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Encarta Historical Essays reflect the knowledge and insight of leading historians. This collection of essays is assembled to support the National Standards for World History. In this essay, Alan Karras of the University of California, Berkeley, holds that three prominent phases of colonialism were developed in the Caribbean, following Columbus’s voyages to the Americas.
By Alan Karras
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| Slaves in a Sugarcane Mill |
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When Genoese mariner Christopher Columbus sailed into the Caribbean Sea in 1492, his voyage introduced processes of colonialism that resulted in profound changes to the history of the world. Looking for a westward route from Europe to southern and eastern Asia, Columbus instead found a world that was unknown to Europeans. His four transatlantic voyages on behalf of the Spanish monarchy between 1492 and 1502 effectively ended the geographical isolation of the Americas. Columbus’s journeys of exploration into the western hemisphere were followed by expeditions of conquest by the Spanish, who, though vastly outnumbered, reduced once-powerful empires to little more than rubble. Within a generation, large numbers of Native Americans had succumbed to disease brought to the Americas by Europeans. The Native Americans had no natural immunity to such diseases and died in large numbers. Many who survived were killed in battle, defeated by Spanish military technology, which was more lethal than that possessed by 16th-century Native Americans. So began Atlantic colonialism and the precedent for global colonialism.
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There is no better place to explore the processes of colonization than the islands of the Caribbean. It was here that European colonization of foreign territories, which came to characterize the modern world, first took place. And it was from this region that the various European states learned valuable lessons about the colonial process. They applied these lessons elsewhere in the world—especially in Asia and Africa during the 19th century.
From 1492 until the second half of the 19th century, when the enslavement of Africans was abolished throughout most of the Americas, the Caribbean region underwent a profound transformation. Thoroughly isolated from the other continents in 1492, the Caribbean islands became increasingly connected, and increasingly important, to an Atlantic world economy.
The original inhabitants of the islands, Caribs, Arawaks, and Lucayans, nearly disappeared. A trickle of migrating Europeans established a growing population in the Caribbean and their settlements faced little resistance. These colonists from Europe often were averse to the kind of physical labor required for colonies to develop and become self-sustaining. Health and climatic reasons also made European residence in the tropics difficult. The settlers solved their labor problem by bringing in African slaves, which created multiracial societies. Subsistence agriculture, hunting, and fishing became far less important to the regional economy as sugar production increased and took precedence. In fact, the region concentrated so heavily on cultivating sugar that food, which was needed more immediately to support the population, regularly had to be imported from Europe and, later, North America.
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After Columbus traveled on Spain’s behalf, other European states soon followed in laying claim to Caribbean islands. Within several decades, islands were claimed for England, France, Spain, or the Netherlands. Each colony experienced a fundamentally identical process. Only the timing and the degree of transformation differed from one island to the next. As a result, colonialism in the Caribbean and other places can be thought of as having at least three distinct phases—implantation (or establishment), maturity, and transition.
The implantation period began with Columbus’s first voyage to the Americas in 1492 and concluded sometime in the middle of the 17th century. During this phase, the Spanish explored the region, conquered territories they encountered, and subjugated the remaining Native American population. They also began extracting colossal amounts of gold and, especially, silver bullion—most of it from South America. The English, French, and Dutch soon followed the Spanish into the region in an effort to prevent the Spaniards from accumulating too much wealth too quickly. At this time Europe operated on a mercantile economy. One of mercantilism’s central tenets was that bullion (gold or silver in bar form) was the measure of wealth and that there was a fixed amount of it in the world. If the Spanish monarchy possessed all of the precious metals produced in the Americas, other European states would be unable to compete.
Early efforts to prevent Spain from keeping all of the bullion it extracted from the natives and their mines led northern Europeans to embrace piracy. The pirates tried to capture the wealth that the Spanish sent back to Europe in an annual flota, or convoy. If pirates could use the Caribbean islands as bases from which to launch attacks on the Spanish treasure fleet, they could prevent the Spanish crown from accumulating too much precious metal. In the late 16th and early 17th centuries, many of the islands became bases from which pirates attacked Spanish ships returning to Europe.
The Native Americans who had not succumbed to disease welcomed the pirates’ attacks on the Spanish who had brought disease and destruction into the hemisphere. Moreover, pirate attacks were unofficially sanctioned by Spain’s rival monarchies; what the pirates took, the Spaniards did not receive. And northern rulers believed that, ultimately, the pirates would act as consumers and spend their plundered loot, which eventually would find its way into European treasuries in one form or another. Spain protested the constant pirate attacks through European diplomatic channels, but its complaints fell on deaf ears. The other monarchies responded that the Caribbean lay beyond the line—that is, European laws and treaties did not yet apply to this region.
The pirates themselves led interesting lives and sometimes followed unique social practices. Some of them had been sailors for one or another European state, while others simply belonged to the lower social and economic orders. They viewed piracy as a way to improve their material circumstances. Pirates around the Atlantic, including the Caribbean region, shared their wealth with fellow crew members almost equally. Of course the captain and first mate always received a bigger share of the loot, but what was left was divided among the crew. Moreover, the pirates often compensated each other if one lost a limb or other body part. A life of adventure robbing Spanish ships brought with it a certain freedom and upward economic mobility.
