Volume IV begins with the initiation of a "free" society after slavery was abolished and thus in the eighteenth century with the Haitian Revolution. Slavery and its destruction form merely a background. It follows that the different parts of the Caribbean region enter the picture effectively only when they leave slavery behind and so at varying dates, whatever sideways glances authors may have used for contextual purposes. Then after firmly establishing freedom the story moves naturally to the time of the First World War and the substitution of the United States for the Europeans in the role of overlord.