James Sweeney Writes Historical Fiction
About:
Hello readers. Jim Sweeney here. I became interested in the history of St. Vincent Island in the Eastern Caribbean and the Black Caribs while researching for a history thesis. I like islands and wanted to learn about how small island nations functioned as independent entities when their populations were no bigger than a California county. They have to provide all the same services as any nation, including defense, social programs, run an economy, and send ambassadors to other nations, the UN, and various international organizations.
I settled on researching St. Vincent and the Grenadines. It was not too far away, not overly touristy, was famous as sailing heaven in the Grenadines Island chain, and was English-speaking. I visited the island for a preliminary paper on its general history, speaking with Dr. Edgar Adams, the leading local historian, who sat me down at his bookstore and gave me the equivalent of St. Vincent History 101, plus several books on local history, including his own.
My thesis advisor told me to focus my research. I found the story of the Black Carib’s resistance to British imperialism as the most interesting topic and delved into it in-depth, along with a second visit to the island, completing my thesis in 2004.
As a history and anthropology teacher, I found the story of the Black Caribs fascinating. These people’s ancestors were a mix of escaped African slaves and native Carib Indians, living in an indigenous fashion. Their language was Carib, as was their culture, though the blood of their African ancestors, from a variety of nations, made up a large element of their genealogy.
Influenced by my sons, who also enjoy writing, I decided to write about the history of these unique people, their ethnogenesis, and their resistance to being removed from their island home so the English could establish sugar plantations worked by African slaves.
I read as much as I could about St. Vincent’s history, Atlantic slavery, the people sent as captives to the Caribbean, and the lands from which they came. What started as a single book about the Black Caribs morphed into nine novels recounting in fictional form what captives’ lives might have been like before they were enslaved, how they might have dealt with slavery, and how they escaped to freedom by joining the Caribs of St. Vincent Island to blend their genes with those of the native people of the island.
This website is devoted to highlighting the history of the Black Caribs, also known as the Garifuna, and how their blended population came to be. I have mixed real history based on intensive research and reading, as well as four visits to St. Vincent and one to the Carib Reservation on Dominica, where they have a mock-up of a traditional Carib village, with my imagination to tell the story of the people who may have blended into the Garifuna/Black Caribs.
A look at upcoming novels in the Black Carib Series is included in Projects.
I have included links to sites with more information on the history of the times, maps, pictures, and summaries of the chapters in each of the nine novels. I will include links when they become available to the public. I welcome comments in the blog section.