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Caribbean Islands
Index
European settlements in the Caribbean began with Christopher
Columbus. Carrying an elaborate feudal commission that made him
perpetual governor of all lands discovered and gave him a
percentage of all trade conducted, Columbus set sail in September
1492, determined to find a faster, shorter way to China and Japan.
He planned to set up a trading-post empire, modeled after the
successful Portuguese venture along the West African coast. His aim
was to establish direct commercial relations with the producers of
spices and other luxuries of the fabled East, thereby cutting out
the Arab middlemen who had monopolized trade since capturing
Constantinople in 1453. He also planned to link up with the lost
Christians of Abyssinia, who were reputed to have great quantities
of gold--a commodity in great demand in Europe. Finally, as a good
Christian, Columbus wanted to spread Christianity to new peoples.
Columbus, of course, did not find the East. Nevertheless, he called
the peoples he met "Indians," and, because he had sailed west,
referred to the region he found as the "West Indies."
However, dreams of a trading-post empire collapsed in the face
of real Caribbean life. The Indians, although initially hospitable
in most cases, simply did not have gold and trade commodities for
the European market. In all, Columbus made four voyages of
exploration between 1492 and 1502, failing to find great quantities
of gold, Christians, or the courts of the fabled khans described by
Marco Polo. After 1499, small amounts of tracer gold were
discovered on Hispaniola, but by that time local challenges to his
governorship were mounting, and his demonstrated lack of
administrative skills made matters worse. Even more disappointing,
he returned to Spain in 1502 to find that his extensive feudal
authority in the New World was rapidly being taken away by his
monarchs.
Columbus inadvertently started a small settlement on the north
coast of Hispaniola when his flagship, the Santa Maria,
wrecked off the Môle St-Nicolas on his first voyage. When he
returned a year later, no trace of the settlement appeared--and the
former welcome and hospitality of the Indians had changed to
suspicion and fear.
The first proper European settlement in the Caribbean began
when Nicolás de Ovando, a faithful soldier from western Spain,
settled about 2,500 Spanish colonists in eastern Hispaniola in
1502. Unlike Columbus' earlier settlements, this group was an
organized cross-section of Spanish society brought with the
intention of developing the Indies economically and expanding
Spanish political, religious, and administrative influence. In its
religious and military motivation, it continued the
reconquista (reconquest), which had expelled the Moors from
Grenada and the rest of southern Spain.
From this base in Santo Domingo, as the new colony was called,
the Spanish quickly fanned out throughout the Caribbean and onto
the mainland. Jamaica was settled in 1509 and Trinidad the
following year. By 1511 Spanish explorers had established
themselves as far as Florida. However, in the eastern Caribbean,
the Caribs resisted the penetration of Europeans until well into
the seventeenth century and succumbed only in the eighteenth
century.
With the conquest of Mexico in 1519 and the subsequent
discovery of gold there, interest in working the gold deposits of
the islands decreased. Moreover, by that time the Indian population
of the Caribbean had dwindled considerably, creating a scarcity of
workers for the mines and pearl fisheries. In 1518 the first
African slaves, called ladinos because they had lived in
Spain and spoke the Castilian language, were introduced to the
Caribbean to help mitigate the labor shortage.
The Spanish administrative structure that prevailed for the 132
years of Spanish monopoly in the Caribbean was simple. At the
imperial level were two central agencies, the Casa de Contratación,
or House of Trade, which licensed all ships sailing to or returning
from the Indies and supervised commerce, and the Consejo de Indias,
the royal Advisory Council, which attended to imperial legislation.
At the local level in the Caribbean were the governors, appointed
by the monarchs of Castile, who supervised local municipal
councils. The governors were regulated by audiencias, or
appellate courts. A parallel structure regulated the religious
organizations. Despite the theoretical hierarchy and clear
divisions of authority, in practice each agency reported directly
to the monarch. As set out in the original instructions to Ovando
in 1502, the Spanish New World was to be orthodox and unified under
the Roman Catholic religion and Castilian and Spanish in culture
and nationality. Moors, Jews, recent converts to Roman Catholicism,
Protestants, and gypsies were legally excluded from sailing to the
Indies, although this exclusiveness could not be maintained and was
frequently violated.
