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66-767: The Anegada Passage / ˌ æ n ə ˈ ɡ ɑː d ə / , also known as the Anegada Trough , is a strait in the Caribbean that separates the British Virgin Islands and the British ruled Sombrero Island of Anguilla , and connects the Caribbean and the Atlantic Ocean . It is 2300 m deep. Because the threshold depths are 1800 and 1600 m, Atlantic deep water from 1600 m level may flow into

132-415: A UNEP report, the Caribbean coral reefs might get extinct in next 20 years due to population explosion along the coast lines, overfishing, the pollution of coastal areas and global warming. Some Caribbean islands have terrain that Europeans found suitable for cultivation for agriculture. Tobacco was an important early crop during the colonial era, but was eventually overtaken by sugarcane production as

198-706: A decline in the Amerindian population. such as the Kongo , Igbo , Akan , Fon and Yoruba as well as military prisoners from Ireland , who were deported during the Cromwellian reign in England . Immigrants from Britain , Italy , France , Spain , the Netherlands , Portugal and Denmark also arrived, although the mortality rate was high for both groups. Cultural geography Cultural geography

264-578: A devastating impact on the population, so starting in 1503, slaves from Africa were imported to the colony. While early slave traders were Portuguese and Spanish, known as the First Atlantic System, by the 17th century the trade became dominated by British, French, and Dutch merchants. This was known as the Second Atlantic System. 5 million African slaves would be taken to the Caribbean, and around half would be traded to

330-541: A few still are, colonies of European nations; a few are overseas or dependent territories : The British West Indies were united by the United Kingdom into a West Indies Federation between 1958 and 1962. The independent countries formerly part of the B.W.I. still have a joint cricket team that competes in Test matches , One Day Internationals and Twenty20 Internationals . The West Indian cricket team includes

396-436: A set of symbolic resources that help people make sense of the world around them, as well as a manifestation of the power relations between various groups and the structure through which social change is constrained and enabled. There are many ways to look at what culture means in light of various geographical insights, but in general geographers study how cultural processes involve spatial patterns and processes while requiring

462-483: A strong trend in human geography toward Post-positivism that developed under the label "new cultural geography" while deriving methods of systematic social and cultural critique from critical geography . Since the 1980s, a "new cultural geography" has emerged, drawing on a diverse set of theoretical traditions, including Marxist political-economic models , feminist theory , post-colonial theory , post-structuralism and psychoanalysis . Drawing particularly from

528-472: Is a foundation of cultural geography but has been augmented over the past forty years with more nuanced and complex concepts of culture, drawn from a wide range of disciplines including anthropology , sociology , literary theory , and feminism . No single definition of culture dominates within cultural geography. Regardless of their particular interpretation of culture, however, geographers wholeheartedly reject theories that treat culture as if it took place "on

594-594: Is a subfield within human geography . Though the first traces of the study of different nations and cultures on Earth can be dated back to ancient geographers such as Ptolemy or Strabo , cultural geography as academic study firstly emerged as an alternative to the environmental determinist theories of the early 20th century, which had believed that people and societies are controlled by the environment in which they develop. Rather than studying predetermined regions based upon environmental classifications, cultural geography became interested in cultural landscapes . This

660-522: Is often used to describe a pirate operating in this region. The Caribbean region was war-torn throughout much of its colonial history, but the wars were often based in Europe, with only minor battles fought in the Caribbean. Some wars, however, were born of political turmoil in the Caribbean itself. In 1791, a slave rebellion in the French colony of Saint-Domingue led to the establishment in 1804 of Haiti ,

726-667: Is questioned. Consistent dates of 3100 BC appear in Cuba . The earliest dates in the Lesser Antilles are from 2000 BC in Antigua . A lack of pre-ceramic sites in the Windward Islands and differences in technology suggest that these Archaic settlers may have Central American origins. Whether an Ortoiroid colonization of the islands took place is uncertain, but there is little evidence of one. DNA studies changed some of

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792-689: Is warm year round, in the 70s, 80s and 90s, and only varies from winter to summer about 2–5 degrees on the southern islands and about a 10–20 degrees difference on the northern islands of the Caribbean. The northern islands, like the Bahamas, Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic, may be influenced by continental masses during winter months, such as cold fronts. Aruba: Latitude 12°N Puerto Rico: Latitude 18°N Cuba: at Latitude 22°N Lucayan Archipelago Greater Antilles Lesser Antilles All islands at some point were, and

