Pirates and Plantations

Before Europeans arrived in the Caribbean, the region contained a group of more or less 'undeveloped' societies. The islands were inhabited by two main peoples, the Arawaks and the Caribs. Both groups had originated from the continent of South America, and as the Caribs gradually moved northwards from the mainland, invading each island in turn, so the Arawaks retreated ahead of them. Both societies had subsistence economies; they depended upon hunting, fishing and food gathering, and grew only a few crops for their own consumption. Private property was more or less unknown in these societies. Land and food were communally shared within small village settlements on the coasts, while people travelled from one island to another in canoes.

We have not harmed any of them ... true, when they have been reassured and lost their fear, they are so naive and so free with their possessions that no one who has not witnessed them would believe it. When you ask for something they have, they never say no. To the contrary, they offer to share with anyone ...

Hans Koning, Columbus: His Enterprise

Explorers and Colonists

These were the societies which the Italian explorer, Christopher Columbus, encountered when his first expedition, financed by Spain, arrived in the region in 1492. The 'discovery' was really an accident. Columbus was in fact attempting to reach India, which was already known to the seafaring European nations, and because he thought that he had found a westerly route to the Indian continent, he called the Caribbean the 'West Indies'. Profit was the driving force behind the expedition. Spain wanted to open up a new trading route to India, since the old routes through the Mediterranean had been disrupted by the wars of the Crusades and were controlled by the powerful city states of Venice and Genoa.

Even if Columbus was unsure of where he was and what he had 'discovered', his expedition showed the considerable progress that had been made in 15th-century Europe. With advances in navigation and ship building, European ·explorers could sail thousands of miles in search of profitable trade. And in the countries of Europe, too, the economy was developing from a feudal and agricultural system to one which was based more on manufacturing and trading. European merchants were interested in buying raw materials and goods from other parts of the world which they could then sell in their own or other countries. Goods such as silk, spices and sugar became very valuable as the wealthy classes in European society acquired a taste for these new luxuries. This was the beginning of the merchant economy which hungered for overseas exploration and trade.

For Spain, 1492 was a pivotal year. It was the year the recently unified Spanish crown, under Ferdinand and Isabella, drove out the last Moors from the city of Granada, reestablishing absolute Christian rule after a 500 year battle. The Church was now ready to turn its attention outwards, and it encouraged expeditions such as that led by Columbus, since it believed that European travellers should convert the non-European peoples whom they met to Christianity.

Gold

However, Columbus' first priority was not religion, but gold. As he wrote in a letter to his patrons, Ferdinand and Isabella, 'Gold is the most excellent, gold is treasure, and who has it can do whatever he likes in this world. With it, he can bring souls to Paradise ...' Noticing that the Caribs and Arawaks wore gold jewellery, he claimed possession for Spain of those islands which he saw and began the process of plunder which destroyed the Caribbean's original societies. Gold meant little to the native inhabitants; to the Spanish it meant everything, and they forced the natives (whom they called 'Indians') to provide it for them. In the world's first gold-rush, open-cast mines were dug, the natives were enslaved and put to work, and ships containing the valuable metal sailed back to Spain.

Every man and women, every boy or girl of fourteen or older, in the province of Cibao (of the imaginary gold fields) had to collect gold for the Spaniards. As their measure, the Spaniards used those same miserable hawks' bells, the little trinkets they had given away so freely when they first came 'as if from heaven.' Every three months, every Indian had to bring to one of the forts a hawks' bell filled with gold dust. The chiefs had to bring in about ten times that amount. In the other provinces of Hispaniola, twenty-five pounds of spun cotton took the place of gold.

Copper tokens were manufactured, and when an Indian had brought his or her tribute to an armed post, he or she received such a token, stamped with the month, to be hung around the neck. With that they were safe for another three months while collecting more gold.

Whoever was caught without a token was killed by having his or her hands cut off ...

Hans Koning, Columbus: His Enterprise

The gold quickly ran out. Soon the Spanish invaders began to look elsewhere for fresh supplies and moved on to the potentially rich lands of South and Central America. For the Caribs and Arawaks, it was already too late. In 1492 there had been perhaps 300,000 of them on the island of Hispaniola alone; by 1514 only an estimated 14,000 were left. Many had died fighting against the invaders, but the majority died from overwork in the Spanish mines or from diseases which the Europeans brought with them. Those colonisers who remained in the islands realised that the region could create riches in another way, that it could be used to grow crops such as tobacco for export back to Europe. In particular, they recognised that the Caribbean's tropical climate would suit sugar-cane which they introduced into the islands (see The Greatest Gift).