By the early seventeenth century, Spain's European enemies, no
longer disunited and internally weak, were beginning to breach the
perimeters of Spain's American empire. The French and the English
established trading forts along the St. Lawrence and the Hudson
Rivers in North America. These were followed by permanent
settlements on the mid-Atlantic coast (Jamestown) and in New
England (Massachusetts Bay colony).
Between 1595 and 1620, the English, French, and Dutch made many
unsuccessful attempts to settle along the Guiana coastlands of
South America. The Dutch finally prevailed, with one permanent
colony along the Essequibo River in 1616, and another, in 1624,
along the neighboring Berbice River. As in North America, initial
loss of life in the colonies was discouragingly high. In 1624 the
English and French gave up in the Guianas and jointly created a
colony on St. Kitts in the northern Leeward Islands. At that time,
St. Kitts was occupied only by Caribs. With the Spanish deeply
involved in the Thirty Years War in Europe, conditions were
propitious for colonial exploits in what until then had been
reluctantly conceded to be a Spanish domain.
In 1621, the Dutch began to move aggressively against Spanish
territory in the Americas--including Brazil, temporarily under
Spanish control between 1580 and 1640. In the Caribbean, they
joined the English in settling St. Croix in 1625 and then seized
the minuscule, unoccupied islands of Curaçao, St. Eustatius, St.
Martin, and Saba, thereby expanding their former holdings in the
Guianas, as well as those at Araya and Cumana on the Venezuelan
coast.
The English and the French also moved rapidly to take advantage
of Spanish weakness in the Americas and overcommitment in Europe.
In 1625, the English settled Barbados and tried an unsuccessful
settlement on Tobago. They took possession of Nevis in 1628 and
Antigua and Montserrat in 1632. They planted a colony on St. Lucia
in 1638, but it was destroyed within four years by the Caribs. The
French, under the auspices of the Compagnie des Iles d'Amerique,
chartered by Cardinal Richelieu in 1635, successfully settled
Martinique and Guadeloupe, laying the base for later expansion to
St. Bartholomé, St. Martin, Grenada, St. Lucia, and western
Hispaniola, which was formally ceded by Spain in 1697 at the Treaty
of Ryswick (signed between France and the alliance of Spain, the
Netherlands, and England, and ending the War of the Grand
Alliance). Meanwhile, an expedition sent out by Oliver Cromwell
(Protector of the English Commonwealth, 1649-58) under Admiral
William Penn (the father of the founder of Pennsylvania) and
General Robert Venables in 1655 seized Jamaica, the first territory
captured from the Spanish. (Trinidad, the only other British colony
taken from the Spanish, fell in 1797 and was ceded in 1802.) At
that time Jamaica had a population of about 3,000, equally divided
between Spaniards and their slaves--the Indian population having
been eliminated. Although Jamaica was a disappointing consolation
for the failure to capture either of the major colonies of
Hispaniola or Cuba, the island was retained at the Treaty of Madrid
in 1670, thereby more than doubling the land area for potential
British colonization in the Caribbean. By 1750 Jamaica was the most
important of Britian's Caribbean colonies, having eclipsed Barbados
in economic significane.
The first colonists in the Caribbean were trying to recreate
their metropolitan European societies in the region. In this
respect, the goals and the world view of the early colonists in the
Caribbean did not vary significantly from those of the colonists on
the North American mainland. "The Caribbee planters," wrote the
historian Richard Dunn, "began as peasant farmers not unlike the
peasant farmers of Wigston Magna, Leicestershire, or Sudbury,
Massachusetts. They cultivated the same staple crop--tobacco--as
their cousins in Virginia and Maryland. They brought to the tropics
the English common law, English political institutions, the English
parish [local administrative unit], and the English church." These
institutions survived for a very long time, but the social context
in which they were introduced was rapidly altered by time and
circumstances. Attempts to recreate microcosms of Europe were
slowly abandoned in favor of a series of plantation societies using
slave labor to produce large quantities of tropical staples for the
European market. In the process of this transformation, complicated
by war and trade, much was changed in the Caribbean.
