History Research Guide

The term Latin America refers to the Portuguese and Spanish-speaking states created in the early 1820s following the wars of independence, states that differed enormously in geographical and demographical scale, ethnic composition and economic resources, yet shared distinct historical and cultural traits. Specially-commissioned essays by leading experts explore the unity and diversity of the region's cultural expressions.

Volume 1 in The Cambridge History of Latin America looks at the history of colonial Latin America. 11 volumes available.

This book documents the diversity and complexity that existed in the Caribbean prior to the arrival of Europeans, and immediately thereafter. The diversity results from different origins, different histories, different contacts between the islands and the mainland, different environmental conditions, and shifting social alliances. Organized chronologically, from the arrival of the first humans-the paleo-Indians-in the sixth millennium BC to early contact with Europeans, The Caribbean before Columbus presents a new history of the region based on the latest archaeological evidence.

With mass migration changing the configuration of societies worldwide, we can look to the Caribbean to reflect on the long-standing, entangled relations between countries and areas as uneven in size and influence as the United States, Cuba, Hispaniola, Puerto Rico, and Jamaica. More so than other world regions, the Caribbean has been characterized as an always already colonial region. It has long been a key area for empires warring over influence spheres in the new world, and where migration waves from Africa, Europe, and Asia accompanied every political transformation over the last five centuries.

This book offers theoretical and empirical analyses of intra-Caribbean migration, regionalism and the construction of identities from the perspective of CARICOM nationals. It offers explanations as to why current attempts to promote intra-regional people mobility in the Caribbean have been met with and mixture of excitement, skepticism, tension and anxiety by regional governments, businesses and organizations, and CARICOM nationals.

This book provides a much-needed study of the lived experience of militarization in the Caribbean from 1914 to the present. It offers an alternative to policy and security studies by drawing on the perspectives of literary and cultural studies, history, anthropology, ethnography, music, and visual art. Rather than opposing or defending militarization per se, this book focuses attention on how Caribbean people negotiate militarization in their everyday lives. The volume explores topics such as the US occupation of Haiti; British West Indians in World War I; the British naval invasion of Anguilla; military bases including Chaguaramas, Vieques and Guantánamo; the militarization of the police; sex work and the military; drug wars and surveillance; calypso commentaries; private security armies; and border patrol operations. 

Explores how perceptions and depictions of the physical landscape both reflected and influenced the history of the British colonial Caribbean.

In this sweeping history, leading Haitian intellectual Jean Casimir argues that the story of Haiti should not begin with the usual image of Saint-Domingue as the richest colony of the eighteenth century. Rather, it begins with a reconstruction of how individuals from Africa, in the midst of the golden age of imperialism, created a sovereign society based on political imagination and a radical rejection of the colonial order, persisting even through the U.S. occupation in 1915.

In this first systematic comparative study of Cuba and Puerto Rico from both a historical and contemporary perspective, contributors highlight the interconnectedness of the two archipelagos and encourage a more nuanced and multifaceted study of the relationships between the islands and their diasporas.