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Historical Process

Developing notion of History

Until recently much of Caribbean history was written by scholars from an ethnocentric perspective.
An ethnocentric outlook views history and current affairs from the point of view of one’s own
culture. Everything was judged by mainstream ideas in develop countries. Our historiography (the
writing of our history) was heavily influenced by Eurocentric views, which meant that Caribbean
Scholars thought of the New World as beginning when Columbus arrived in the New World.
However, as was seen in earlier chapters that our history is much older than that.

*Caribbean scholars challenge Eurocentric views by contending that history is largely an

interpretive exercise, greatly influenced by the person who is doing the interpreting (history is
written by the victors and rulers).

Throughout this lecture, we will examine: ethnocentric ideas taught as history and how they
influence our understanding of contemporary history. This study will dispel notions that Caribbean
History is of limited significance.

The history of Caribbean culture is closely related to present-day society and culture; in other
words the culture of our region and other countries has been profoundly affected.

Migration
The movement of people from place to place means the movement of society and culture.
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Earliest Caribbean Migrations:

A popular misconception of our history is that it is ‘short’ and that the society is ‘relatively new’.
Emphasis is often place on Columbus instead and the influx of Europeans, dating all that is
significant to 1492 with the first voyage of Columbus. However, Fig.2.1 shows

Diagram (Give student Fig, 2.1)

European Migration
Columbus may not have been the first to visit the Americas (the early medieval Vikings explored
the eastern seaboard around the tenth century AD) but he was the first to carry back tangible
evidence of gold to show there Catholic Majesties Ferdinand and Isabella, King and Queen of Spain.
The fact that gold had been found in Hispaniola and that the island had a large resident population
of Tainos suitable for conversion into slave labour made the island the first official Administrative
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Spanish settlement in the Americas. The indigenous people were vulnerable to all kinds of diseases
to which they had no immunity, increasing the death toll resulting from the presence of the
Spaniards. At the end of the process only a few Tainos were left. The Spanish, more than any other
European power, were responsible for the genocide of the native people of the Caribbean.

Iberian Rivalry.
The two Nation of the Iberian Peninsula, Spain and Portugal, were both fairly advanced in
exploration and navigation by 1492, when Columbus arrived in the New World. They were also
rivals. Portugal’s fifteenth century explorations had mainly concerned Africa and the Indian Ocean.
They were not interested in what they saw as possibly mythical lands across the Oceans to the
West, preferring to sail along the coastal waters of the African continent. Columbus was himself
Portuguese, but his own country had refused to support his voyages westward across the Atlantic,
which is why he had gone to the Spanish for funding.

The Pope at the time, Alexander VI, fearing rivalry and hostility between the two Iberians nations
would erupt into war, decided on an intervention, and this resulted in the Treaty Tordesillas 1495,
which effectively apportioned control of the of the known (and the unknown) world outside Europe
between the two Iberian nations. The Treaty of Tordesillas, divided the New world.

The treaty of Tordesillas divided the new worldand drew and arbitrary line on the

Map of the Atlantic, (about 1300 miles or 2000 KM) from the Cape Verde

Islands, and decreed that any territories west of this line would be considered

Spanish territory and any to the east would go to the Portuguese.

From this papal decree Portugal received the large territory of Brazil,

Making it today the only Portuguese speaking country within Latin America.

While the Iberian nations obeyed the Pope, the upstart Protestant of Britain and the Netherlands-
ignored papal authority and instead choose to regard the Caribbean as fair game; they would
encroach on Spanish Territory through whatever means: hand-raids, piracy, smuggling, trade and
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later settlement. Hispaniola, having been the first territory to be officially administered by Spain,
soon became the established hub of a very large Spanish American Empire, stretching from Mexico
to Patagonia, and including the Caribbean (but excluding Brazil).

The greed that spurred the first migration of Spaniards now spread to all capitals of Europe, where
adventurers gathered prepared to take what they could from Spain.

In the history of the Caribbean the Europeans have usually been treated as if they were a uniform
group. A more sensitive reading of our own history will show that many of the differences among
the Caribbean nations today initially stemmed from old hostilities and rivalries among European
nations. It is important then, to be aware of some of the differences between the various groups of
Europeans and how they impacted the Caribbean.

The Slave trade:

The first enslaved Africans were provided for trade, solely by the Portuguese since the Spanish
were not permitted in Africa.

Challenging Spain:

As soon as word filtered back to other European nations that Spain had come upon untold wealth
and riches, nobleman, merchant and commoner alike vowed to have a share as well. Spain’s
empire in the New World was constantly harassed by buccaneers, privateers and pirates.

Buccaneers.

Initially these were French runaways who lived a hand to mouth existence on Tortuga (Off the
north-west cost of Hispaniola) and nearby islands killing wild pigs. The French word Boucanier
means ‘one who hunts wild pigs’. Spain tried to dislodge them from the small islands on which they
had settled, and many joined the ranks of privateers and pirates in revenge. The tern ‘Buccaneers’
has come into general use to describe privateers and pirates and all those who sought to rob Spain
of its treasure in the Americas.
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Privateers.