Data as of November 1987
- Caribbean Islands-Historical Background
- Caribbean Islands-Prosperity and Government Centralization, 1974-81
- Caribbean Islands-Economy
- Caribbean Islands-Agriculture
- Caribbean Islands-Government and Politics
- Caribbean Islands-Tourism
- Caribbean Islands-Political Dynamics
- Caribbean Islands-COUNTRY PROFILE: Turks and Caicos Islands
- Caribbean Islands-Chapter 7 - Strategic and Regional Security Perspectives
- Caribbean Islands-Role of Government
- Caribbean Islands-Labor Force and Industrial Relations
- Caribbean Islands-Role of Government
- Caribbean Islands-Growth and Structure of the Economy
- Caribbean Islands-Political Dynamics
- Caribbean Islands-Economy
- Caribbean Islands-Political Dynamics
- Caribbean Islands-A Regional Security System
- Caribbean Islands-Tourism
- Caribbean Islands-Other Third World Relations
- Caribbean Islands-SOCIAL AND CULTURAL CHARACTERISTICS
- Caribbean Islands-Foreign Relations
- Caribbean Islands-Balance of Payments and Debt
- Caribbean Islands-HEALTH AND WELFARE
- Caribbean Islands-ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
- Caribbean Islands-Role of Government
- Caribbean Islands-FOREIGN RELATIONS
- Caribbean Islands-Education
- Caribbean Islands-Manufacturing
- Caribbean Islands-Relations with the Commonwealth and Others
- Caribbean Islands-Foreign Relations
- Caribbean Islands-COUNTRY PROFILE: St - Christopher and Nevis ST - CHRISTOPHER AND NEVIS
- Caribbean Islands-The Penal System
- Caribbean Islands-The Soviet Presence
- Caribbean Islands-Colonial Heritage HISTORICAL SETTING
- Caribbean Islands-National Security
- Caribbean Islands-COUNTRY PROFILE: Antigua and Barbuda ANTIGUA AND BARBUDA
- Caribbean Islands-The Public Security Forces
- Caribbean Islands-Political Systems
- Caribbean Islands-EDUCATION
- Caribbean Islands-Relations with Latin American and Caribbean Countries
- Caribbean Islands-Changes in the Social Base of Political Power POLITICAL INDEPENDENCE
- Caribbean Islands-POPULATION
- Caribbean Islands-Political Dynamics
- Caribbean Islands-Relations with the United States
- Caribbean Islands-Livestock, Fishing, and Forestry
- Caribbean Islands-National Security
- Caribbean Islands-Population
- Caribbean Islands-Education
- Caribbean Islands-ECONOMY
- Caribbean Islands-Banking and Finance
- Caribbean Islands-Foreign Relations
- Caribbean Islands-Health and Welfare
- Caribbean Islands-Geography
- Caribbean Islands-Population
- Caribbean Islands-NATIONAL SECURITY
- Caribbean Islands-Agricultural Sector
- Caribbean Islands-The Barbados Defence Force
- Caribbean Islands-Government and Politics
- Caribbean Islands-Geography
- Caribbean Islands-Economy
- Caribbean Islands-The Police
- Caribbean Islands-The Robinson Government
- Caribbean Islands-United States Preeminence
- Caribbean Islands-External Sector
- Caribbean Islands-Energy
- Caribbean Islands-Education
- Caribbean Islands-POLITICAL TRADITIONS
- Caribbean Islands-THE STRATEGIC SETTING
- Caribbean Islands-Education
- Caribbean Islands-Role of Government
- Caribbean Islands-Foreign Trade and Balance of Payments
- Caribbean Islands-Geography
- Caribbean Islands-Foreign Trade and Balance of Payments
- Caribbean Islands-Government and Politics
- Caribbean Islands-Livestock, Fishing, and Forestry
- Caribbean Islands-Industrial Sector
- Caribbean Islands-Relations with the Commonwealth and Others
- Caribbean Islands-THE COLONIAL PERIOD
- Caribbean Islands-Political Dynamics
