The west indies [antikvár]

Introduction The West Indies, next after the East Indies, is the most strategically placed, overpopulated, ethnologically complex and politically divided archipelago on earth. Aside from a few vacation spots, the American public knows little of it. Historically, the dominant power in the Caribbean Sea has been the dominant power in the Western Hemisphere. The islands of the Greater and Lesser Antiiles, a great crescent reaching from Florida to the South American shoulder, have been and still are the classic keys to Caribbean penetration. No picture of the whole region and its salient characteristics, colors and conflicts had been presented (so far as I know) until the trailbreaking job here offered by Mr. Carter Harman. Neither he nor anyone could exhaust the area's combined románcé, beauty, danger and passión, or do justice to its combined possibilities, capacities, achievements and hopes. Few analysts would agree with all of any single account: the problems are too complex, deep and varied. West Indián history began more than 100 years before the continental United States was settled at all. Plunder, product and trade arising from the region's development revolutionized European economic life and its monetary as well as maritime evolution. As a unit, the archipelago might have been a powerful independent force; conquests, diplomatic bickerings, European power politics, piracy and the slave trade instead left it a patchwork of separate nations, languages, races and cultures. Clearly the area can have a bri]liánt future. The renascence of Puerto Rico-the best single job of rapid political, social and economic construction in the world-demonstrates that fact. If this book does no more than indicate the richness as well as the problems of the region, its purpose will have been served. One need not take as complete its account of the turmoil in the Dominican Republic; one may differ with its emphasis on the vodou rites in Haiti. Yet the fact is that no single author, aside from Mr. Harman, has attempted to present a whole picture of this intricate chain of islands. For they are now interconnected in their own right and on their own ground. This is new. When I was young, one could travel from San Jüan, Puerto Rico, to Port-au-Prince, Haiti, only by steaming to New York and coming back. Since World War II most if not all major islands have been linked to each other by air; their radios talk to each other continuously; they impact upon each other and upon the Caribbean littoral. It remains to be seen whether the archipelago will become anew the cockpit of world politics, as it was during the naval and revolutionary struggles of European nations during the 17th and 18th Centuries. In the New World, the region is now a top problem: war and peace may well depend on the outcome of its affairs. Latin American nations on the continent can base their lives on their own internál structures. The West Indies, fatefully lying across major trade routes, must depend for their peace in large measure on better organization of the affairs of the world. It is time for Americans to know them well. Adolf A. Berle former Assistant Secretary of State for Latin American Affairs