History of the Caribbean
The history of the Caribbean reveals the significant role the region played in the
From the 1620s and 1630s onwards, non-Hispanic
After the
Before European contact
At the time of European contact in 1492, Caribbean islands were densely populated by different indigenous groups. Recent scholarly research has investigated the origins and evolution of the islands' population over the entire period. At the beginning of the current geological epoch, the Holocene era, the northern part of South America was occupied by groups of small-game hunters, fishers and foragers. These groups occasionally resided in semi-permanent camp sites, while mostly being mobile in order to make use of a wide range of plant and animal resources in a variety of habitats.[1]
Archaeological evidence suggests that Trinidad was the first Caribbean island to have been settled as early as 9000/8000 BCE. However, the first settlers most likely arrived in Trinidad when it was still attached to South America by land bridges.[2] It was not until about 7000/6000 BCE, during the early Holocene that Trinidad became an island rather than part of the mainland due to a significant jump in sea level by about 60 m., which may be attributable to climate change. The conclusion is that Trinidad was the only Caribbean Island that could have been colonized by indigenous people from the South American mainland by not traversing hundreds or thousands kilometres of open sea.[3] The earliest major habitation sites discovered in Trinidad are the shell midden deposits of Banwari Trace and St. John, which have been dated between 6000 and 5100 BCE. Both shell middens represent extended deposits of shells discarded by human populations utilizing the crustaceans as a food source and stone and bone tools.[4] They are considered to belong to the Ortoiroid archaeological tradition, named after the similar but much more recent Ortoire site in Mayaro, Trinidad.[citation needed]
Scholars have attempted to classify Caribbean prehistory into different "ages," a difficult and controversial task.[5] In the 1970s archaeologist Irving Rouse defined three "ages" to classify Caribbean prehistory: the Lithic, Archaic and Ceramic Age, based on archaeological evidence.[6] Current literature on Caribbean prehistory still uses these three terms, but, there is much dispute regarding their usefulness and definition. In general, the Lithic Age is considered the first era of human development in the Americas and the period where stone chipping is first practiced.[7] The ensuing Archaic age is often defined by specialized subsistence adaptions, combining hunting, fishing, collecting and the managing of wild food plants.[8] Ceramic Age communities manufactured ceramic and made use of small-scale agriculture.[9]
With the exception of Trinidad, the first Caribbean islands were settled between 3500 and 3000 BCE, during the Archaic Age. Archaeological sites of this period have been located in Barbados, Cuba, Curaçao and St. Martin, followed closely by Hispaniola and Puerto Rico.[10] This settlement phase is often attributed to the Ortoiroid culture.
Between 800 and 200 BCE a new migratory group expanded through the Caribbean island: the Saladoid.[11] This group is named after the Saladero site in Venezuela, where their distinctive pottery (typically distinguished by white-on-red painted designs) was first identified.[12] The introduction of pottery and plant domestication to the Caribbean is often attributed to Saladoid groups and is considered the beginning of the Ceramic Age. However, recent studies have revealed that crops and pottery were already present in some Archaic Caribbean populations before the arrival of the Saladoid.[13] Although a large number of Caribbean Islands were settled during the Archaic and Ceramic Ages, some islands were presumably visited much later. Jamaica has no known settlements until around 600 CE while the Cayman Islands show no evidence of settlement before European arrival.[14]
Following the colonization of Trinidad, it was originally proposed that Saladoid groups island-hopped their way to Puerto Rico, but current research tends to move away from this stepping-stone model[15] in favor of the southward route hypothesis. The southward route hypothesis proposes that the northern Antilles were settled directly from South America followed by progressively southward movements into the Lesser Antilles. This hypothesis has been supported by both radiocarbon dates and seafaring simulations.[16] One initial impetus of movement from the mainland to the northern Antilles may have been the search for high quality materials such as flint. Flinty Bay on Antigua, is one of the best-known sources of high-quality flint in the Lesser Antilles. The presence of flint from Antigua on many other Caribbean Islands highlights the importance of this material during the Pre-Contact period.[17]
The period from 650 to 800 CE saw major cultural, socio-political and ritual reformulations, which took place both on the mainland and in many Caribbean islands.[18] The Saladoid interaction sphere disintegrated rapidly. This period is characterized with a change in climate. Centuries of abundant rainfall were replaced by prolonged droughts and increased frequency of hurricanes. In general, the Caribbean population increased, with communities changing from scattered single villages to the creation of settlement clusters. Agricultural activity increased. Analysis of cultural material has also shown the development of tighter networks between islands during the post-Saladoid period.[19]
