Dreams of Empire: The Legacies of Contact

By Sherry Johnson

The Columbian Exchange: The Cultural And Biological Unification Of The World

The Fourth of July in Florida is truly an American holiday. Whether the celebration is conducted on the beaches of Miami, at a picnic table near Lake Okeechobee, at a primitive landing on Central Florida's St. Johns-Oklawaha River system, in a state park just off I-75 near the Cove of the Withlacoochee in Sumter County or standing on the old Barrancas in Pensacola, the celebration will likely be very similar. Friends and family gather to celebrate, tables and chairs are set up awaiting the feast. A plate of hamburgers and pork ribs await preparation on the barbecue, a basket of whole-wheat hamburger buns await the finished burgers. A variety of relishes, onion, pepper, and olives sit beside, as does a tray of fresh sliced tomatoes and leaves of lettuce. Alongside is a simmering casserole of baked beans flavored with brown sugar. Since it's summer, bags of potato chips and corn chips are ready to be torn open by eager hands. A healthy bowl of bananas, apples, grapes and oranges sits to one side, but for the less health-conscious several bowls of peanuts and a basket of chocolate-chip cookies tempt the appetite. Dad lounges in a hammock strung between two trees as he awaits the rest of the family and guests. Everyone is hoping that they can go out in the canoe if it doesn't storm, but they have to be careful because the weather bureau had predicted storms blowing in from a far away Caribbean hurricane.

At the picnic, few modern-day Floridians pause to ponder that the evolution of many American traditions occurred as a consequence of European arrival in the Americas more than 500 years in the past. The legacies of Old World/New World contact surround us: in the foods we eat, in the language we speak, in the things we use, in the names of the places where we live, in the values in which we believe. The meeting of Old and New Worlds brought about political, social, economic, cultural, environmental and biological consequences that neither world could have foreseen.

Old World Antecedents

Contact between Europe and the Americas came about as a consequence of events that occurred at the end of the fifteenth century in the Old World that would set the stage for Columbus's voyage. At that time, trade to Europe flowed from the Eastern Mediterranean in the hands of Mongols who allied with the Italian merchants and created a monopoly in the trade of expensive, luxury goods. Disaster struck in 1458 when the city of Constantinople fell to Turkish (Muslim) control. They still allowed the Italian merchants to trade but goods became prohibitively expensive.

Because of these events, Europeans began to search for new routes to the East. The person most responsible was Prince Henry the Navigator (1394-1460) of Portugal--a misnomer because he never sailed out of the sight of land--whose leadership made Portugal the premier nation in maritime discoveries in the late 1400s. Henry's contribution was to promote navigational skills in a school for mariners in Sagres on the southern Atlantic coast. From Portuguese ports a continuing stream of ships sailed down the coast of Africa, where they set up trading posts to trade for gold with native African chiefs. As more voyagers returned successfully to Portuguese ports, cartographers drew upon the knowledge of these navigators to create better and better maps of the Atlantic. Henry's school also supported technological innovation, including improving the astrolabe and compass. Another advance was the development of better, more seaworthy ships called caravelles with deep-keel hulls, large sturdy rudders and improved triangular lateen sails. Portuguese advances continued through the fifteenth century when Bartolomeo Diaz reached the southern tip of Africa. After Columbus had demonstrated that land could be reached by sailing westward, Vasco de Gama (1497) rounded the coast of Africa reaching India, obtaining two shiploads of spices and returning to Lisbon in 1499.

Enter Christopher Columbus: The Spanish monarchs, Isabella and Ferdinand, were in a good mood when in 1492 an obscure Genoese navigator, Christopher Columbus, a veteran of Portuguese voyages throughout the Atlantic, made one last plea for financing for a proposed voyage to discover a western passage to Cipango (Japan) and Cathay (China). Isabella and Ferdinand were not Columbus's only prospects. Columbus had approached his boss, the Portuguese monarch who was not interested in the scheme, since it was only a matter of time before his captains did navigate around the southern tip of Africa. Columbus sent his brother to the courts of England and France asking for similar support but only Spain was in a position to accommodate his request. Indeed, Spain was in a jubilant mood having just accomplished their 750+ year goal to expel the Muslims from the peninsula. Thus in 1492, Columbus received authorization to sail from a sovereign state and financial backing to construct and outfit ships for the voyage. Columbus was an extremely lucky fellow insofar as he was at the right place at the right time. Yet, it is clear that he built upon the technological advances and maritime knowledge of the time he spent in the employ of Portugal, but a fortunate combination of circumstances made him the person whose name would go down in history.

Contact

With the Columbus expeditions two distinct worlds came together, the European and the American. Far from being homogeneous both were characterized by variety. In the Americas, large sedentary populations existed only in Mexico and Peru. Other settled societies of far less complexity lived in the Caribbean islands and on the Florida peninsula. The Europeans, for their part, were characterized by heterogeneity too, based upon religion and the goals of imperial expansion.

