Caribbean and West Indies History & Study Resources

eBooks & Online Books

• Caribbean and West Indies eBooks: History & Area Studies: Digital Book Index
• Caribbean from Online Books (U Pennsylvania)
• Caribbean History from Project Gutenberg (3,240 results)

Indigenous Peoples / Pre-European arrival

The indigenous peoples of the Caribbean region include: Arawak, Boriquen, Carib, Ciboney, Ciguayo, Garifuna, Guanahatabey, Igneri, Kalinago, Lucayan, Macorix, San Blas and Taino. Historians have estimated that the pre-Columbian inhabitants of the West Indies numbered approximately six million in 1492. (Brereton) The vast majority of these peoples were massacred by Europeans or succumbed to disease and the effects of enslavement. The view that all indigeneous people have disappeared has now come into serious question. There are still many living descendants of the original peoples to the present day.

• A Brief History of the Taino, the Caribbean's Indigenous People (The Culture Trip)
• Ancient DNA sheds light on what happened to the Taino, the native Caribbeans by Kiona Smith, ArsTechnica , 2018
  A new DNA study explores where the Taino came from and where they went. "The Caribbean was one of the last parts of the Americas to be settled by humans, although scientists don’t agree on when the first settlers arrived or where they came from. Some argue that people probably arrived from the Amazon Basin, where today’s Arawakan languages developed, while others suggest that the first people to settle the islands came from even farther west, in the Colombian Andes".
• Archaeologists determined the step-by-step path taken by the first people to settle the Caribbean islands by Matthew F Napolitano, Jessica Stone, Robert DiNapoli and Scott Fitzpatrick, theconversation.com, 2020
• Bringing Taíno Peoples Back Into History by Ranald Woodaman, Smithsonian Magazine, 2017
• Indigenous peoples and Afro-descendants, CEPAL
• Current situation of indigenous and afro-american peoples in Latin America and the Caribbean, ECLAC Press Release, 2018
  "After centuries of exclusion and denial, the 10% of the region's population that is of Indigenous origin, and another 30% of African origin, including black and mixed race people, continue to be treated like minorities, even when they are actually majorities in their own countries. Furthermore, throughout Latin America and the Caribbean, ethnicity tends to be synonymous with poverty". (Original publication no longer available.)
• Debunking the Myth of Indigenous Caribbean Extinction @ Cultural Survival
  Majority of Puerto Ricans with Taino ancestry: According to a study funded by the National Science Foundation, 61 percent of all Puerto Ricans have American Indian mitochondrial DNA, probably from a common Taino ancestry. Other indigenous groups include: Arawak, Carib, Ciboney, Kalinago and mixed-race people such as the Garifuna (@ archive.org, 2022).
  Cultural Survival works toward a future that respects and honors Indigenous Peoples' inherent rights and dynamic cultures, deeply and richly interwoven in lands, languages, spiritual traditions, and artistic expression, rooted in self-determination and self-governance.
• Faces Divulge the Origins of Caribbean Prehistoric Inhabitants: Ross, A.H., Keegan, W.F., Pateman, M.P. et al. Sci Rep 10, 147 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038
• Study puts the 'Carib' in 'Caribbean,' boosting credibility of Columbus' cannibal claims by Natalie van Hoose, Florida Museum of Natural History, Gainesville, FL, 2020
• Indigenous Caribbean @ Indigenous Peoples United (indigenouspeoplesunited.org)
  "Before Cristobal Colon "Christopher Columbus" arrived in the Caribbean, Most of the islands had already been discovered and inhabited by a diversity of indigenous Peoples of different ethnic groups originating from parts of the Orinoco and Amazon river valleys, The Caribbean coast of Central and South America and the wetlands of Florida in North America".
• Indigenous Caribbean Center | Issues in Indigenous Caribbean Studies
  Directory, blog, essays, publications, resources for teaching and research related to the indigenous Amerindian peoples, cultures and societies of the Caribbean, past and present. Information on Indigenous Peoples of the Caribbean, from the Guyanas to Central America, from the Antilles to North America. (was Caribbean Amerindian Centrelink)
• Indigenous Caribbean perspectives: archaeologies and legacies of the first colonised region in the New World, Cambridge U, 2018
  