The period after 800 CE can be seen as a period of transition in which status differentiation and hierarchically ranked society evolved, identified by a shift from achieved to ascribed leadership.[20] After about 1200 CE this process was interrupted by the absorption of many Caribbean settlements into the evolving socio-political structure of the Greater Antillean society. This process disrupted more-or-less independent lines of development of local communities and marked the beginnings of sociopolitical changes on a much larger scale.[20]
At the time of the
DNA studies changed some of the traditional understandings of pre-Contact indigenous history. In 2003, a geneticist from the University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez, Juan Martínez Cruzado, designed an island-wide DNA survey of Puerto Rico's modern population. The received understanding of the profile of Puerto Ricans' ancestry has been as mainly having Spanish ethnic origins, with some African ancestry, and distant and less significant indigenous ancestry. Martínez Cruzado's research revealed that 61% of all Puerto Ricans have Amerindian mitochondrial DNA, 27% have African and 12% Caucasian.[22] According to National Geographic, "Among the surprising findings is that most of the Caribbean’s original inhabitants may have been wiped out by South American newcomers a thousand years before the Spanish invasion that began in 1492. Moreover, indigenous populations of islands like Puerto Rico and Hispaniola were likely far smaller at the time of the Spanish arrival than previously thought."[23]
Early colonial history
Soon after the voyages of Christopher Columbus to the Americas, both Portuguese and Spanish ships began claiming territories in Central and South America. These colonies brought in gold, and other European powers, most specifically the English, Dutch and French, hoped to establish profitable colonies of their own. Imperial rivalries made the Caribbean a contested area during European wars for centuries. In the Spanish American wars of independence in the early nineteenth century, most of Spanish America broke away from the Spanish Empire, but Cuba and Puerto Rico remained under the Spanish crown until the Spanish–American War of 1898.
Spanish Empire and Caribbean settlements
The Spanish encounter with lands and peoples unknown to them before the 1492 began with the first voyage of Genoese mariner Christopher Columbus, sailing under license from Queen
During Columbus's first voyage of exploration in 1492, he made contact with the
The Spanish settled permanently in the Caribbean, establishing as far as possible lives similar or better than what they had in Iberia. Unlike the Portuguese pattern of expansion that created a series of small trading posts or forts, Spaniards' expectation was to create Spanish-style cities with permanent residents. They expected to use forced labor of the indigenous population to make European settlement not only possible but also profitable. Spaniards required the natives produce food for European settlers, putting strain on agriculture that did not generally produce major surpluses. Spaniards took it as their right to force the indigenous to labor for them in enterprises often far from natives' home villages. The allocation of labor to individual Spanish settlers was via grants, called
Spaniards continued their explorations of islands and the lands around the Caribbean Sea in search of sources of dense indigenous populations and material wealth. The expedition of Spanish settler on Cuba, Hernán Cortés, resulted in Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire in 1521, which shifted the crown's focus to Mexico.
Other European powers
Although the Caribbean remained strategically important for the Spanish Empire, other European powers established a presence in the Caribbean after Spain's main interest turned toward
- Francis Drake was an English privateer who attacked many Spanish settlements. His most celebrated Caribbean exploit was the capture of the Spanish Silver Train at Nombre de Dios in March 1573.
- British colonization of Bermuda began in 1612. British West Indian colonization began with Saint Kitts in 1623 and Barbados in 1627. The former was used as a base for British colonization of neighboring Nevis (1628), Antigua (1632),[28] Montserrat (1632), Anguilla (1650) and Tortola (1672).
- French colonization too began on St. Kitts, the British and the French splitting the island amongst themselves in 1625. It was used as a base to colonize the much larger St. Vincent(1719).
- English admiral William Penn seized Jamaica in 1655 and it remained under British rule for over 300 years.[29]
- In 1625 French buccaneers established a settlement on
- The Dutch took over Dutch West Indies, in the 17th century.
- U.S. Virgin Islands since 1672, Denmark sold sovereignty over the Danish West Indiesin 1917 to the United States, of which they are still a part.
