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...