WEEK 1
A Small Palace, by Jamaica Kincaid
Basic gist: This is a very powerful and opinionated book. It’s basically a long rant where Kincaid bashes tourists, the damn English, and the corrupt government of her homeland, Antigua.
P 1 – 19
Jamaica writes about the naivety of the tourist. He does not think at all about the native Antiguans, and not about things like where their sewage ends up (not far into the ocean) or the terrible corruption in the government. All the tourist thinks about is getting away from his own boredom and seeing the beauty of the island, not the bad parts. The natives hate tourists because they envy them; they too would like to get away but they are too poor.
P 23 – 37
Jamaica writes about how England completely screwed them over in the past, which causes lasting problems up to the present. A bank which still exists in Antigua today, called Barclays Bank, was started by two brothers in the slave trade. Jamaica hates the fact that she went to school named after the Princess of England and how she speaks English, the language of Antigua’s oppressor. She speaks of a specific example involving the Mill Reef Club, a club which was started by wealthy Europeans that used to exclude black from membership. She is disturbed by the fact that when she was young almost all of the servants there are black. Finally, she has beef with capitalism, and how blacks were used in the past as capital only to make the white rich.
P 41 – 74
Jamaica starts off with how her beloved library ruined in an earthquake still has yet to be repaired because the government is so corrupted. Next, she explains that Antiguans have no culture because of their unfortunate history with the British. She then writes of how the nature of the island (which is just 12 miles by 9 miles) makes it so people blow up every event. She writes how people on the island are naïve to the happenings around them and validity of an event. This explains the fact of how the Prime Minister can get away with the largest prostitution house on the island, and how “a minister is involved in drug trafficking.” The rest of the chapter gets into her problems with specific government issues….goes a little off track for our purposes.
P 79 – 81
Antigua is too beautiful for its own good. The slave/slave-master role is still present in Antigua; however, once a master gives up his “yoke” he is no longer a master, just as a slave is no longer a slave. In essence, all of us are “just human beings.”
WEEK 2
ROGOZINSI
Chapter 1: The Enduring Environment and the First Islanders
- Physical
- Greater Antilles – Cuba, Jamaica, Hispanola, Puerto Rico
- Lesser Antilles – arc from Virgin Islands to Grenada
- Outer Lesser Antilles much lower than inner (ones closer to Central America)
- Trinidad, Tobago, Aruba, Bonaire, Curaco form another group
- Except Bahamas, all represent the peaks of underwater mountain ranges (some volcanic)
- Weather
- Tropical climate due to prevailing (trade) winds
- Daily variations in temperature (up to 15 degrees) more marked than seasonal/monthly
- Currents and winds run roughly clockwise from S to N, and from E to W (Central American coast) and back E (across the Gulf back to the Atlantic)
- Hurricanes common in late summer, with potentially devastating results (Hugo in 1980)
- Environment
- Tropical environment perfectly suited to year-round agriculture
- Erosion a major problem – both natural and chemical
- Tropical and seasonal rainforests (>50 inches rain/yr)
- Some dry forest and savannah, very limited cactus scrub (Venezuelan islands and Bahamas) and mangrove swamps
- Pre-Columbian period – small animal population, centralized in Trinidad (proximity to the mainland)
- Early tribes – Arawak and Taino (see lecture notes, 9/23)
- Major local diseases
- Malaria – mosquito transmitted
- Yellow fever – mosquito transmitted
- Up until late 1800s, high mortality rates for Europeans – up to 20-30%, localized incidents much higher
- Sanitation advances and modern medicine significantly reduces risk today
Chapter 2: Discovery of the Islands
- Columbus – Spanish claims to most of the region, royal grant
- Poor management, single-minded focus on gold disrupts local economies
- Crown rule
- Encomienda system – Indian slavery – quickly fails b/c of resistance and high mortality rates
- Hispanola as center of settlement – eventual exploration of the rest of the Greater Antilles
- Shift in Spanish focus to Central and South America, along with loss of labor
Chapter 3: Pirates Fight for Spanish Gold
- Challenges to Spanish Hegemony
- New focus on Central Americas; exhaustion of Caribbean gold and silver deposits
- Piracy
- Organized challenges -- French and British
- Pirates
- Sponsored by nations seeking portions of Spanish take; in the context of European wars of the 16th century
- Norman French corsairs – sponsored by government before peace, continued afterwards as weak French government unable to control them
