A General History of the Caribbean

When one undertakes an historical study, any success in the undertaking is

arguably predicated on an understanding of the subject to be studied. Knowing
the culture of a given people or region, the geography and climate of its
habitation, the attitudes of the people and their current political comportment
all of these breathe life into the subject. It is this deepening familiarization that
gives life to the historical figures and events of that subject.
Perhaps nowhere is this preliminary requirement more necessary than when
undertaking an historical study of the Caribbeanislands. This archipelago of fifty
small to moderate sized inhabited units that span a coarse 2,500 mile arc above
the north side of Central and South America represent a very similar and yet very
diverse group of people and cultures. Sharing a common climate, they contain a
variety of terrain. Subjected to European invasion and conquest, then populated
involuntarily by black African slaves under an oppressively dominating plantation
system, the dissimilar timing of these very common circumstances lead to a
curious variety of cultures. Conversely, the many languages spoken and the
several cultural manifestations that are apparent in this region do not obliterate
an essentially consistent ambience, a common rhythm that is unmistakably
Caribbean. It is this contradiction, this sameness and yet difference, that makes
a vigorous introductory approach such a compelling and, in itself, such a
diversified component of this historical study.
Even more important than the natural lure of anthropological or sociological
considerations in their own right is the insufficiency of chronological political
events alone to frame a general history of the Caribbean. Unlike many regions
that experience clear, defining events and forces in a more or less cohesive
fashion, periodization is difficult to construct for Caribbean history. Some pivotal
events were confined to the particular island on which they occurred, while
others had a regional impact. Furthermore, these latter sometimes did so with
the uneven yet certain rhythm of the waves that come across the sea to lap the
shores of the receptive neighboring island. This tendency yields a certain
proclivity towards eclectic explanatory approaches.
Three different yet mutually supportive approaches illustrate the utility of this
eclecticism. The Caribbeanist Sidney Mintz employs the analytical approach of a
social scientist to identify conditions of common description in his article "the
Caribbean as a Socio-Cultural Area". Antonio Benitez-Rojo injects a decidedly
cultural emphasis to his historical narrative of the region in his chapter "From the
plantation to the Plantation", taken from his book The Repeating Island. And
Michelle Cliff weaves a story of emerging adolescence in Jamaica during the late
1950s with a parallel story of relevant historical memories in almost stream-ofconsciousness manner in her novel Abeng. Cliff offers some autobiographical
insights as well in the recollections, both childhood and adult, in her article "If I
Could Write This in Fire, I Would Write This in Fire".
The Plantation
In all these approaches, the plantation is identified as a central ingredient in

defining the cultural development of the Caribbean. In Michelle Cliffs novel, the
ongoing importance of its place in Jamaican history is demonstrated in Clares
visit to her ancestral compound. One hundred years after the emancipation and
no longer owned by the Savage family, the great house stood as a ramshackle
relic of a past enterprise.
Having ancestors from both the slave and master class, the feelings generated
by this visit are mixed for this young mulatto girl. The faded wallpaper depicting
scenes of an equally fading British upper middle class gentility and its notions of
aristocratic grandeur contrast with the harsh image of the burned down and once
squalid quarters of the enslaved black laborers. Clares father engaged in a
running monologue about the refinement in furnishings that once adorned this
room or that, while Clare visualized the brutal treatment that had once taken
place in the outbuildings. This aroused in Clare deep consternation, for the great
house was a part of her as well as Jamaicas identity.
It was for her "(d)ingy and mindful of the past. Both the source of her and not
the source of her. The house carried over to her a sense of great disappointment
maybe a great sadness. It was a dry and dusty place not a place of dreams
She had had expectations of the great houseNow she wished that the fire
(that Justice Savage had set) in the canefields would spread to the house and
that it would burn to the ground. She didnt need the house, now she had seen it.
If it burned, only the stories she knew would be left." (Abeng, p37)
This visit to the great house is interwoven in the novel with the recalled story of
Inez, the involuntary concubine of the former plantation owner and Clares
ancestor, Justice Savage. The connection between the two stories is multifaceted
and symbolic. The fire that engulfed the fields marks a passionate reaction to
emancipation, is simultaneous with the escape of Inez, and demarcates the
onset of poetic justice in the reversal of the Savage family fortunes.
As powerful as this literary device is, it cannot be regarded as any sort of
overstatement of the ongoing impact of the plantation. Nor is this a condition
found exclusively in Jamaica, but is evident throughout the Caribbean. Sidney
Mintz, in the course of describing nine major features of Caribbean regional
commonality, declares the establishment of the plantation system as salient in
its overarching impact. The plantation system was not only an agricultural
device, according to Mintz, but became the actual basis for society there. It also
became completely dominant on the islands where it matured. "The inability of
freemen to compete in any local sphere with slave labor complimented and
intensified a sort of manorial self-sufficiency in plantation areas, sharply
inhibiting the development of occupationally diverse communities of freemen in
the same region." (Mintz, p27) This tended to inhibit cultural development of any
kind outside of the strict regimen of the sugar plantation.
The thrust of, and indeed, the very title of Antonio Benitez-Rojos chapter "From
the plantation to the Plantation" speaks to the very primacy of this institution as
a defining development in the Caribbean. He describes the onset of the smallscale experiment as undertaken by the Spanish in Hispanola, the plantation,
being the model for subsequent refinement and development. This first series of
establishments, controlled as they were by the Spanish monarchy, did not cover

