Caribbean

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CARIBBEAN

spanish, british, and french colonization
the situation in the late eighteenth century
revolution in the french caribbean
reshaping of the british caribbean
cuba
bibliography

Modern Europe, it might be said, was born in the Caribbean. From Christopher Columbus's landing in the region in 1492 through the nineteenth century, the economic productivity, political revolutions, and cultural dynamics generated by the Caribbean profoundly shaped the evolution of European empires, most notably those of Spain, Britain, and France. The Caribbean was the first zone of European colonization in the Americas, and it attracted the attention of successive waves of colonists and merchants whose actions decimated the indigenous populations and created a new population of enslaved individuals brought across the Atlantic from Africa. European economic systems, administrative models, philosophical ideas, music, and language had a profound influence in the Caribbean. But the imperial projects carried out there also led to a massive and unprecedented movement of population into the region that created economic, cultural, and political dynamics that indelibly shaped the colonizing nations who sought (often unsuccessfully) to control their colonies.

The Caribbean can be understood most fruitfully through the lens of what the Cuban anthropologist Fernando Ortiz called "transculturation," as a zone of both violent and productive encounter between a bewildering series of cultures: the indigenous civilizations who, though brutally decimated by Europeans, nevertheless survived in important numbers well into the eighteenth century in the eastern Caribbean; the Gascons, Scots, Provençals, Castilians, and members of other European tribes who nominally served various states but also often served themselves much more successfully; the East Indian and Chinese contract laborers who were brought to work in the region during the nineteenth century; the Middle Eastern merchants who came voluntarily to the region; and of course, most importantly, the multiple and diverse groups of Africans who were brought on slave ships from the early sixteenth century through the late nineteenth century and who, as laborers but also as survivors, revolutionaries, and eventually citizens have made the Caribbean what it is today.

The period from 1789 to 1914 was an era of profound transformation in the Caribbean. At the end of the eighteenth century, the region was booming, as was the slavery and the slave trade that made its plantations prosperous. By the early twentieth century there was no slavery anywhere in the Caribbean, though the inheritances of the institution remained quite powerful and shaped the economic and political crises that were to come in the ensuing decades. In addition to witnessing emancipation in the region, the period saw the emergence of three independent nations there: Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and Cuba. But they were surrounded by islands that remained under the control of France, Britain, Holland, and (though not for much longer) the Danes. If, in 1789, it was the French and British who dominated the colonies of the Caribbean, by the early twentieth century it was clear that its future would evolve under the shadow of another empire: that of the United States.

spanish, british, and french colonization

The island of Española (known as Hispaniola in the Anglophone world) was colonized by the Spanish in the early fifteenth century, but after a brief boom in Santo Domingo that included the construction of sugar plantations on the island, the Spanish empire turned most of its energies to mainland Latin America. Cuba became the site of well-fortified stopping points for convoys of silver and other goods, and, like Santo Domingo, was populated mainly by small farmers, though both societies included slaves. During the sixteenth century, the British and French began colonizing the eastern Caribbean, an area neglected by the Spanish, founding colonies first (jointly) in Saint Christopher (Saint Kitts) and then (separately) in Barbados and Antigua and Martinique and Guadeloupe. Within a few decades new ventures were launched on the larger islands near Cuba. The British took Jamaica, which became their most important colony, and the French squatted and then gained official title to the west of Santo Domingo, which became the thriving colony of Saint Domingue.

the situation in the late eighteenth century

Despite the relatively small size of its territory, the Caribbean was at the center of the Atlantic economy in the eighteenth century because its climate was very well suited for the cultivation of sugar, which became a staple of European diets. Coffee, indigo, cotton, and cacao supplemented this important crop. The success of these commodities did not assure the success of planters in the Caribbean. Especially once the best land in the colonies had been settled, new arrivals there often ended up bankrupt. Yet many did make important fortunes from producing and selling sugar and other commodities. Some planter families grew extremely wealthy, and merchants in the metropole profited handsomely from importing and selling their goods. Whereas Britain consumed most of its colonial sugar domestically, France exported much of what its colonies produced to the rest of Europe, and those involved in this trade did very well. The port towns of Britain and France boomed thanks to the Caribbean colonies. Indeed, the economic and accompanying social changes that resulted from the Atlantic economy were one of the forces that helped set up, and then drive the twists and turns of, the French Revolution.

While in the early days of colonization the population included many European indentured laborers, who often worked alongside African slaves, as soon as the sugar boom hit in the various islands the population generally became heavily Africanized. By the late eighteenth century the populations of the major sugar islands were dominated by a vast majority of slaves. Resistance was constant, and some communities of enslaved individuals who escaped to the mountains (called Maroons) won their freedom from the British and Dutch in the 1730s. Then, in the 1790s, the most profitable colony in the region, and in the world—French Saint Domingue—exploded in a revolt that became a revolution.

revolution in the french caribbean

In August 1789, before news of the fall of the Bastille had reached the region from France, slaves in Martinique began to gather, stirred by an exciting rumor: the king of France had abolished slavery. Unfortunately, however, local leaders and planters were conspiring to repress the decision. It was therefore necessary to force them, with violence if necessary, to apply the abolition decree. The small revolt that began in Martinique in 1789 was quickly repressed, but the idea that emancipation was imminent helped drive a remarkable series of insurrections through the French Caribbean during the next years. The most important of these took place in August 1791 in the northern plain of Saint Domingue, where a coalition of plantation workers launched the only successful slave revolt in history. Transforming themselves into an unbeatable military force, they positioned themselves strategically in the volatile situation of revolution and imperial war, and in 1793 administrators in Saint Domingue decreed the abolition of slavery there as a way of avoiding the loss of the most valuable colony in the world to the British and Spanish. The National Convention in Paris ratified the decision in 1794, and so the French Empire ended an institution that had brought wealth pouring into its coffers for a century. It was a remarkable political triumph, the most radical of the Age of Revolution: from being chattel, the men and women of the French Caribbean had gained not only liberty but also citizenship and equality, in the process expanding the meaning and possibilities of republican universalism in dramatic ways.