As Spain became more aggressive in combating piracy, northern Europeans began to establish more-permanent bases in the Caribbean islands. Groups of men (European women were unknown to most parts of the western hemisphere at this time) began to cultivate enough food and agricultural products to provision ships passing through the region. By the end of the 16th century, tobacco and cotton were produced in sufficient quantity to send what was not consumed in the Americas back to Europe. As demand for these products increased, more-efficient modes of production appeared. And as profits rose, more European settlers came to the region. Most hoped to make a quick fortune and return to Europe. Although the Native Americans had long since retreated to a few remote enclaves, European settlers did not find the region especially hospitable. Its hot, humid climate along with exotic flora and fauna were curiosities to be endured only as long as absolutely necessary. Laboring in the hot sun was difficult enough; creating cultural institutions that resembled those in Europe (such as schools, theatres, and newspapers) was nearly out of the question.
Put simply, northern Europeans, like their Spanish predecessors, did not wish to work as they settled in the Caribbean islands. At the same time, they wanted to increase agricultural productivity and, therefore, profitability. The emerging solution propelled the colonists into the next phase of colonization. Mature colonialism in the Caribbean rested squarely on the backs of slaves imported from Africa. And, in other places in the world, after Europeans forbade slavery, mature colonies relied upon formally free, but generally coerced, labor to produce and extract resources for the marketplace.
Mature colonialism in the Caribbean lasted just over 100 years, from the middle of the 17th century until around 1770. The mature colonial societies operated in their own broad equilibrium. During this time, the colonies grew conspicuously in population, production, and trade. Slave traders and their customers forced about 12 million Africans to cross the Atlantic as permanent bondsmen. Of these, between 10 million and 11 million actually arrived in the Americas; the rest died en route. Most of the slaves who survived the journey were sold for use in an economy that produced sugar to the exclusion of most other crops. As the sugar economy evolved, the colonies saw an increase in the number of laws and a hardening of attitudes about Africans. The number of people of mixed race also increased, indicating that European men often had children with African or Native American women. Finally, enduring patterns of mercantilist competition between Europe and its American possessions developed. Commercial rivalry, privateering (piracy officially sanctioned by governments in times of war), and sporadic warfare were well known throughout the region. European political institutions took root around the Caribbean. Almost every island colony had a legislature, consisting of representatives appointed by the Governor or elected by residents who owned enough property to vote. Although real political and economic power still resided in Europe, white property-owning residents of the Caribbean began to exert slightly more control over items of local concern. These same economic and social patterns occurred later in European colonies around the world.
The mature Caribbean colony, whether British, French, or Spanish, focused heavily on producing sugar cane. Sugar itself was, at least initially, relatively rare in Europe; only the very wealthiest citizens could afford to import it from the sugar producing regions of the eastern Mediterranean. The Portuguese first brought sugar to the western hemisphere, establishing highly successful plantations in their colony in Brazil. Sugar was introduced into many Caribbean islands by the Dutch, who were expelled from Brazil in the 1650s after briefly competing with the Portuguese for control of the colony.
Sugar production could have been an expensive proposition, requiring a great deal of labor to plant, cut, crush, and boil the cane. At first, planters used cheap European labor, generally indentured servants who agreed to work for a specified amount of time in exchange for free passage to the Americas and room and board. However, many European workers soon became reluctant to move to the West Indies because tropical diseases killed off European settlers in large numbers. Few wanted to cross the Atlantic to perform the grueling labor involved in sugar cultivation. Instead, during the second half of the 17th century, the Caribbean islands developed large-scale plantation economies with African slaves comprising the overwhelming majority of workers. African slaves, who came from tropical homelands, were immune to many of the diseases that affected European workers. Unlike indentured servants, slaves could be forced to work until they dropped from exhaustion. Across the Caribbean islands, large African majority populations appeared. Indeed, during the mature colonial period, in places such as Jamaica, blacks outnumbered whites ten to one.
African slaves crossing the Atlantic increased from an average of 16,000 each year in the 17th century to an average of about 70,000 each year in the 18th century. The peak of the Atlantic slave trade came in the 18th century, which was, not coincidentally, the height of sugar production. British North America received only 5 percent of the total number of slaves who arrived in the Americas; the British Caribbean, by contrast, took 21 percent of arrivals—-second only to Portuguese Brazil at 37 percent. The Spanish, French, and Dutch Caribbean also received significant numbers of Africans imported from western African. Caught by African slave traders, the slaves were sold to European traders. The European traders spread their business as widely as possible among African slave-trading groups, ensuring a ready supply of captives for the growing plantation economy and preventing one African supplier from becoming more powerful than another.
