Colonisation

By Nashia Graneau-Barrie
 Introduction

▪ Whereas the first human colonizers of the Caribbean were latecomers in the
broad sweep of world history, the islands were prime sites in the fateful modern
colonization that brought Europeans and Africans across the Atlantic to the
Americas. It was on a Caribbean island that Columbus set foot on his first
voyage of 1492 and it was in the islands that the Spanish built their first colonies.
Rather than seeming a barrier, the sea now served as a conduit for European
imperialism. Further, the easy accessibility of island shores, together with the
islands’ small size and long coastlines, made them ideal sites for economic
exploitation. Mile for mile, it was cheaper to ship a barrel of rum or a bale of
cotton across the seas than it was to haul it overland on a wagon.
▪ The first colonizers of the Caribbean brought with them few animals, but over time
reduced the species diversity of the islands through extinctions. They carried with them
a wider variety of plants and some of these, notably cassava, were fundamental to the
food supply of a growing population, but at the same time the spread of agriculture was
accompanied by the burning of forest. In these ways, the Ta´ınos changed the landscape
of the islands but did no more than shift the balance towards a biodiversity more
representative of the surrounding tropical mainland cultures from whence came their
technologies, languages, and social patterns.
▪ The secondary, European, colonization was unlike the primary peopling
of the Caribbean in a variety of ways.
▪ In the first place, the new colonization, almost everywhere, was
invasive. People already occupied the islands and there were few
places that could be regarded as terra incognita or terra nullius. Only
by pushing aside, removing, enslaving, or killing those people could
European colonization make space to succeed.
▪ Secondly, the systems of plant and animal use introduced after 1492
fundamentally altered the biodiversity of the islands, most obviously
through the introduction of large domesticated mammals and the
broad-acre planting of grasses, trees, and other plants, many of them
having their origins far away. In order to achieve these results, the
forest was burned on a scale far greater than anything accomplished
by the Ta´ıno and their forefathers.
▪ Thirdly, the newcomers brought and imposed new ways of claiming rights to land and labour, and new
systems of government. The essence of this transformation was the establishment of capitalism as the
primary means of articulating an economy, the export of wealth to Europe as a driving objective, and
metropolitan imperial rule as the primary political form. Ultimate authority, backed by military might,
was located outside the region. Social inequality was taken to a height far beyond anything achieved in
the hierarchical complex societies that had gone before.

▪ Fourthly, all of these fundamental social, political, and environmental changes depended on a new
cosmology – new ideas about what it is to be human. At the core of this new cosmology was the belief
that human beings could think of themselves as beyond and outside nature because of their special
situation in a great chain of being that placed them between the brutes and the angels. In the
Caribbean, Indigenous people were looked at as heathens and pagans, people lacking true religion.
Most of these new cosmological elements came from the other side of the Atlantic, nurtured in the
religious tradition of Christianity, and only gradually found nourishment in Caribbean soil.
▪ Finally, rather than a population in which genetic diversity was
reduced, the bringing together of peoples from Europe, Africa, and
Asia, together with the native peoples of the Americas, resulted in a
significant increase in diversity of heritage. The consequence was the
emergence of peoples, languages, and cultures that were identified as
characteristically hybrid or creole, rooted in the Caribbean but
created from elements that were universal rather than localized.
 ▪ By the 1590s, the islands that attracted Spain’s colonial
efforts were: Cuba, Hispaniola, Jamaica, and Puerto Rico,
with a little fewer than 90,000 colonizers spread out
unevenly throughout the region.
▪ Other Europeans were envious of the activities in the
The Spanish Caribbean, longing to be participants in the
Monopoly colonization and economic exploitation. For most of the
16th century, the European powers were not ready to
pose direct challenges to Spanish rule. One deterrent
was the knowledge of Spanish might and their proven
efficiency and cruelty in the art of conquest
▪ And if any doubted Spain’s zealousness at keeping its
domains untouched by other Europeans, there was a
1564 massacre in Florida in which 200 Frenchmen were
executed by the Spanish. • This was a lesson that kept
France focused on the exploration of Canada rather
than challenging Spanish hegemony farther south.
▪ • The strategy employed by the English and French,
then, was to avoid an open contest and encourage
instead, excursions conducted by individuals or
mercantile companies acting for personal or corporate
gains and not officially for national or royal objectives.
 BUCCANEERS