- Spanish convoy system as response – two fleets, one April, one August, armed guards – armada
- British piracy becomes big business – Sir Francis Drake’s big hauls, attacks on Spanish fortifications
- The Dutch get into the act – c. 1600
- Lull from about 1606-1620 – European peace, then picks up with tobacco ban
Chapter 4: Spain’s Caribbean Colonies
- Government
- Council of the Indies – theoretical absolute authority until abolished (1834)
- Casa de Contratacion (Seville) – overall supervision, economic jurisdiction
- Audencia in Santo Domingo
- Town councils (extends beyond urban centers)
- Juridical rather than political – no “separation of powers”
- Economy
- Growth constricted by convoy system – powerful merchant guilds, inflated prices for goods, eventual failure
- Yet no free trade till 1765
- Natural Resources
- Metals major focus – non-perishable, non-manufacturable
- Cattle ranching – interior of islands, esp Cuba, Hispanola
- Sugar introduced – ideal environment, labor-intensive process leads to…
- Slave Trade
- From individual Crown licenses to asiento – centralized “distribution” of slaves from Cartanega
- Both sugar and slave trade for Spanish dies down after 1600
- New Centers
- Havana – control of Bahama Channel route to Gulf Stream, deep and secure port, effectively became capital of Cuba
- Expansion through Hispanola, Puerto Rico, and Jamaica
- French gain control of western third of Hispanola – now Haiti
- Puerto Rico largely abandoned after 1600
- Jamaica largely escaped Crown control – Columbus’ family controlled, absenteeism besides taxes, no real contact with Spanish crown
- Trinidad neglected with founding of new trade routes
Chapter 5: The Dutch Empire
- Northern Europeans focus first on uncolonized outer islands (Lesser Antilles)
- Limited role for government initially
- Influence of pirates/piracy; chartered explorers
- Dutch provide cover for the rest of Europe with assaults on Spanish and Portuguese trading
- Dutch West India Company – traders and raiders
- Overwhelmed traditional trade sources
- Largely abandoned by 1648
Chapter 6: Settlement of the Lesser Antilles
- Tobacco and Sugar as driving forces
- Tobacco overwhelmed by continental American supply
- British in the Lesser Antilles
- St. Kitts – pirate berthing
- Barbados – early sugar boom once introduced by Dutch traders, early reliance on indentured servants, then slaves
- Brief semi-independence during English Civil War – free trade
- Navigation Acts – mercantilist, exclusionary, meant to hit the Dutch
- required importation of items to Britain to be on British vessels; imports to colonies from Europe on English, colonial, or country of origin
- Settlement of the other Leewards – Nevis, Antigua, Montserrat, later Virgin Islands, Anguilla
- French in Lesser Antilles
- St. Christophe, then Guadeloupe and Martinique
- Proprietary control until 1661, when Louis XIV assumes royal control – Jean-Baptiste Colbert’s role
- French and British both confront internal organizational struggles and continuing Carib resistance
- Virgin Islands
- British, French, Dutch, Danish all exercise control over some portion at some point
Chapter 7: Buccaneers of Jamaica, Saint-Domingue, and the Bahamas
- “classic” pirates (Pirates of the Caribbean-style)
- Hispanola and Jamaica as perfect bases – lots of small natural harbors, proximity, size precluded effective government control of the interior of the islands
- Cromwell’s Western Design – get all of Caribbean, end up with Jamaica from the Spanish (1640s) – more an afterthought after initial assaults failed
- Eventually drove out Spanish; Maroons (escaped slaves) to interior of country
- slow population growth at first, but early on (by 1673) majority-African slave population
- Planters gain control over local government during Restoration period in Britain– transition to classic planter economy, if not yet plantation slavery
- The Bahamas
- Puritan minority population through much of 1600s
- Agriculture doesn’t work here, but strategic position makes holding them advantageous – control of the other end of the Florida-Cuba passage
- Tortega – pirates haven
- Pirate Society in the Caribbean
- Tortuga– base for pirate raids
- D’Ogeron – brings what is now Haiti under French crown rule – no Spanish challenge b/c of limited population, mountainous terrain in middle
- Limited success in corralling pirates from Tortuga
- Pirates move to Port Royal, Jamaica – government shares in profits, gains a measure of protection
Chapter 8: Wars and Piracy, 1665-1720
- Post-1665 – Britain and France split, Spanish in decline
- Wholly destructive for islanders – destruction of rival crops in time, stealing slaves
- Both governments send men-of-war to aid colonists
- Second Dutch War (1665-1667)
- British merchants seek to wipe out Dutch competition
- French pillage the Leeward isles
- Henry Morgan and the Port Royal Buccaneers – defeats Dutch, then takes his fleet raiding up the Central American coast