858-469: The 2004 Haitian coup d'état , the US were accused by CARICOM of arranging it to remove elected Haitian leader Jean-Bertrand Aristide. In 1965, 23,000 US troops were sent to the Dominican Republic to quash a local uprising against military rule (see Dominican Civil War ). President Lyndon Johnson had ordered the invasion to stem what he deemed to be a "Communist threat." However, the mission appeared ambiguous and

924-620: The Caribbean . The Caribbean is sometimes considered alongside Latin America as a region. Generally, the Caribbean region is organized into 33 political entities , including 13 sovereign states , 12 dependencies , 7 overseas territories , and various disputed territories . From 15 December 1954 to 10 October 2010, there was a territory known as the Netherlands Antilles composed of five islands, all of which were Dutch dependencies. From 3 January 1958 to 31 May 1962, there

990-880: The Caribbean Community . On the continental mainland of the Americas , the Caribbean coasts of Mexico , Central America, and South America, including the Yucatán Peninsula of Mexico, Bay Islands Department of Honduras, the North and South Caribbean Autonomous Regions of Nicaragua, the Limón Province of Costa Rica, Cartagena and Barranquilla in Colombia, Maracaibo and Cumaná in Venezuela, are considered part of Caribbean. As with

1056-711: The Cuban Revolution of 1959, relations deteriorated rapidly leading to the Bay of Pigs Invasion , the Cuban Missile Crisis , and successive US attempts to destabilize the island, based upon Cold War fears of the Soviet threat. The US invaded and occupied Hispaniola for 19 years (1915–34), subsequently dominating the Haitian economy through aid and loan repayments. The US invaded Haiti again in 1994 . After

1122-468: The Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico , while the more seasonal dry tropical savanna climates are found in Cuba , northern Colombia and Venezuela , and southern Yucatán, Mexico . Arid climates are found along the extreme northern coast of Venezuela out to the islands including Aruba and Curacao , as well as the northwestern tip of Yucatán. While the region generally is sunny much of

1188-642: The Indian subcontinent and Asia ; as well as modern immigration from around the world. The region takes its name from the Caribs , an ethnic group present in the Lesser Antilles and parts of adjacent South America at the time of the Spanish conquest of the Americas . The two most prevalent pronunciations of "Caribbean" outside the Caribbean are / ˌ k ær ɪ ˈ b iː ə n / ( KARR -ə- BEE -ən ), with

1254-784: The Monroe Doctrine , the United States gained a major influence on most Caribbean nations. In the early part of the 20th century this influence was extended by participation in the Banana Wars . Victory in the Spanish–American War and the signing of the Platt Amendment in 1901 ensured that the United States would have the right to interfere in Cuban political and economic affairs, militarily if necessary. After

1320-499: The University of California, Berkeley . As a result, cultural geography was long dominated by American writers. Sauer defined the landscape as the defining unit of geographic study. He saw that cultures and societies both developed out of their landscape, but also shaped them too. This interaction between the natural landscape and humans creates the cultural landscape . Sauer's work was highly qualitative and descriptive and

1386-736: The Virgin Islands Basin , Anegada Gap, and Sombrero Basin , that form part of the general trough stretching from the southeastern Puerto Rican mainland in the Caribbean Sea to the northeastern British Virgin Island of Anegada in the North Atlantic Ocean are often collectively grouped under the name of Anegada Passage or Trough . Caribbean Situated largely on the Caribbean Plate ,

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1452-404: The environmental determinist theories of the early Twentieth century, which had believed that people and societies are controlled by the environment in which they develop. Rather than studying predetermined regions based upon environmental classifications, cultural geography became interested in cultural landscapes . This was led by Carl O. Sauer (called the father of cultural geography), at

1518-448: The new cultural geography have turned their attention to critiquing some of its ideas, seeing its views on identity and space as static. It has followed the critiques of Foucault made by other ' poststructuralist ' theorists such as Michel de Certeau and Gilles Deleuze . In this area, non-representational geography and population mobility research have dominated. Others have attempted to incorporate these and other critiques back into

