Dear Anatol Scott:
 
     I am pleased to see that there is no problem with the
"Triangular Trade" being a misnomer.
 
     On the second point, my inclusion of the Caribbean with the
Americas, the issue can be viewed as a methological problem. But
only, it seems to me, if you look at the islands in isolation. Was
the Caribbean not part and parcel of the Atlantic economy that
emerged after 1492? The importance of how the "New England
traders, the Caribbean rum traders, and the Brazilian rum-tobacco
traders in the Atlantic slave trade" fit together is not just
limited to the historiography of the U.S., but to that of the
Atlantic as a whole. These folks, by drawing upon a low cost,
colonial product (as opposed to Euro-Asian trade goods, that became
valued in West, and especially West Central, Africa, were able to
break the monopoly which merchant capitalists in Europe had enjoyed
prior to the mid-1600s in the Atlantic slave trade. This because,
colonial rum was much cheaper and cost less to transport to Africa,
amongst other advantages, than any of the alcoholic beverages
Europeans had to offer: and here colonial traders in Brazil were
quite effective. Viewing this process in its totality does not
necessarily suggest, as you do, that "their [people who inhabited
the Caribbean] flourishing trade [was] subordinate to that of North
or South America."
 
     One more thing and do correct me if I am wrong. You ask "Will
answers to such questions help to explain anything about the two
solitudes which developed in the United States?" Which two: the
Euro-Americans and the Amerindians, or the Euro-Americans and the
African-Americans? In either case, one group is missing here: the
African-Americans (in terms of the broad Americas), who produced
most of the rum and were led to consume not small quantities of it;
and the Amerindians who were also turned to this intoxicant.
 
     As for the other point you raise, I shall leave it to
specialists of the Caribbean and North America to comment on.
 
Cheers, Jose
 
 
 
 
 
Jose C. Curto
Co-editor, Newsletter of CAAS
Center for Society, Technology and Development
McGill University
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