Pirates and Plantations

But first they had a problem to overcome. After the extermination of the native inhabitants, there were not enough workers or slaves to cultivate the sugar.

At first the colonists brought contracted labourers from Europe to work in the plantations. They were poor people or prisoners, some of whom volunteered (others were kidnapped) and who hoped to obtain a small amount of land for themselves at the end of their contract. But they were insufficient for the big sugar plantations. Many also died because of poor food and conditions and from diseases such as yellow fever. The sugar producers looked for another source of labour, and now they decided to import slaves not from Europe, but from Africa.

Spain had been the first European nation to seize and colonise the Caribbean islands. As other European countries saw the wealth which Spain was extracting from the region they, too, began to move into the area. At first, British and French pirates or buccaneers preyed upon the Spanish ships as they sailed back to Europe. Later, the governments of these and other European countries sent armies to fight the Spanish colonists and took certain territories for themselves. When Britain defeated the Spanish Armada in 1588, it ended Spanish naval supremacy. Over the next century Britain took possession of Antigua, Barbados and Jamaica, while the French colonised Martinique, Guadeloupe and the western side of Hispaniola (or what is now Haiti). Gradually the Spanish monopoly in the Caribbean disappeared. Many of the islands subsequently changed hands as European nations struggled for domination in the region.

Slavery

By the beginning of the 18th century all the islands had something in common, whichever European country controlled them; they all imported and used slaves on their plantations. The enslavement of Africans was nothing new. From the middle ages onwards, European countries had been willing to capture or buy black slaves who were often provided by Arab or Portuguese traders. They considered this morally acceptable, since the Africans were not Christians and were therefore thought to be inferior. What was different about the Caribbean slave trade, however, was its sheer scale. In the course of the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, the slavers abducted an estimated five million Africans from their countries and sold the survivors in the Caribbean colonies.

Companies were founded in Britain, France, Spain, Holland and Denmark to supply the Caribbean plantations with slave labour. In what was known as the 'triangular trade' ships set out from European ports such as Bristol, Bordeaux or Liverpool and sailed to the west coast of Africa. There, they bought slaves from local chieftains or other traders in exchange for manufactured goods such as weapons, metals or fabrics. The ships then crossed the Atlantic to the Caribbean, where they sold their human cargo to the plantation owners. In the final leg of the triangle, the ships then returned to Europe, carrying sugar and other tropical products for sale to European manufacturers. At each stage the traders made a large profit by exchanging one commodity (including the slaves) for another.

Slavery devastated Africa. Local and foreign traders looking for further victims tore apart the coastal areas with wars and raids, then went further inland in an effort to feed Europe's insatiable appetite for slaves. The great civilisations of West Africa slowly declined. Every year thousands of young men, women and children were stolen from their communities. For the slaves themselves, the experience was horrifying. Many died during the crossing from Africa to the Caribbean in overcrowded and filthy ships (see The Middle Passage). This crossing, known as the 'middle passage' (being the middle stage in the triangular trade), became notorious for its cruelty and death toll. Sometimes half or more of a ship's consignment of slaves died and were tossed overboard before reaching the Caribbean. The traders, however, made huge amounts of money from the business. Personal fortunes and the prosperity of cities like Bristol and Nantes were built on the trade in human beings.

Upon arrival in the Caribbean islands the slaves were sold according to their age, health and sex. Most were immediately put to work on the sugar plantations. They worked from dawn to dusk, planting or cutting cane. At night they slept in simple huts, provided by their owners, and on Sunday they were allowed to grow food on small plots of land. The slaves belonged to their masters and could be treated as they saw fit. Whipping, branding and other forms of physical punishment were commonplace (see Pain and Pleasure).

Some slaves escaped and formed free communities in the islands' more remote areas. These escaped slaves were called 'Maroons' (from the Spanish word, cimarrón, meaning wild) and defended themselves against recapture. In many cases the Maroons became a strong fighting force, and the colonists were forced to leave them in peace. Many other slaves, however, were unable to escape and quickly died. The colonists needed to replace them, and so the trade grew.

In contrast to the miserable existence of the slaves, the white plantation owners lived in luxury. Installed in their 'great houses', which dominated the plantations, they imported everything that they wanted from Europe. In a letter written in the 1830s, Lady Nugent; a British aristocrat gave a graphic account of the lives of the planters.