1584-538: The plantation system . [REDACTED] The oldest evidence of humans in the Caribbean is in southern Trinidad at Banwari Trace , where remains have been found from 7,000 years ago. These pre-ceramic sites, which belong to the Archaic (pre-ceramic) age, have been termed Ortoiroid . The earliest archaeological evidence of human settlement in Hispaniola dates to about 3600 BC, but the reliability of these finds

1650-954: The Bahamas and the Leeward Islands ; the Island Caribs and Galibi in the Windward Islands; and the Ciboney in western Cuba. The Taínos are subdivided into Classic Taínos, who occupied Puerto Rico and part of Hispaniola; Western Taínos, who occupied the Bahamian archipelago, Cuba, Jamaica , and part of Hispaniola; and the Eastern Taínos, who occupied the northern Lesser Antilles . The southern Lesser Antilles, including Guadeloupe , Dominica , and Trinidad, were inhabited by both Carib-speaking and Arawak-speaking groups. Soon after Christopher Columbus came to

1716-644: The British Caribbean islands. Slavery was abolished first in the Dutch Empire in 1814. Spain abolished slavery in its empire in 1811, with the exceptions of Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Santo Domingo. Slavery was not abolished in Cuba until 1886. Britain abolished the slave trade in 1807 , and slavery proper in 1833 . France abolished slavery in its colonies in 1848. The Caribbean was known for pirates , especially between 1640 and 1680. The term " buccaneer "

1782-608: The Caribbean itself, but according to the Dictionary of Caribbean English Usage , the most common pronunciation in Caribbean English stresses the first syllable instead, / ˈ k ær ɪ b i æ n / ( KARR -ih-bee-an ). The word "Caribbean" has multiple uses. Its principal ones are geographical and political. The Caribbean can also be expanded to include territories with strong cultural and historical connections to Africa, slavery , European colonisation and

1848-692: The Caribbean region varies: Some islands in the region have relatively flat terrain of non-volcanic origin. These islands include Aruba (which has minor volcanic features), Curaçao , Barbados , Bonaire , the Cayman Islands , Saint Croix , the Bahamas , and Antigua . Others possess rugged towering mountain-ranges like the islands of Saint Martin , Cuba , Hispaniola , Puerto Rico , Jamaica , Dominica , Montserrat , Saba , Sint Eustatius , Saint Kitts , Saint Lucia , Saint Thomas , Saint John , Tortola , Grenada , Saint Vincent , Guadeloupe , Martinique and Trinidad and Tobago . Definitions of

1914-536: The Caribbean, both Portuguese and Spanish explorers began claiming territories in Central and South America. These early colonies brought gold to Europe; most specifically England, the Netherlands, and France. These nations hoped to establish profitable colonies in the Caribbean. Colonial rivalries made the Caribbean a cockpit for European wars for centuries. Columbus, and the early colonists of Hispaniola, treated

1980-543: The Dutch. Sea water was pumped into shallow ponds, producing coarse salt when the water evaporated. The natural environmental diversity of the Caribbean islands has led to recent growth in eco-tourism . This type of tourism is growing on islands lacking sandy beaches and dense human populations. Life expectancy in some countries of the Caribbean in 2022, according to estimation of the World Bank Group : At

2046-757: The Orinoco around 650 AD and another group, the Arauquinoid, expanded into these areas and up the Caribbean chain. Around 1300 AD a new group, the Mayoid, entered Trinidad and remained the dominant culture until Spanish settlement. At the time of the European discovery of most of the islands of the Caribbean, three major Amerindian indigenous peoples lived on the islands: the Taíno in the Greater Antilles ,

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2112-611: The South American nation of Guyana , the only former British colony on the mainland of that continent. In addition, these countries share the University of the West Indies as a regional entity. The university consists of three main campuses in Jamaica, Barbados and Trinidad and Tobago, a smaller campus in the Bahamas and Resident Tutors in other contributing territories such as Trinidad. The Caribbean islands have one of

2178-436: The United States, Britain, France and the Netherlands still have some Caribbean possessions . The decline of the export industries meant a need to diversify the economies of the Caribbean territories. The tourism industry started developing in the early 20th century, rapidly developing in the 1960s when regular international flights made vacations affordable and is now a $ 50 billion industry. Another industry that developed in

