The Lesser Antilles in the Age of European Expansion

The history of the Lesser Antilles from the early colonial era through the end of slavery

This collection offers the only single-volume study in English of the Lesser Antilles from the time of Columbus to the abolition of slavery. The essays show how the Lesser Antilles in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were among the most densely populated and advanced economic zones in the world and how they served as stepping-stones for the expansion of the slave-based plantation system in the Americas.