Early French actions
During the first three-quarters of the sixteenth century, matters of balance of power and dynastic succession weighed heavily on the course of European diplomacy and war. Europe's largest and most powerful kingdoms, France and Spain, were the continent's fierce rivals. Tensions increased after 1516, when the kingdoms of
French corsair attacks began in the early 1520s, as soon as France declared war on Spain in 1521, the year
The first recorded incursion in the Caribbean happened in 1528, when a lone French corsair vessel appeared off the coast of
In 1536, France and Spain went to war again and French corsairs launched a series of attacks on Spanish Caribbean settlements and ships. The next year, a corsair vessel appeared in Havana and demanded a 700-ducat rescate. Spanish men-of-war arrived soon and scared off the intruding vessel, which returned soon thereafter to demand yet another rescate. Santiago was also victim of an attack that year, and both cities endured raids yet again in 1538. The waters off Cuba's northwest became particularly attractive to pirates as commercial vessels returning to Spain had to squeeze through the 90-mile-long strait between Key West and Havana. In 1537–1538, corsairs captured and sacked nine Spanish vessels. While France and Spain were at peace until 1542, beyond-the-line corsair activity continued. When war erupted again, it echoed once more in the Caribbean. A particularly vicious French corsair attack took place in Havana in 1543. It left a gory toll of 200 killed Spanish settlers. In all, between 1535 and 1563, French corsairs carried out around sixty attacks against Spanish settlements and captured over seventeen Spanish vessels in the region (1536–1547).[34]
European rivalries and impact on the Caribbean
While the French and Spanish fought one another in Europe and the Caribbean,
Following the Franco-Spanish peace treaty of 1559, crown-sanctioned French corsair activities subsided, but Huguenot pirate incursions persisted. In at least one this instance led to the formation of a temporary Huguenot settlement in the Isle of Pines, off Cuba. English piracy increased during the reign of Charles I, King of England, Scotland, and Ireland (1625–1649) and became more aggressive as Anglo-Spanish relations further deteriorated during the Thirty Years' War. Although Spain had been dealing with the insurrection of Netherlands against the Habsburg monarchy since the 1560s, the Dutch were latecomers to the Caribbean. They appeared in the region only after the mid-1590s, when the Dutch Republic was no longer on the defensive in its long conflict against Spain. Dutch privateering became more widespread and violent beginning in the 1620s.[34]
English incursions in the Spanish-claimed Caribbean boomed during Queen Elizabeth's rule. These actions originally took the guise of well-organized, large-scale smuggling expeditions headed by piratical smugglers the likes of John Hawkins, John Oxenham, and Francis Drake. One of their main objectives were smuggling African slaves into Spain's Caribbean possessions in exchange for tropical products. The first instances of English mercantile piracy took place in 1562–63, when Hawkins’ men raided a Portuguese vessel off the coast of Sierra Leone, captured the 300 slaves on board, and smuggled them into Santo Domingo in exchange for sugar, hides, and precious woods. Hawkins and his contemporaries pioneered the method of maximizing the number of slaves that could fit into a ship. He and other slave traders methodically packed enslaved Africans by forcing them to lie on their sides, spooned against one another. An example is Hawkins's slave-trading vessel Jesus of Lübeck, a ship he used on slave smuggling expeditions, on which he transported hundreds of enslaved Africans. In 1567 and 1568, Hawkins commanded two piratical smuggling expeditions, the last of which ended disastrously. He lost almost all of his ships and three-fourths of his men were killed by Spanish soldiers at San Juan de Ulúa, off the coast of Veracruz, the point of departure of the fleet of New Spain. Hawkins and Drake barely escaped but Oxenham was captured, convicted of heresy of Protestantism by the Mexican Inquisition and burned alive.[34]
Many of the battles of the Anglo-Spanish war were fought in the Caribbean, not by regular English forces but rather by privateers whom Queen Elizabeth had licensed to carry out attacks on Spanish vessels and ports. These were former pirates who now held a more venerable status as privateers. During those years, over seventy-five documented English privateering expeditions targeted Spanish possessions and vessels. Drake terrorized Spanish vessels and ports. Early in 1586, his forces seized Santo Domingo, retaining control over it for around a month. Before departing they plundered and destroyed the city, taking a huge bounty. Drake's men destroyed images and ornaments in Catholic churches.[34]
Enslavement of Africans
The development of agriculture in the Caribbean required a large workforce of manual laborers, which the Europeans created by the forced migration of enslaved Africans to the Americas. The concomitant Atlantic slave trade brought enslaved Africans to Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, English, and French colonies in the Americas. Enslaved Africans were brought to the Caribbean from the early 16th century until the end of the 19th century, with majority brought between 1701 and 1810.