2244-414: The United States. Between the 1960s and 80s, most of the British holdings in the Caribbean achieved political independence, starting with Jamaica in 1962 , then Trinidad and Tobago (1962), British Guiana (1966), Barbados (1966), the Bahamas (1973), Grenada (1974), Dominica (1978), St. Lucia (1979), St. Vincent (1979), Antigua and Barbuda (1981), and St. Kitts and Nevis (1983). Presently,

2310-474: The coastal areas of the mainland, Belize , Panama , Guyana , Suriname , and French Guiana are often completely included within the Caribbean due to their strong political and cultural ties with the region. Geopolitically, the islands of the Caribbean are often regarded as a subregion of North America , though sometimes they are included in Middle America , or regarded as its own subregion as

2376-578: The deep areas in the Caribbean Sea. The Anegada Passage is a key shipping lane for the Panama Canal . Often called the "Oh-my-god-a Passage", it is considered a difficult passage for sailors because of the winds, waves, and swells. The Anegada Passage was the site of the 1867 Virgin Islands earthquake and subsequent tsunami . The multiple fault lines , ridges , and basins , including

2442-623: The earlier foraging inhabitants—presumably through disease or violence—as they settled new islands." Between 400 BC and 200 BC, the first ceramic-using agriculturalists, the Saladoid culture , entered Trinidad from South America. They expanded up the Orinoco River to Trinidad, and then spread rapidly up the islands of the Caribbean. Some time after 250 AD another group, the Barancoid, entered Trinidad. The Barancoid society collapsed along

2508-492: The early 20th century was offshore banking and financial services , particularly in The Bahamas and the Cayman Islands , as the proximity of the Caribbean islands to North America made them an attractive location for branches of foreign banks seeking to avail themselves of less complicated regulations and lower tax rates. The United States has conducted military operations in the Caribbean for at least 100 years. Since

2574-852: The first humans is correlated with extinction of giant owls and dwarf ground sloths . The hotspot contains dozens of highly threatened animals (ranging from birds, to mammals and reptiles), fungi and plants. Examples of threatened animals include the Puerto Rican amazon , two species of solenodon (giant shrews) in Cuba and the Hispaniola island, and the Cuban crocodile . The region's coral reefs, which contain about 70 species of hard corals and from 500 to 700 species of reef-associated fishes have undergone rapid decline in ecosystem integrity in recent years, and are considered particularly vulnerable to global warming and ocean acidification. According to

2640-523: The first republic in the Caribbean. Neighboring Santo Domingo (now Dominican Republic ) would attain its independence on three separate occasions in 1821, 1844 and 1865. Cuba became independent in 1898 following American intervention in the War of Independence during the Spanish-American war . Following the war, Spain's last colony in the Americas, Puerto Rico , became an unincorporated territory of

2706-671: The fringe of the Atlantic Ocean and Caribbean Sea just to the north of the island of Puerto Rico, is the deepest point in all of the Atlantic Ocean. The region sits in the line of several major shipping routes with the Panama Canal connecting the western Caribbean Sea with the Pacific Ocean. The climate of the area is tropical , varying from tropical rainforest in some areas to tropical monsoon and tropical savanna in others. There are also some locations that are arid climates with considerable drought in some years, and

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2772-430: The head of a pin". Some of the topics within the field of study are globalization has been theorised as an explanation for cultural convergence. This geography studies the geography of culture Though the first traces of the study of different nations and cultures on Earth can be dated back to ancient geographers such as Ptolemy or Strabo , cultural geography as academic study firstly emerged as an alternative to

2838-630: The indigenous peoples brutally, even enslaving children. In 1512, after pressure from Dominican friars, the Laws of Burgos were introduced by the Spanish Crown to better protect the rights of the New World natives. The Spanish used a form of slavery called the Encomienda , where slaves would be awarded to the conquistadors, who were charged with protecting and converting their slaves. This had

2904-418: The island of Barbados in the Lesser Antilles, are considered to be a part of the Caribbean despite not bordering the Caribbean Sea. All the islands in the Antilles , including the Lucayan Archipelago, form the West Indies , a term often interchangeable with the Caribbean . The archipelago of Bermuda is not part of the Caribbean, as it lies in the Sargasso Sea to the north, but it is an associate member of

