Review of Myths and Realities of Caribbean History by Basil A. Reid

The “New World” colonial imagination has deeply entrenched itself in history to the detriment of indigenous peoples. Postcolonial studies, particularly Caribbean and Latin American scholarship, have sought to combat the all-too-prevalent Eurocentric notions that indigenous peoples lacked civilization, culture, and sophisticated societies. Alongside this scholarship is Basil A. Reid’s Myths and Realities of Caribbean History . Reid writes: “Clearly, the early indigenes of the Caribbean were not passive, timeless recipients of external European colonization but created their own histories, reflected in their dynamic social, economic, and political lifeways. We need to create them with the same active intelligence and decision-making ability with which we credit ourselves” (pp. 9-10).