  Figure 1. Map of the Caribbean showing pre-colonial networks with examples of the types of artefacts being exchanged. (Map by Corinne Hofman and Menno Hoogland.)
• Indigenous peoples of the Caribbean (Wikipedia)
• Origins and genetic legacies of the Caribbean Taino, Schroeder et al, PNAS, 2018
• The Indigenous People of the Caribbean
  Sponsored by the Florida Museum of Natural History and emerging from a conference organized by the Virgin Islands Humanities Council, this volume brings together the researchers from three subdisciplines under one cover: archaeology, ethnohistory, and ethnology. It includes the work of an extraordinary range of specialists and provides a well-rounded introduction to the history of indigenous peoples in the Caribbean. But the reader should be warned -- this text does not provide any substantial information, as the title might otherwise suggest, about indigenous peoples in the Caribbean today.
• Lucayan people - Wikipedia
  The Lucayan (loo-KY-ən) people were the original residents of the Bahamas before the European conquest of the Americas. They were a branch of the Tainos who inhabited most of the Caribbean islands at the time. The Lucayans were the first indigenous Americans encountered by Christopher Columbus.
• Taino Archaeology (Wikipedia)
  The Taino were the indigenous people of the Caribbean and the principle inhabitants of Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Jamaica, and Puerto Rico. Caribbean archaeologists have theorized that by the mid 16th century the native people of the Caribbean were extinct. However, the story of Taino extinction may not be the case according to recent research and archaeological findings.
• Taino: Indigenous Caribbeans from Black History 365
  Completing this week with the largest indigenous Caribbean ethnic group, BHM365 sheds the light on another group who has changed the Americas.
• Taino Legacies (tainolegacies.com @ archive.org, 2019)
  "The belief is widespread that the indigenous peoples and cultures of the Greater Antilles (Taíno being the most culturally prevalent and widely accepted term) became extinct in the violent and exploitive wake of Spanish conquest and colonization. Yet, in the Greater Antilles and other areas of the Caribbean, the indigenous legacy—in language, bloodline, visual arts, foods, housing styles, in a range of spiritualist practices, and throughout popular culture—is palpable and constant".
• Taino: The story of the 'Caribs and Arawaks' by Kim Johnson
• The Kalinago People: All about Dominica's first settlers and early inhabitants (avirtualdominica.com)
• The Caribbean Indigenous Legacies Project: Celebrating Taíno Culture, The Smithsonian.
• The Mysterious Taino of the Caribbean by James Wiener, Ancient History et cetera, 2012
• Mesoamerica/Caribbean: Infinity of Nations: Art and History in the Collections of the National Museum of the American Indian
  Infinity of Nations: Art and History ... is a spectacular, permanent exhibition of some 700 works of Native art from throughout North, Central, and South America. This exhibition will demonstrate the breadth of the National Museum of the American Indian's renowned collection and highlight the historic importance of many of these iconic objects.
• Pre-Columbian Caribbean Chronology: Timeline of Caribbean Prehistory (ThoughtCo)
• Tribal Government of the Jatibonicu Taino People of Puerto Rico
  This is the official tribal Government web site of the Jatibonicu Taino Tribal Nation of Boriquen Puerto Rico. (Boriquén, Borinquén or Borikén)
  We are part of a greater Arawakan family of tribes who are geographically located stretching from South America, Caribbean, Florida and New Jersey. Our Jatibonicu Taino Tribal Nation presently in the US Commonwealth State of Puerto Rico, in the region of the central mountains range. We are better known as the VERY FIRST Native American Indian nation to meet and greet Christopher Columbus in the year 1492.
• Who are the Indigenous People That Columbus Met? by Krystal D'Costa, Scientific American, 2018
  Peaceful and warring — where does the truth lie about the Indigenous people of the Caribbean?

