“The modern Caribbean economy was invented, structured and managed by European states for one purpose: to achieve maximum wealth extraction to fuel and sustain their national financial, commercial and industrial transformation.” So begins How Britain Underdeveloped the Caribbean: A Reparation Response to Europe’s Legacy of Plunder and Povertyas Hilary McD. Beckles continuesthegroundbreaking work he began in Britain’s Black Debt: Reparations for Caribbean Slavery and Native Genocide. We are now in atime of global reckoning for centuries of crimes against humanity perpetrated by European colonial powersas they built their empires with the wealth extracted from theterritories they occupied and exploited with enslavedand, later, indenturedlabour.The systematic brutalityof the transatlantic trade in enslaved Africans and the plantation economies did not disappear with the abolition of slavery. Rather, the means of exploitation were reconfiguredto ensure that wealth continued to flow to European states.Independence from colonial powers in the twentieth century did not mean real freedom for the Caribbean nations, left as they were without the resources for meaningful development and in a state of persistent poverty. Beckles focuses his attention onthe British Empireand shows how successive governments have systematically suppressed economic development in their former colonies and have refused to accept responsibility for the debt and development support they owe the Caribbean