French and British monarchs gave the captain of an armed ship the authority to patrol coastal areas
to protect merchant vessels or to commit acts of reprisal against any ship or territory that was
owned by rival European Nations. These privateers were given letters of marque by the monarch as
their official permission to attack, loot and pillage enemy positions in the Americas. They were
rewarded by a portion of the spoils. Famous English pirates included Sir Francis Drake and Sir Henry
Morgan.

Pirates.

These were group of men who sailed the high seas generally to rob and to plunder. Their attacks
were usually directed at the heavily laden Spanish galleons en route to Spain with gold and silver,
but they would attack any ship perceived to be the enemy of their country.

British, French and Dutch settlement

After a turbulent period of piracy in the sixteenth century, Spain was unable to stop the flow of
British, French and Dutch Migrants who succeeded in establishing settlements in the Caribbean;
these grew into substantial colonial societies. Communication and trade between the colonies
were discouraged through laws and regulations. Not only geographical borders separated the
islands but political, linguistic and cultural barriers as well. By the close of the nineteenth century,
the period of large scale European migration had come to an end, and the Caribbean was
subdivided into enclaves owned by different European empires. Even today, in the twentieth
century, there is minimal interaction between the two islands and territories of the French, British,
Dutch and Spanish Caribbean. In each island a society and culture has developed heavily influenced
by the European metropolitan country. Efforts of cooperation and regional integration across these
cultural groups are still proving to be difficult.
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Forced Migration of Africans

It is a matter of considerable interest whether Africans came to the Americas long before
Columbus.
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We do know that Africans came with the first expedition of the Spanish freemen. While slavery had
existed in Spain for centuries, slaves were of different races and ethnicities- Jews, Moors, Canary
Islanders rather than Africans. Slavery had existed in Africa long before the Europeans organized
the infamous Atlantic slave trade. Yet the way in which the European eventually arrange the
capture, transport and distribution and servitude of the Africans in the seventeenth, eighteenth
and nineteenth centuries remain unprecedented in the world history. The sheer numbers involved,
the trade’s economic basis as a capitalist enterprise, the unspeakable brutality, as well as the racial
stereotype that accompanied the Atlantic slave trade, involved a totally new understanding of slave
trade and slavery.

In Europe and Africa people were enslaved for many different reasons- religious persecution, as
captives of war, as payment, as part of a dowry or they could be kidnapped and traded. In many
cases there was little ethnicity between master and slave. What made the Atlantic trade so unique
was not only the forced migration of millions of Africans into a life time of captivity and servitude,
nor that it continued for centuries, nor that it supported an economy overseas that could only
survive on enslave labour, but that the foundation of the trade was based on race.

Atlantic Slave Trade

In 1520 the Spanish crown had given permission to import Africans as slaves to support the
dwindling Tainos population. According to the Treaty of Tordesillas, Spain was not entitled to trade
in Africa and therefore had to rely on Portuguese for supply of slaves. This was done by means of a
license, the asiento. The licensee bought slaves from Portuguese traders operating in Africa (who
usually bought them from the Africa slave trader) and sold them on the Spanish mines and later the
plantation in the New World. There was also considerable smuggling from those who had not
bought a license.

Organization

The European Rulers funded the joint stock companies, of which the best known are the Royal
African Company, the Company of Senegal (French) and the Dutch West India Company. These
companies were given monopolies to trade in slaves and other goods for certain time periods. They
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were responsible for defending their forts and warehouses in Africa and could harass other
Europeans traders on the African cost by capturing their merchandise.

Forts and Castles

West Africa was integral to the operation of these companies. Each European nation involved in
the trade built fort at different points on the cost. The Portuguese built a massive fort at Elmina,
which was captured by the Dutch in 1650, while in 1653 the Royal African Company built its fort at
Cape Coast Castle, on the Gold Cost, Ghana. The forts were used to store merchandise brought
from Europe for trading purposes- cloths, iron, weapons, trinkets and beads- and to house those
Africans who were to be sold as slaves in the Americas. Europeans at the fort were also responsible
for conducting delicate negotiations with the African chiefs and their emissaries. The forts had
armed guards to ward off dissatisfied African traders and European Rivals. Members of these
chartered companies acted on the behalf of their governments, offering gifts and bribes to tribal
chiefs.

The Portuguese slave trade was mainly active along the Gold Coast. The Dutch establish established
forts and settlements on the Gold Cost, the Slave Cost, and the Ivory Coast. France main areas of
activity were present- day Benin, Senegal, Guinea and later Angola, as well as the Gold Cost. Each
European nation carved out a sphere of influence on the African Coast and Nurtured delicate
relations with the tribal Chieftains for the good of the trade and also to safeguard their own
persons.

Triangular Slave Trade

The Slave trade has been termed the triangular trade because it had three branches or arms that
formed a rough triangle when viewed on a map.See map below.
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The same ships were used (suitably adapted for the different types of cargo) for each leg of the
journey. Enslaved Africans were treated as commodities, rather than human beings.