  "Still to be accurately accounted, and still counting, Tobago is estimated to have changed international ownership some 29 times [JH]; and in the process suffered the extermination of the population of at least seven local Amerindian tribes; the Arawaks, Chaimas, Tamanaques, Salives, Chaguanes, Quaquas and Caribs; the last being divided into four sub-groupings, the Nepoios, Yaios, Carinepagotos and Cumanagotos [JH]. The island however gained a large African slave population, who sustained stronger than is usual their African traditions; and who provided the ancestry to the majority of todays population (~90%)"
  (Trinidad & Tobago: A brief New-World History by Jeremy G de Barry)

Slavery, Slave Trade and Abolition

Isn't it ironic that while slaves were legislated to remain as workers on an estate long after abolition took place, plantation owners were not obligated to do so. Many plantation owners abandoned their land and slaves were often left in the care of an overseer or to fend for themselves.

Abolition of the Slave Trade, 1807 (BBC History)

(The) Abolition Project (East of England Broadband Network)

(The) Atlantic Slave Trade and Slave Life in the Americas: A Visual Record by Jerome S. Handler and Michael L. Tuite Jr.
The 1,280 images in this collection have been selected from a wide range of sources, most of them dating from the period of slavery. This collection is envisioned as a tool and a resource that can be used by teachers, researchers, students, and the general public - in brief, anyone interested in the experiences of Africans who were enslaved and transported to the Americas and the lives of their descendants in the slave societies of the New World. © 2015, Virginia Foundation for the Humanities and University of Virginia

Barbados Slave and Slavery History by Jerome S. Handler (jeromehandler.org)
This website brings together a selected list of my publications which have appeared since the early 1960's in widely scattered sources. These publications treat a variety of topics dealing with slavery in Barbados and the Atlantic World as well as some aspects of production activities in modern rural Barbados.

Bristol and Transatlantic Slavery - Discovering Bristol

Caribbean Exchanges: Slavery and the Transformation of English Society, 1640-1700 by Susan Dwyer Amussen

The Centre for the Study of the Legacies of British Slave-ownership Legacies of British Slave-ownership is the umbrella for two projects based at UCL tracing the impact of slave-ownership on the formation of modern Britain. The Centre for the Study of the Legacies of British Slave-ownership has been established at UCL with the generous support of the Hutchins Center at Harvard. The Centre will build on two earlier projects based at UCL tracing the impact of slave-ownership on the formation of modern Britain: the ESRC-funded Legacies of British Slave-ownership project (2009-2012), and the ESRC and AHRC-funded Structure and significance of British Caribbean slave-ownership 1763-1833 (2013-2015).
Colonial slavery shaped modern Britain and we all still live with its legacies. The slave-owners were one very important means by which the fruits of slavery were transmitted to metropolitan Britain. We believe that research and analysis of this group are key to understanding the extent and the limits of slavery's role in shaping British history and leaving lasting legacies that reach into the present. The stories of enslaved men and women, however, are no less important than those of slave-owners, and we hope that the database produced in the first two phases of the project, while at present primarily a resource for studying slave-owners, will also provide information of value to those researching enslaved people.

Chronology on the History of Slavery and Racism (Holt House)

Documenting the American South

How Slavery Helped Build a World Economy at National Geographic

International Slavery Museum, Liverpool
The International Slavery Museum highlights the international importance of slavery, both in a historic and contemporary context. Working in partnership with other museums with a focus on freedom and enslavement, the museum provides opportunities for greater awareness and understanding of the legacy of slavery today. | About

Internet Archive Search: subject:"Slavery"

Parliament and The British Slave Trade (UK)

• Parliament and the British Slave Trade 1600-1833 (UK)

Recovered Histories
Anti-Slavery International has digitised its collection of 18th and 19th century literature on the Transatlantic Slave Trade. Recovered Histories captures the narratives of the enslaved, enslavers, slave ship surgeons, abolitionists, parliamentarians, clergy, planters and rebels.
Use the themed narratives as starting points or "Search Collection" to explore over 40,000 pages in the collection.
Recovered histories is a project funded by the National Heritage Lottery Fund to digitise Anti-Slavery International's BINN collection of anti and pro slavery pamphlets from the 18th and 19th century.

