Cannibal Encounters: Europeans and Island Caribs, 1492–1763

Preface to the Paperback Edition

Preface to the Paperback Edition IN THE SUMMER OF 2007, as I read through the edited manuscript of my forthcoming book France and the American Tropics to ijoo: Tropics of Discontent ?, I was struck that the material in the new book describing the Island Caribs (or Kalinago) differed only very slightly from the discussion in my 1992 book with the Johns Hopkins University Press, Cannibal Encounters: Europeans and the Island Caribs, 1492—1763. At the risk of immodesty, I concluded that Cannibal Encounters had held up very well. And it occurred to me that the current revival of interest in the Atlantic World in the early modern era and the relative lack of materials in the English language focusing on the Caribbean, especially the French parts, might secure a place for Cannibal Encounters in university classrooms . Several of my colleagues who have used the hardcover edition in teaching have reported that students reacted positively to Cannibal Encounters. Thus, I was pleased when the Johns Hopkins University Press decided to reissue the book in a paperback edition with this new preface , which includes an account of work published in the area since 1992. Naturally, I hope that far greater numbers of students will now have access to this book. The reviews of Cannibal Encounters in the 19905 were largely favorable ; to be sure, some anthropologists indicated that the treatment of Island Carib culture was not up to their standards. As I am not an anthropologist or even an ethno-historian, no doubt there is something to their critiques, though they lacked specificity. A major problem impeding greater understanding of Island Carib culture is the lack of post-1492 sites in which to conduct archaeological research. (See, e.g., Andre Delpuech, "Historical Archaeology in the French West Indies: Recent Research in Guadeloupe," in Paul Farnsworth, ed., Island Lives: Historical Archaeologies of the Caribbean [Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2001].) This archaeological deficit leaves scholars overly dependent on primary written sources from the period. In a book review that did identify a specific problem, one critic rather vociferously complained that my distinguishing Island Caribs from Black Caribs on eighteenthcentury St. Vincent distorted the ethnic situation. Perhaps, but island officials certainly remarked on the hostility between these groups. In any case, Cannibal Encounters is really about the relationship between Europeans and these Native American people. Questions of interpretation aside, xi xii PREFACE TO THE PAPERBACK EDITION as far as I know, no one has pointed out any significant factual errors in Cannibal Encounters and thus I am willing to see it reprinted as it is. As mentioned above, valuable publications have appeared since Cannibal Encounters was first published. In 1992 Peter Hulme and Neal Whitehead edited a magnificent collection of primary materials about the Island Caribs titled Wild Majesty: Encounters with Caribsfrom Columbusto the Present (Oxford: Claredon Press, 1992). It was gratifying to see in Paul Henley's review essay in the Times Literary Supplement that the reader of Wild Majesty's primary sources should have Cannibal Encounters nearby "to contextualize them." In 1992 also appeared two works in French complementary to parts of Cannibal Encounters. Gerard Lafleur, Les Caraibes des Petites Antilles (Paris: Karthala, 1992), is an acceptable synthesisfaute de mieux; Jean-Pierre Moreau, Les Petites Antilles de Christophe Colomb a Richelieu (Paris: Karthala, 1992), is very useful on Spanish-Island Carib relations in the sixteenth century and is well informed on Spanish archival material. More recently, Laurence Verrand, La Vie quotidienne des Indiens Caraibes aux Petites Antilles (XVHe siecle) (Paris: Karthala, 201), is a useful compendium of quotations from seventeenth-century primary sources on Carib customs and beliefs. Verrand assumes implicitly that when European sources were in agreement, we can be fairly certain of their accuracy, which some critics would dispute. The reader of French desiring useful quotations without the bother of reading the accounts themselves should look to Verrand's book. In the first chapter of Doris Garraway, The Libertine Colony: Creolization in the Early French Caribbean (Durham: Duke University Press, 2005), there is nothing objectionable on French-Island Carib relations, but it is a difficult text. These are not the only publications to have appeared since Cannibal Encounters, but they are the major ones. Scholars of the Atlantic World have not adequately exploited some key conclusions of Cannibal Encounters. I believed that my analysis of English and French relations with the Island Caribs would help explicate European and Native American relations in continental North America. Most contemporary historians utilize structural...