Eric Williams - From Columbus to Castro: The History of the Caribbean, 1492–1969

This book made available by the Internet Archive.

TO THE PEOPLES NATIONAL MOVEMENT OF TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO

^Great is the P.N.M, and it will prevail'

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Illustrations

facing

page

1. Columbus being greeted by the Indians 32

2. Spaniards mining gold 32

3. Sugar: the greatest gift from the Old World to the

New 33

4. A Spanish settlement sacked by the French 33

5. The death of Hatuey 64

6. Bartolome de las Casas 64

7. A sixteenth-century view of the West Indies 65

8. Sir Francis Drake 96

9. Anglo-French rivalry in the Caribbean 96

10. Barbados in the seventeenth century 97

11. Cross-section of a trapiche 128

12. Morgan Godwyn 128

13. Sir Dalby Thomas 128

14. A Negro festival 129

15. A Surinam Planter 160

16. William Beckford 160

17. Planters folly 160

18. A slave poster 161

19. A Negro hung alive 161

20. The start of the Middle Passage 192

21. Negro figure 192

22. Toussaint Louverture 193

23. Henri Christophe 193

24. English Harbour, Antigua 288

25. Nelsons monument, Bridgetown 288

26. The Rodney Memorial, Spanish Town 288

27. Thomas Clarkson and William Wilberforce 289

28. The plan of a slave ship 289

29. The Anti-Slavery Convention 320

30. A Slave in Chains 320

31. Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton 321

32. James Stephen 321

33. Emancipation 321

34. Holing a Cane-Piece 400

35. Planting the Sugar-Cane 400

36. Cutting the Sugar-Cane 400

37. A Mill-Yard 400

38. Exterior of a Boiling-House 401

39. Interior of a Boiling-House 401

40. Interior of a Distillery 401

41. Exterior of a Distillery 401

42. & 43. Nineteenth-century Cuban sugar factories 496

44. American guard of honour for President Batista 496

45. Fidel Castro meets Richard Nixon 496

46. Fidel Castro starts the harvest 497

47. Che Guevara 497

48. 1959-1969: Tenth Anniversary of the triumph of

the Cuban rebellion 497

From Columbus to Castro:

The History of the Caribbean 1492-1969

Chapter One

Westward Ho!

The decisive landmark in the history of the fifteenth century, representing the transition from the Middle Ages to the modern era, was the Portuguese exploration and conquest of the West African coastline.

Up to 1415, when the Portuguese attacked and captured the Moorish stronghold of Ceuta in North Africa, the world, as known to and by the Europeans, was virtually limited to the world known to the Phoenicians, Greeks and Carthaginians. It embraced Europe, Asia Minor and North Africathough Alexander the Great and the Roman legions had left behind memories of India, and Ethiopian civilisation was known to the Greeks. But the Travels of Marco Polo in the thirteenth century whetted the appetite with their descriptions of the Kingdom of Prester John, the empire of the Grand Khan, and the gold of Java and India.

With their conquest of Ceuta, the Portuguese set out on their discovery and exploration of the West African Coast. In 1435 they reached Senegal, in 1443 Cape Bojador, in 1446 Sierra Leone, in 1455 Guinea, and in 1481 the Congo. They stood poised for that superb achievement of Vasco da Gama, the rounding of the Cape of Good Hope, which opened the way to India.

From Columbus to Castro

That was Europes dream in the fifteenth century, that was Europes ambitionto reach India and the East. The Crusades had disrupted the normal overland connections, while the Italian maritime States of Venice and Genoa, sitting astride the sea routes, charged heavy tolls. The search for a westward route to India which dominated the fifteenth century had its roots in severely practical considerations. The Estates General of France in 1484 complained that in four years two previous Popes had drained France of more than two millions in gold.

The practical urge to discovery and expansion was also based on a much greater store of theoretical knowledge than had previously been available. The medieval view that the earth was flat could not withstand the Renaissance outlook which had developed renewed interest in a knowledge of geography from the study of Ptolemy, Strabo and Greek geographers who had speculated on the possibility of more easily reaching the Far East by a western voyage from the Pillars of Hercules. In the thirteenth century Roger Bacons scientific method with its subordination of philosophy to mathematics led him to speculate as to the distribution of land and ocean over the globe, to hazard the view that a few days sail westward from Spain would lead to eastern Asia, and to anticipate instruments for navigation, the automobile and the crane. The end of the fifteenth century witnessed the scientific method of Leonardo da Vinci, the representative man of the Renaissance, who anticipated the discovery of the law of gravity, designed the first submarine, and clearly foresaw the aeroplane.

By 1474 Columbus, even then planning his historic voyage, was assured by the great Italian geographer, Pablo Toscanelli, that his intentions were sound: The voyage you wish to undertake is not as difficult as people think; on the contrary, the ships course is certain...