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Three Ancient Colonies: Caribbean Themes and Variations. By Sidney W. Mintz. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2010. Pp. xii, 257. Illustrations. Notes. References. Index. $27.95 cloth.
As a pioneering scholar of the Caribbean over several decades, Mintz is well prepared to reflect on the various cultures and histories of this "geographically modest but historically important region" (p. 2). Three Ancient Colonies, based on a series of lectures given at Harvard University's W. E. B. Dubois Institute in 2003, is both a searching "personal look back" at the people and places of Mintz's fieldwork in the 1940s and 1950s and a "meditation" on the legacies of slavery and plantation development in the Caribbean (p. 24).
The three core chapters focus on Jamaica, Haiti (Saint-Domingue), and Puerto Rico. In each chapter, Mintz emphasizes the importance of each place's "ancient" colonial history, focusing on slavery, sugar, and the plantation complex. These are the keys to understanding the Caribbean, he argues, and the basis for comparing Caribbean societies. Mintz then moves from the time of emancipation to the people he met during his fieldwork,...