2970-422: The more subjective, qualitative aspects of landscape. In the 1970s, new kind of critique of positivism in geography directly challenged the deterministic and abstract ideas of quantitative geography. A revitalized cultural geography manifested itself in the engagement of geographers such as Yi-Fu Tuan and Edward Relph and Anne Buttimer with humanism , phenomenology , and hermeneutics . This break initiated

3036-486: The most diverse eco systems in the world. The animals, fungi and plants, and have been classified as one of Conservation International 's biodiversity hotspots because of their exceptionally diverse terrestrial and marine ecosystems, ranging from montane cloud forests , to tropical rainforest , to cactus scrublands . The region also contains about 8% (by surface area) of the world's coral reefs along with extensive seagrass meadows, both of which are frequently found in

3102-444: The new cultural geography. Groups within the geography community have differing views on the role of culture and how to analyze it in the context of geography. It is commonly thought that physical geography simply dictates aspects of culture such as shelter, clothing and cuisine. However, systematic development of this idea is generally discredited as environmental determinism . Geographers are now more likely to understand culture as

3168-466: The number of fungal species endemic to some Caribbean islands. For Cuba, 2200 species of fungi have been tentatively identified as possible endemics of the island; for Puerto Rico , the number is 789 species; for the Dominican Republic , the number is 699 species; for Trinidad and Tobago, the number is 407 species. Many of the ecosystems of the Caribbean islands have been devastated by deforestation , pollution, and human encroachment. The arrival of

3234-438: The peaks of mountains tend to have cooler temperate climates . Rainfall varies with elevation, size and water currents, such as the cool upwellings that keep the ABC islands arid. Warm, moist trade winds blow consistently from the east, creating both rain forest and semi arid climates across the region. The tropical rainforest climates include lowland areas near the Caribbean Sea from Costa Rica north to Belize , as well as

3300-643: The primary stress on the third syllable , and / k ə ˈ r ɪ b i ə n / ( kə- RIB -ee-ən ), with the stress on the second. Most authorities of the last century preferred the stress on the third syllable. This is the older of the two pronunciations, but the stressed-second-syllable variant has been established for over 75 years. It has been suggested that speakers of British English prefer / ˌ k ær ɪ ˈ b iː ə n / ( KARR -ə- BEE -ən ) while North American speakers more typically use / k ə ˈ r ɪ b i ə n / ( kə- RIB -ee-ən ), but major American dictionaries and other sources list

3366-432: The region has thousands of islands, islets , reefs , and cays . Island arcs delineate the northern and eastern edges of the Caribbean Sea : the Greater Antilles in the north and the Lesser Antilles , which includes the Leeward Islands , Windward Islands , and the Leeward Antilles , to the east and south. The nearby northwestern Lucayan Archipelago , comprising The Bahamas and the Turks and Caicos Islands , and

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3432-551: The region's staple crop. Sugar was produced from sugarcane for export to Europe. Cuba and Barbados were historically the largest producers of sugar . The tropical plantation system thus came to dominate Caribbean settlement. Other islands were found to have terrain unsuited for agriculture , for example Dominica , which remains heavily forested. The islands in the southern Lesser Antilles , Aruba , Bonaire and Curaçao , are extremely arid, making them unsuitable for agriculture. However, they have salt pans that were exploited by

3498-413: The shallow marine waters bordering the island and continental coasts of the region. For the fungi, there is a modern checklist based on nearly 90,000 records derived from specimens in reference collections, published accounts and field observations. That checklist includes more than 11,250 species of fungi recorded from the region. As its authors note, the work is far from exhaustive, and it is likely that

3564-408: The stress on the third syllable as more common in American English too. According to the American version of Oxford Online Dictionaries, the stress on the second syllable is becoming more common in UK English and is increasingly considered "by some" to be more up to date and more "correct". The Oxford Online Dictionaries claim the stress on the second syllable is the most common pronunciation in

3630-452: The terms Greater Antilles and Lesser Antilles often vary. The Virgin Islands as part of the Puerto Rican bank are sometimes included with the Greater Antilles. The term Lesser Antilles is often used to define an island arc that includes Grenada but excludes Trinidad and Tobago and the Leeward Antilles. The waters of the Caribbean Sea host large, migratory schools of fish, turtles, and coral reef formations. The Puerto Rico Trench , located on

