The Modern Caribbean Economy, Volume I

Introduction

Setting the Context

The Caribbean is a distinctive socioeconomic order determined by experiences of a historical formation rooted in colonialism and the plantation system, and all the consequences manifested in social stratification, cultural contradictions, and endemic economic limitations. As a result, the persistence of “plantation variables” is a fact, and the economies of the region eventually evolved typically into monocrop production, which is mostly foreign-owned and export-oriented. Later on, since the 1960s, emphasis on crops such as sugar, coffee, and bananas has been replaced by an excessive emphasis on tourism, which has been heralded as the road to modernity and prosperity.

Recently, even though Caribbean countries ...