Contact between civilizations occurred on the morning of October 12, 1492 in the present-day Bahama Islands. The people who greeted the Europeans, the Lucaya, a subgroup of the Caribbean indigenes Taino, were a group of sedentary agriculturists who lived in a non-threatening environment. They were not afraid of the Europeans, rather they expected to trade with them as extensive pan-Caribbean trading networks had been in place for centuries prior to the European arrival. Indeed, the natives of the circum-Caribbean area engaged in long distance trade in huge dugout canoes that could hold up to fifty rowers. One of the most visible remainders of the interconnectedness of the native societies is the ball game played in some form by indigenous groups from Tikal to Tallahassee. Columbus, erroneously believing that he made it to the East Indies, named the people Indians.

The original inhabitants of the Caribbean islands and their brethren of the Florida peninsula are long gone, but the Europeans borrowed many of their items and their names. The ingenious idea of roasting game on a rack directly over a fire did not occur to Europeans (who usually used animal dung for fuel), and from the practice came the Spanish word barbacoa or barbeque. The Caribbean natives ingeniously wove together fiber (probably tree-cotton from the ceiba tree) into a net-like structure, a hamaca or hammock, that was suspended between two trees. The hammock permitted the natives to sleep outside in the cool air but off the sandy ground where they would be prey to insects. By the eighteenth century, the use of hammocks for sleeping and storage had become commonplace in the British royal navy. The name for the destructive climatic phenomena, huracán, is still used in place of its scientific nomenclature tropical cyclone. The names of innumerable towns and villages throughout Florida are perhaps the most visible manifestation of the legacy of the Florida Indians such as Miami, Tallahassee, Apalachicola and Ocala, to name just a few. The Taino vomiting spatula or feasting on jutía (a rodent native to Cuba) never caught favor with the Europeans but many survived on bread made of the indigenous root manioc when their Old World crops failed to take root. New World hallucinogens also never caught the Europeans' fancy but the equally addictive and ubiquitous tobacco became an instant sensation in Europe.

The Biological Revolution: Plants and Animals

After the pacification of indigenous groups (whether in the Caribbean, in Florida, or elsewhere in the Americas), the European intent was to recreate the way of life that they enjoyed in the Old World. Consequently, they usually brought with them virtually everything to duplicate the way of life they had left behind in Spain. To begin, the Europeans needed large animals for transportation and food, and by the second Columbus voyage in 1493 they brought horses, pigs, cattle, goats, oxen and chickens. Large dogs were particularly important to the Spaniards as they were used to make war on rebellious native tribes. One of the primary goals was to recreate European foodways and the second voyage also introduced wheat, olive trees and grape vines in an attempt to produce the staples of the Spanish diet; bread, wine and olives. The sandy acidic soils of the Caribbean were not conducive to European agriculture, but as European settlement moved outward from the initial towns on Hispaniola to the mainland, gradually European staples began to take hold. Complementary crops such as oranges, lemons, bananas, figs, radishes, onions, and salad greens rounded out the Spanish dietary array. More important, in terms of economic exploitation, were the cash crops that were introduced--sugar and coffee-- that would come to represent the basis of wealth in the Caribbean where the precious metals were quickly exhausted.

What did the indigenous societies have? To survive, the human diet must have a protein/carbohydrate complement, and in spite of its lack of a large quantity of meat the Amerindian diet was totally adequate in terms of being nutritionally complete. The Ameridians ate huge amounts of carbohydrates a large amount of incomplete proteins, and a small amount of complete protein. The most important carbohydrates were maize or corn in Central America; the white potato in the Andean region; manioc in the Caribbean and the Amazon basin; and the sweet potato throughout the Americas. The many varieties of beans that were an important source of incomplete protein that thrived in the Americas included string, kidney, lima, navy and butter beans. A small amount of complete protein was necessary to provide the necessary amino acid reaction and it was provided by waterfowl, fish and shellfish, or rodents. The Americas also had a wide array of seasoning crops for variety. The most important were chili peppers, tomato, vanilla, cacao and pineapple. No large animals inhabited the Americas and the closest substitute was the llama or alpaca of the high Andes. However, they did not have the transportation benefits of horses as they would not carry a pack weighing more than approximately 75 pounds and they were rarely utilized as food. Their major contribution was their silky fur that was woven into cloth. Most Amerindian societies exploited animals of a small size and only a small number of them.

The most important nonfood crops were tobacco, cochineal and cacao. Tobacco was smoked by the Amerindians and also ground and inhaled, and it became an instant success when it was brought back to Europe, so much so that it became one of the primary reasons for the international territorial rivalries in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Cochineal, a red dyestuff made from the bodies of beetles that inhabit the nopal cactus in Mexico, became that area's second most important export behind silver and fueled the textile industry in Northern Europe. Cacao, an important food crop was also important for the export trade. In its pure form, ground into powder and infused in a bitter drink, it was a status item for the Aztec. Its bitter flavor disgusted, Europeans, but combined with another New World product vanilla, and an Old World staple, sugar, it formed a delightful luxury item, chocolate, that appealed to a growing affluent European public.

