The West Indies

"A well-known British biographer has collected from original fieldwork and intensive library research a wide range of detailed historical and environmental material about the Caribbean islands, from their earliest occupation to the present. Inevitably, the principal theme is sugar and how it influenced not only the islands but the policies of the colonial powers for more than 300 years. Just as important are the consequences for each pristine island environment of introducing successions of foreign plants and animals. A nearly flawless text...is supplemented by a large number of well-constructed maps, tables, and model diagrams." Choice "...[Watts] takes as his subject a region where the impact of Europeans on nature was particularly marked, both because they encountered a fragile ecology, and because at first they focused their rapaciousness on just a few islands. The resulting book, The West Indies, demonstrates impressively the potential of environmental history." Times Literary Supplement "David Watts has managed to capture both the complexity and the simplicity of Caribbean development and weave them together in a remarkable study that covers the region as a whole over the entire span of its modern history." Dale W. Tomich, Forest & Conservation History