- Caribbean Islands-Relations with Communist Countries
- Caribbean Islands-Role of Government
- Caribbean Islands-GEOGRAPHIC SETTING
- Caribbean Islands-Government and Politics
- Caribbean Islands-Macroeconomic Overview
- Caribbean Islands-Sectoral Performance
- Caribbean Islands-National Security
- Caribbean Islands-Natural Gas
- Caribbean Islands-Geography
- Caribbean Islands-Incidence of Crime
- Caribbean Islands-Economy
- Caribbean Islands-COUNTRY PROFILE: Barbados BARBADOS
- Caribbean Islands-The Road to Independence
- Caribbean Islands-PREFACE
- Caribbean Islands -CHAPTER 3 - TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO
- Caribbean Islands-Services
- Caribbean Islands-National Security
- Caribbean Islands-Foreign Trade and Balance of Payments
- Caribbean Islands-World War II
- Caribbean Islands-External Sector
- Caribbean Islands-EDUCATION
- Caribbean Islands-Foreword
- Caribbean Islands-Health and Welfare
- Caribbean Islands-The Postwar Strategic Vacuum
- Caribbean Islands-Education
- Caribbean Islands-Regional Security Threats, 1970-81
- Caribbean Islands-Controversial Security Issues
- Caribbean Islands-HEALTH AND WELFARE
- Caribbean Islands-Foreign Assistance
- Caribbean Islands-Chapter 4 - The Windward Islands and Barbados
- Caribbean Islands-ECONOMY
- Caribbean Islands-Population
- Caribbean Islands-Political Dynamics
- Caribbean Islands-Foreign Relations
- Caribbean Islands-Foreign Relations
- Caribbean Islands-Banking, Financial Services, and Currency
- Caribbean Islands-HISTORICAL SETTING
- Caribbean Islands-Education SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENTS, 1800-1960
- Caribbean Islands-The Post-Williams Era, 1981-86
- Caribbean Islands-The Armed Forces
- Caribbean Islands-Chapter 6 - The Northern Islands
- Caribbean Islands-Relations with the United States
- Caribbean Islands-Sectoral Performance
- Caribbean Islands-Population
- Caribbean Islands-Finance and Banking
- Caribbean Islands-COUNTRY PROFILE: CAYMAN ISLANDS BRITISH DEPENDENCIES: THE CAYMAN ISLANDS AND THE TURKS AND CAICOS ISLANDS
- Caribbean Islands-Political Dynamics
- Caribbean Islands-Services
- Caribbean Islands-Political Dynamics
- Caribbean Islands-Education
- Caribbean Islands-Land Tenure and Use
- Caribbean Islands-COUNTRY PROFILE: MONTSERRAT
- Caribbean Islands-Growth and Structure of the Economy
- Caribbean Islands-Population
- Caribbean Islands-Transportation, Communications, and Electricity
- Caribbean Islands-Health and Welfare
- Caribbean Islands-Government and Politics
- Caribbean Islands-Petroleum and Asphalt
- Caribbean Islands-Economy
- Caribbean Islands-Foreign Relations
- Caribbean Islands-Macroeconomic Overview
- Caribbean Islands-The Pre-European Population HISTORICAL AND CULTURAL SETTING
- Caribbean Islands-Macroeconomic Overview
- Caribbean Islands-National Security
- Caribbean Islands-COUNTRY PROFILE: The Bahamas THE BAHAMAS
- Caribbean Islands-Health and Welfare
- Caribbean Islands
- Caribbean Islands-Crops
- Caribbean Islands-National Income and Public Finance
- Caribbean Islands-COUNTRY PROFILE: Dominica DOMINICA
- Caribbean Islands-National Security
- Caribbean Islands-Population
- Caribbean Islands-Political Dynamics
- Caribbean Islands-Trade and Finance
- Caribbean Islands-Chapter 1 - Regional Overview
- Caribbean Islands-Economy
- Caribbean Islands-Labor Organizations
- Caribbean Islands-Revenues
- Caribbean Islands-THE REGIONAL SECURITY SETTING
- Caribbean Islands-Construction
