Caribbean by James Mitchener covers a large span of history, from the history of indigenous people of the Caribbean up to when the book was published. He covers all the different empires in The Caribbean from the Spanish to the French, Dutch, and English. He attempts to cover major points of Caribbean history through these different empires.

I enjoyed the chapter setups. Even though, Mitchener went from Point of View to Point of View with the different characters, the stories were connected enough or flowed into each other well enough to follow. Throughout the book I kept wondering, “where is The Bahamas?” But at the very end of the book, with his ‘the setting’ page, I see he chose to exclude The Bahamas and the Turks and Caicos Islands from the book completely. 

To me that was an interesting narrative choice, though The Bahamas is not in the Caribbean Sea. It is a part of the Caribbean in every other way. It is the place where Columbus first landed and the first interaction between the ‘old’ and ‘new’ world. Nassau, New Providence also played a large role in the Golden Age of Piracy among other historical events, so I was disappointed to see its exclusion. The one chapter where he did mention The Bahamas (Chapter 5) made me wonder what he was citing or where he was drawing his information from. The Bahamas was barely an established English colony by 1650 as the first English settlers created a colony in 1647. So the likelihood of the colony weighing in on important government matters would have been very unlikely.


I have always enjoyed reading historical fiction. I liked elements of Caribbean; it was a mammoth task to try and write a whole history of the Caribbean. I believe a number of the characters fall into the White Savior trope, particularly in latter half of the book. I am aware of racism throughout history but some of the POVs were apologetically racist. Racism is even acknowledged in the book and characters shift and change. But the lens through which, not only the characters see people of color, but also the way Mitchener describes people of color rubbed me the wrong way at times. 

There is an exotification of indigenous people with how they are physically described and how their way of life is described. What stuck out to me the most was in chapter 14, Ras-Negus Grimble is described in very physically dirty language. “Mud” in his hair, that looks like “writhing vipers.” He has a “savage appearance” and “fetid smell.” This is not a particular POV, this is just general description from Mitchener. Personally, I have never known a Rastafarian, or people with locs, to have mud in their hair and not bathe.