ABSTRACT
In the Caribbean, the truly indigenous peoples had been exterminated by the early 18th century. The Caribbean peoples today are the descendents of involuntary migrants, who came to the Caribbean by ‘fatality’ rather than of their own will. They are descendents of African slaves, Indian indentured labourers, Chinese contract workers, deportees for religious reasons, or poverty migrants from the British Isles, Western Europe and the Levant/Middle East. In sum, West Indians are in a way ‘neo-indigenes’.