The following table lists the number of slaves brought into some of the Caribbean colonies:[35]
Caribbean colonizer | 1492–1700 | 1701–1810 | 1811–1870 | Total number of slaves imported |
---|---|---|---|---|
British Caribbean | 263,700 | 1,401,300 | — | 1,665,000 |
Dutch Caribbean | 40,000 | 460,000 | — | 500,000 |
French Caribbean | 155,800 | 1,348,400 | 96,000 | 1,600,200 |
Marriage, separation, and sale together
"The official plantocratic view of slave marriage sought to deny the slaves any loving bonds or long-standing relationships, thus conveniently rationalising the indiscriminate separation of close kin through sales."[37][a] "From the earliest days of slavery, indiscriminate sales and separation severely disrupted the domestic life of individual slaves."[38] Slaves could be sold so that spouses could be sold separately. "Slave couples were sometimes separated by sale .... They lived as single slaves or as part of maternal or extended families but considered themselves 'married.'"[39] Sale of estates with "stock" to pay debts, more common in the late period of slavery, was criticised as separating slave spouses.[38] William Beckford argued for "families to be sold together or kept as near as possible in the same neighbourhood"[38] and "laws were passed in the late period of slavery to prevent the breakup of slave families by sale, ... [but] these laws were frequently ignored".[38] "Slaves frequently reacted strongly to enforced severance of their emotional bonds",[38] feeling "sorrow and despair",[38] sometimes, according to Thomas Cooper in 1820, resulting in death from distress.[40] John Stewart argued against separation as leading slave buyers to regret it because of "despair[,] ... utter despondency[,] or 'put[ting] period to their lives'".[41] Separated slaves often used free time to travel long distances to reunite for a night[40] and sometimes runaway slaves were married couples.[40] However, "sale of slaves and the resulting breakup of families decreased as slave plantations lost prosperity."[42]
Colonial laws
European plantations required laws to regulate the plantation system and the many slaves imported to work on the plantations. This legal control was the most oppressive for slaves inhabiting colonies where they outnumbered their European masters and where rebellion was persistent such as Jamaica. During the early colonial period, rebellious slaves were harshly punished, with sentences including death by torture; less serious crimes such as assault, theft, or persistent escape attempts were commonly punished with mutilations, such as the cutting off of a hand or a foot.[43]
In European colonies in the Caribbean, each colony had to develop laws regulating slavery. British West Indian colonies were able to establish laws regulating the institution through their own local legislatures, and the assent of the colony's governor (who served as a representative of the Crown). In contrast, French, Danish, Dutch and Spanish colonies were strictly controlled by their metropole, including the implementation of slave codes. The French regulated slaves under the Code Noir (Black Code) which was in force in all of France's colonies, and was based upon early French slave practises in the Caribbean colonies.[43]
As noted by American historian Jan Rogozinski, "All [Caribbean] islands sought to protect the planter and not the slave." Slave codes in the British West Indies frequently did not recognize marriage for slaves, family rights, education for slaves, or the right to religious practices such as holidays. The Code Noir recognized slave marriages, but only with the consent of the master, and like Spanish colonial law gave legal recognition to marriages between European men and black or Creole women. They were also more generous than their British counterparts in granting the possibility of manumission to slaves.[44]
Slave rebellions
The plantation system and the slave trade that enabled its growth led to regular slave resistance in many Caribbean islands throughout the colonial era. Resistance was made by escaping from the plantations altogether, and seeking refuge in the areas free of European settlement. Communities of escaped slaves, who were known as
Violent resistance broke out periodically on the larger Caribbean islands. Many more conspiracies intended to create rebellions were discovered and ended by Europeans before they could materialise.[46] Actual violent uprisings, involving anywhere from dozens to thousands of slaves, were regular events, however. Jamaica and Cuba in particular had many slave uprisings. Such uprisings were brutally crushed by European forces.
