Module Convenor: Dexnell Peters

Module description
At the heart of this seminar will be a consideration of what is a region and how can it change over time. The course
will begin about 6,000 years ago when people first began living in the Caribbean islands and will end as new states
such as Haiti and Venezuela emerged in the early nineteenth century. What constitutes a region is not an easy
question to answer. Disease, war, and settlement were the three horsemen of the Indigenous apocalypse. Hurricanes, earthquakes, and volcanic eruptions were—and still are—defining features of the Caribbean environment. Slavery, the
plantation system, and sugar transformed the economic and social landscape. Towns, trade, and ships connected
people and places, as empires, race, and revolutions divided them. These central themes will guide discussion, but
the main premise of the course is that a regional approach is an indispensable framework for making sense of the
past. The problematic is: what framework is best? Increasingly popular is the idea of a Greater Caribbean,
encompassing not only the islands of the Caribbean Sea but the neighboring mainland--a rimland. How far should the
boundaries extend? Looking south, to the Guianas, Suriname, even northeastern Brazil? Looking north, to Louisiana,
Florida, even Georgia and South Carolina? Embracing the concept of a Greater Caribbean will invite a reconsideration
of traditional regions in the Americas. Historians now increasingly focus on the relationships between the islands and
territories of North, Central and South America that touch the Caribbean Sea. Reviewing recent scholarship, this
course will assess what binds and what divides the Greater Caribbean. What broad processes are shared across the
region? What are the forces making for disunity? Above all, what is the significance of a Greater Caribbean for
hemispheric, Atlantic and Global history?

Principal module aims
This aims to assess:

• What binds and what divides the Greater Caribbean?
• What broad processes are shared across
  the region?
• What are the forces making for disunity?
• What is the significance of a Greater Caribbean for hemispheric,
  Atlantic and Global history?

Learning outcomes

• Gain the ability to effectively read, summarize, compare and contrast secondary literature in the discipline of
  history.
• Express thoughts in a succinct written and verbal form.
• Encourage rich academic debates.
• Identify the ways in which scholars define regions.
• Define the core definitions of the Greater Caribbean and consider the utility of the concept.
• Develop and confidently express arguments with effective evidence from secondary readings.
• Describe various ways in which the Greater Caribbean region has been conceived and assess the merits and
  demerits of these justifications.

Syllabus
Week 1: Considering Regional History and Defining the Caribbean.

Week 2: Indigenous Greater Caribbean.

Week 3: The Imperial Greater Caribbean.

Week 4: The Environmental Greater Caribbean.

Week 5: The Greater Caribbean Plantation Complex.

Week 6: Trade in the Greater Caribbean.

Week 7: Port Cities/Urban Spaces in the Greater
Caribbean.

Week 8: Resistance in the Greater Caribbean.

Week 9: The Revolutionary Greater Caribbean.

Week 10:Considering the Greater Caribbean (Review).