Disease Migrations

Far more sinister than corn or potatoes, that became staples of the European diet, or horses and dogs that helped bring down the Aztec empire, were the disease migrations between the worlds. The American Indians had no immunity to European diseases and the results were devastating to their population numbers. The first disease to affect the Caribbean was an upper respiratory disease, probably influenza, that arrived in 1506. Smallpox arrived in the Caribbean in 1519 and became the most effective ally of Hernándo Cortés in the conquest of Mexico. It also preceded Francisco Pizzaro to Peru and made the conquest of the Andes relatively easy as it had decimated the Inca leadership and precipitated a crisis in royal succession. Measles, tuberculosis, diphtheria, typhus and the bubonic plague all contributed to the decimation of the native populations in the Americas in the sixteenth century, and in the seventeenth century yellow fever and malaria arrived via the slave trade. The introduction of European diseases contributed to the decline of the American Indian societies, and the Florida natives were as reduced by the Pánfilo Narvaéz, Hernándo de Soto and Tristan de Luna expeditions as were the more spectacular--and better documented--reductions in the Valley of Mexico and Peru. Yet the New World repaid the European invasions with an equally-deadly disease, syphilis, contracted by Columbus's sailors on the first voyage and transported to the Old World. By 1495, it had begun its spread throughout Europe.

Ecological Change

Almost as deadly to Amerindian society were the introduction of European agricultural practices. The penultimate symbol of European status is the Castillian municipio or city, and upon arrival in any area the first act was to found a town. Virtually immediately, Europeans began to cut the forests and clear the land for building. In addition, the Spanish allowed their large animals to run wild and trample native agriculture. In 1493, sugar was introduced into the tropical lowlands of the Caribbean basin. The importation of European food crops, in spite of their failure to take hold on the Caribbean islands, nevertheless interfered with native agricultural systems. Indiscriminate mining practices caused soil erosion, native crop failure, and significant population decline. Upon arrival in the Valley of Mexico, the Spanish drained Lake Texcoco and filled in the swampy area surrounding the Aztec capital thus causing severe ecological degradation of the area.

Social Mixture

By the 1470s on their way around Africa, Portugal established settlements along the coast to provision their ships and trade for gold. As sugar spread westward across the Mediterranean and into the Atlantic islands, increasingly the available labor supply proved insufficient. At the time, Africa was experiencing a population surplus and as a consequence African chiefs began trading surplus people to Europeans, thus initiating the practice of European enslavement of Africans.

With Columbus's arrival in the Bahamas, European men began sexual relations with Amerindian women, both through intermarriage and through more casual relations. While one consequence was the spread of syphilis to the Old World, in the New World a population phenomenon that was unequalled anywhere else in the world emerged; the development of a group of mixed blood people usually termed mestizos.

At the same time that the mixed blood population grew, the Amerindian population began to decline precipitously. The Crown forbade the enslavement of the Indians; they were to be treated with benign subjugation. Under the laws of the day, soldiers could enslave captives from battle provided it was a just war if they failed to convert to Christianity. As the populations on the major Caribbean islands declined, the Bahamas and Florida became prime slave-raiding areas.

In 1502 the first permanent governor, Nicolás de Ovando, arrived on Hispaniola. He was under orders to treat the Indians well but there were no instructions, on how to deal with resistance. This expedition included Bartolomé de Las Casas, who arrived with hopes of obtaining an encomienda. He would become the foremost advocate of humane treatment for the Indians. Ovando's lieutenant, Diego de Velázquez, sought to bring the Cuban Indians under control and after landing on the eastern tip of the island he began his march to the west. According to eyewitness accounts, the Cuban chiefs greeted him and his men with a banquet which the Spanish accepted. After the banquet, the Spaniards got up and slaughtered the Indians, astutely eliminating the aristocracy of Indian society and therefore the Indian resistance in one swoop. Reputedly, Bartolomé de Las Casas was so horrified by the wholesale slaughter of the innocent Cuban Indians that he would renounce his encomienda and spend the remainder of his long life as a Dominican friar championing their interests, thus earning him the title Protector of the Indians.

One of the solutions that Las Casas offered to the problem of Indian enslavement was a labor substitute of African slaves. Although the first African slaves were brought to the Caribbean in 1518, large-scale slavery was associated primarily with sugar cultivation and was of less importance in the New World than other forms of economic production. An event that would change this was a slave revolt that destroyed the Portuguese colony Sao Tomé off the west coast of Africa in 1570. The Portuguese transferred their major sugar producing areas to Brazil and with it the institution of African slavery jumped the ocean and was transplanted into the Americas. Ultimately, sugar production with the help of the Dutch moved up the Caribbean islands to Martinique, Cuba and Jamaica. African slavery followed, and as sugar expanded the last major ethnic group entered the Caribbean in large numbers. And with the slave trade, plants, animals and organisms native to Africa entered the gene pools of the Americas.

Thus, one of the major legacies of contact was the biological unification of the world. Plants, animals, pathogens and people went both ways across the Atlantic with consequences for both worlds.

