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5 - The Caribbean on the Eve of European Contact

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2012

Samuel M. Wilson
Affiliation:
University of Texas, Austin
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Summary

In the last few centuries before the arrival of Columbus and others from Europe, the people of the Caribbean were in the midst of change throughout the archipelago. From the smallest islands, where local groups struggled to make the most of the available resources and relationships with other groups, to the largest polities, which confronted large-scale and powerful forces of change, the people of the Caribbean were undergoing profound transformations.

This final chapter explores the cultural and political situation in late prehistory, paying attention to processes and directions of change, particularly to the following categories and engines of ongoing transformation:

  • The processes of cultural change involved in the growth in complexity of the Taíno polities were still very important. Large-scale changes were taking place on Hispaniola and Puerto Rico, but there was also a significant impact on Cuba, Jamaica, and the Bahamas. Cacicazgos were emerging in places they had not been previously, and the attendant competition among lineages and individuals for status and power was itself a powerful force for change (Keegan et al. 1998; Wilson 1990).

  • A related force, which was changing the political geography of the Caribbean, was the continuing growth of the largest polities. These large cacicazgos, especially on Hispaniola, were attaining new levels of size and territorial expansion. The polities of the Greater Antilles were beginning to project their influence into the Lesser Antilles and certainly into neighboring parts of the Greater Antilles and the Bahamas (Hofman 1993; Keegan 1992).

  • […]

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2007

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