AM217
David Lambert

Tuesday 20 th October,
11am-12pm

Major phases in the long history of the Caribbean
[T]he sea-crossing technologies – canoe, caravel, and container ship – serve as symbols of the main periods of
Caribbean history. The last – the container ship – defines a short period, the last fifty years. The caravel stands for a period ten times as long, the 500 years from 1492. The canoe accounts for another multiple of ten, the previous
5,000 years or more. Each of these vessels carried with them whole cultures, representing an increasingly global cargo.
B. W. Higman, A Concise History of the Caribbean
(Cambridge, 2011), p. 327.

Higman’s period of the caravel

European ‘discovery’
1. Early globalisation
2. Remembering 1492 and all that
3.
The ‘Age of Discovery’ i.
The expansion of Europe ii. The beginning of world dominance: The
Treaty of Tordesillas (1494) iii. An encounter with indigenous peoples iv.
The ‘Columbian exchange’
4. Case study: The colonisation of Hispaniola

For Caribbean people all the talk today about the uniqueness of the present era of globalisation is cause to chuckle. They know their histories, and realise they have been through many earlier rounds of globalisation…Historically, the Caribbean is perhaps the most globalised world region. Since the 1500s it has been controlled by outside powers, based economically on imported labour, cleared to create monocultural landscapes of sugar cane, bananas or other crops, and reliant on the import of virtually everything else needed to sustain local populations.
R. Potter et al.
, ‘Globalisation and the Caribbean’
(2004), p. 388.

Remembering 1492 and all that

While in the context of European history the events associated with Europe’s expansion across the Atlantic are studied under the rubric of ‘exploration’, ‘discovery’, etc., in the context of
New World history those same facts can be studied only as invasions and conquests…The quest for gold…drove the
Atlantic enterprise throughout the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries…What brought the Antilles and, in the long run, all of the New World into association with Europe was the existence of its mineral wealth. The rest was an afterthought. If
Columbus had not found signs of gold during his first voyage, his name would never have gone down in history, and the process of uniting the planet would have been postponed.
J. SuedBadillo, ‘‘The indigenous societies at the time of
Conquest’ (2003), p. 275.

Voyages of Columbus, 1492-1504

• According to Immanuel Wallerstein, there was a ‘crisis of feudalism’ (1300-1450), in which western European states suffered from economic stagnation, worsened by constant warfare.
• Gold reserves were low and money was in short supply.
• As a result, western European states were running out of money to buy luxury goods from Asia (silk, spices and precious stones).
• They needed to find new sources of mineral wealth (gold and silver).
• Other factors:
• The fall of Constantinople (1453) blocked the way east to European merchants. An alternative route was sought.

The Fall of Constantinople, 1453

• According to Immanuel Wallerstein, there was a ‘crisis of feudalism’ (1300-1450), in which western European states suffered from economic stagnation, worsened by constant warfare.
• Gold reserves were low and money was in short supply.
• As a result, western European states were running out of money to buy luxury goods from Asia (silk, spices and precious stones).
• They needed to find new sources of mineral wealth (gold and silver).
• Other factors:
• The fall of Constantinople (1453) blocked the way east to European merchants. An alternative route was sought
• A desire to claim land (for the King and Queen of Spain)
• A desire to convert the heathen to Christianity

The beginning of world dominance:
The Treaty of Tordesillas (1494)

The beginning of world dominance:
The Treaty of Tordesillas (1494)
[The Treaty] is a landmark of great psychological and political importance: Europeans, who by then had not even gone round the globe, had decided to divide between themselves all its undiscovered and unappropriated lands and peoples. The potential implications were vast…The conquest of the high seas was the first and greatest of all the triumphs over natural forces which were to lead to domination by western civilisation of the whole globe. Knowledge is power, and the knowledge won by the first systematic explorers…had opened the way to the age of western world hegemony.
Roberts (1985) quoted in S. Hall,
‘The west and the rest’ (1992), p. 285.