Consequences Of Contact

For the Amerindian societies the most visible consequence was in population change. The Caribbean people disappeared rapidly and completely. By the 1560s the island societies were virtually eradicated. In the process the Taino language did not survive and only some remnants of their culture are extant today. The Carib were a bit more fortunate because of their hostility toward the Spanish and they were able to hold out in the Leeward islands since they were out of the mainstream of Spanish settlement. They also formed relations with black slaves and a colony of Black Carib survives in Dominica today. In Florida the natives held on longer but by 1763 the last remaining Florida Indians evacuated to Cuba with the Spanish. On the mainland, the Aztec people declined initially but subsequently they regained in numbers after 1700. The Inca and the people of Peru were less affected because of their isolation and the number of indigenes in that area remains high. Other areas were relatively unaffected by Spanish influences, some of the more remote societies, for example in the Brazilian Amazon basin, did not come into contact with Europeans until the late l9th century.

Until 1821, Spain remained dominant in the New World. Spain transferred a political structure designed to incorporate the New World into the imperial system. The economy was structured around mercantilism in which the colonies provided raw materials for the mother country and received finished goods, thus retarding colonial economic development. One of the most visible legacies of Spanish rule is seen in its culture, particularly in the areas where Roman Catholicism is predominant and in the millions of people who speak Spanish.

Of course, there were also consequences for Europe. In the political arena, Spain became the dominant power on the continent from 1505 until 1620. The economic consequences revolved around an influx of precious metals that changed the European economy. The arrival of so much silver into Europe had a trickle down effect since Spain spent its silver almost faster than it received it. Two of the greatest beneficiaries were the Dutch and British and Spanish silver, it is argued, contributed to the rise of capitalism in Northern Europe. Greater wealth led to better living conditions that led to an increase in population. Ultimately, when the population reached critical levels in the other European areas, the excess population sought an outlet. The areas of the New World not under effective Spanish control were attractive areas for other European nations, and in particular, France and England became the nations that would challenge Spain's sovereignty in the Americas. In religious matters, Spain became the defender (perhaps savior) of Catholicism in Europe. Only through the large amounts of bullion arriving from the New World could Spain launch a counterchallenge to the Protestant Reformation.

The New World discoveries inspired an intellectual revival in Spain. As new lands were discovered, better maps were drawn, and the recent invention of the printing press allowed the news of discoveries to spread throughout Europe. Amerigo Vespucci, a Mediterranean trader and pilot in Spanish employ, lent his name to the new continent with the help of a geographer, Martin Waldseemüller, who named the southern hemisphere of the New World; America, in his honor. Maritime voyages also led to the discovery of new sets of stars, the Southern Cross in the Southern hemisphere for example, and to better navigational devices. By Columbus's fourth voyage, both Portuguese and Spanish navigators were well on their way to understanding the secret of the wind and water currents across the Atlantic ocean. Today this is common knowledge to every Floridian in the form of a hurricane tracking chart. Advances in medicine were made possible with the discovery of new plants and healing techniques. The New World became the inspiration for a Golden Age in literature and drama and the wealth of the Spanish court attracted talented men (and women) who sought patrons to sponsor their creations.

Contact also stimulated theological discussion especially after the discovery of a world so completely separate from the known world at the time. Questions arose such as: Who are the Indians and where did they come from? How should they be treated? Could they and/or should they be enslaved or not? Were they to be free men or, as Aristotle proposed, natural slaves? The rivalry between Church and encomenderos for the use of Indian labor began almost with the first missionaries to the Caribbean, and the issue was complicated because of the debate over the issue of the humanity of the Amerindians. The greatest champion of the Indians, Bartolomé de Las Casas, returned to Spain where he spoke and wrote forcefully that the Amerindians were capable of converting peacefully and that forced conversion and enslavement should be stopped. In spite of a Papal Bull in 1537 that decreed that the Indians were indeed men and not animals, abuse continued. The debate reached its height in 1560s between Las Casas and theologian Juan Gines de Sepúlveda, who argued for the Aristotlean doctrine of natural slavery based upon the unnatural practices of the Indian people, particularly cannibalism. After a series of debates between the two men in the Spanish city of Valladolid in 1555, the Spanish monarch declared that conquest should be halted, but it did little to stop the population decline. By the time of the debates, the Caribbean Indians were on their way to virtual extinction. Spain's rivals in Europe seized on Las Casas's speeches and writings and the Valladolid debates as evidence of Spanish cruelty. In particular, England at the time was engaged in a struggle with Spain over religion and maritime supremacy. The British began to use Las Casas's propagandizing to justify their challenges to Spain and led to the birth of the "Black Legend" essentially a rationale for their actions based upon tales of Spanish cruelty to the Amerindians. Five centuries later, the "Black Legend" still persists.