entire islands or completely overwhelm the emergence of creole culture and

alternative economic activity, much to the chagrin of the colonial officials. The
mature, pervasive Plantation system, as established by the British, French, and
Dutch in the 17th century, serving the larger and growing European market for
tropical produce, fashioned an overwhelming structure that either precluded or
arrested cultural growth. "In plantation conditions, in spite of the enormous
percentages reached by the number of slaves in relation to the total population,
the African was reduced to living under an incarcerating regimen of forced labor,
which stood in the way of his being able to exert a cultural influence upon the
European and creole population." (Rojo, p70)
The Legacy of Slavery
Connected to the institution of the plantation was its source of labor, which was
the institution of slavery. It is this involuntary installation of Africans on the
Caribbean islands that substantially composes the regions population. And it is
the power of present effect that makes past slavery such an important factor in
understanding the Caribbean. A system in which a few white plantation owners
had absolute control over a far greater number of African slaves set into motion
a caste system, the impact of which extended and extends far beyond
emancipation. Its monumental impact can best be understood in relation to its
huge demographic accomplishment. "Antillean slavery constituted one of the
greatest phenomena in world history." (Mintz, p25)
"There was no cash compensation for the people who had labored under slavery.
No tracts of land for them to farm. No employment for the most part. No literacy
programs. No money to book passage back to Africa. Their enslavement had
become an inconvenience - ad now it was removed. All the forces which worked
to keep these people slaves now worked to keep them poor. And poor most of
them remained." (Abeng, p28)
Not only does this legacy have an economic component, which can be overcome
in time and by succeeding generations of frugality and sacrifice, but also a social
stigma component as well. Centuries of distinction made along racial lines,
where darkness denotes inferiority, made an indelible imprint on all members of
society. The introduction of mulatto members merely transformed the distinction
from a bipolar one to a spectrum, that is to say, differentiation by degree. "Under
this system, light and dark people will meet in those ways in which the lightskinned person imitates the oppressor. But the imitation goes only so far: the
light-skinned person becomes the oppressor in fact." (Fire, p368)
It cannot be overstated the ways in which arbitrary presuppositions of superiority
and inferiority along racial lines maintain themselves. Even children, whose
innocence generally renders them immune to such matters as class and rank,
quickly become inculcated to such distinctions in the subtlest ways. Cliff alludes
to this in describing the friendship of the light-skinned Clare and the darkskinned Zoe. "This was a friendship a pairing of two girls kept only on school
vacations, and because of their games and make-believe might have seemed to
some entirely removed from what was real in the girls lives. Their lives of light
and dark which was the one overwhelming reality." (Abeng, p95)

