In The Black Carib Wars, Christopher Taylor offers the most thoroughly researched history of the struggle of the Garifuna people to preserve their freedom on the island of St. Vincent. Today, thousands of Garifuna people live in Honduras, Belize, Guatemala, Nicaragua and the United States, preserving their unique culture and speaking a language that directly descends from that spoken in the Caribbean at the time of Columbus. All trace their origins back to St. Vincent where their ancestors were native Carib Indians and shipwrecked or runaway West African slaves—hence the name by which they were known to French and British colonialists: Black Caribs. In the 1600s they encountered Europeans as adversaries and allies. But from the early 1700s, white people, particularly the French, began to settle on St. Vincent. The treaty of Paris in 1763 handed the island to the British who wanted the Black Caribs' land to grow sugar. Conflict was inevitable, and in a series of bloody wars punctuated by uneasy peace the Black Caribs took on the might of the British Empire. Over decades leaders such as Tourouya, Bigot, and Chatoyer organized the resistance of a society which had no central authority but united against the external threat. Finally, abandoned by their French allies, they were defeated, and the survivors deported to Central America in 1797. The Black Carib Wars draws on extensive research in Britain, France, and St. Vincent to offer a compelling narrative of the formative years of the Garifuna people.

In The Black Carib Wars, author Christopher Taylor offers the fullest, most thoroughly researched history of the Garifuna people of St. Vincent, and their uneasy conflicts and alliances with Great Britain and France. The Garifuna--whose descendants were native Carib Indians, Arawaks and West African slaves brought to the Caribbean--were free citizens of St. Vincent. Beginning in the mid-1700s, they clashed with a number of colonial powers who claimed ownership of the island and its people. Upon the Garifuna's eventual defeat by the British in 1796, the people were dispersed to Central America. Today, roughly 600,000 descendants of the Garifuna live in Guatemala, Honduras, Belize, Nicaragua, the United States, and Canada. The Garifuna--called "Black Caribs" by the British to distinguish them from other groups of unintegrated Caribs--speak a language and live a culture that directly descends from natives of the Caribbean at the time of Columbus. Thus, the Garifuna heritage is one of the oldest and strongest links historians have to the region before European colonialism. The French, the first white people to live on St Vincent, attempted to subdue the Black Caribs but eventually developed an alliance with them. When the Treaty of Paris ostensibly handed St. Vincent to the British crown in 1763, the British clashed with the Black Caribs but, like the French, eventually formed another treaty. This cycle of attempted colonialism of St. Vincent by France and England alternately would continue for three decades. After repeated conflict and desperate measures by the European powers, the Garifuna were forced to surrender. In March 1797 the last survivors were loaded on to British ships and deported to the island of Roatán hundreds of miles away in the bay of Honduras. A little over 2,000 men, women and children were all that were left--perhaps a fifth of the Black Carib population of just two years earlier. It was a cataclysm. But the Black Caribs--the Garifuna in their own language--survived and their descendants number in the hundreds of thousands.

"Published in 2012 in the United Kingdom by Signal Books ... Oxford"--T.p. verso.

Describes the lives of two very different Zimbabweans--Nigel Hough, a wealthy white farmer, and Aqui, his poor black nanny--from the 1970s to 2002, focusing how both were affected by Zimbabwe's brutal civil war and its aftermath.

A “wide-ranging, vivid” narrative history of one of the most coveted and complex regions of the world: the Caribbean (The Observer). Ever since Christopher Columbus stepped off the Santa Maria and announced that he had arrived in the Orient, the Caribbean has been a stage for projected fantasies and competition between world powers. In Empire’s Crossroads, British American historian Carrie Gibson offers a panoramic view of the region from the northern rim of South America up to Cuba and its rich, important history. After that fateful landing in 1492, the British, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Danish, and even the Swedes, Scots, and Germans sought their fortunes in the islands for the next two centuries. These fraught years gave way to a booming age of sugar, horrendous slavery, and extravagant wealth, as well as the Haitian Revolution and the long struggles for independence that ushered in the modern era. Gibson tells not only of imperial expansion—European and American—but also of life as it is lived in the islands, from before Columbus through the tumultuous twentieth century. Told “in fluid, colorful prose peppered with telling anecdotes,” Empire’s Crossroads provides an essential account of five centuries of history (Foreign Affairs). “Judicious, readable and extremely well-informed . . . Too many people know the Caribbean only as a tourist destination; [Gibson] takes us, instead, into its fascinating, complex and often tragic past. No vacation there will ever feel quite the same again.” —Adam Hochschild, author of To End All Wars and King Leopold’s Ghost

This purchase on Amazon is for JUST THE PAPERBOOK. If you'd like the audiobook please go to: LearnGarifunaNow.com. All products are available there. ---- Luz F. Soliz-Ramos became motivated to create Learn Garifuna Now! when she realized that many Garifuna people, especially the youngsters are not speaking language. The book and its accompanying audio version was created with a fun and easy to follow approach. This will help beginners, intermediate speakers, and all people who want how to jumpstart their ability to speak the Garifuna language in real, every day conversations!