- 1692 – Port Royal sunk in earthquake, most buccaneers to Bahamas (again) for refuge
- Treaty of Breda (1667) – cessation of hostilities, all colonies back to prewar owners except Tobago to France from Netherlands – end of Dutch ambitions
- Third Dutch War (1672-1678)
- Again, attempt to thwart Dutch shipping dominance – France and Britain at beginning, British drop out
- By end of war, Tobago firmly held (but not settled) by French, and Dutch pull out of Caribbean trading
- Saint-Domingue
- Refuge for many pirates excluded from Port Royal by British
- Plundering of Spanish along Central American coast continues
- Nine Years War (1688-1697)
- England, Holland, Spain v. France
- Both sides skirmish across the Caribbean again, French enlist pirates, English make move to expel French from Leewards (unsuccessful)
- War reaches the Greater Antilles – Jamaica pillaged by French
- French raid and then buccaneers sack Cartagena, where the Spanish had been collecting gold and silver before shipment back to Europe
- Marks final “organized” pirate raid
- Return to pre-hostility situation with French control of Saint-Domingue
- War of the Spanish Succession (1702-1714)
- British, Dutch, Austria seek to prevent uniting of French and Spanish Empires; British seek entry to Spanish markets, esp. the asiento (slave import contract)
- Again, only British and French skirmish in Caribbean
- Antiguan rebellion – eventually put down
- Buccaneer Republic in Bahamas – Robinson Crusoe
- New Providence Puritan settlement destroyed by joint French-Spanish force, leaving Bahamas to the buccaneers
- By 1718, new royal governor begins to crack down – Woodes Rodgers
BRANDON
Santeria: From Africa to the New World, pp. 37-52
I. Cuba originally was inhabited by the Ciboney
A. Spain enticed Spaniards to settle in Cuba through perks
II. Imposed Roman Catholicism to unify Spain
A. Queen Isabella instituted through 1492 and 1502 declarations
B. Offered Muslims and Jews conversion or exile
III. Spanish conquest culture imposed on Cuba
A. Spanish believed their way of life was best
B. Members of Spain’s aristocracy traveled to Cuba
C. African and ladino slaves brought to Cuba
1. ladino: Christianized, Spanish-speaking blacks and/or mulattoes, slave, or free
2. ladinos helped rebellions in Caribbean
a. Spanish then solely used slaves straight from Africa
IV. Creole culture emerged
A. Cultural intersystem
1. drew from European, Islamic, and African sources
V. Rise of tobacco and beeswax production brought more slaves (up to 1 million)
A. Later coffee and, especially, sugar needed more labor to cultivate
VI. Spanish imported Catholicism to Cuba
A. Basic cult: seven sacraments
B. Specialized cults: personages
1. folk legends of saints arose
2. saints were worshipped and believed to be miraculously powerful
3. towns adopted patron saints for “protection”
VII. Plantations were “Christened” in a religious ceremony including godparents
A. Cross and sword union: soldiers took part in religious services with the female
aristocracy
Irving Rouse
The Tainos: Rise and Decline of the People Who Greeted Columbus
Pages 1-25
I. The West Indian Islands form a “y”
A. bordered by Atlantic Ocean, Caribbean Sea, Gulf of Mexico
B. Lesser Antilles: islands from Trinidad and Tobago to Virgin Islands
C. Greater Antilles: Puerto Rico, Hispanola, Jamaica, and Cuba
D. Bahamian Archipelago
E. South and North Equatorial currents combine to form the Gulf Stream
F. Very tropical with fertile soil, abundant rain, and various fruits and vegetables
II. The Tainos
A. Inhabited the Bahamas, Northern Lesser Antilles, and all of the Greater Antilles except Western Cuba
B. Tainos identified themselves not collectively, but by island (i.e. Borinquen of Puerto Rico)
C. Tainos of Hispanola and Puerto Rico were the more populated and culturally advanced
- Identified as “Classic Tainos”
- Columbus found permanent villages governed by a chief or cacique
- Had system of village/regional organization
- Mined gold
- Trained various skilled artisans
- Mounded agricultural fields called conucos
- Cultivated cassava, sweet potato, and corn among other crops
- religion centered around deity worship (zemis)
- Yucahu-god of cassave and the sea
- Atabey-Yucahu’s mother, goddess of fresh water and human fertility
- Went through personal purification before worship/sacrifice
- Shamans (bohuti) cured the sick
- played games, had celebrations around their central plaza
- frequently traveled by sea
- males/females held equal standing
- lineage traced through mother
- polygamy, trade, and in-fighting were widespread
D. Western and Eastern Tainos
- Jamaica, central Cuba, and Bahamas
- Large villages, except in Bahamas
- Jamaicans were heavily ornamented
- Western Tainos more peaceful, Easter Tainos more hostile
- Columbus felt the Taions were less civilzed than the Asians he expected to find
- Neighbored the Guanahatabeys and Island-Caribs
- Little cultural interaction
Pages 138-172