The Caribbean is a chain of Islands known as the West Indies. It stretches from the tip of Florida and goes east before swinging down to Venezuela, and includes thousands of small islands. These form a breakwater 2000 miles long and separate the Atlantic Ocean from the Caribbean Sea. There are many countries that make up this chain. They are divided into two main groups – The Greater Antilles and the Lesser Antilles.

Cuba, Jamaica, Hispaniola (Haiti and Dominican Republic) and Puerto Rico make up the Greater Antilles. These islands are the largest. The Bahamas and Cayman Islands are included.

The Lesser Antilles are divided into the Leeward Islands and the Windward Islands, according to the Trade Winds that blow steadily from the Northeast. The Leewards start in the North from the Virgin Islands, St Kitts and Nevis, Antigua and Barbuda, Montserrat, Guadeloupe, and Dominica.

The Windwards start from Martinique, St Lucia, Barbados, St Vincent and the Grenadines, Grenada, and Trinidad and Tobago, the most Southern. Although Guyana is not an Island, and is part of the South American Continent, it is part of the Caribbean.

This has been the basis of arguments on defining the Authenticity of a Caribbean Recipe. With over 20 different countries making up one Caribbean, skeptics have continuously used this as the Principal Premise for their argument against this being so. They have claimed that each island has their own Native Recipes, and that there can be no Authentic Caribbean Recipes.

In evaluating the merit of Authentic Caribbean Recipes as compared to an Authentic Native Recipe for each Caribbean Island, one must consider the Political and Cultural Development of the Caribbean as a whole.

Before 1492, these lands were inhabited by Caribs and Arawaks. They were South American Indians who travelled between the islands and colonized them. They apparently settled there long before the time of Christ, and would have villages established with the basic infrastructures.

European presence in the Americas dates back to the 11th century, when the Vikings settled in New Foundland. This lasted until the 15th century.

The Spanish first occupied Hispaniola in 1496 and started to colonize the other islands. In the 1500’s they set up extensively sugar cane plantations an enslaved the natives, who quickly died as a result of brutal labour and diseases for which they had no immunity. The introduction of domesticated animals such as pigs, horses, sheep, goats, and fowls which were kept close to the homes was alien to the Indians and epidemics soon broke out. Only small pockets of the Carib population survived.

In the 1600’s, British, Dutch and French colonies were established. This led to rivalries and wars, as each nation tried to compete for the islands. Pirates and buccaneers were common. This happened for almost 200 years. Eventually, they settled on the smaller islands, and planted tobacco. The English established themselves in St Kitts, Nevis, Antigua, Montserrat and St Croix. The Dutch took Curacao, Saba, and Saint Eustatius in the 1630s, and the French colonized Martinique and Guadeloupe during the same period.

During the early years of settlement, the English and the French colonies consisted mainly of settlers who worked relatively small plots of land. European indentured servants provided the labor. They grew tobacco and indigo and cut wood for export. By the 1650s the British, French, and Dutch had substantially diminished the Spanish monopoly in the Caribbean. In 1655 the English took Jamaica by force from Spain. French adventurers gradually occupied the western third of Hispaniola, which Spain officially ceded to France in 1697.

Eventually the Virginia tobacco in the 1640’ forced tobacco plantations out of business, and sugar cane cultivations started. Compared to tobacco, sugar was highly industrialized and required extensive labour. To supply the labour, slaves were captured from Africa and transported across. This was profitable, and as production decreased due to overworked soils, more islands were cultivated. The African population quickly grew to about 87,000 with 12,000 Europeans by 1760.

In 1791, the Haitian Revolution broke out and in 1834, slavery was abolished. Colonial life changed radically. The ex-slaves departed the sugar fields and preferred urban life. Some pooled resources and took over some of the plantations. But village communities were created and the opportunities to grow and sell food and thus engage in business emerged.

The Planter Class no longer held a near-monopoly on the colonies’ economic activities. Faced with shortage of labour, Indentured laborers from Madeira, China, and later India were brought in. The Portuguese and Chinese moved out and preferred to set up retail businesses, leaving the Indians on the estates.

Given this background, one sees that the Caribbean came out of a tremendous ethno-cultural variety. It is perhaps the only part of the world that possesses this diverse biological and cultural mixture. The smallest of the islands would be almost homogenous. The largest ones would still possess colour heterogeneity as there is a higher degree of ethnic variation. But racial purity will be a minimum.

These facts, you may argue, must point to dissimilarities in Native Caribbean Recipes, and adding weight to there not being true Authentic Caribbean recipes. But when one looks at the implications:

1.The Northeast Trade Winds blew directly into the Caribbean from the Atlantic. This meant that ships coming in to trade would first pass through the Caribbean islands before reaching Venezuela and the rest of South America. Contact with many of the islands is now part of the route. Ships leaving the Caribbean would have to sail through the Gulf of Mexico to get the reverse winds to push them out to the Atlantic.

2.The establishment of profitable plantations on the islands meant that Trade must take place between the Caribbean and Europe. This led to the development of the Dutch West India Trading Company and the French West India Trading Company. These were very powerful organizations in their times.

3.Each of these islands, including Guyana was at some point in time controlled by a Colonial power for decades at a time. They became ‘mini-states’ of these European Governments.

4.As time passed, the Governance of these mini-states changed, and so did the clusters. Each island was then a subject of different powers, and had alliances with different island states.

5.Being part of a cluster would mean that trading with other members of the cluster would be encouraged, and as the clusters changed, renewed trading would take place.

6.With trading among similar mini-state members, cultural exchanges would take place as the colonial powers would encourage their own cultural practices, rules and other laws.

7.This would result in a certain amount of “check and balance" of cultural diversification amongst the Caribbean as a whole. The common ancestries would make this easy and mutually accepted.

8.Cooking of Food is part of Culture. Trading would encourage exchange of recipes, as well as the local resources including ingredients.

9.The result would be a homogenous culture. Slight differences will occur, especially in the larger land masses and the predominance on one colonial power. This is easily identified by the development of different dialects.

10.Depending also on the nature of the local resources and their abundance or scarcity, tastes would vary to suit and dialect differences may cause one Caribbean Recipe to have a different name or variation.

The end result is that even though we are living in separate islands, we all eat the same Caribbean Foods by following the same Caribbean Recipes because we all came from the same ancestral backgrounds, planted the same crops and exchanged our ideas for centuries. We lived together as one. We evolved into a separate culture by itself. You will find pieces that belong here, there and everywhere, because that is where we came from. The different environment has caused us to modify and this is change. It was slow, taking hundreds of years to be called our own food, our own Authentic Caribbean Recipes.

In Cooking Caribbean Cuisines, fresh foods are always used. Certain spices such as Curry, Geera, Essences, salt, oil and the obvious would be already preserved or prepackaged. But the other main ingredients, the ground provisions, vegetables, seasonings, meats and fish are freshly harvested. This is what makes the difference. Each ingredient has its own flavour and imparts a certain taste. It is that skilful blending of these, where each must compliment the other, which brings out the Authenticity of the recipe. These skills were handed down through the generations and are part of our Culture. They are part of what makes us unique. This cannot be achieved otherwise.