yellow fever? Slaves on Barbados had to learn to work with the white people there, because they were together in close proximity. Larger islands do not have that opportunity to learn that.
10. (pps.420,424). For the life of me, I don't know why anybody believes in this concept of Pan-African unity. Many of these chapters show black people divided against each other. (What on Earth was Marcus Garvey on about?)
-In the case of Haiti, it was slaves against free blacks.
-In the case of Jamaica, The Maroons captured slaves and returned them to White owners. And for some reason or another Maroons took an interest in Black rebellion - - by massacring black rioters. (Maroons had lived outside of colonial Jamaican Society for at least a couple of centuries--not even speaking English.)
11. Then, as now (and since the beginning of the written word), Men of Words stake out positions in a conflict not because they know the participants, but because a situation exists into which they can insinuate themselves in the role of angels. (In the blacks' corner: Darwin / Spencer/Huxley/ John Bright/John Stuart Mill; In the whites' corner: Thomas Carlysle / Charles Dickens/Charles Kingsley / Alfred Tennyson.)
12. The Caribbean was a place where many battles between Distant Powers were fought out because that was the safest place to do it. Cavaliers and Roundheads in Barbados. Royalists and Rebels in Guadeloupe, 144 years later. Lots of naval warfare between France, Spain and England (as a substitute for more costly land wars in the mother countries.)
13. Treaties sorting out who got what were completely fortuitous, and though it is what it is there's no reason that it might not have been different. Louisiana might have been for Spain. Canada might have been all for France in exchange for several Caribbean islands all for England.
14. Indians show up in this Michener book (Ch 13) in the same way that they showed up in his other book on South Africa ("Covenant"): initially brought in as slaves, ultimately becoming merchants, too good to marry black people, with a strong sense of cultural heritage, and slowly persistent in their rise to the top. (They economically overtook Afro-Trinidadians many decades ago. Economic power>>Political power.)
15. (p.502). "Social change/justice" has a long pedigree, and it is always a topic for academic elites-played over the head of people that they claim to lead but want no part of. American academia is a vector to transfer the stupidity from one place to the next.
16. Ch. 14. It seems like the most prolific innovators-- in the field of bizarre religions, that is-- are black people. Here, we get a taste of Rastafarianism. (Of course, I have read about Hebrew Israelites, with which this mishegoss has significant links.) One of the characters in my last book (a book of stories about female prisoners) was a Rastafarian and she said that she was tired of their being stereotyped as jobless, weed-smoking bums.
I can say that she has an uphill battle on her hands.
17. Neutrality and non-alignment are the best choice, and the US government has not been able to figure that out since World War I. In this book, it shows those fools getting involved with Cuba and bringing in the current Cuban infestation--most particularly with the Mariel boat lift. ("Minnesotan Somalis" are not new and the stupidity of Congress is the direct explanation for the existence of Ihlan Omar.)
18. ACLU is always and everywhere bad news.
19. Cautionary tales for black revolutionaries:
a. The Castro Revolution passed black people in Cuba by. So much for that.
b. Michener asks the uncomfortable question (p.619): "If Haiti had been an independent, self-governing Republic rule only by blacks since 1804, and if it had achieved so pitifully little for its people, what did that say about the ability of blacks to govern?"
20. A bit of Economics. The resource curse actually happened to black people in the Caribbean long before it happened to blacks in Africa. Sugar in one case, and oil in the other.
Verdict: A very time consuming read, however strongly recommended.
New Vocabulary:
Agouti
Manioc
Croton
Coney
Carom shot
Propitiatory
Stela/stelae
Vista
Aperture
Gibbet
Caballero
Chandler
Clinker (-built)
Carvel (-built)
Strake
Peculator
Frigate
Hie(d)
Choler
Cockade
Weskit
Verger
Unguent
Collop
Muscovado
Boucanier/buccaneer
Filibustering (original meaning of the word)
Barbados
Canoa
Saturnalia
Woolding
Spar (shipping)
Cutlass
Ratoon
Puncheon
Stentorian
Baronetcy
Fife
Hied (hie)
Ramparts
Malefactors
Hogshead
Navy braid (insignia)
Croton
Fustian
Creole (both the French AND English usages)
Rapier
Traduce
Peccary
Stanchion
Aiguillette
Gauleite
Papiamento
Carrel
A lot of words heretofore-unknown-to-be from the Carib language. (Cannibal. Hurricane. Canoe. Cigar. Barbecue.)
adventurous
challenging
informative
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
N/A
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
It’s a decent historical romp through the history of the Caribbean. Pushed me to do research on some of the events mentioned.
It does get weak when he gets to the modern times, but it is still a very good read.
It does get weak when he gets to the modern times, but it is still a very good read.