Caribbean slave uprisings (1522–1844)
The following table lists slave rebellions that resulted in actual violent uprisings:
Caribbean island | Year of slave uprising[46] |
---|---|
Antigua | 1701, 1831 |
Bahamas | 1830, 1832–34 |
Barbados | 1816 |
Cuba | 1713, 1729, 1805, 1809, 1825, 1826, 1830–31, 1833, 1837, 1840, 1841, 1843 |
Curaçao | 1795- |
Dominica | 1785–90, 1791, 1795, 1802, 1809-14 |
Grenada | 1765, 1795 |
Guadeloupe | 1656, 1737, 1789,1802 |
Jamaica | 1673, 1678, 1685, 1690, 1730–40, 1760, 1765, 1766, 1791–92, 1795–96, 1808, 1822–24, 1831–32 |
Marie Galante | 1789 |
Martinique | 1752, 1789–92, 1822, 1833 |
Montserrat | 1776 |
Puerto Rico | 1527 |
Saint Domingue | 1791 |
Saint John | 1733-34 |
Saint Kitts | 1639 |
Saint Lucia | 1795-96 |
Saint Vincent | 1769–73, 1795–96 |
Santo Domingo | 1522 |
Tobago | 1770, 1771, 1774, 1807 |
Tortola | 1790, 1823, 1830 |
Trinidad | 1837 |
Impact of colonialism on the Caribbean
Economic exploitation and colonial dependency
The extraction of wealth from the Caribbean dates back to the Spanish colonists, starting in the 1490s, who forced indigenous peoples held by Spanish settlers in encomienda to mine for gold. Gold was not the long term motor of the Caribbean economy, but rather the cultivation of cane sugar. Christopher Columbus observed that the islands were favorable for the cultivation of cane sugar, a high value export commodity.[47]: 114 The history of export Caribbean agriculture is directly linked with European colonialism. Spaniards replicated of the model of plantation sugar cultivation in the Atlantic islands using forced labor. Sugar was a luxury in Europe prior to the 18th century. With increased production and falling prices, it became widely popular in the 18th century, becoming a necessity in Europe the 19th century. This evolution of taste and demand for sugar as an essential food ingredient unleashed major economic and social changes.[48] Caribbean islands with plentiful sunshine, abundant rainfalls, and no extended frosts were well suited for sugarcane agriculture and sugar factories. With the precipitous decline in the indigenous population during the first years of Spanish colonization, the problem was the lack of labor. Spaniards sought a large and resilient labor force for cultivation of sugar, initiating the large-scale forced migration of enslaved Africans.
The success of Spanish Caribbean sugar plantations was a model for other European powers. The Portuguese colony of Brazil also developed large-scale sugar plantations. The high demand in Europe for sugar attracted other European powers to stake claims on Caribbean islands claimed by the Spanish but not effectively held. In the seventeenth century the Dutch, the English and the French took Caribbean islands and developed plantation agriculture. By the middle of the 18th century sugar was Britain's largest import which made the Caribbean islands that much more important as colonies.
Following the abolition of slavery during the 19th century across the Atlantic World, many emancipated Africans left their former masters. This created an economic chaos for the owners of Caribbean sugar cane plantations. The hard work in hot, humid farms required a labor force of strong, low-waged men. The plantation owners looked for cheap labor. This they found initially in China and then in India; the plantation owners subsequently crafted a new legal system of forced labor, which in many ways resembled enslavement.[49] They were indentured laborers, technically not enslaved labor, but the labor regime was harsh. Migrants from the Indian subcontinent began to replace Africans previously brought as slaves, under this indentured labor scheme to serve on sugarcane plantations in European colonies in the Americas and parts of South America. The first ships carrying indentured laborers for sugarcane plantations left India in 1836. Over the next 70 years, numerous more ships brought indentured laborers to the Caribbean, as cheap labor for harsh work. The enslaved labor and indentured laborers - both in millions of people - were brought to the Caribbean, as in other European colonies throughout the world.[50][51][52][53]
Export agriculture dominated the island economies, with few cities, and no industrial base. Agricultural workers had no alternative for urban, nonfarming employment.[47]: 27 Agricultural laborers' wages were extremely low with no potential for growth, since producers sought to keep labor costs low and their own profits high.[47]: 28 Profits from Caribbean agriculture were not converted to industrial development or for the changes in agricultural workers' conditions. As industrialized nations sought cheap sources of food for their industrial working classes, Caribbean islands continued to be the producers of cane sugar. Cane sugar was no longer a high-value commodity only for elites; Caribbean sugar was cheap enough for the industrial working classes to consider it a staple in their diet. It would prove extremely difficult for Caribbean producers to escape from the economic relationship with the developed world that was forged during the colonial era. Caribbean nations were among the world's most impoverished.
Wars affecting the Caribbean
The Caribbean region was affected by violence and war throughout much of colonial history, but the wars were often based in Europe, with only minor battles fought in the Caribbean.
- Eighty Years' War between the Netherlands and Spain.
- The First, Second, and Third Anglo-Dutch Wars were battles for supremacy.
- Nine Years' War between the European powers.
- The War of Spanish Succession(European name) or Queen Anne's War (American name) spawned a generation of some of the most infamous pirates.
- The Cartagena de Indiasin present-day Colombia.
- The Saint Vincent (island)to Britain.
