Gibson - Empire’s crossroads : a history of the Caribbean from Columbus to the present day

EMPIRES

CROSSROADS

EMPIRES

CROSSROADS

A History of the Caribbean From Columbus to the Present Day

C ARRIE G IBSON

Atlantic Monthly Press

New York

Copyright 2014 by Carrie Gibson

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First published in Great Britain in 2014 by Macmillan an imprint of Pan Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited

Printed in the United States of America

ISBN 978-0-8021-2614-6

eBook ISBN 978-0-8021-9235-6

Atlantic Monthly Press

an imprint of Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

154 West 14th Street

New York, NY 10011

Distributed by Publishers Group West

www.groveatlantic.com

For Chris

Contents

List of Illustrations

1. The Catalan Atlas of 1375 is attributed to mapmaker Abraham Cresques and was presented to Frances Charles V. Its detail of Europe, the Mediterranean, and North Africa made it one of the most cartographically advanced maps of its time. (Bibliothque Nationale, Paris, France/Index/ The Bridgeman Art Library)

2. Christopher Columbus landing on the island of Hispaniola for the first time, as later imagined by Flemish printmaker Pieter Balthazar Bouttats (16661755). (Hubbard Collection/Library of Congress)

3. Carib Indians, from an engraving in a 1593 account by Johannes Lerii, complete with ceremonial tobacco pipes though no obvious cannibalism. (Private Collection/The Bridgeman Art Library)

4. A portrait of Welsh-born pirate Henry Morgan, who attacked Spanish settlements in Cuba, Panama, and Venezuela, and was later named lieutenant-governor of Jamaica in 1674. (Private Collection/Peter Newark Historical Pictures/The Bridgeman Art Library)

5. A Dutch engraving (1678) depicting Henry Morgans devastating attack on Panama City in 1671, where he and his men spent three weeks pillaging the Spanish city, taking as much treasure as they could find. (Private Collection/The Bridgeman Art Library)

6. A seventeenth-century map of Santo Domingo, on Hispaniola, which was by that point the capital of the island. (De Agostini Picture Library/G. Dagli Orti/The Bridgeman Art Library)

. Detail of a Mexican casta painting (c. 1715), this one showing the mestizo offspring of a Spanish man and an indigenous woman. (Breamore House, Hampshire, UK/The Bridgeman Art Library)

. The sixteenth-century Alczar de Coln, in Santo Domingo, was built to house Diego Columbus, the son of Christopher, who became the islands governor in 1509. (By courtesy of the author)

. An engraving (c. 1585) of Dutch traders arriving in West Africa (Guinea) to negotiate a shipment of slaves. (Bibliothque Nationale, Paris, France/ Giraudon/The Bridgeman Art Library)

. Gold mining in Hispaniola, as imagined in the nineteenth century. The mines were so dangerous that the brutal conditions often quickly killed the indigenous people and African slaves who worked in them. (Private Collection/The Bridgeman Art Library)

. A romanticized depiction of sugar cane harvesting in Antigua, c. 1820s, displaying none of the brutality that was part of daily life for slaves. (British Library, London, UK/ British Library Board. All Rights Reserved/ The Bridgeman Art Library)

12. An engraving of the sugar refining process in the mid-seventeenth-century French West Indies. (Library of Congress)

13. Havana harbour in the aftermath of the British battle in 1762, during the Seven Years War, complete with sinking masts of defeated ships. (Library of Congress)

14. The taking of the French island of St Lucia by the British in 1778, during the American War of Independence. In addition to fighting the patriots in the thirteen colonies, Britain faced hostility from Spain, France, and the Dutch in the Caribbean. (Library of Congress)

15. Mr and Mrs Hill, as painted by Arthur Devis (c. 175051). Although little is known about the subjects, they represent the growing and aspirational middle-class consumer complete with tea cups laid out for visitors, and of course, a sugar bowl. (Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection, USA/The Bridgeman Art Library)

16. James Gillrays Barbarities in the West Indies, which depicts an incident mentioned during the 1791 debate on the motion to abolish the slave trade. ( Courtesy of the Warden and Scholars of New College, Oxford/ The Bridgeman Art Library)

17. An English portrait from 1802 of Toussaint Louverture, the Saint-Domingue general who fought to free the islands slaves. He was imprisoned by the French and died before the republic of Haiti was established in 1804. (English School/Private Collection/The Bridgeman Art Library)

18. The burning of Le Cap, Saint-Domingue the port city faced numerous attacks throughout the Haitian revolution, including a devastating one in 1793. (Private Collection/Archives Charmet/The Bridgeman Art Library)

19. George Cruikshanks The New Union Club (1819) evokes the worst nineteenth-century stereotypes about black people, and the work parodies the aim of white abolitionists who expressed their desire to civilize slaves and ex-slaves. (Private Collection/ Michael Graham-Stewart/The Bridgeman Art Library)

20. Abolitionist William Wilberforce, who campaigned to end the slave trade, which became law in 1807. He died in 1833, only a few days after an act to free slaves in the British Empire passed the House of Commons. (Library of Congress)

21. Agostino Bruniass A Linen Market depicts the world of the free people of colour in the British Windward Islands c. 1780. (Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection, USA)

22. & 23. Costumes worn during the 1837 Christmas Amusements in Jamaica, as captured by the artist Isaac Mendes Belisario. Jaw-Bone, or House John-Canoe, donned by former and soon-to-be-freed slaves; Queen or Maam of the Set-Girls. (Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection, USA/The Bridgeman Art Library)

24. Banana workers cutting fruit on a plantation in Costa Rica, c. 1910. (Frank and Frances Carpenter Collection/Library of Congress)

25. A hut belonging to Indian (also called coolie) indentured labourers, in Jamaica. Many people from India and China arrived in the Caribbean for work, from the mid-1850s onwards, mostly settling in Jamaica, Cuba, Trinidad, and Guiana. (M. H .Zahner/Griffith & Griffith/Library of Congress)

26. SugarworkersinYabucoa,PuertoRicogatheratameetinginsupportofa strike at the sugar mill, in 1941. (Jack Delano/U.S. Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information/Library of Congress)