Amerindian Expectations

What did the arrival of peculiar looking people with extraordinary light skin who were fully clothed in spite of the heat signify to the Caribbean and Florida Indians? Aside from their appearance, the Taino and their brethren were probably not unduly alarmed since they were used to strangers coming to their territories hoping to trade. Throughout the Caribbean, Florida, the Gulf of Mexico and the Yucatan peninsula, lively trade networks existed for centuries exchanging products and cultural innovations. Visitors were greeted with food, lodging and the sexual favors of a number of the host village's young women. But the Caribbean hosts were clearly unprepared when their European guests began behaving in a very ungracious manner. First, they began to demand gold in return for the unequal exchange of worthless trinkets. Worse still, they began to interfere with the social, cultural and political structures of native societies by demanding that the natives discard their old beliefs in favor of a new system, Christianity. Since native religion was so closely tied to political power and the social hierarchy and since the visitors were so obstinate in their insistence their arrival signified much more than the desire for trade. Ultimately, the native populations came to realize that the arrival of the Europeans meant to challenge their very way of life.

European Dreams of Empire

Contact between the two worlds occurred during the period of European history, called the "rise of nation states," when territory and power was transferred out of hands of local nobles and consolidated in a strong monarchical clan or dynasty. With the marriage of Isabel and Ferdinand in 1469, Spain became one of the first European nations to embark on the course of unification. Once the power of the Spanish nobility had been curtailed, the Catholic Kings as the pair was known, could turn to other issues, most importantly the eradication of the last Moslem stronghold in Spain, namely Granada. In January 1492, their efforts were successful and Granada fell to their combined armies.

The importance to the future of European/native interactions was that the 750 year effort left Spain with an ideological and cultural baggage of the glorification of military service and the exploits of military heroes such as the national epic poem, El Cid. In addition, it left Spain with an unwavering belief in the infallibility of Catholicism bordering on fanaticism. Both of these cultural traits would shape the Spanish experience in the New World. In response to Portugal's challenge to the news of Columbus's discoveries, the political realities of the day also demanded that Spain gain a legitimate title to the land that Columbus had encountered, from the most powerful person on earth, God's spokesman, the Pope. A strong, political alliance between Spain and Rome ensued. In return for the, responsibility of Christianizing the people they encountered, with the treaty of Tordesillas in 1494, the Pope legitimized Spain's claim by dividing the world in two. Spain received sovereignty over the Western half of the world and Portugal over the eastern portion of Africa. Ever mindful of their responsibilities, Spain would become the champion of Catholicism in both hemispheres and the influx of silver from Mexico and Peru allowed her to embark upon a series of costly European wars to eradicate the Protestant challenge to political and religious dogma.

The major antagonists to such arbitrary division, France, England and ultimately Holland, refused to acknowledge Spain's exclusivity in the New World. Almost from the outset they challenged Spain territorially. Reportedly, when hearing of the Papal mandate the French king, Francis I, responded that he wanted to see the clause in Adam's will that excluded him from a share of the newly-found lands. Perhaps as early as 1504, France sent ships to the Caribbean and to Brazil, and when they seized the first treasure ships in 1523 it stimulated enormous interest in the New World. Many voyages of plunder operated without government sanction, but European rulers quickly realized the utility of having private vessels harass the Spanish for private gain in the interest of national policy. So the governments of France, England and Holland began granting approbation or royal sanction to pirates to operate in their name. The official documents were called "letters of marque" and they stated that a certain ship sailed with royal approval. Early in the sixteenth century, the French developed two harassing mechanisms; the small scale expedition that operated in peacetime to conduct trade and barter to out-of-the way settlements, and large scale wartime expeditions accompanied by royal warships like that of Jacques Sores that plundered and burned Havana in 1555.

The challenge to Spain also had an ideological dimension. Many of the French sailors were Protestant so their attacks became a personal crusade. These religious zealots were also useful to the French queen, Catherine de Medici who, in 1565, sent them to establish a settlement in Florida under their famous leader, Jean Ribault. Ribault founded the first French colony in Florida, Fort Caroline, at the mouth of St. Johns River. Spain's response was quick and brutal. Pedro Menéndez de Avilés was granted permission to found St. Augustine and he quickly crushed French settlement with legendary brutality. Spain's exclusivity in the New World, for the present, was safe.

The Rise of England

While France was busy harassing Spanish ships and settlements, England was not yet a seafaring power. They shipped cloth, primarily woolens, to the Dutch city of Antwerp or established merchant houses there. But as the fortunes of Antwerp declined English merchants sought another market for their goods. They first sailed to the east to Russia, where on the treacherous North Sea they gained experience in seamanship and navigation. Soon they were ready to test tropical waters and they branched out across the Atlantic, where they traded for cochineal, tobacco, sugar, hides and cacao, thus promoting new tastes and demands in England. In addition, the population of England at the time was expanding and many families were being evicted from the land so the nation looked for an outlet for its surplus population. This would lead to the English attempts to colonize North America (Roanoke), in spite of Spain's claim to sovereignty. English seafaring exploits also led to the creation of a class of privateers who were the younger sons of gentry and who, because of the laws of inheritance, had no hope of a family fortune. With the ambition and the connections to raise capital to outfit a ship, these daring young men began to plunder the treasure ships and trade illegally with the Spanish colonies. Until 1558 England and Spain were allies but that was undermined when Protestant Elizabeth I ascended to the English throne and the political climate did an about face. In addition, an extreme Protestant faction came to political power who saw their challenge to Spain as a reforming religious crusade. Elizabeth promoted the voyages of John Hawkins who went to the Canary Islands, purchased a load of slaves, and took them to the Indies. On his fourth voyage he encountered Menéndez de Avilés who sank his ships. The most famous English privateer, Francis Drake, occupied Nombre de Dios on the Isthmus of Panama in 1572. In 1577 he sailed into the Pacific where he harassed Spain's Pacific cities before going on to circumnavigate the globe. By 1586 he returned to the Caribbean plundering Cartagena, Santo Domingo and St. Augustine. Drake's exploits, along with the settlement attempt of Walter Raleigh at Roanoke Island, scared Spain into action. In 1588 Spain attempted a full-scale invasion of England, the famous Spanish Armada, which was destroyed off the southern English coast by a combination of bad weather and bad judgment.

