region. It is divided into three parts, each centered around a particular case study: the first focuses on the nineteenth century ("The Age of Free Trade"); the second considers the period up to 1960 ("The Age of Preferences"); and the final section concerns the half century from the Cuban Revolution to the present ("The Age of Globalization"). The study makes use of a specially constructed database to observe trends across the whole region and chart the progress of nearly thirty individual countries. Its findings challenge many long-standing assumptions about the region, and its in-depth case studies shed new light on the history of three countries in particular, namely Belize, Cuba, and Haiti.

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