Leyburn provides a connected story of the growth of Haiti's social institutions out of the backgrounds of slavery and French colonial life and the slow shaping of these institutions through the 19th century. The central thesis of the book is that Haitian society is divided into two segments, the yeomanry and the elite, and that the national institutional structure has not allowed any alteration in that division in the course of Haiti's history as a sovereign nation.

In Caribbean Contours eight leading scholars in the humanities and the social sciences survey the history, politics, economics, demographics and culture of the Caribbean to provide an authoritative introduction to this complex and geographically fragmented region.

Based on historical research and more than thirty years of anthropological fieldwork, this wide-ranging study underlines the importance of Caribbean cultures for anthropology, which has generally marginalized Europe's oldest colonial sphere.

Located at the gateway to the New World in the plantation heartlands of the Americas, the settlement of Martha Brae, Jamaica, has witnessed the unfolding of two distinct yet interrelated histories. Exploring the significance of Martha Brae as a European Caribbean slaving port in the eighteenth century, Jean Besson simultaneously uncovers the...