The Caribbean in the flow of global currents

The rise of the Western European 'historical core' zone and the Caribbean 'historical peripheral' zone---both closely intertwined as part of the Atlantic region since the early days of the modern era---were both embedded in the mael-stream of global processes. The emergence of the far-western frontier of the Afro-EurAsian continent, and future hegemonic zone, was not carried out on its own accord. The Caribbean occupies a special place in world history. As the oldest 'modern' West European colonial sphere, the Caribbean region symbolizes the beginning of the 'modern world,' a primordial sphere. This work ponders what the nature of this 'Atlantic' world region was.;Western Europe was economically, politically and intellectually extensively impacted by older centers in Afro-EurAsia, especially the 'Arabic World.' Western political philosophies which had been in the making since the 'classical' Crusades, matured in the Spanish neoscholasticism and humanism. Spanish political philosophy---the closest approximation of epistemologies accompanying the 'transition' to 'modernity' we have---accompanied processes of the Spanish Empire, including those pertaining to new international human relations, the cultural hegemonic mission of the core zone, as well as the invention of Europe and its 'Other.' Processes such as the inquisition, religious persecution, and expulsions of ethnic minorities accompanied the Renaissance era's colonization of the Caribbean and the subjection as well as enslavement of the native population. Supported by papal donations---a swindle of historical proportions---the Spanish 'universal empire' in the Atlantic took the early modern era on the track of a theocratic international apartheid system.;The failure of the Spanish 'world-empire' contributed to the rise of rival but nevertheless totalitarian types of empires in the Caribbean. Sombart located the rise of the first modern capitalist structures in the slave plantation system. With its obsession on profit making and the absolute 'commodification' of 'man' through the new slavery which prevailed all over the Caribbean---a gross violation of established norms and normally acceptable social relations in Western Europe---the Atlantic region not only retained, but deepened, the international apartheid system which characterized the Atlantic world region from the 16th to the 19th century.