3696-487: The theories of Michel Foucault and performativity in western academia, and the more diverse influences of postcolonial theory , there has been a concerted effort to deconstruct the cultural in order to reveal that power relations are fundamental to spatial processes and sense of place . Particular areas of interest are how identity politics are organized in space and the construction of subjectivity in particular places. Examples of areas of study include: Some within

3762-606: The time of European contact , the dominant ethnic groups in the Caribbean included the Taíno of the Greater Antilles and northern Lesser Antilles , the Island Caribs of the southern Lesser Antilles, and smaller distinct groups such as the Guanajatabey of western Cuba and the Ciguayo of eastern Hispaniola. The population of the Caribbean is estimated to have been around 750,000 immediately before European contact, although lower and higher figures are given. After contact, social disruption and epidemic diseases such as smallpox and measles (to which they had no natural immunity) led to

3828-538: The traditional beliefs about pre-Columbian indigenous history. According to National Geographic , "studies confirm that a wave of pottery-making farmers—known as Ceramic Age people—set out in canoes from the northeastern coast of South America starting some 2,500 years ago and island-hopped across the Caribbean. They were not, however, the first colonizers. On many islands they encountered a foraging people who arrived some 6,000 or 7,000 years ago...The ceramicists, who are related to today's Arawak -speaking peoples, supplanted

3894-411: The true total number of fungal species already known from the Caribbean is higher. The true total number of fungal species occurring in the Caribbean, including species not yet recorded, is likely far higher given the generally accepted estimate that only about 7% of all fungi worldwide have been discovered. Though the amount of available information is still small, a first effort has been made to estimate

3960-438: The west of Barbados. The principal hurricane belt arcs to northwest of the island of Barbados in the Eastern Caribbean. A great example being recent events of Hurricane Irma devastating the island of Saint Martin during the 2017 hurricane season. Sea surface temperatures change little annually, normally running from 30 °C (87 °F) in the warmest months to 26 °C (76 °F) in the coolest months. The air temperature

4026-435: The wet and dry seasons. Seasonally, monthly mean temperatures vary from only about 5 C (7 F) in the northern most regions, to less than 3 C in the southernmost areas of the Caribbean. Hurricane season is from June to November, but they occur more frequently in August and September and more common in the northern islands of the Caribbean. Hurricanes that sometimes batter the region usually strike northwards of Grenada and to

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4092-419: The year, the wet season from May through November sees more frequent cloud cover (both broken and overcast), while the dry season from December through April is more often clear to mostly sunny. Seasonal rainfall is divided into 'dry' and 'wet' seasons, with the latter six months of the year being wetter than the first half. The air temperature is hot much of the year, varying from 25 to 33 C (77 F to 90 F) between

4158-431: Was also a short-lived political union called the British West Indies Federation composed of ten English-speaking Caribbean territories, all of which were then British dependencies. The modern Caribbean is one of the most ethnically diverse regions on the planet, as a result of colonization by the Spanish , English , Dutch , and French ; the Atlantic slave trade from Sub-Saharan Africa ; indentured servitude from

4224-411: Was challenged in the 1930s by the regional geography of Richard Hartshorne . Hartshorne called for systematic analysis of the elements that varied from place to place, a project taken up by the quantitative revolution . Cultural geography was sidelined by the positivist tendencies of this effort to make geography into a hard science although writers such as David Lowenthal continued to write about

4290-440: Was led by the "father of cultural geography" Carl O. Sauer of the University of California, Berkeley . As a result, cultural geography was long dominated by American writers. Geographers drawing on this tradition see cultures and societies as developing out of their local landscapes but also shaping those landscapes. This interaction between the natural landscape and humans creates the cultural landscape . This understanding

4356-426: Was roundly condemned throughout the hemisphere as a return to gunboat diplomacy . In 1983, the US invaded Grenada to remove populist left-wing leader Maurice Bishop. The US maintains a naval military base in Cuba at Guantanamo Bay . The base is one of five unified commands whose "area of responsibility" is Latin America and the Caribbean. The command is headquartered in Miami, Florida. The geography and climate in

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