Spanish Response to Interlopers

In a project promoted by Pedro Menéndez de Avilés, the founder of St. Augustine and governor of Cuba, Spain sought to eliminate foreign threats to its claim of exclusivity in the Americas. Menéndez suggested implementing naval escorts for the transatlantic fleets and the creation of cruiser squadrons based permanently in the Caribbean that would go on seek-and-destroy missions. He also suggested building fortifications in Caribbean cities and manning them with permanent garrisons, and throughout the Caribbean and Florida the many forts begun in the 1560s remain the hallmark of several cities such as St. Augustine, Havana and San Juan. More restrictive shipping measures included a convoy (flota) system to escort the twice-yearly shipping to and from Spain. While the plan sounded like a good idea, Spain could never fulfill the necessities of its colonies and the result was that the colonies turned to doing things they were not supposed to be doing such as contraband trade with other nations.

Adding to Spain's troubles were The Netherlands, which had been a Spanish possession, and which broke away from Spanish rule in 1567. Spain thus began a long series of wars of religion, which contributed to the further decline in Spanish royal fortunes. Philip II spent untold millions of pesos in silver in an attempt to bring England and The Netherlands back into the Catholic fold. The Dutch, who were more interested in the East Indies than the West Indies, were latecomers to the Americas, however, and they rarely were interested in settling the area. Instead they were interested in contraband trading and transporting products to Europe.

Spain began by cracking down on the inhabitants of Hispaniola who had been trading with a nest of privateers from Tortuga, an island off the northwest coast of Hispaniola inhabited by men and women of mixed nationalities with a common hatred of Spain. Charles II (1605) ordered that the towns on the north coast of Hispaniola be abandoned, which led to a further decline in the region. After the Spanish abandonment of the north coast, the privateers moved in and took possession. In 1607 the Spanish Caribbean was at a low ebb, and their weakness was an invitation to foreign powers to begin nipping at the heels of the mighty Spanish empire.

The Age of Colonies (1607-1697)

The death of Philip II in 1598 marked the beginning of the decline of Spain. Spain was overstretched in her worldwide empire and her troubles began at home. Until then Spain occupied the Americas with the blessing of the Pope under the "doctrine of de jure" possession. Other nations did not recognize the Pope's ability to exclude them from colonization and they countered Spain's claim by de facto possession. Taking advantage of Spanish weakness, foreign interlopers began to establish colonies on the outer Caribbean islands and the fringes of North America away from the threat of the Spanish naval fleet. Their reasons were to establish bases for raiding and smuggling to the Spanish colonies, for supplying their ships, and to export tropical products. For the French and English the key was the expansion of tobacco cultivation and their first colonies were created as tobacco-growing centers.

Spain's real trouble came from the Dutch who early on had a different agenda. Initially they were primarily interested in salt extraction off the north coast of Venezuela at Araya, but they, of all the interlopers, were most interested in commerce. In the seventeenth century the Dutch nation became the wealthiest in Europe engaging in the carrying trade, that is, transporting other nations colonies' products to Europe and marketing them.

One of their most effective harassing mechanisms was the Dutch West India Company, established in 1621 when Holland was again threatened with war by Spain. This was a permanent joint stock company, part commercial, part military, capable of challenging Spain in the West Indies. Its focus was not colonization; rather it was intended that the profits come from plunder, from conquest and from commerce. Organized fleets began concerted attacks on Spanish shipping everywhere from Africa to West Indies and contributed to the downfall of Spain by overtaxing her limited resources.

The Dutch West India Company's most spectacular success was the capture of the entire flota off the coast of Matanzas, Cuba in 1628. Dutch admiral Piet Heyn commanded thirty-one ships that surprised and intercepted the entire flota without firing a shot. This spectacular raid took so much money from Spain that the company paid a 50% dividend that year. The attack ruined Spanish credit in Europe and paralyzed its shipping for several years. Along with the official company, the Dutch government sanctioned hundreds of unofficial private merchant ships that sailed without letters of marque and attacked Spanish ships and settlements regularly.

