“To the general public, it might seem like a buried history, but the Caribbean is so much more than tourism,” said Marlene Daut, professor of African American and African Studies and an
expert on Haiti who helped create the new program on Caribbean literatures, arts and cultures.
When Christopher Columbus arrived in the New World, he hit these islands first. Over the years and the subsequent trips that Columbus and other Europeans made, the indigenous populations were almost entirely exterminated on many islands, due to a deadly combination of resistance through warfare with the conquistadors and smallpox, which the Europeans brought with them to the Americas.