Freedom Roots

Laurent Dubois, author of Haiti: The Aftershocks of History and A Colony of Citizens, among other books, is professor of history and romance studies at Duke University.
For more information about Laurent Dubois, visit the Author Page.

Richard Lee Turits, author of Foundations of Despotism, is associate professor of history, Africana studies, and Latin American studies at The College of William & Mary.

For more information about Richard Lee Turits, visit the Author Page.

“Freedom Roots narrates the history of the Caribbean islands from the late 15th century until the present from a ‘counter-plantation perspective.’ The main thread running throughout the narrative is land—specifically the tension between elite desires to extract wealth from it and popular efforts to derive autonomy from it. . . . This volume's accessible narrative quality and critical perspectives make it a great textbook for any Caribbean history course.”--CHOICE

“This varied, wide-angle history, one that rolls on from first contact through plantations, slavery, peasants, and revolutions, centers on how land was used by the exploiting empires and the ways different communities pushed back. The focus here is on the stories of populations who have fought, with more or less success, to imagine alternatives to imperial rule.”--Brown Alumni Magazine

“Laurent Dubois’ and Richard Lee Turits’ lively narrative. . . . Tells a straightforward and easy-to follow history of the Caribbean that doesn’t sacrifice theoretical sophistication. . . . Freedom Roots’ ability to distill the complex history of the Caribbean into one narrative makes it an excellent teaching tool and an invaluable resource for scholars of the region. It fulfills its own call to imagine a different (and better) Caribbean.”--Journal of Social History

"A magisterial, wide-ranging work that tells a global history of the Caribbean—among the most densely colonized regions of the world—in a way that centers the perspectives of the generations of people who have struggled to envision and create alternatives to imperial rule and its legacies. Laurent Dubois and Richard Lee Turits brilliantly shift our default focus from Caribbean plantation society to Caribbean counter-plantation society and the rich cultural and political worlds it has generated over many centuries."—Ada Ferrer, author of Freedom’s Mirror

"Ambitious, powerfully argued, and elegantly written, Freedom Roots thrusts the Caribbean into the center of historical debates and political controversies, illuminating the understanding of slavery, race relations, political insurgencies, economic modernization, and the building of nations. Recovering Caribbean history as a site crucial to understanding major issues in U.S., Latin American, and Atlantic world history, Dubois and Turits show how events in the larger Caribbean islands, especially Haiti and Cuba, profoundly shaped the fates of the smaller entities, but also how powerful outside interests in Europe and then the United States kept their thumbs on the scales of justice—bending it toward injustice."—Thomas C. Holt, author of Children of Fire

"Freedom Roots meets the long-standing need for a new thematic narrative of the Caribbean, a place pivotal to global events. It reorients how we conceive the history of a region that, despite its small size, is comprised of individual countries with histories containing multitudes. Exploring its story from pre-Conquest through the transformations of the twentieth century, Dubois and Turits will satisfy readers who desire to learn more about the places that often appear in the media nowadays only as tourist hotspots or danger zones for natural catastrophes."—Matthew J. Smith, author of Liberty, Fraternity, Exile and Red and Black in Haiti