- The American Revolution saw large British and French fleets battling in the Caribbean again. American independence was assured by French naval victories in the Caribbean, but all the British islands that were captured by the French were returned to Britain at the end of the war.
- The French Revolutionary War enabled the creation of the newly independent Republic of Haiti. In addition, in the Treaty of Amiensin 1802, Spain ceded Trinidad to Britain.
- Following the end of the Napoleonic War in 1814 France ceded Saint Luciato Britain.
- The Spanish–American War (1898) ended Spanish control of Cuba (gained independence in 1902 independent but remained under heavy U.S. influence until 1959 through the Platt Amendment and Cuban–American Treaty of Relations (1903)) and Puerto Rico (which became a U.S. protectorate with Puerto Ricans becoming U.S. citizens in 1917, and Puerto Rico becoming an unincorporated territory of the U.S. in 1952 under the name Estado Libre Asociado (Free Associated State), and heralded the period of U.S. dominance of the islands.
Piracy in the Caribbean was often a tool used by the European empires to wage war unofficially against one another. Gold plundered from Spanish ships and brought to other European nations had a pivotal effect on European interest in colonising the region.
Independence
Haiti, the former French colony of Saint-Domingue on Hispaniola, was the first Caribbean nation to gain independence from European powers in 1804. This followed 13 years of war that started as a slave uprising in 1791 and quickly turned into the Haitian Revolution under the leadership of Toussaint Louverture. Black Haitian revolutionaries overthrew the French colonial government, before becoming the world's first and oldest black republic, and also the second-oldest republic in the Western Hemisphere after the United States.[54] This is additionally notable as being the only successful slave uprising in history. The remaining two-thirds of Hispaniola, Santo Domingo, was declared independent from Spain in 1821. A year later, in 1822, the nation was conquered by Haitian forces. In 1844, the newly formed Dominican Republic declared its independence from Haiti. After a brief return to Spanish rule, the Dominican Republic gained its third and final independence in 1865.
The nations bordering the Caribbean in Central America gained independence with
The islands of
Between 1958 and 1962 most of the British-controlled Caribbean was integrated as the new
In addition British Honduras in Central America became independent as Belize (1981), British Guiana in South America became independent as Guyana (1966), and Dutch Guiana also in South America became independent as Suriname (1975).
Islands currently under colonial administration
Not all Caribbean islands have become independent, as of the early 21st century. A number of islands continue to have government ties with European countries, or with the United States.
Aruba, Curaçao, and Sint Maarten are all presently separate constituent countries, formerly part of the Netherlands Antilles. Along with Netherlands, they form the four constituent countries of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. Citizens of these islands have full Dutch citizenship.[58]
History of U.S. relations
President James Monroe's State of the Union address in 1823 included a significant change to United States foreign policy which later became known as the
Victory in the
In 1965, 23,000 US troops were sent to the Dominican Republic to intervene into the
As an arm of the economic and political network of the Americas, the influence of the United States stretches beyond a
This relationship has carried through to the 21st century, as reflected by the
Economic change in the 20th century
The mainstay of the Caribbean economy, sugar, has declined gradually since the beginning of the 20th century, although it is still a major crop in the region. Caribbean sugar production became relatively expensive in comparison to other parts of the world that developed their own sugar cultivation industries, making it difficult for Caribbean sugar products to compete.[62] Caribbean economic diversification into new activities became essential to the islands.
Tourism
By the beginning of the 20th century, the Caribbean islands enjoyed greater political stability. Large-scale violence was no longer a threat after the end of slavery in the islands. The British-controlled islands in particular benefited from investments in the infrastructure of colonies. By the beginning of World War I, all British-controlled islands had their own police force, fire department, doctors and at least one hospital. Sewage systems and public water supplies were built, and death rates in the islands dropped sharply. Literacy also increased significantly during this period, as schools were set up for students descended from African slaves. Public libraries were established in large towns and capital cities.[63]
These improvements in the quality of life for the inhabitants also made the islands a much more attractive destination for visitors. Tourists began to visit the Caribbean in larger numbers by the beginning of the 20th century, although there was a tourist presence in the region as early as the 1880s. The U.S.-owned United Fruit Company operated a fleet of "banana boats" in the region that doubled as tourist transportation. The United Fruit Company also developed hotels for tourist accommodations. It soon became apparent, however, that this industry was much like a new form of colonialism; the hotels operated by the company were fully staffed by Americans, from chefs to waitresses, in addition to being owned by Americans, so that the local populations saw little economic benefit. The company also enforced racial discrimination in many policies for its fleet. Black passengers were assigned to inferior cabins, were sometimes denied bookings, and were expected to eat meals early before white passengers.[64] The most popular early destinations were Jamaica and the Bahamas; the Bahamas remains today the most popular tourist destination in the Caribbean.