The stubborn persistence of differential treatment based on degree of apparent

African ancestry seems rather remarkable given the substantial percentage of
people of obviously African decent throughout the Caribbean. Mintz explains that
an active program to prohibit any meaningful cultural development within the
community of imported African laborers was a principle element in the design of
the sugar machine. He declares that "the formation of any cultural integrity
always lagged behind the perpetuation of traditional bipolar social and economic
structures, usually established relatively early in the period of settlement of each
territory." (Mintz, p37)
A Diverse Archipelago
The preceding comments regarding the importance of the plantation and slavery
to Caribbean identity may seem to suggest a homogenizing affect which would
certainly be no more evident to a traveler to the region than it would be to its
residents. Naturally, a certain difference would exist owing to the language of the
occupying colonial power. The spoken French in Haiti, the English in Jamaica,
Barbados, and Trinidad, and the Spanish in Cuba and Puerto Rico, are all obvious
distinctions at the surface. Also, an islands size and soil, as various as they are,
certainly did determine whether and to what degree sugar or any other
plantation would be established, and to what extent it would saturate the
available landmass. The unifying categorization that Sidney Mintz, at the outset,
makes clear that each islands particular geography dictated its suitability to
plantation development.
Probably the most important determinant in cultural variation is the relationship
between the European conquest of a given island in relation to the onset of a
mature plantation system. The rapid introduction of large-scale plantation
enterprise soon after acquisition is a model followed by the British and Dutch and
as well to a certain extent by the French. Mintz points out that the Hispanic
colonies deviated to some extent from this model. Here, Europeans or Creoles
always outnumbered slaves, with settlement patterns established centuries
before large-scale plantation developments were underway. Augmenting this
paradigm, Rojo concludes that, even to the extent that slaves composed a given
islands population "the Negro slave who arrived at a Caribbean colony before
the plantation was organized contributed much more toward Africanizing the
Creole culture than did the one who came within the great shipments typical of
the plantation in its heyday." (Rojo, p70)
Even among the more monotonous models of British plantation construction,
differences in the relative dates of acquisition had some effect on the attainment
of critical mass, and therefore on the resulting cultural consequences, as
Barbados, Jamaica, and Trinidad bear witness to. More textured is the various
responses to any alternative economic enterprise that may have emerged in the
more creolized Hispanic colonies. The 16th century development of a vibrant
Creole economy in leather on the northwest side of the island of Hispanola
represented a potentially more lucrative activity than did Spains dwindling
agriculture near Santo Domingo. Situated as it was outside of the Casa de
Contratacion, the enterprise of this banda norte was subjected to devastation by

the colonial officials in 1605-06. According to Rojo, "As a coda to this episode of
the devestations, one would have to add that the colony took centuries to
recover from the adverse economic and social consequences that the incident
produced." (Rojo, p48)
A similar alternative economic development in Cuba at about the same time
produced very different results. Cubas eastern region, just as its nearby
northwest Hispanola neighbor, was engaged in a leather trade of its own, and its
creole practitioners were themselves removed from the official Spanish port of
Havana. Under these circumstances, they too were subject to threat of punitive
sanction. Here, however, a fortuitous avenging of a mediating bishops
kidnapping gained this renegade community a reprieve and allowed it to
continue its activities unmolested. "The regions inhabitants continued to
smuggle more than ever, and the type of society generated by the leather
economy lasted until the beginning of the nineteenth century. Its complex
cultural forms also endured and, sometimes withdrawing into themselves while
at other times extending outward, they made up a long lasting creole culture."
(Rojo, p51)
Rhythm of the Waves
The common and recognizably Caribbean and simultaneously island-distinct
qualities of the music, style, and cuisine of the region can assuredly provide
ample material for a study of its own. Interesting and less obvious are the
parallel attributes of political developments in the region. Common themes of
emancipation, independence, and economic development animate the
discussion of political direction on each island at some time, but each in its own
unique context while still influenced by others of them. Michelle Cliff has Clare
recall a fleeting image from the car window, unexplained, but a relevant
message for 1958: "CASTRO SI, BATISTA NO. In black paint. In large letters
against the cathedral." (Abeng, p22)
This message would resonate in Jamaica some years later, not in a violent
Communist revolution, but with independence and later with the socialism of
Michael Manley. Same rhythm, but different. And the wave was uneven, for it
would not resonate sufficient to alter the autocratic regime of Papa Doc in
Haiti.
These waves had been undulating back and forth for some time. The Haitian
revolution that resulted in her independence in 1804 sent its waves across the
sea to Jamaica to inspire slave revolts and producing emancipation for its slaves,
but the wave took three decades to achieve its full effect. Curiously, Cuba,
situated between the two, was meanwhile accelerating its slave-driven sugar
plantation and did not absorb that rhythm for still another half century.
The eclectic examinations of a diverse and yet similar group of people and the
islands on which they dwell help capture the essence of a most curiously
heterogeneous accumulation of cultures that share a common sea, a common
climate, and a remarkable history that makes it hard to understand one without
first understanding them all.