'I don't wonder at the fever the people suffer from here — such eating and drinking I never saw. Such loads of all sorts of high, rich and seasoned things, and really gallons of wine and mixed liquors as they drink. I observed some of the party, today, eat of late breakfasts as if they had never eaten before — a dish of tea, another of coffee, a bumper of claret, another large one of hock-negus, then Madeira, sangaree, hot and cold meat, stews and fries, hot and cold fish pickled and plain, peppers, ginger sweetmeats, acid fruits, sweet jellies — in short, it was as astonishing as it was disgusting.'

Many planned to return to their country of origin as soon as they had made enough money to afford a comfortable retirement. The slave owners and their white employees often took advantage of their power over the female slaves. From these relationships were born the coloured or brown-skinned people, known by the pejorative term mulattoes, who formed a third class between the white colonists and the black slaves.

To justify this system, the colonists and their European partners developed a series of racist ideas and arguments. These claimed that the Africans deserved to be slaves because of their supposed inferiority to the Europeans. Since the Africans, they argued, were uncivilised and un-Christian; it was reasonable to enslave them as a means of converting them to Christianity. In fact, this argument was in direct contradiction with Christian ideas and teachings. They also suggested — although few people could have believed them — that the slaves were happier in the Caribbean than in Africa, since they were fed and housed by their owners. But above all, they argued that slaves were essential to the colonial economy; without them, the colonists asked, who would produce the sugar?

Europe's Sweet Tooth

Sugar, the 'white gold', brought riches to the Caribbean planters and industrialists who refined and sold it in Europe. The colonies became vital to the economies of the European countries, since they provided raw materials which could not be found in Europe and because they, in turn, bought manufactured goods back from the European producers. The colonial system was based upon a two-way trade. But many colonists resented the system, in particular the monopoly which the European governments held over their colonies. A Jamaican sugar producer, for example, had to sell to a British refiner, even if a Dutch refiner was prepared to pay more. Local producers began to rebel against such controls and to demand greater independence for the colonies. This was the beginning of Caribbean nationalism, the idea that the colonies should become self-governing nations.

The profits from sugar went partly to the planters themselves. Many left the islands and returned to Europe with their fortunes. They also went to European capitalists who refined and sold the sugar and who exported other goods to the Caribbean colonies. And governments, too, took their share of the profits through various forms of taxation. These huge profits helped to pay for Europe's economic development; it was sugar which largely financed Europe's Industrial Revolution. The great advances of the 18th and 19th centuries — the growth of factories and mass production, railways, ports and roads — were chiefly made possible by the colonial system and by the work of the slaves.

Despite the wealth it produced, the Caribbean itself remained extremely poor. The planters were interested in sugar alone. They prevented other crops being grown, as they would have taken up valuable space in the plantations. Food was imported into the islands and the development of other forms of agriculture was ignored. Schools were never built; the planters did not consider it necessary or wise to educate the slaves, while the colonists' children were sent to Europe for their education. European governments often banned or blocked manufacturing, as they wanted the colonies to buy products from them (see Not a Nail, Not a Horseshoe). The islands were expected to produce sugar, to send it to Europe and to do little else. While Europe's governments and merchants grew steadily richer and Europe progressed, the Caribbean islands stagnated.

From the beginning of colonialism, outside needs and profits dictated the Caribbean's development. Just as the islands' gold had been shipped away to Spain, so the wealth created by sugar production sailed off across the Atlantic to Britain or France. Apart from the planters themselves (and many of them lived in Europe, leaving managers to run their estates), nobody in the islands, and least of all the slaves, benefited from the wealth and development which sugar could have provided. The plantations took only the most fertile land in the islands, leaving large areas idle. The planters shipped in some technology such as machinery for crushing the cane, but otherwise they never introduced modern techniques. The planters treated the islands as temporary homes, and felt no need to improve working conditions for their slaves. The system had gone as far as it could.

The Decline of Sugar: the End of Slavery

By the beginning of the 19th century sugar production had passed its peak. The colonies were producing too much and prices dropped. Not only were they competing among themselves and with other colonies such as Portuguese-controlled Brazil, but they were now also confronted with the danger of competition from Europe itself. Another form of sugar production had been discovered which used not cane, but sugar beet. This could be grown and produced in Europe. The colonial economies consequently declined. At the same time, a movement was growing in Europe for the abolition of the slave trade, arguing that slavery was morally unacceptable and could not be tolerated by the Christian societies of Europe.