Sea and Land

Reviews / Votes

The Caribbean was the first region in the Americas to bear the human and environmental stamp of European intervention, mainly through slavery and sugar monoculture. Further, it is the place from which modernity and European capitalism emergedthe modern industrial labor regime had its origin in the rigors of plantation slavery, and in the 18th century, the Caribbean became a center of European finance. This volume treats Caribbean environmental history from the first Indigenous settlement of 7,000 BCE to the mid-19th century. It comprises three sections, each with eminent authorship and a cooperatively written conclusion...[that] deals with the regions environmental history after 1850. An authoritative and accessible work for all libraries. Recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty. * Choice * The violence of natural phenomena like hurricanes, manmade horrors like African chattel slavery, and the destruction of the natural environment by planters,...the dangers of environmental destruction, deforestation, and climatic shocks...all of these subjects are excellently covered in Sea and Land, which, surprisingly, is the Caribbean's first twenty-first-century comprehensive environmental history....This book provides a standard account of Caribbean history but one that is done with such verve and with such authority that it is an essential guide to the dynamics of the Caribbean in a larger global system....Brilliantly executed. * Trevor Burnard, New West Indian Guide * This enticing and coherent volume is environmental history at its best, gracefully moving in scale from microscopic insects to massive global transformations during the last five hundred years. The research is innovative and the writing stellar. Together, the authors illustrate the centrality of the Caribbean to global phenomena such as slavery and the Atlantic world, ecological exchanges, and pandemics. * Charles F. Walker, University of California, Davis * This exceptional work brims with the richness, exuberance, and fragility of the creole ecologies of the Caribbean. Through its focus on the multifarious physical environments of the region and their amalgams of global biota, this volume fills a significant gap in the region's historiography. It demonstrates that thinking with the environment is essential for the historical understanding of the Caribbean and the violent worlds of modern colonialism, capitalism, and extractivism that emerged from the region. * Pablo F. Gomez, University of Wisconsin-Madison * An authoritative and accessible work for all libraries. * Choice * This book was overdue...This attempt to bring an environmental focus to the islands and the sea is an excellent place to start, a most enjoyable reading...This book delivers on its promise to document environmental changes in the Caribbean for the longue duree. Undergraduates will benefit from this knowledge, while graduate students should draw inspiration toward topics that demand further research. The collaboration that these scholars undertook has paid off handsomely. * Myrna Santiago, Saint Mary's College of California, H-Net *