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•· · ~ . · SIDNEY W. MINTZ

1. The Caribbean as a Socio-cultural Area1

The Caribbean islr,nds, a scattering of some fifty inhabited units

spanning nearly 2,500 miles of sea between Mexico's Yucatan Penin

sula and the north coast of South America, constitute the oldest

colonial sphere of western European overseas expansion. By the second decade of the sixteenth century, these territories were circum

navigated and explored, their aborigines had been dominated and

Spanish colonies established on the largest islands, and the entire

area had been thrust into the consciousness of European monarchs,

philosophers, and scientists. As the primordial sphere of Spain's At

lantic imperium, the Caribbean region symbolized the world's be

ginnings of what Konetzke2 properly called planetary empires,

spanning whole oceans; the massive shift from a thalassic (Mediter

ranean) to an oceanic (Atlantic) orientation,3 that would governEurope's expansive designs for so long thereafter, began with the

Caribbean. And when LOpez de G6mara, addressing himself to

Charles V in 1552, asserted that, after the Creation and the coming

of Christ, the most important event in history had been the discovery

1 of the New World, he was not claiming more than what many in

formed Europeans of the time would have conceded. 4

Soon after their discovery, the Caribbean islands became a spring

board for the Spanish conquest of the American mainland, and a

testing-ground for Reconquista political designs, readapted for usein the administration and control of colonial peoples. After the sub

jugation of highland Mexico and the Andes, the importance of the

islands as areas of settlement in the Spanish imperial system declined

soURCE: Article prepared for the International Commission for a History of

the Scientific and Cultural Development of Mankind, and issued in the Journalo World History Vol. 9, No.4 (1966):912-37, published by Les Editions deLa Baconniere, Boudry-Neuchatel, Switzerland. Reprinted by permission of

the author and editor, Journal o World History Division of Cultural Studies,United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.