ABSTRACT
Meditation on Yellow' looks out from the perspective of an indigenous inhabitant of the Caribbean islands. One of the few things that archaeologists can tell with assurance about the indigenous Caribbean is that there were extensive trade networks in existence before 1492. Those networks certainly extended into the Amazon basin, possibly to Central America, and perhaps as far as the Andes. Trade is never 'free', but there are moments when it is carried out more or less between equals; that is to say, with little room for coercion on either side, or at least with equal degrees of coercion. One such moment might be identified in the theatre of Caribbean cultural contact. The existence of indigenous pre-Columbian trade networks makes the point that trade was not the product of colonialism. Once European settlement began on the smaller Caribbean islands, equality of trade ceased because the Europeans quickly learned how to grow the local crops.