▪ The buccaneers were essentially stateless individuals, but they retained

strong links with the general culture and society with which they were
familiar. They did not try to create a culture and a society. They had their
culture, and they knew their social origins quite well. What they sought - at
least for a time - was freedom from the restraints and obligations of that
culture and society. The leaders of the buccaneers had some "national"
identity: Alexandre Exquemelin was Dutch; Bartholomé Portuguez - the
most famous non-swimmer in the history of the buccaneers -was
Portuguese; Rock, the Dutchman, had lived in Brazil; Henry Morgan of
Barbados - later Sir Henry Morgan, lieutenant-governor of Jamaica - was
born in Wales; Raveneau de Lassan - in all probability a fictitious character
- claimed to be a French buccaneer.
 ▪ A consequence of the wealth of the Caribbean and
Spain’s monopoly on the region was an upsurge in
piracy, as roving sea robbers sought to help themselves
to some of the wealth being shipped from the Americas
Pirates to Spain. • The peak period of piracy in the Caribbean
was from 1692 to 1725, an era referred to as the “golden
age of piracy.
 ▪ Privateers • Privateers were hired hands in the service
of a nation at war with another; their orders were to
attack enemy ships. • All the European powers used
privateers, including Spain. • Privateers could keep a
percentage of the plunder they took, while the bulk of
the riches was intended for the patron’s coffers • By
Privateers 1600 privateering was becoming increasingly
dangerous • The populations of towns had grown so
they were now better able to ward off attacks from
privateers

▪ Remember last class we spoke about the letter of

Marque?????? Very important aspect of privateering.
 ▪ • Many smugglers were merchants who were willing to
break Spain’s trading laws to make a profit. • Because
the Spanish fleet could not police all the waters of the
Caribbean, it was easy for these merchants to buy and
sell goods among the colonies

Smugglers ▪ To facilitate their enterprise, some smugglers scouted

for locations where they could live and plant such
products as tobacco. • It was with that objective that
smugglers helped settle some of the islands of the
Lesser Antilles, attracting other smugglers as well as
Dutch, English, and French planters
 ▪ • The Spanish defence became better organized and
stronger as a result of the work of Pedro Menendez
Breaking the (Introduction of fortifications) • European nations then
turned to colonization as a means of attack in the
Spanish Spanish monopoly. • They said they would recognize
Monopoly Spanish monopoly only in those territories effectively
colonized by her.
▪ Despite Spain’s claims to the Caribbean under the
Treaty of Tordesillas, other European powers had a
presence in the area. • The Dutch, English, and French
were successful in making dents in the Spanish
monopoly in the Caribbean.
▪ • Forced to defend major ports such as Havana and San
Juan and to protect the treasure fleet, the Spanish
directed their attention to the largest of the islands:
Cuba, Hispaniola, Jamaica, and Puerto Rico. • The
smaller islands, which the Spanish considered less
valuable, were abandoned.
▪ • These islands served as entry points for Spain’s rivals,
first buccaneers and privateers, then merchants,
leading eventually to a presence in the Caribbean for
England, France, and the Netherlands • Though slow in
settling their newly acquired possessions, the English,
the Dutch, and the French soon saw the value of the
islands
 ▪ Particularly the development of sugar plantations—
commerce, and mining became attractive. • Such
Agriculture activities were to define colonial life in the Caribbean
in the centuries to come.
▪ By the end of the seventeenth century, the pattern of territorial possession contrasted
strongly with that at its beginning. The changes that occurred were not initiated by
the sugar revolution but it was sugar and slavery, and the trades they generated, that
drove rivalry in the period after 1650 and determined the character of conflict.
Amerindian peoples had lost effective control almost everywhere, though Kalinagos
remained dominant and relatively unmolested in a few islands, notably St Vincent
and, to a lesser extent, Dominica, where the French held a loose authority. They
struggled hard against colonization in Grenada and Tobago. The grand claims of the
Spanish were much reduced, but they did still control the largest area of Caribbean
land, in Cuba, the eastern end of Hispaniola, and Puerto Rico.
 FRENCH COLONIES