During the middle passage, many slaves died from suffocation in the hold as there was only enough
space to lie down with another layer of captives stacked on shelves above or below. The more
slaves a ship could carry, the more profits, and if a certain number of fatalities were to be expected
then even more were taken on to offset that occurrence. The journey lasted roughly two to three
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months. Occasionally slaves escaped when: ship sank close to shore in bad weather, poor
maintenance, slaves used their advantage in numbers to overpower the crew, as what happened
with the Clarke in 1729 (Wolfe, 2013) and the Amistad in 1839. Some committed suicide by
jumping over board the ship, rather than continue life of a slave. Others resisted imprisonment by
either refusing to work or by refusing to eat, they were often forced fed.

The impact of salve trade on Africa

Wherever slave trading took place on the cost, it affected the region hundreds of miles inland.
Sometimes the European conducted their own raids to capture Africans, with help from rival
groups. Later, as they found it necessary to go deep inlands, they formed alliances with African
groups. Eventually, although they were only involved in bartering or buying slaves, they were
constantly draw into internal, domestic intrigues of coastal kingdoms, providing guns and
ammunitions to their allies. The slave trade led to a loss of 15 million able-bodied citizens over
more than three centuries, an estimated 2 per cent per year of the total population of West Africa
(Manning, 2013), severely depleted the human resources of the region and led to economic
stagnation.

Impact of Slave Trade on the Caribbean.

The forced migration of millions of Africans to the Americas is the single most important historical
process affecting the Caribbean today. It has totally changed the structure of the Caribbean today.
The Caribbean societies became slave societies because of the sheer numbers of the slaves in
society. They were not only societies in which slaves existed; slavery became the basis of the
economy and society. However, its impact affected the Caribbean countries in different ways:

 Slaves were directly tied to the need for labour. Thus, colonies where plantations were first
established tended to develop large African populations, before others. In British, French,
and Dutch Territories, African segment of the population dominant.
 The Spanish on the other hand, were slow to introduce plantations into Cuba, Puerto Rico,
and Santo Domingo, and so over the centuries fewer Africans were imported. However, in
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the late nineteenth century, they imported other African slaves at a time when other
European countries had already abolished salve trade and slavery.
 The British, French and Dutch abolished the slave trade and slavery before the Spanish did.
In 1807 Britain abolish slave trade; the Dutch followed soon in 1814 and France in 1818.
Slavery itself was abolished by the British in 1834 and French in 1848 and by the Dutch in
1863. Slavery was finally abolished in Cuba in 1886.
 Although slavery was completely abolished by 1886, people of African descent do not
compromise a majority in the Hispanic Caribbean. Cuba is approximately 6 per cent white,
the majority of the people of Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic are mixed.

Caribbean Diaspora

In Caribbean society and culture, migration has been a traditional practice and is regarded
positively. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century many Caribbean emigrants,
mainly from Jamaica and Barbados, went to Panama to find work on the canal that was being
built across the peninsula. Although the work was attractive there were many dangers to it, not
to mention jungle diseases to which the island migrants were not accustomed. Afro-Caribbean
workers were also subject to racist discriminations and abuse. But many workers sent money
home to their families to enable them join them in Panama where a large diasporic community
was founded. After the canal was finished, many workers found employment on the sugar
plantations.

Today large numbers of Caribbean migrant and their children live and work in the metropolitan
countries and elsewhere. There is an important and vibrant Caribbean diasporic community in
London, in other cities in the UK, and in France, the Netherlands and Canada, among other
places. It is normal practice for people in the Caribbean to send home remittances to assist
family members. These remittances also constitute a valuable source of foreign exchange for
the home country, as they have done for decades. The phenomenon has also helped Caribbean
countries by lessening the pressure for jobs and social services locally. However, migration can
be seen as a negative approach to development and decolonization.
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Overtime Britain, Canada, and the United States have moved to curb immigration from the
Caribbean and have stipulated their preference for the highly educated and skilled persons. At
the same time they have been forced to accept poor or unskilled or semi-skilled migrants on a
seasonal basis because their own residents are unwilling to work to work at strenuous or low-
status jobs. The labour shortage in farm work has given poor farmers and unemployed youth in
the Caribbean and elsewhere an opportunity to earn an income in metropolitan countries.
Caribbean people also migrate on a seasonal basis to perform seasonal work, childcare and
taking care of the elderly. However, there are still certain negative influences:

 The ‘brain drain’ effect of the emigration of the skilled people, most of whom were
trained in the Caribbean (e.g. nurses, teachers, technicians).
 The experiences of racism in the metropolitan country and treatment as second-class
citizens as far as wages, benefits and grievances are concerned.
 The injustice felt by seasonal workers, who are largely segregated from the resident
communities on large farms and who hold down jobs that residents think are too menial
for them to do.
 The ‘mindset’ that better opportunities lie with regional countries.

The migration experience today (particularly seasonal migration) while seeming beneficial,
continues the syndrome of dependency on extra- regional countries.