Money from the Heyn expedition allowed the Dutch to concentrate more thoroughly on the Portuguese settlements in Brazil that were under the sovereignty of Spain until 1655. The Dutch had occupied Brazil in 1624 only to be expelled, but with the Heyn money they could renew their offensive in the 1630s, especially in Pernambuco. In addition, on the other side of the ocean, the Dutch captured the Portuguese slaving stations in Africa. The Portuguese/Brazilian planters resisted and by 1640 they successfully ousted the Dutch, who had advanced them credit, had carried their sugar to Europe and had brought back slaves. In retaliation the Dutch cut off the supply of slaves to Brazil, set up colonies in the Caribbean, and helped other nations' colonies to set up sugar production, for example the French in Martinique and Guadaloupe, and the British in Barbados. Sugar cultivation in the non-Hispanic West Indies was made possible by Dutch immigrants from Brazil. In Brazil they had acquired the knowledge and experience; to Brazil's competitors they supplied the equipment from Europe they lent the necessary capital and they transported the product to Europe. Ultimately, the Caribbean competition would ruin the Brazilian sugar industry.

As a consequence of Dutch activity, England and France were able to occupy other areas, and the Spanish who were overtaxed everywhere, could not do a thing about it. The first permanent English settlement was at Jamestown in North America. In the Caribbean, St. Christopher (St. Kitts) was founded in 1624 and Barbados in 1627, far away from the areas patrolled by the Spanish naval fleet. In North America, the French concentrated on Canada, and in the Caribbean settled the islands of Martinique and Guadaloupe. Island life was miserable for the settlers. In Barbados, for example, many inhabitants arrived as indentured servants of tobacco planters until its shift to sugar after the first cane was brought to the island in 1637.

The Dutch did not seek to create settlements except in a few places such as Curacao that was close to the salt pans at Araya. Instead, they became predominant in transatlantic commerce that brought fortunes into the country. Their joint stock company set the example for France and England who modeled their economies after the proven success of the Dutch example. Other nations' islands were dependent upon Dutch shipping and, with every colony created, it meant more money for the Dutch carrying trade. Even Spain could not resist the Dutch example and by 1648 the two nations signed a peace treaty. Holland gave up its national policy of raiding Spanish settlements and ships in return for the privilege of supplying the Spanish colonies with slaves.

European Events and The West Indies

By the mid-seventeenth century, the goals of European nations changed once again. In the early century they dedicated their efforts to colonizing areas that were out of the way of the Spanish Armada. By mid-century, England and France went on the offensive to take some of the territory away from Spain, exemplified in the English capture of Jamaica in 1655. From 1642-1660, the period of the English Civil War, that nation was ruled by a parliamentary government dominated by militant Protestants. They saw their natural enemy in Spain and their vision was that attacks against their enemy was a crusade against Catholicism. Spain's treasure ships were tempting, but the bottom line was the permanent acquisition of territory to establish colonies. England's parliamentary leader, Oliver Cromwell, lent the name to this program, his Western Design, that ultimately was a "successful failure." The main attack was aimed at Santo Domingo, the prosperous port city on the south coast of Hispaniola. The expedition was organized from Barbados populated by exiled royalists who did not like the Cromwellian government to begin with. To make matters worse, when the army arrived in Barbados the leaders drafted the plantation owners' laborers to fight. Hence, the invasion force was comprised of men who didn't want to be there and this mutinous un-warlike mob landed in Santo Domingo. The quality of the leaders, General Venables and Admiral William Penn, also contributed to the failure of the original plan. Neither was an experienced leader and upon arrival they made a tactical mistake of landing too far from the town where there was no water for the troops. The attempted invasion of Santo Domingo became a total rout by a much smaller party of Spanish cavalry. The only thing that saved the fiasco from becoming a total massacre was the arrival of a party of sailors that ferried the invasion party back to the British ships. To save the expedition from total disgrace, and given Cromwell's reputation, to save their necks, as an afterthought Penn and Venables turned to Jamaica, the neighboring island with a very small population and virtually no economy except cattle raising. The British landed on the south coast and marched to Spanish Town meeting little resistance. Recognizing that he was outnumbered, the Spanish governor fled to the hills from which he was rescued by a party from Cuba. In spite of the failure of the initial venture, Penn and Venables returned to England to ultimate acclaim.

England guessed, rightly so, that Spain would not take the loss of Jamaica lying down, and the governor of Jamaica issued privateering commissions of reprisal for protection against Spanish attack. Jamaica was ideally situated to be a privateering base, and its major city Port Royal was located on an excellent natural harbor. Thus, during the late seventeenth century, the Caribbean entered the second great era of privateering, and the greatest of all privateers was Sir Henry Morgan. Operating from his stronghold at Port Royal, he led expeditions against Cuba and staged raids on mainland settlements, Porto Bello and Maracaibo, Venezuela. His greatest victory came in Panama in 1671 in which his expedition, consisting of nearly 1,500 combined French and English buccaneers, devastated the isthmus. The sack of Panama represented the climax of Morgan's career, and for his service to the British crown he was knighted and rewarded with the governorship of Jamaica. Most of the cargoes stolen from Spanish ships were sold in North America, particularly in Rhode Island. Meanwhile in Europe negotiations had been going on to end the hostilities. Significantly these negotiations specifically stipulated that the treaty should also include events in the Americas. In 1670, in the Treaty of Madrid, both nations revoked their letters of marque. More importantly Spain recognized England's right to exist in the Caribbean, and as the Industrial Revolution began to transform England, she recognized that trade in and of itself would bring greater rewards.