▪ The territories of the French and English were less

extensive and more dispersed but highly profitable.
▪ The French had effective control of Martinique,
Guadeloupe, St Croix, Grenada, and Tobago. They
shared some islands: Hispaniola with the Spanish, St
Martin with the Dutch, and St Lucia with the English.
▪ In the west, the English held Jamaica, the Cayman Islands (ceded in 1670 together with
Jamaica), and the sparsely settled Bahamas (1648). In the east, they had Barbados and
the Leewards settlements of St Kitts (the French section of the island having been
wrested from them in 1691), Nevis, Anguilla (settled 1650), Montserrat, Antigua,
Barbuda (1685), and the eastern group of the Virgin Islands (1672), where the English
drove out Dutch buccaneers. The Dutch had Curac¸ao, Aruba, and Bonaire off the coast
of South America and, in the Leewards, St Eustatius, Saba, and St Martin (shared with
France). St Thomas was Danish but almost completely dependent on the Dutch for its
capital development. In 1733, St Croix was sold by the French to the Danish, who
sought to redevelop the island as a sugar colony and had already occupied St John
with similar intentions.
 DUTCH

▪ Trade, particularly the trade in people, sometimes provided the

foundation for an entire colony’s economy. Thus, Curac¸ao, an arid
island off the coast of Venezuela, was taken by the Dutch in 1634
and quickly developed into a collecting station for enslaved
people taken from foreign ships. From the 1650s, Curac¸ao became
a major centre for the Atlantic trade, supplying enslaved people to
the Spanish territories either by smuggling or through the asiento
system, reinstated by the Spanish government in 1662.
▪ In the eighteenth century, however, the Dutch lost control of the asiento and
the inhabitants of Curac¸ao were forced to pay more attention to
the production of salt, lumber, and minor agricultural products such as
ginger, indigo, and cotton. Dutch ships employed in the Atlantic slave trade
attempted to obtain return cargoes, on their voyages back to Holland, but
they were often paid in Spanish silver and could not always find bulky
goods of value to fill the remaining space. Wood products were important
in the early eighteenth century but the supply dried up as the forests were
depleted. Sugar produced in the Dutch plantations on the mainland soon
became the primary commodity carried but some ships were forced to
take on ballast, even sand.
▪ St Eustatius, in the Leeward Islands, was initially intended as a plantation
colony when taken by the Dutch in 1635, producing tobacco then sugar,
but failed because it suffered frequent droughts. For a brief period, in the
1720s, St Eustatius became a significant centre for the Dutch slave trade,
seen as the northern counterpart of Curac¸ao. It supplied enslaved people
to the French colonies of Martinique and Guadeloupe and also to some of
the English islands. St Eustatius lost most of its market after 1730, however,
when English slave traders dominated and the island then played only a
marginal role in Dutch commerce down to 1770. As with Curac¸ao, return
cargoes from St Eustatius included significant quantities of sugar, and the
success of St Eustatius as a commercial centre was based more on this
commodity than its trade in enslaved people.
Dutch and Danish Colonies

▪ Denmark imitated the Dutch model by establishing the

Danish West India and Guinea Company in 1671. •
Danish colonists settled St. Thomas in 1672 with a
charter issued by King Christian V of Denmark Norway.
• In 1683 they expanded to St. John, competing with
England for the island. • In 1733 they bought St. Croix
from the French West Indies Company
 DUTCH ENTERPRISE

▪ It was the Dutch merchants who, by the beginning of the 17th century, were offering
the most effective challenge to Spain's West Indian monopoly. While war against
Spain was going on in European merchants in the Netherlands were sending 20
ships a year to buy hides in Hispanola alone, and 10 ships a month collected salt at
Araya under the nose of the Spanish Governor of Venezuela. All these ships arrived
with trade good which they sold at lower prices than their rivals, chiefly the
Portuguese and English.
▪ The Dutch East India Company, forged in 1602, was really an amalgamation of all
the individual Dutch concerns which had gained a foothold for trade in India.

▪ They refused to recognise Spain's monopoly rights in the West Indies.

▪ The earliest attemps at settlement were made, not in the islands but on the Guiana
coast of South America. These settlements were unsuccessful. Suppplies
were difficult to maintain and the Carib Indians were hostile; atttempt after attempt
was made only to fail eventually.
▪ Between 1630 and 1649, the Dutch established themselves in curacao, Saba, St
Martin and St Eustatius, all of which they used as depots for their trade with the
French and English settlers.Dutch traders brought equipment and supplies to the
strggling colonis and found a ready European market for the tobacco produced.
▪ In 1631, the Dutch West India Company took over the southern part of the island of
St. Maarten. Its objective was twofold: establishing a naval base to monitor the
movements of the Spanish fleet and setting up a salt plant. Two years later, the
Spanish reclaimed the island.
▪ Other settlements were established on Suriname and Guyana. In 1648, the Spanish
quietly abandoned St. Maarten, and the Dutch returned.

