Caribbean Sea of the New World

First published in 1946, one year after the Spanish original Biografia del Caribe, German Arciniegas's Caribbean Sea of the New World has been described as "a breathtaking and magisterial work, encompassing four centuries of history of the Caribbean basin in its broad sweep.' For Arciniegas the Caribbean Sea was the Mediterranean of the New World, 'a place of fertile and dramatic encounter of people, races, religions and cultures.' Today we know that region as the Greater Caribbean - El Gran Caribe. There are four 'books' in this work, corresponding roughly to the four centuries from the arrival of Columbus to the construction of the Panama Canal. Their titles tell the themes: the Golden Age; the Silver Age; the Age of Enlightenment and the Age of Liberty. According to Professor Gustavo Belle Lemus, historian and former Vice-President of Colombia, Arciniegas broke with the traditional nationalistic perspectives of Hispanic American historians by incorporating the Caribbean into the long history of the West, as an integral part of the violent expansion of the Judeo-Christian world that began with the arrival of Columbus. As such, Caribbean See of the New World takes its place as one of the earliest expressions of a Pan-Caribbean intellectual and political consciousness. Today, the book remains a genuine literary and historiographical classic of the Americas.