Post-independence economic needs, particularly in the aftermath of the end of preferential agricultural trade ties with Europe, led to a boom in the development of the tourism industry in the 1980s and thereafter. Large luxury hotels and resorts have been built by foreign investors in many of the islands. Cruise ships are also regular visitors to the Caribbean.
Some islands have gone against this trend, such as Cuba and Haiti, whose governments chose not to pursue foreign tourism, although Cuba has developed this part of the economy very recently. Other islands lacking sandy beaches, such as Dominica, missed out on the 20th-century tourism boom, although they have recently begun to develop
Financial services
The development of
Shipping
Ports both large and small were built throughout the Caribbean during the colonial era. The export of sugar on a large scale made the Caribbean one of the world's shipping cornerstones, as it remains today. Many key shipping routes still pass through the region.
The development of large-scale shipping to compete with other ports in Central and South America ran into several obstacles during the 20th century. Economies of scale, high port handling charges, and a reluctance by Caribbean governments to privatise ports put Caribbean shipping at a disadvantage.[68] Many locations in the Caribbean are suitable for the construction of deepwater ports for commercial ship container traffic, or to accommodate large cruise ships. The deepwater port at Bridgetown, Barbados, was completed by British investors in 1961. A more recent deepwater port project was completed by Hong Kong investors in Grand Bahama in the Bahamas.
Some Caribbean islands take advantage of
Timeline
- 1492 Spanish arrival on the Lucayan Archipelago, Hispaniola and Cuba.
- 1493 Spanish arrival on Dominica, Guadeloupe, Montserrat, Antigua, Saint Martin, Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, Jamaica.
- 1496 Spanish foundation of Santo Domingo - colonization of Hispaniola begins.
- 1498 Spanish arrival on Trinidad, Tobago, Grenada, Margarita Island.
- 1499 Spanish arrival on Curaçao, Aruba, Bonaire.
- 1502 Spanish arrival on Martinique.
- 1508 Spanish colonization of Puerto Rico and Aruba begins.
- 1509 Spanish colonization of Jamaica begins.
- 1511 Spanish foundation of Baracoa - colonization of Cuba begins.
- 1520 Spaniards removed last Amerindians from Lucayan Archipelago ( population of 40,000 in 1492 ).
- 1525 Spanish colonization of Margarita Island begins.
- 1526 Spanish colonization of Bonaire begins.
- 1527 Spanish colonization of Curacaobegins.
- 1536 Portuguese arrival on Barbados.
- 1592 Spanish colonization of Trinidad begins.
- 1623 English colonization of Saint Kitts begins.
- 1627 English colonization of Barbados begins.
- 1628 English colonization of Nevis begins.
- 1631 Dutch colonization of Saint Martin begins.
- 1632 English colonization of Montserrat and Antigua begins.
- 1634 Dutch conquest of Spanish Curaçao.
- 1635 French colonization of Guadeloupe and Martinique begins.
- 1636 Dutch conquest of Spanish Aruba and Bonaire.
- 1648 English colonization of The Bahamas begins.
- 1649 French colonization of Grenada begins.
- 1650 English colonization of Anguilla begins.
- 1654 Dutch colonization of Tobago begins.
- 1655 English conquest of Spanish Jamaica.
- 1681 English colonization of Turks and Caicosbegins.
- 1697 by Peace of Ryswick, Spain ceded western third of Hispaniola (Haiti) to France.
- 1719 French colonization of Saint Vincent (Antilles)begins.
- 1734 English colonization of Cayman Islands begins.
- 1797 British conquest of Spanish Trinidad.
See also
- Cartography of Latin America
- General History of the Caribbean
- History of the British West Indies
- Influx of disease in the Caribbean
- Territorial evolution of the Caribbean
Notes
- Plantocratic, of a political order dominated by plantation owners
References
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Further reading
- Altman, Ida. "The Revolt of Enriquillo and the Historiography of Early Spanish America," The Americas vol. 63(4)2007, 587–614.
- Altman, Ida. "Marriage, Family, and Ethnicity in the Early Spanish Caribbean," William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser. 70:2(2013):226-250.
- Altman, Ida."Key to the Indies: Port Cities in the Spanish Caribbean: 1493-1550." The Americas 74:1(Jan. 2017):5-26.