While sugar production occupied the daily lives of slaves, the profits from sugar production fueled the growing Atlantic economy. Sugar was shipped from the Caribbean to Europe and North America, where it was sold at a profit. Consumption increased dramatically, driving the need for more cultivated land in the Caribbean and yet more slaves from Africa. Increasingly, sugar became a staple in European and American diets. The growth of the plantations also required the work of non-African laborers and professionals. Doctors, attorneys, merchants, bookkeepers, estate managers, and tavern keepers all found opportunities to elevate their socioeconomic status by working in the Caribbean islands. During the mature colonial phase, the migration of Europeans to the Caribbean changed. Where it once had been one of principally impoverished men, it became one of well-educated, middle-class individuals. These new immigrants sought to make enough money on the plantations to buy a Caribbean property of their own. Once they had done this, they maintained, they could return to Europe and leave the heat and humidity behind. This common perception persisted throughout the European colonial establishments that followed in Asia and Africa.
The increase of slaves led to the occupational diversity of European residents across the region. For many of them, profits increased, which, in turn, allowed them to go home wealthy. For others, careful attention to business never brought the rewards they sought. The aspiration of many white residents of the Caribbean to return to Europe caused local institutions to develop rather slowly. Newspapers appeared in the capitals, which were generally port cities, but were not widespread elsewhere. Churches frequently had absentee ministers; theatres and music halls appeared before schools did. In fact, children were sent to Europe for their education. In some cases, tutors were hired for private lessons. By the end of the mature colonial period, however, more and more island residents had become frustrated in their plans to leave the Caribbean and resolved to remain in the tropics. At this point, a society that increasingly resembled that of Europe began to emerge.
Across the Caribbean, socioeconomic status depended in part on racial classification. African slaves propped up the economy, but socially, those of mixed race parentage generally stood between them and European whites. More men than women migrated to the region and the islands all had black majorities, so Europeans in the Caribbean recognized their children of mixed race and gave them increased social standing. By the end of the mature colonial phase, a fairly complex socioeconomic hierarchy had developed, based at least in part on degrees of whiteness and degrees of blackness. By contrast, in North America, any individual with any black ancestry was generally considered to be a slave. This suggests that the Caribbean islands were developing a complex society that increasingly resembled European society. That is, it was increasingly stratified along class lines, with prescribed occupational categories beyond which people were rarely mobile. There were also a small group of very wealthy planters and a large group of slaves—in other words, a social order that echoed the relationship between the aristocrats and peasants of Europe. What made Caribbean society distinctly different from European society was that race became the basis of the Caribbean class system.
The transition period began in the 1770s and lasted in most places through the middle of the 19th century, when slavery was abolished throughout the Caribbean (1886 in Cuba). This period can be considered the genesis of the modern Caribbean. In Europe in the 1780s and 1790s, anti-slave trade increased. Britain abolished its slave trade in 1807 and then urged other European states to do the same. The planters in the islands fought to maintain the slavery that had allowed them to live well, but to no avail. Agreeing to compensate the colonists for the loss of their slaves, the British government abolished slavery altogether in 1834. The French followed suit in the 1840s. (By then, the French colony of Saint-Domingue already had become the independent nation of Haiti, so the French abolition affected principally Martinique and Guadeloupe.) The Spanish maintained slavery in Cuba into the 1880s. As the slaves became free men and women, most of them did not wish to continue working in the sugar economy. Moreover, the development of the sugar beet in Europe allowed sugar to be produced nearer to home. The cost of cane increased correspondingly, while demand continued to decline. The freed slaves increasingly found themselves unable to earn enough money to improve the material conditions of their lives. Standards of living declined even as colonial rule continued. Moreover, the white planters consolidated their grip on political power and generally did not extend political enfranchisement to people of non-European descent. Following abolition, there was no discernible increase in racial equality.
By the middle of the 19th century, the European states had turned most of their attention toward Asia and Africa. In those places, they repeated the process that had been used in the Caribbean, but they also changed it. Having learned that building societies from the ground up was difficult, many European nations imposed their rule on top of existing local structures, leaving the local leaders in place with diminished authority. At the same time, European colonizers tried to extract as much as possible for their own increasingly global economic development. The older colonized area of the Caribbean had yielded high profits for some and had seen the creation of societies where Africans, Europeans, and a few Native Americans resided; however, it ceased to be central to Europe’s colonizing ventures. Caribbean residents of all races were forced to deal with an economy dependent upon a product in diminishing demand. Profits declined, and those who could least afford it suffered the most. A similar process took place in Africa and Asia during the decolonization of those regions during the three decades following 1945. European colonization of the world brought both problems and benefits to non-European societies. But it was unable to ensure a steadily increasing standard of living or a more stable political or economic life for those societies.
About the author: Alan Karras is a lecturer in the International and Area Studies Teaching Program at the University of California at Berkeley. He is the author of Sojourners in the Sun: Scots Migrants in Jamaica and the Chesapeake, 1740-1800 as well as numerous other publications.
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Colonialism and Colonies; Columbus, Christopher; Spanish Empire; British Empire; Caribbean Sea
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