- Caribbean Islands-Manufacturing
- Caribbean Islands-Agriculture
- Caribbean Islands
- Caribbean Islands-ISLANDS OF THE COMMONWEALTH CARIBBEAN
- Caribbean Islands-Health and Welfare
- Caribbean Islands-Geography
- Caribbean Islands-Political Dynamics
- Caribbean Islands
- Caribbean Islands-Relations with Latin American and Caribbean Countries
- Caribbean Islands-National Security
- Caribbean Islands
- Caribbean Islands-COUNTRY PROFILE: ANGUILLA
- Caribbean Islands-NATIONAL SECURITY
- Caribbean Islands-Economy
- Caribbean Islands-THE EUROPEAN SETTLEMENTS
- Caribbean Islands-Balance of Payments and Debt
- Caribbean Islands-INTRODUCTION
- Caribbean Islands-Foreign Relations
- Caribbean Islands
- Caribbean Islands-Banking and Finance
- Caribbean Islands-Current Strategic Considerations
- Caribbean Islands
- Caribbean Islands-Narcotics Crime
- Caribbean Islands-Economy
- Caribbean Islands-Petrochemicals
- Caribbean Islands-Sectoral Performance
- Caribbean Islands-POPULATION
- Caribbean Islands
- Caribbean Islands-The Post-Emancipation Societies
- Caribbean Islands-The West Indies Federation, 1957-62
- Caribbean Islands-Relations with the United States, Britain, and Canada FOREIGN RELATIONS
- Caribbean Islands-Sectoral Performance
- Caribbean Islands-Health and Welfare
- Caribbean Islands-Geography
- Caribbean Islands-Crops
- Caribbean Islands-National Income and Public Finance
- Caribbean Islands-Sectoral Performance
- Caribbean Islands-Precursors of Independence
- Caribbean Islands
- Caribbean Islands-Education
- Caribbean Islands-The Criminal Justice System
- Caribbean Islands-GEOGRAPHY
- Caribbean Islands-Role of Government
- Caribbean Islands-Banking and Finance
- Caribbean Islands-Economic Policy and Management
- Caribbean Islands-Foreign Trade and Balance of Payments
- Caribbean Islands-Political Unrest and Economic Troubles, 1970-73
- Caribbean Islands-Education
- Caribbean Islands-Labor Force and Industrial Relations
- Caribbean Islands-Chapter 5 - The Leeward Islands
- Caribbean Islands -Chapter 2 - Jamaica
- Caribbean Islands-Health and Welfare
- Caribbean Islands-The Governmental System GOVERNMENT AND POLITICS
- Caribbean Islands-The Sugar Revolutions and Slavery
- Caribbean Islands-Macroeconomic Overview
- Caribbean Islands-The Cuban Presence
- Caribbean Islands-Geography
- Caribbean Islands-Population
- Caribbean Islands-Land Tenure and Use
- Caribbean Islands-Macroeconomic Overview
- Caribbean Islands-Role of Government
- Caribbean Islands
- Caribbean Islands-Government and Politics
- Caribbean Islands-The Governmental System GOVERNMENT AND POLITICS
- Caribbean Islands-Economy
- Caribbean Islands-Industry
- Caribbean Islands
- Caribbean Islands-The Increased Role of the United States
- Caribbean Islands-Population
- Caribbean Islands-Health and Welfare
- Caribbean Islands-Transportation and Communications
- Caribbean Islands-Country profile: Grenada GRENADA
- Caribbean Islands-Iron and Steel
- Caribbean Islands-Geography
- Caribbean Islands
- Caribbean Islands-Banking and Finance
- Caribbean Islands-Postwar Federation Efforts
- Caribbean Islands-Health and Welfare
- Caribbean Islands-Government and Politics
- Caribbean Islands
- Caribbean Islands-Population
- Caribbean Islands-GEOGRAPHY
- Caribbean Islands-Industry
- Caribbean Islands-Consolidation and Economic Hardship, 1962-69
- Caribbean Islands-Patterns of Development
- Caribbean Islands-Geography
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