The Making of the Black Caribbean, 1650–1800

The Caribbean Sea (See Map 4.1) is set between the Atlantic Ocean to the east and several mainland nations to the west, and the islands in it extend in a great arc east and south from Cuba to Trinidad, Curacao, and Aruba between 10 and 25 degrees north latitudes.² There are three distinct archipelagos: the Bahamas, strictly speaking an Atlantic cluster; the Greater Antilles, that is, Cuba, Hispaniola (present-day Haiti and Dominican Republic), Jamaica, and Puerto Rico; and the Lesser Antilles, comprising the many small Leeward and Windward Islands and Barbados. Most of the islands look out to the Atlantic