By 1670, only France remained hostile to the Spanish and the center of privateering shifted from Port Royal to Tortuga. France under King Louis XIV was the most powerful country in Europe and he wanted recognition in the West Indies. The official French presence began in 1665 when it appointed a governor of Tortuga and from that island it began to occupy the western half of Hispaniola, St. Domingue. Two distinct settlements arose; the rough-and-tumble buccaneers in Tortuga, and the respectable planters in St. Domingue. The French royal governors stood in between both societies, often walking a thin line between respectability and roguishness. Many of Henry Morgan's old cohorts, now unemployed with England's renunciation of privateering, shifted their allegiance to the French forces. Raids, as official government policy, took a terrible toll on Spanish port cities. At the same time in Europe, England and Holland, fearful of France gaining too much power in Europe and the West Indies, united and aligned against her. The war ended in 1697 and by the Peace of Ryswyck Spain ceded the western half of the island of Hispaniola to France, thus acknowledging that nation's right to occupy the New World also.

The Treaty of Ryswyck formally ended the age of the buccaneers, yet the legacy of the colonial period in the Caribbean and Florida lives on. No one can visit a Spanish Caribbean city without being impressed by the fortifications built in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The culture of the Caribbean--food, language, music, or dress, for example, is a wonderful mixture of European, Creole and African and varies from island to island, depending on which colonial nation it belonged to. Caribbean society is also a mixture of African, of European, even of some Amerindians, although the claim of some to be descendants of the Taino is disputed. Spain promoted Catholicism as an exclusive religion in its exclusive territory, but once Spain's monopoly was broken, the way was open for other religions to enter the area, not only the traditional western religions but also those of the African slaves. Spanish is spoken by millions of people in Central and South America and on the largest islands, but throughout the Caribbean, French, English, Dutch and patois are the languages of the islands' people. By 1697 the power of Spain was broken and to quote one of the greatest historians of the Caribbean, Eric Williams, "Adam's will had been proved a forgery."

Selected Bibliography

Andrews, Kenneth, The Spanish Caribbean: Trade and Plunder, 1530-1630. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1978.

Bridenbaugh, Carl and Roberta Bridenbaugh. No Peace Beyond the Line: The English in the Caribbean 1624-1690. New York: Oxford University Press, 1972.

Bushnell, Amy. The King's Coffer: Proprietors of the Spanish Florida Treasury, 1565-1702. Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1981

Cook, Noble David. Born to Die: Disease and New World Conquest 1492-1650. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997.

Crosby, Alfred W. Jr. The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1972.

_______. Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900-1900. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986.

Curtin, Philip D. The Rise and Fall of the Plantation Complex: Essays in Atlantic History, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2d ed. 1998.

Dobyns, Henry. Their Number Become Thinned: Native American Population Dynamics in Eastern North America. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1983.

Dunn, Richard S. Sugar and Slaves: The Rise of the Planter Class in the English West Indies. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press1972.

Hann, John. Apalachee: Land Between the Rivers. Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1988.

________. Missions to the Calusa. Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1991.

Hoffman, Paul. The Spanish Crown and the Defense of the Caribbean 1535-1585: Precedent, Patrimonialism and Royal Parsimony. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1980.

________. A New Andalucia and a Way to the Orient: The American Southeast during the Sixteenth Century. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1990.

Keegan, William. The People Who Discovered Columbus. Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1992.

Lewis, Gordon K. Main Currents in Caribbean Thought: The Historical Evolution of Caribbean Society in its Ideological Aspects, 1492-1900. Baltimore & London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983.

Lyon, Eugene. The Enterprise of Florida: Pedro Menéndez de Avilés and the Spanish Conquest of 1565-1568. Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1976.

Milanich, Jerald. The Florida Indians and the Invasion from Europe. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1995.

Pagden, Anthony. Lords of All the World: Ideologies of Empire in Spain, Britain and France, 1492-1830. New Haven: Yale University Press,1995.

Parry. John H. The Age of Reconnaissance: Discovery, Exploration and Settlement, 1450 to 1650. New York: Praeger, 1969.

________. The Spanish Seaborne Empire. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1966.

Parry, J.H. R. Sherlock and A. P. Maingot. A Short History of the West Indies, 4th ed. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1987.

Seed, Patricia. Ceremonies of Possession: Europe's Conquest of the New World, 1492-1640. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.

Thornton, John. Africa and Africans in the Formation of the Atlantic World, 1400-1680. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992.

Weber, David J. The Spanish Frontier in North America. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1992.

Williams, Eric. From Columbus to Castro: The History of the Caribbean, 1492-1969. London: Andre Deutsch Limited, 1970; reprinted New York: Vintage Books, 1984.

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