The century after the abolition of slavery in the British Caribbean colonies (from 1834 to 1934) witnessed more than a transformation in the systems of labor in the Americas. It was also a time of unprecedented mobility of workers across territories inside and around the Caribbean Sea. The bibliography of intra-Caribbean migrations includes studies on Leeward and Windward Islanders to South America and Puerto Rico, Haitian and eastern Caribbean sugar workers to the Dominican Republic, Barbadians and Jamaicans to Central America, and more.
Cuba was not an exception to this Caribbean process. The authors of this book challenge the tendency to “Cuban exceptionalism” in the historiography by asking “what makes Cuba Caribbean” (182). In doing so, they test the limits of Cuba’s nationalist historiography. Over the years, articles by Juan Pérez de la Riva, Mats Lundahl, Rose Mary Allen, and Marc McLeod, among others, have examined the different immigrant groups...
