Introduction

Abstract

This volume of essays on the subject of early Caribbean literature aims to provide scholars and readers with a sense of the richness and complexity of more than two centuries of English language literary works by and about people in a region marked by being the first place that the Old and New worlds collided; where a near-complete genocide was followed by the largest forced migration in history; where mass-scale deforestation was followed by the world’s first monoculture; where previously unimaginable wealth helped fuel the industrialization and imperial expansion of Europe; and where those empires clashed violently and traded territories more than in other parts of the imperialized globe.