About this Item
Ober, Frederick A. A Guide to the West Indies and Bermudas. New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1908. First edition. First printing. 525 pages, with five fold-out color maps and numerous black-and-white photographic illustrations. Original red cloth stamped in gilt, as issued with no dust jacket. 8vo. An early 20th-century travel guide reflecting U.S. and European imperial tourism in the Caribbean at the height of American expansion following the Spanish-American War. Ober, a prolific writer on the Caribbean and Latin America, interweaves geography, natural history, and colonial ethnography, offering a period perspective into the ways tourists, imperial authorities, and travel publishers framed the predominantly Black, Afro-Caribbean, and Creole cultures of the region during the Jim Crow era. This guide includes detailed chapters on Cuba, Puerto Rico, Jamaica, Trinidad, Barbados, Guadeloupe, Martinique, and dozens of other island territories, along with sections on "The Bermudas," "The Lesser Antilles," "The South Coast of Cuba," and "A Glimpse of South America." The contents pages visible here show Ober's systematic movement through the archipelago, giving each island a discrete treatment with notes on climate, agriculture, transportation, and colonial governance. As Ober writes in his introduction, the West Indies form "a region of infinite variety," a phrase that reflects both genuine admiration and the period's exoticizing tone common to pre-WWI travel literature. The fold-out maps, chart shipping routes, railways, ports, and political boundaries at a moment when the United States had recently taken possession of Puerto Rico (1898) and solidified its influence in Cuba and the broader Caribbean basin. Light rubbing to cloth with slight sunning to spine; corners mildly worn. Five fold-out maps complete, crisp, and clean, one with a minor tear near margins. Interior exceptionally bright with no writing or markings; binding tight. Overall very good condition. A well-preserved first printing of an important Caribbean travel guide, valuable for scholars of U.S. imperial history, Caribbean studies, tourism studies, and the racial-cultural representation of the West Indies during the early American century.
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