▪ Curaçao became a major centre in the slave trade. Slaves brought from Africa were
often taken first to the island to become acclimatized before being sold to settlers in
the Spanish and British Caribbean islands
 FRENCH

▪ French Enterprise was a little slower than the English

because France in 1635 had joined the Thirty Years War
which dragged on in Europe from 1618 until 1648.
Nethertheless, Cardinal Richelieu still saw colonisation
as an important part of his attack on Spain, and iin 1635
he organised further help for Gveror D'Esnambuc in a
Company of the Isles of America.
▪ The French arrived through the establishment of
several companies similar to the Dutch West India
Company: • The Compagnie de Saint Christophe (St.
Christopher Company), • The Compagnie des ÎIles
d’Amérique (Company of the American Islands) • And
the Compagnie des Indes Occidentales (WestIndies
Company) • All founded between 1626 and 1664.
▪ Their objective, as dictated by a charter drafted in 1626, was to colonize the Lesser
Antilles. • In that spirit, 300 Frenchmen settled in St. Kitts in 1627. • Less than a
decade later, in 1635, the island served as the jumping-off point for the colonization
of Martinique.
▪ IN 1635, Martinique, Guadeloupe and Doiminica were surveyed by fRench
adventurers and directors of the Company of the Isles of America. They were
granted the right to colonise these islands. They were daunted by the rugged
mountains of Dominica and returned to settle Martinique and Guadeloupe.
▪ That same year the French took possession of Guadeloupe • In
1665 France gained possession of St. Croix (later sold to Denmark),
and in 1697 it acquired Saint-Domingue, which became the French
side of Hispaniola, from the Spanish via a treaty.
 BRITISH COLONIES

▪ The first English settlement was established in Bermuda. Bermuda

is located in the North Atlantic, east of South Carolina and north of
the Caribbean. This came about not by design but by accident in
1609 when a ship under the command of Sir George Summers
(1554–1610) was wrecked off the island.
▪ The English claimed possession of the islands in 1612, but it was
not until 1624 that actual colonization began. During this time, there
was constant turmoil and ongoing attacks from Spanish and
French who wanted to rule these countries.
▪ English settlements were made in 1632 on Antigua and Montserrat.
Other colonies that followed included St Kitts and Nevis.
▪ Shortly after, British colonized Jamaica, their greatest accomplishment during this
time.

▪ Before the colonization of Jamaica, British colonisers attacked Hispaniola; however,

they were unsuccessful. This was when focus was turned to Jamica as British fleets
did not want to face the fact that they were to return to base empty handed.

▪ The Spanish who were in control of Jamica during this time were not equipped
enough to stand against 8000 British soldiers who embarked from 38 ships. The
Spanish settlers accepted defeat and in turn were granted passage back to Europe.

▪ Spain; however, did not relinquish its claim to the island until 1670.
 ▪ The early financing of the colonies was provided by
private enterprise or joint stock companies. • The
The early labour English monarchs were not interested in the “distant
force and worthless rocks in the ocean”, so merely issue
charters of settlements to settle in the Crowns name
▪ • These were issued to Lord proprietors who remained
in England and appointed the governors in the
colonies. • The lord proprietors was to provide defence
and support for the colonist and in return was allowed
to tax them.
▪ The governors appointed a legislative Council, and the
colonist elected an assembly to represent their views. •
This system is called a proprietary system of
government and it was to last until the late 1650s. •
Examples of Lord prepare ships well Lord Willoughby
and Earl of Carlisle both of Barbados
 ▪ 1. Clearing the land of dense forest with primitive tools.
▪ 2. Supply ships came irregularly and infrequently. • This
Problems of led to malnutrition and starvation among the settlers. •
early settlers The early days in the history of Barbados are known as
the starving time in the history of the colony.
▪ 3. Difficulty in adapting to a diet of local food stuff such
as cassava, maize and route crops.

▪ 4. The hot sun and tropical and six made working long
hours difficult unless the weakened and vulnerable to
tropical diseases
▪ 5. Tropical diseases such as malaria, yellow fever,
dengue and dysentery killed many.

▪ 6. Attacks from Kalinagos (St. Kitts 1627) Spaniards De

Toledo’s attack on St. Kitts in 1629