Rum, Sugar And Slavery (West Africa Cooks, 2017)
This article is about rum, sugar and human property; a tapestry of trade woven into the histories of the Caribbean, Britain, America and Africa.

Scotland and the slave trade

'Shipped for the Barbadoes'
"While the government encouraged enemy soldiers to leave the country, a different fate awaited those civilians unsuitable for military service. In the early decades of the seventeenth century, England acquired a number of islands in the Caribbean, such as Barbados and Montserrat, and began to develop lucrative tobacco and sugar plantations. African slaves provided most of the field labour, but a demand also existed for indentured servants of European stock, who worked for a fixed period of time, 'under a yoke harsher than that of the Turks', before eventually obtaining their freedom. From the 1630s, official accounts record the arrival of the Irish in the Caribbean, many of them kidnapped by press-gangs operating in the vicinity of the principal ports in Munster. The journey across the Atlantic took almost three months, and those who survived the crossing found living and working conditions on the plantations extremely harsh. After seven years of service, a handful did acquire small landholdings, but none that we know of ever returned to Ireland
The outbreak of the rebellion in 1641 temporarily disrupted the Atlantic trade, but transportations resumed after Cromwell's invasion in August 1649. The first shipment occurred towards the end of that year, when, after the storming of Drogheda, Oliver Cromwell ordered the few surviving members of the garrison to be sent to Barbados. Over the coming years, thousands of military prisoners were sold in perpetuity to plantation-owners to work in the fields, effectively as slaves. Despite the departure of so many soldiers to the Continent at the end of the war, small Tory bands continued to pose a serious, if localised, military threat throughout the 1650s. Local parliamentary commanders usually executed captured Tories, or else arranged for them to be shipped to the Caribbean, along with those civilians accused of assisting them.
The war had also created a large number of widows and orphans, many of them destitute and homeless. Over the next ten years, unscrupulous merchants shipped thousands of these Catholic women and children across the Atlantic. The authorities in Dublin, concerned by the 'great multitudes of poor swarming in all parts of this nation', welcomed this trade as a means of clearing the country of vagrants. They also periodically emptied the jails by sending shiploads of convicts to the colonies, a practice that continued until the late nineteenth century, with Australia replacing the West Indies as the principal destination. In 1655, as part of the war against Spain, an English fleet captured Jamaica. Shortly afterwards, the government in Ireland arranged for over 2,000 Catholic boys and girls to be transported there in an attempt to repopulate the island.
The Irish did not always meekly accept their fate. In 1655, runaway Irish and African slaves in Barbados began attacking local militia forces, killing plantation-owners and destroying crops. It took the authorities the best part of two years to suppress the disorder. The island continued to be plagued by vagrant Irish, encouraging slaves to rebel against their masters. Some of the more adventurous managed to escape from English-controlled territory to the French colonies, such as the Leeward or Windward Islands, while others joined the numerous pirate fleets that roamed freely throughout the Caribbean for much of the seventeenth century. The collapse of the Cromwellian regime and the restoration of the Stuart monarchy in 1660 brought an end to large-scale transportations. Most of the Irish indentured servants had been freed by 1680, although shipments of convicted Tories continued throughout the reign of Charles II. Their descendants continue to reside in the Caribbean, particularly on the island of Montserrat, where Irish surnames such as O'Connor, Fitzgerald and O'Carroll are still to be found today".
"Over 60,000 Irish Catholics had been sent as slaves to Barbados, and other islands in the Caribbean by Oliver Cromwell". (source: New World Celts)

Slave registers, Norfolk Record Office
These registers were compiled between c1812 and 1834 and the information they contain varies across the former colonies.
However, they were updated every three years or so, making them very useful in establishing who was born, who died and who was moved in between updates.