An encounter with indigenous peoples

Chiefdoms in Hispaniola

With the arrival of the conquistadores came other more visible elements of their biota, such as cultivated plants and domesticated animals, fruits of the Old World’s Neolithic agricultural revolutions (Crosby 1977, 1986). The 17 ships of
Columbus’s second voyage not only brought Spanish subjects to occupy the new territories (as well as pathogenic viruses), but also carried plants and animals that formed an indissoluble part of the Spaniard’s subsistence and farming culture. The former included seeds of wheat, garbanzo
[chickpeas], onion, radish, melons, grapes, some unidentified vegetables and fruits (including citrus), and sugarcane; the latter horses, cattle (adult and calves), pigs, sheep, and goats.
Reinaldo Funes Monzote, ‘The Columbian Moment’, p. 91.

[In 1503], shipments of gold began to be sent uninterruptedly to Spain, and these shipments continued for more than half a century. And in that year, too, the policy was instituted for enslaving ‘cannibals’; that is, of taking indigenes as slaves to
Hispaniola as a labour option…Finally, on 20 December of that fateful 1503, Queen Isabella instituted the practice of encomiendas , the legalization of servile labour. If we take
1494, the first year of the Conquest, as our starting-point, we would have to recognize that it took only nine years to transform the relations between Europeans and indigenes into relations of slavery and exploitation. The worst thing about it was, of course, that Hispaniola became the model for relations throughout the New World.
J. SuedBadillo, ‘The indigenous societies at the time of
Conquest’ (2003), p. 276.

Voyages of Columbus, 1492-1504

1492 – Columbus landed at what he termed ‘La isla española’
(Hispaniola for short) and established settlement at Navidad.

Map of Hispaniola, 1493
(known locally as Hayti )

1492 – Columbus landed at what he termed ‘La isla española’
(Hispaniola for short) and established settlement at Navidad.
1493 – Returned to find settlement destroyed. Founded
Isabela.
1500 – 200,000 pesos of gold were sent to Spain, the largest shipment ever.
1503 – continuous shipments of gold began and indigenous slaves brought from nearby islands.

Estimated indigenous population of
Hispaniola (1491-1550)
1200000
1000000
800000
600000
400000
200000
0
1000000
1491
60000
1508
30000
1514
11000
1519
150
1550

Indigenous resistance to the
Conquest
There were several kinds of resistance and reaction to the
Conquest. We should make clear that behaviour was not uniform throughout the archipelago because there was not uniformity before the Conquest. On all the islands there were those who considered alliance, or at least compliance with the invaders’ orders, the best option in their particular situation…Yet resistance, too, began almost immediately…
[T]he first important event of a warlike nature was the defeat of the Spaniards in the fort at Navidad, possibly in mid-1493. There were 39 Spaniards killed as a consequence of their crude pursuit and treatment of indigenous women and grudges among themselves…
J. SuedBadillo, ‘The indigenous societies at the time of
Conquest’ (2003), p. 280.

Map of Hispaniola, 1493
(known locally as Hayti )

1492 – Columbus landed at what he termed ‘La isla española’
(Hispaniola for short) and established settlement at Navidad.
1493 – Returned to find settlement destroyed. Founded
Isabela.
1500 – 200,000 pesos of gold were sent to Spain, the largest shipment ever.
1503 – continuous shipments of gold began and indigenous slaves brought from nearby islands.
1506 – first experiments with growing of sugar cane.
1518 – import of enslaved Africans permitted.
1520 – mines depleted and indigenous population largely destroyed.
Later the eastern part of Hispaniola came to be known as
Santo Domingo.

For Caribbean people all the talk today about the uniqueness of the present era of globalisation is cause to chuckle. They know their histories, and realise they have been through many earlier rounds of globalisation…Historically, the Caribbean is perhaps the most globalised world region. Since the 1500s it has been controlled by outside powers, based economically on imported labour, cleared to create monocultural landscapes of sugar cane, bananas or other crops, and reliant on the import of virtually everything else needed to sustain local populations.
R. Potter et al.
, ‘Globalisation and the Caribbean’
(2004), p. 388.