Caribbean Empire

Ever since Christopher Columbus stepped off the Santa Maria onto what is today San Salvador, in the Bahamas, 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 traces the story of this coveted area from the northern rim of South America up to Cuba, and from discovery through colonialism to today, offering a vivid, panoramic view of this complex region and its rich, important history.

In Colonizing Paradise, historian Jefferson Dillman charts the broad spectrum of sentiments that British citizens and travelers held regarding their colonial possessions in the West Indies. Because British sentiments in the Caribbean located danger and evil not just in indigenous populations but in Spanish Catholics as well, Dillman’s work begins with the arrival of Spanish explorers and conquistadors. Colonizing Paradise spans the arrival of English ships and continues through the early nineteenth century and the colonial era.

He challenged the greatest empire on earth with a ragtag bunch of renegades—and brought it to its knees. Empire of Blue Water is the real story of the pirates of the Caribbean. Henry Morgan, a twenty-year-old Welshman, crossed the Atlantic in 1655, hell-bent on making his fortune. Over the...

Built on sugar, slaves, and piracy, Jamaica’s Port Royal was the jewel in England’s quest for empire until a devastating earthquake sank the city beneath the sea. Apocalypse 1692 exposes the lives of the individuals who made late seventeenth-century Jamaica the most financially successful, brutal, and scandalously corrupt of all of England’s nascent American colonies.

A powerful, groundbreaking new history of Britain and the Caribbean, challenging existing thinking about British colonization and recontextualizing the twin stories of contemporary inequality in both regions. In Empire Without End, historian Imaobong Umoren delivers an incisive and captivating...

This audiobook tells the story of how Spain managed to conquer the Americas in the span of half a century, from the late 1400s to the mid-1500s. Although exploitation and warfare continued between the colonizers and the colonized after this period, the largest campaigns against the indigenous peoples were undertaken in this short time span, which is the focus of this audiobook.

A kingdom risen. A goddess reborn. A world burning red. Esmyra now knows the truth of her magic, but it's cost her everything. Draevyn shattered her heart, and she's sworn to make him pay. But when her hunt uncovers ancient lies, she finds herself entangled in a battle far greater than vengeance...

Ninety miles from Florida, history may be preparing to accelerate again. For more than five centuries, Cuba has occupied a position far larger than its geography suggests. From the arrival of Christopher Columbus and the destruction of indigenous societies to the rise of sugar plantations, slavery, revolution, Cold War confrontation, and modern great-power rivalry, the island has repeatedly stood at the crossroads of empire and resistance. Now, as tensions between the United States, China, Russia, and the Global South intensify, Cuba is once again emerging as a strategic flashpoint in the ...

Bestselling author and award-winning investigative journalist Sandy Tolan exposes the bitter history behind the powerful, secretive sugar industry, and the Fanjuls, the Succession-like family who owns Domino Sugar and profits from it the most. For well over a century—going back to the slave...

in 37 CE, at the death of Emperor Drusus, the Roman Empire was the undisputed master of Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East. There was nothing worthwhile to conquer east of the Vistula River, and the Sahara Desert blocked expansion south of the fertile coastal plains of North Africa. Rome established the client kingdoms of Media and Persia as buffers between the Empire and the turbulent empires of the Indian sub-continent. The next opportunity for the development of Rome’s power and influence lay across the ocean. Rome's attention turned west after Phoenician traders reported ...

For five horrific weeks after Christmas in 1831, Jamaica was convulsed by an uprising of its enslaved people. What started as a peaceful labor strike quickly turned into a full-blown revolt, leaving hundreds of plantation houses in smoking ruins. By the time British troops had put down the rebels, more than a thousand Jamaicans lay dead from summary executions and extrajudicial murder. While the rebels lost their military gamble, their sacrifice accelerated the larger struggle for freedom in the British Atlantic.

He challenged the greatest empire on earth with a ragtag bunch of renegades—and brought it to its knees. Empire of Blue Water is the real story of the pirates of the Caribbean. Henry Morgan, a twenty-year-old Welshman, crossed the Atlantic in 1655, hell-bent on making his fortune. Over the...

The Somali Pirate 3 - White Star Empire follows pirate Noor Fayrus as he leads his clan of dagger dogs on a die-hard mission to take over the presidential palace in Mogadishu. Local militias vying for power and foreign mercenaries backed by Western interests put up fierce resistance to the pirate brigands. As the odds against Noor's gang quickly ratchet up to harrowing levels, he must dig deep within himself to inspire his followers through the relentless grind of war. Noor's battle, enlisting both the spirit and the sword, sounds a greater clarion call for all Somalis trying to triumph ...

Inspired by the true story of Jamaica’s first serial killer. Jamaica, 1772. Caribbean jewel, or a killer's playground? On the island of Jamaica, people have started disappearing without trace. Have they run away, trying to start new lives in the British colony under assumed names, or is...

In 1948, Britain invited its empire to rebuild the “mother country.” Thousands answered the call. They arrived legally, proudly, and full of hope, men and women from the Caribbean who came to work, to serve, and to belong. They filled shortages in transport, hospitals, factories, and public services. They paid taxes, raised families, and helped shape post-war Britain. Yet decades later, many were told they did not belong. This book traces the hidden history of the Windrush generation, from arrival and settlement to exclusion, surveillance, and betrayal. It explores how welcome turned ...

With gripping storytelling and cutting-edge scholarship, Pirates of Empire reframes piracy not as rebellion against empire, but as its indispensable partner. It exposes how colonial powers quietly relied on black markets to sustain their ambitions, and how these hidden economies gave rise to the modern Caribbean, multicultural, volatile, and endlessly creative.

Brought to you by Penguin. From the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian: a searing study of the British Empire that interrogates the pervasive use of violence throughout the twentieth century and traces how these practices were exported, modified, and institutionalized in colonies around the globe...

Andrea Levy, author of the Man Booker shortlisted novel THE LONG SONG and the prize-winning, million-copy bestseller SMALL ISLAND, draws together a remarkable collection of short stories from across her writing career, which began twenty years ago with the publication of her first novel, the...

Brought to you by Peguin. This book is not just written to enlighten. It is written with the optimism that it may contribute to a willingness to dismantle unsustainable 500-year-old hierarchies. After five long centuries, the roots of colonialism still run deep. This is a powerful new reckoning...

A ground-breaking and essential work of history – the first of its kind to closely examine the British Royal Family’s connection with the transatlantic slave trade The Crown's Silence is the untold story of the British royal family’s relationship to slavery from the reign of Elizabeth I to...