Properties 1600-1830 and Slavery Connections (English Heritage) (PDF)

• Slavery Connections to English Heritage Sites
• Google search for "Slave Trade" @ English Heritage (117 results)
• Slave Trade and Abolition (English Heritage, @ archive.org, 2015)
• Slave Trade and Plantation Wealth (English Heritage, @ archive.org, 2014)
• Slavery and the British Country House (English Heritage, @ archive.org, 2014)

Slave Trade Statistics

Slave Valleys, Peasant Ridges: Topography, Colour and Land Settlement on Dominica. by Lennox Honychurch (UWI, Cave Hill, Barbados)

Slavery, Abolition, and Emancipation by Brycchan Carey, PhD (brycchancarey.com)

• A Chronology of Slavery, Abolition, and Emancipation

Slavery and Anti-Slavery: A Transnational Archive Gale Digital Collections
The world's largest archive on the history of slavery. (Requires Subscription)

Slavery - the Epsom and Ewell Connection

Slavery History - History in Focus Series, 2007
History in Focus invited eight academics to write short pieces on various aspects of slavery, the slave trade and its abolition from their own research perspectives. The resulting articles cover a broad range of issues, including resistance among slaves, runaway slave communities, proslavery arguments in the British West Indies, aspects of abolishing the slave trade including the economic consequences, and memories of slavery in Africa. We hope they will be of interest to historians and students of slavery and its consequences which still resonate today. The Institute of Historical Research (IHR, U London) provides resources for historians, including a major research library, digital projects, seminars and lectures, conferences, books and journals, podcasts and Ma/PhD study and research training.

Slavery and Revolution
A showcase of excerpts from letters written by Simon Taylor (1738-1813), a slaveholder and plantation owner who lived in Jamaica during a period characterised by revolution, war, and imperial reform.

"Slavery" at Google Books
Many books have a preview and full view mode.

Slavery in the Circuit of Sugar: Martinique and the World Economy, 1830-1848 (Review by Christopher Chase-Dunn)

Slavery and Anti-slavery (gale.com)
The world’s largest archive on the history of slavery.

Exploring the Early Americas, Exhibition at The Library of Congress

• Spirits and Spirituality: Alcohol In Caribbean Slave Societies by Frederick H. Smith (archive.org from 2011)

Sugar and Slavery: Molasses to Rum to Slaves by JM West (docplayer.net)

The British Slave Trade and its abolition 1770-1807 (BBC archived page)

Google search for : The slave trade at The Royal Museums Greenwich, UK (1,230 results)

The Sugar Revolutions and Slavery at The Library of Congress Country Studies

The Negro Family in British Guiana (U Chicago)

The slave trade - a historical background - British Library

Transatlantic slave trade: legacies of the past & building the future (UNESCO)

Prominent academics, researchers, authors and other global experts - including members of the International Scientific Committee of UNESCO’s Routes of Enslaved Peoples project - gathered from 9 to 11 June 2022 in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, to discuss the causes, consequences and impacts of the transatlantic slave trade. This was the Committee’s first meeting in North America.

Understanding Slavery Initiative
The transatlantic slave trade was responsible for the forced migration of between 12 - 15 million people from Africa to the Western Hemisphere from the middle of the 15th century to the end of the 19th century. The trafficking of Africans by the major European countries during this period is sometimes referred to by African scholars as the Maafa ('great disaster' in Swahili). It's now considered a crime against humanity.
The slave trade not only led to the violent transportation overseas of millions of Africans but also to the deaths of many millions more. Nobody knows the total number of people who died during slave raiding and wars in Africa, during transportation and imprisonment, or in horrendous conditions during the so-called Middle Passage, the voyage from Africa to the Americas.
The kidnapping of Africans occurred mainly in the region that now stretches from Senegal to Angola. However, in the 19th century some enslaved Africans were also transported across the Atlantic from parts of eastern and south-eastern Africa.

Voyages - Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Study Centre and Database
A major resource for the study of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, includes a "voyages" database, an African names database and lesson plans.