Wrong. There were elements of witchcraft brought to all countries where African slaves were taken, but like all elements of African culture it was almost totally destroyed by the oppression of the slaves and the intermingling of people from widely different places. (In fact there were almost as many white slaves as blacks transported to the British Caribbean and mainland American colonies, the origin of the term “redneck” – they were usually treated even worse than the blacks and many did not live very long.)

Voodoo is a synthetic religion which was artificially created by the Haitian government in the 19th century for nationalist and anti-Catholic reasons, combining elements of Catholic rituals and practices with real or imagined elements of indigenous African occultism.

“Down there”? “Down here”?

Are not the Caribbean islands on the surface of the earth. They are not “down” from any other place where readers of this page live.

Even if you make the silly equation “down” = “south of”, do you assume that all of this page’s readers are in the USA and Canada?

Few serious historians today think that Columbus seriously “believed” that he had discovered a new route to Asia or India. That was merely a story that he played up in order to encourage investment and migration. Nobody in Europe would have been much interested in coming to a continent that contained, no cities, no civilisation, no wealth, just primitive half-naked illiterate warlike cannibals and dangerous animals.

“what almost any non-islander thinks the Caribbean is all about: Sun, sea and sand!”
Not us Aussies. We;ve got much more of all three on our island continent than all the Caribbean islands put together. If we go to the Caribbean it’s for its many other attractions.

Ooops sorry, too American for some of you.