- Altman, Ida. Life and Society in the Early Caribbean: The Greater Antilles, 1493-1550. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press 2021.
- Anderson-Córdova, Karen F. Surviving Spanish Conquest: Indian Fight, Flight, and Cultural Transformation in Hispaniola and Puerto Rico. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press 2017.
- Andrews, Kenneth R. The Spanish Caribbean: Trade and Plunder, 1530-1630. New Haven: Yale University Press 1978.
- Baptiste, Fitzroy. War, Cooperation, and Conflict: The European Possessions in the Caribbean, 1939-1945 (1988). online Archived 2019-05-27 at the Wayback Machine
- Bousquet, Ben and Colin Douglas. West Indian Women at War: British Racism in World War II (1991) online Archived 2020-03-22 at the Wayback Machine
- Bush, Barbara. Slave Women in Caribbean Society: 1650–1838 (1990)
- Cromwell, Jesse. "More than Slaves and Sugar: Recent Historiography of the Trans-imperial Caribbean and Its Sinew Populations." History Compass (2014) 12#10 pp 770–783.
- Cox, Edward Godfrey (1938). "West Indies". Reference Guide to the Literature of Travel. University of Washington publications. Language and literaturev. 9-10, 12. Vol. 2: New World. Seattle: University of Washington. – via Hathi Trust.
- de Kadt, Emanuel (editor), 1972. Patterns of foreign influence in the Caribbean, London, New York, published for the Royal Institute of International Affairs by Oxford University Press.
- * Dooley Jr, Edwin L. "Wartime San Juan, Puerto Rico: The Forgotten American Home Front, 1941-1945." Journal of Military History 63.4 (1999): 921.
- Dunn, Richard. Sugar and Slaves: The Rise of the Planter Class in the English West Indies, 1624–1713 1972.
- Eccles, Karen E. and Debbie McCollin, eds. World War II and the Caribbean (2017) excerpt; historiography covered in the introduction.
- Emmer, Pieter C., ed. General History of the Caribbean. London: UNESCO Publishing 1999.
- Floyd, Troy S. The Columbus Dynasty in the Caribbean, 1492-1526. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press 1973.
- Healy, David. Drive to hegemony: the United States in the Caribbean, 1898-1917 (1988).
- Higman, Barry W. A concise history of the Caribbean. Cambridge University Press, 2010.
- Hoffman, Paul E. The Spanish Crown and the Defense of the Caribbean, 1535-1585: Precedent, Patrimonialism, and Royal Parsimony. Baton Rouge: LSU Press 1980.
- Jackson, Ashley. The British Empire and the Second World War (Continuum, 2006). pp 77–95 on Caribbean colonies
- Keegan, William F. Taíno Myth and Practice: the Arrival of the Stranger King. Gainesville: University of Florida Press 2007.
- Klein, Herbert S. and Ben Vinson, African slavery in Latin America and the Caribbean Oxford University Press, 2007
- Klooster, Wim, 1998. Illicit riches. Dutch trade in the Caribbean, 1648-1795, KITLV.
- Knight, Franklin W., and Colin A. Palmer, eds. The Modern Caribbean. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2014.
- Kurlansky, Mark. 1992. A Continent of Islands: Searching for the Caribbean Destiny. Addison-Wesley Publishing.
- Martin, Tony, Caribbean history: From pre-colonial origins to the present. Routledge, 2016.
- Morse, J. (1797). "West Indies". The American Gazetteer. Boston, Massachusetts: S. Hall, and Thomas & Andrews.
- Moya Pons, F. History of the Caribbean: Plantations, Trade, and War in the Atlantic World (2007)
- Palmié, Stephan and Francisco Scarano, eds. The Caribbean: A History of the Region and Its Peoples (U of Chicago Press, 2011) 660 pp
- Ratekin, Mervyn. "The Early Sugar Industry in Española," Hispanic American Historical Review 34:2(1954):1-19.
- Rogozinski, Jan. A Brief History of the Caribbean (2000).
- Sauer, Carl O. The Early Spanish Main. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press 1969.
- Sheridan, Richard. Sugar and Slavery: An Economic History of the British West Indies, 1623–1775 (1974)
- Stinchcombe, Arthur. Sugar Island Slavery in the Age of Enlightenment: The Political Economy of the Caribbean World (1995)
- Tibesar, Antonine S. "The Franciscan Province of the Holy Cross of Española," The Americas 13:4(1957):377-389.
- Wilson, Samuel M. The Indigenous People of the Caribbean. Gainesville: University of Florida Press 1997.