An analysis of how the eighteenth century Caribbean was significant for the United States/British North America at the time. It doesn’t so much shed light on the Caribbean as it does on how outsiders saw the Caribbean, and, in particular how Americans came to see the Caribbean. The core idea, that the Caribbean was the central region, in more than geographical terms, of the Americas in the eighteenth century is not really new (Eric Williams, for example, made the same argument seventy years ago). ( )