Crossroads in the Caribbean: A site of encounter and exchange on Dominica

Abstract

Dominica is the most mountainous of all the islands of the Lesser Antilles which forms the eastern arc of the Caribbean archipelago. It was the last island in the Caribbean to be colonized by Europeans. Its thick oceanic rain forests provided a refuge and ecological resources for the indigenous Carib people facing the Spanish, French, English and Dutch advance into the Caribbean during the sixteenth century. Dominica also provided a strategic location on which to cultivate and process raw materials for trading with the European ships en route to other parts of the Caribbean and American mainland. It is argued that the primary Carib product in this exchange was tobacco and that the traditionally established view of total resistance by ‘warlike Caribs’ to the European advance should be modified in the light of this trade. The recent discovery of a late Amerindian archaeological site at such an important maritime crossroad provides a unique opportunity to re‐evaluate the relationship between Caribs and Europeans in the years immediately following contact and the effects which this had on Carib society.

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