A Brief History of the Caribbean

It is very difficult to know exactly when did the people that Christopher Columbus saw in 1492 migrated to the area now known as the Caribbean. The Archaeological findings suggest that human beings have migrated to the American continent between 6,000 and 10,000 BC. These dates are different from those suggested by the findings in the Caribbean region. Apparently the migration to the Caribbean Island was not done primarily but secondarily after settling on the main land in North America, Central America and the Northern region of South America.. Archaeological carbon dating placed the arrival of the first human in the Caribbean region between 3.500 and 4000 BC.

A New World

On October 12, 1492, Christopher Columbus landed on a small island he called San Salvador. Columbus believed he had reached the Indies, or the islands southwest of India that include Indonesia and Malaysia. Columbus died believing he had reached the east by sailing west, but instead he had discovered a "new world."

San Salvador was one of the islands in the Caribbean Sea, a body of water between North America and South America. The islands of the Caribbean are part of the West Indies. The West Indies received its name because Columbus believed the native people of the Caribbean islands were Indians.

Before the arrival of Columbus, there were three groups of native peoples in the Caribbean: The Arawak, the Carib, and the Ciboney. The Arawak populated the larger Caribbean Islands of Cuba, Hispaniola, Jamaica, and Puerto Rico. The Carib lived on the smaller volcanic islands of the eastern Caribbean: St. Kitts-Nevis, Antigua, Guadeloupe, Dominica, Martinique, St. Lucia, Barbados, St. Vincent and Tobago. They had migrated earlier from the mainland of what we now call South America.

Once word of a "new world" reached Europe, the British, French and Dutch joined the Spaniards in the Caribbean. The newcomers brought with them diseases like measles and smallpox. The Europeans had been exposed to the diseases, so their bodies developed a protection similar to a vaccine. When you receive a vaccine, a small portion of a virus is injected into your body. Your immune system then learns the disease and prepares for future infections. The native people of the Caribbean had no immunity from the European diseases, so outbreaks of measles and smallpox decimated their population.

Between 1536 and 1609 the British and French carried out armed raids on Spanish possessions in the Caribbean. They were especially successful in the smaller Leeward and Winward islands where the Spanish presence was weak. European colonization by the Spanish, followed by the British, French and Dutch resulted in the almost complete depopulation of the West Indies of its native Amerindian populations. Between 1630 and 1640 the Dutch took control of Aruba, Bonaire, Curacao, Saint Eustatius, Saint Martin and Saba; the British claimed Antigua, Barbados and Nevis and the French Martinique and Guadeloupe. Between 1697 and 1814 there were numerous battles between Britain and France over their Caribbean possessions.

In the 1640's Portuguese Jews emigrated from Brazil to Barbados taking with them the techniques of cultivating sugar cane, thus the sugarcane plantations of the Caribbean, some of which are still operational today. Sugar came to be known as "brown gold". With sugar came slavery, an estimated 10 million slaves being brought from Africa to the Caribbean to work on the plantations, thus repopulating this region (with the exception of Puerto Rico) through the forced transportation of African peoples (mainly from western Africa). The population densities of these colonies became the highest in the colonial world with Barbados, for example, having a higher population density than India. This was not the case in the larger colonies such as the Guianas and Trinidad. The slaves were provided mainly by Dutch and English traders. One Englishman, Captain William Snelgrave who was involved in the slave traffic has suggested in his writings that the Africans expected those who were sold to live better than they did in Africa. They never anticipated the horrors of the Caribbean plantations.

ORIGINS OF SLAVES

The seven principal countries from which Africans were taken and their proportion of the total number of Africans enslaved in the West. Nigeria 24% Angola 24% Ghana 16% Senegal/Gambia 13% Guinea-Bissau 11% Sierra Leone 6% Other 6% Africans were taken from all over the African continent, but especially from West Africa and Angola. They were gathered at points along the Western coast to be shipped across the Atlantic Ocean.

Slavery

Demand for slaves to cultivate sugarcane and other crops caused what came to be known as the triangle trade. Ships leaving Europe first stopped in Africa where they traded weapons, ammunition, metal, liquor, and cloth for captives taken in wars or raids. The ships then traveled to America, where slaves were exchanged for sugar, rum, salt, and other island products. The ships returned home loaded with products popular with the European people, and ready to begin their journey again.

An estimated 8 to 15 million Africans reached the Americas from the 16th through the 19th century. Only the youngest and healthiest people were taken for what was called the middle passage of the triangle trade, partly because they would be worth more in America, and partly because they were the most likely to reach their destination alive. Conditions aboard the ship were dreadful. Slaves were jammed into the hull, chained to one another in order to stop revolts; as many as one in five passengers did not survive the journey. When one of the enslaved people was stricken with dysentery or smallpox, they were cast overboard.

Those who survived the middle passage faced more abuses on the plantations. Many of the plantation owners had returned to Europe, leaving their holdings in America to be managed by overseers who were often unstable or unsavory. Families were split up, and the Africans were not allowed to learn to read or write. African men, women, and children were forced to work with little to eat or drink.

The African slave population quickly began to outnumber the Europeans and Native Americans. The proportion of slaves ranged from about one third in Cuba, to more than ninety percent in many of the islands. Slave rebellions were common. As slave rebellions became more frequent, European investors lost money. The costs of maintaining slavery grew higher when the European governments sent in armed forces to quell the revolts.

Many Europeans began to pressure their governments to abolish slavery in the Caribbean. The first organized opposition to slavery came in 1724 from the Quakers, a Christian sect also known as the Society of Friends. Great Britain outlawed slavery in all of their territories in 1833, but the practice continued for almost fifty years on some of the islands of the Caribbean.

Beginning in 1803 Denmark abolished the slave trade followed by Britain in 1807, France in 1817, Holland in 1818, Spain in 1820, and Sweden in 1824. Slavery was abolished in the British colonies in 1833-34, in the French colonies in 1838, in the Dutch colonies in 1863 and in the Spanish colonies of Puerto Rico in 1873 and Cuba in 1880. After emancipation in the British colonies plantation labor was sought from various sources. The largest number came from India as indentured servants. They were attracted by contracts which paid their passage and offered them options including the acquisition of land. The plantation economies of the Guianas (Guyana and Suriname especially) and Trinidad benefited most from this Indian immigration.

The US in the Caribbean

United States involvement in the Caribbean which began with the occupation of Cuba and Puerto Rico during the Spanish-American War (1898) grew in scope during the early 20th century. In 1917 The US bought the Virgin Islands from Denmark, occupied Haiti from 1915-35 and the Dominican Republic from 1916-22. Haiti in 1804, the Dominican Republic in 1844 and Cuba in 1898 were the first Caribbean colonies to gain independence. Jamaica and Trinidad & Tobago were the first British colonies to gain independence in 1962 followed by Guyana and Barbados in 1966, the Bahamas in 1973, Grenada in 1974, Dominica in 1978, St. Lucia and St. Vincent & the Grenadines in 1979, Antigua in 1980, Belize in 1981and St. Kitts & Nevis in 1983.

source: http://www.mrdowling.com; http://www.caribbeanfestival.org; http://www.welcometothecaribbean.com