The history of the Caribbean, which includes the history of the northeastern rim of South America, is one of enactments and events that span every political, social, and cultural development to have been played out in major areas of the world since the end of the fifteenth century. The Spanish conquest and subsequent imperial rule lasted without external interference for over a century and minimal internal resistance resulted in the dramatic depopulation of the Amerindian peoples within just a few decades of European arrival. The agencies of disease, enslavement, massacre, and eventually intermixture have meant that only isolated communities such as the Caribs of Dominica and scattered remnants of other Amerindians in the Guianas have survived. The history of the region, therefore, carries the burden of a profound erasure, the traces of which haunt the area with a memory but no recognition of an autochthonous cultural base. What remains startling about Caribbean history, then, is the stark transparency of its European manufacture: of its populations, social structures, political organizations, and the outside orchestration of the region's participation in the events of the larger world.

The play of multiple colonialisms in the region began in earnest in the seventeenth century. The piracy of the Spanish Main by the British, French, and Dutch led to Northern European colonization of most of the region except Cuba, Puerto Rico, Santo Domingo, and Trinidad.