2.0. INTRODUCTION In this chapter, we would be looking at related data that, in one way or another, have some bearing on the issues of post colonialism in the Caribbean. The chapter also concerns itself with the historical antecedents of the Caribbean and how the corpus of work identifiable as Caribbean Literature came into existence. 2.1 HISTORY AND ORIGIN OF THE CARIBBEAN The historical antecedents of the Caribbean can be traced back to the days of Christopher Columbus, a voyager, who set forth in the name of King and Queen Isabella of Spain as an explorer to navigate the world in order to discover new places. It was during the voyage that he got an island close to India but which was not on the map and he named the place the West Indies. Western history therefore has it that Christopher Columbus ˜discovered' the West Indies. This discovery of Columbus is really no discovery in the real sense of it. This is because, as some commentators have remarked in times past, the Caribbean islands and their people had always existed long before Columbus had ever conceived the thought of a voyage. Some of have described his ˜discovery' as a lucky event. One of such commentators, Colin Martindale (2009) informs us that: "In seeking to solve one problem, a person makes another discovery quite by chance. In seeking a route to India, Columbus discovered America (116).  (Italics mine). In discovering the West Indies, Christopher Columbus discovered that the land was very rich in mineral and natural resources. At this juncture, it is important to mention that original aborigines of the so-called islands were the Caribs and the Arawaks. After Christopher Columbus's discovery of the new world and after his discovery that the land was blessed with mineral resources, Columbus and his men decided to settle in and in no time other European countries like Britain, France, and Portugal began to arrive there for economic advancement. Their arrival meant one thing: that the new found land would have to be tilled and cultivated and so they began to use the aborigines as labourers to work on their own land. This led to resistance on the part of the original inhabitants, and this generated into a confrontation that resulted in the extermination of the original inhabitants of the land (the aborigines) There was the need for manpower because there was a discovery of sugar. Therefore, the Indians and Chinese were recruited as indentured labourers to work on the plantations on contract basis. Indentured labourers are workers who are made to work for a period of time after an agreement must have been reached between them and their employers. According to Rickford and Rickford (2000), indentured labour is: ¦the arrangement under which most white servants and laborers (sic) came to America, involved contracted work for a period (often five to ten years), after which the labourer (sic) might receive land and would be free to work for himself or herself. (131) This agreement between white workers and the slave masters just before the days of slavery was a means through which the latter secured labour for their plantations. However, these indentured labourers “ Indians and Chinese “ got stranded on the island because there was breach of contract. Since these labourers could not provide enough manpower to run the daily expansive work on the tobacco, sugarcane, cotton plantations, there was need for more labour and it was this point that attention was shifted to Africa. Large number of Africans were transported to the New World via slave ships under harrowing and inhuman conditions. This forceful movement of Africans to the new world is just one of the different kinds of migration that Africans have made or been forced to make to the new world in general and to the Caribbean in particular. Although there were indications that before Christopher Columbus, some Africans had migrated to the Caribbean islands. Historians have continued to identify Columbus's discovery as one singular that changed the future of Africans. Between the 15th and 19th centuries, Africans were forcefully moved to the Caribbean as slaves. This accounts for their leading numerical figure in the total population of blacks in the Caribbean. It therefore follows that Africans were brought to the new world and the Caribbean islands to do one thing: to bring the land to full cultivation. The captured Africans who survived the horror and gory experiences of the Middle Passage, unfortunately had to continue horrifying experiences on the various plantations. They had to face squalor, poverty, degradation; and apart from being made to work on the plantations, some of them were used for grave digging and as errand boys; some were employed as beasts of burdens or load-carrying workers. Added to all of these was the fact that quite a number of the female slaves were sexually exploited and abused. So the lives of blacks were restricted by the use of padlocks, chains, etc. th