Emancipation took root in the midst of war and embodied many contradictions. Administrators, the most famous of them Toussaint Louverture, remained committed to maintaining plantation production with liberty, developing a variety of coercive mechanisms for doing so. The ex-slaves, meanwhile, did what they could to secure autonomy, notably by seeking to gain control over land for themselves. It was a struggle that would be replayed in every other postemancipation context in the Americas, notably in the British Caribbean after the abolition of slavery there in 1833, and in Cuba in the 1870s. Despite the efforts of Toussaint to maintain and rebuild plantation production, however, the French government under Napoleon Bonaparte turned against him in late 1801. Attempting to regain direct control over the colony, and to reverse the transformations brought about by emancipation, they incited a large-scale war in the colony that culminated, in 1804, with a French defeat and the creation of a new nation called Haiti.

The Haitian Revolution had a profound impact on the Caribbean region. Refugees fanned out from the colony to neighboring islands, particularly Cuba. The vast opening in the sugar market was filled, in the early nineteenth century, by a plantation boom on Cuba, which experienced the rapid proliferation of sugar production and the massive importation of African slaves that Saint Domingue had in the eighteenth century. As Spain lost its mainland colonies in the first decades of the nineteenth century, Cuba, long a marginal zone in its American empire, became its center.

reshaping of the british caribbean

The British Caribbean was also reshaped in the wake of the Haitian Revolution. The precise impact of the dramatic revolution has been a subject of some controversy among historians. Some have argued that the abolitionist movement was actually stalled by the violent uprising in Haiti, because critics of slavery were saddled with the accusation that they had abetted the killing of white masters. Others have argued that the example of successful slave revolution in fact spurred on the abolitionist campaign in various ways. Whatever the case, by 1807 the abolitionists had succeeded in abolishing the British slave trade, a decision that had a profound impact on the Caribbean colonies. During the next decades a series of revolts took place in the British Caribbean, notably in 1816 in Barbados, often directly inspired by abolitionist advances. Popular and parliamentary pressure for an abolition of slavery increased during the next decade, and in 1831 an uprising in Jamaica, called the "Baptist War" because of the large number of Baptist slaves involved, helped spur on the final push to end the institution.

Slavery was abolished in 1833 but replaced in all the British colonies—with the exception of Antigua—with a system of "apprenticeship" that kept the former slaves tied to plantation labor. Many former slaves intensely disliked the limited freedom granted to them by apprenticeship, and their resistance helped assure that it was ended earlier than planned. During the next decades former slaves struggled to establish some form of economic autonomy and independence, often by settling on available land in the interior of the colonies. Planters, meanwhile, struggled to maintain their power, finding ways to limit access to land and diminish the economic options of the former slaves. Tensions exploded in Jamaica with the Morant Bay uprising of 1865, to which the administration responded by dismantling many of the democratic reforms augured in with emancipation and by making the island a crown colony.

Slavery was abolished in Martinique and Guadeloupe in 1848, and there a similar dynamic took shape during the rest of the nineteenth century. Citizenship was granted to former slaves in 1848 and then retracted in 1851, and finally only firmly established with the advent of the Third Republic in 1870. The colonies elected representatives in the National Assembly, but their local administration was nevertheless controlled by governors appointed from Paris, and planters found many ways to protect their traditional power in the society.

cuba

Cuba was the last Caribbean society in which slavery was abolished. As in Haiti, emancipation and independence were intertwined in Cuba. The end of slavery began in 1868 when Carlos Manuel de Céspedes began an uprising against Spanish rule by freeing his own slaves and calling on them to fight with him for both freedom and independence. The insurgent policy of freeing slaves who joined the uprising against Spain did not assure victory: after ten years, the uprising was effectively defeated. But the Spanish accepted the freedom of those slaves who had fought in the insurrection. Soon afterward, in 1880, they passed a "Free Womb" law, which meant that all children of slaves would henceforth be free, and put in place a process of gradual emancipation similar to the apprenticeship system in the British Caribbean. Once again, this gradual process was accelerated by the resistance and sophisticated legal maneuverings of slaves, and by 1886 slavery was abolished outright in Cuba with many slaves having already secured their full freedom. Many former slaves would take part in the second war of independence in Cuba from 1895 to 1898, and some of the great leaders of this struggle, most famously Antonio Maceo, were men of African descent. Through their participation, they helped craft a political discourse of raceless citizenship that, for all its ambiguities, continues to shape Cuban culture. The end of Spanish empire in Cuba in 1898, however, was combined with the assertion of power over Cuba by the United States, which during the twentieth century ultimately replaced the European empires as the most significant external force shaping Caribbean political and economic realities.

See alsoColonialism; Colonies; Haiti; Toussaint Louverture.