The Black Carib Wars: Freedom, Survival and the Making of the Garifuna

The Garifuna people today live all along the Caribbean littoral of Central America, from Belize, through Guatemala and Honduras down to Nicaragua, and also in some of the biggest cities of the United States. For more than 200 years they have preserved their unique culture and language-the direct descendent of that spoken in the islands at the time of Columbus. All of them, however, trace their origin back to the island of St. Vincent-Youroumaÿn in their own language-where shipwrecked and runaway slaves joined together with the local Carib Indians to form a distinct society, known to the European colonists as the Black Caribs. Relations with the French veered between conflict and cooperation but when a deal struck in Paris in 1763 ceded the island to Britain, the stage was set for the Black Caribs' final, desperate struggle to preserve their freedom. What followed was a series of bloody wars punctuated by periods of wary coexistence in which a small but determined people stood up to the might of the British Empire.

The product of extensive original research in St. Vincent, the United Kingdom and France, The Black Garib Wars combines a compelling narrative with new details of the Black Caribs fight to stay free.