Freedom Roots: Histories from the Caribbean

by Laurent Dubois, Richard Lee Turits

Overview

To tell the history of the Caribbean is to tell the history of the world," write Laurent Dubois and Richard Lee Turits. In this powerful and expansive story of the vast archipelago, Dubois and Turits chronicle how the Caribbean has been at the heart of modern contests between slavery and freedom, racism and equality, and empire and independence. From the emergence of racial slavery and European colonialism in the early sixteenth century to U.S. annexations and military occupations in the twentieth, systems of exploitation and imperial control have haunted the region. Yet the Caribbean is also where empires have been overthrown, slavery was first defeated, and the most dramatic revolutions triumphed. Caribbean peoples have never stopped imagining and pursuing new forms of liberty.

Dubois and Turits reveal how the region's most vital transformations have been ignited in the conflicts over competing visions of land. While the powerful sought a Caribbean awash in plantations for the benefit of the few, countless others anchored their quest for freedom in small-farming and counter-plantation economies, at times succeeding against all odds. Caribbean realities to this day are rooted in this long and illuminating history of struggle.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781469672557
Publisher:	The University of North Carolina Press
Publication date:	08/01/2022
Pages:	408
Sales rank:	496,220
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.25(h) x 0.91(d)

About the Author

Laurent Dubois, author of Haiti: The Aftershocks of History and A Colony of Citizens, among other books, is John L. Nau III Bicentennial Professor in the History & Principles of Democracy at the University of Virginia. Richard Lee Turits, author of Foundations of Despotism, is associate professor of history, Africana studies, and Latin American studies at William & Mary.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

A magisterial, wide-ranging work that tells a global history of the Caribbean—among the most densely colonized regions of the world—in a way that centers the perspectives of the generations of people who have struggled to envision and create alternatives to imperial rule and its legacies. Laurent Dubois and Richard Lee Turits brilliantly shift our default focus from Caribbean plantation society to Caribbean counter-plantation society and the rich cultural and political worlds it has generated over many centuries."—Ada Ferrer, author of Freedom's Mirror

Ambitious, powerfully argued, and elegantly written, Freedom Roots thrusts the Caribbean into the center of historical debates and political controversies, illuminating the understanding of slavery, race relations, political insurgencies, economic modernization, and the building of nations. Recovering Caribbean history as a site crucial to understanding major issues in U.S., Latin American, and Atlantic world history, Dubois and Turits show how events in the larger Caribbean islands, especially Haiti and Cuba, profoundly shaped the fates of the smaller entities, but also how powerful outside interests in Europe and then the United States kept their thumbs on the scales of justice—bending it toward injustice."—Thomas C. Holt, author of Children of Fire

Freedom Roots meets the long-standing need for a new thematic narrative of the Caribbean, a place pivotal to global events. It reorients how we conceive the history of a region that, despite its small size, is comprised of individual countries with histories containing multitudes. Exploring its story from pre-Conquest through the transformations of the twentieth century, Dubois and Turits will satisfy readers who desire to learn more about the places that often appear in the media nowadays only as tourist hotspots or danger zones for natural catastrophes."—Matthew J. Smith, author of Liberty, Fraternity, Exile and Red and Black in Haiti

Editorial Reviews

Laurent Dubois and Richard Lee Turits offer an impeccably written and skillfully organized history of the Caribbean. . . . The book's nuance and readable style means it will appeal to both specialists and nonspecialists. . . . Impressive."—Journal of African American History

A lively narrative . . . a straightforward and easy-to follow history of the Caribbean that doesn't sacrifice theoretical sophistication. . . . [Its] ability to distill the complex history of the Caribbean into one narrative makes it an excellent teaching tool and an invaluable resource for scholars of the region. It fulfills its own call to imagine a different (and better) Caribbean."—Journal of Social History

The most unique aspect of the work is the lens through which the authors examine freedom and power. They place land at the center of the narrative, arguing that the key to autonomy was access to and control over land. In sum, the book highlights the contested nature of Caribbean land and space."—Hispanic American Historical Review

This volume's accessible narrative quality and critical perspectives make it a great textbook for any Caribbean history course."—Choice Reviews

Dubois and Turits put before the reader a past of struggles for freedom and autonomy in the Caribbean . . . and in doing so they inspire all the Americas to look at their indigenous and African roots and develop new and different projects for the future."—The Americas

Powerfully argued and engagingly written. . . . Freedom Roots offers a well-written, always interesting, and erudite account of the topics it takes up, especially the troubled histories of Cuba, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic in the last century."—New West Indian Guide

Freedom Roots shows how the study of the Caribbean past can help scholars understand the ways in which Caribbean people re-imagined alternate realities for themselves through counter-plantation thought and actions. . . . an important methodological blueprint and teaching tool for scholars of the region."—Bulletin of Latin American Research

From the Publisher