While the Indian Ocean was primarily dominated by two powers, the Caribbean – the
fi rst site of extensive European colonialism outside of Europe – was contested by many.
Columbus claimed the entire area for Spain, but many islands had only small, weakly defended
settlements. By the middle of the sixteenth century English and French ships began
to smuggle all types of goods to Spanish settlements, and English and French privateers
attacked Spanish ships. The religious wars in the sixteenth century gave Protestant
captains an excuse to engage in more formal attacks on Catholic Spanish settlements,
though often these were ruses; captains threatened, Spanish governors acquiesced, and
then both sides engaged in trade. After 1610 or so such “attacks” grew less frequent, and
smugglers went back to work, their jobs made easier by the establishment of Caribbean
colonies by many nations, which shortened smuggling routes and enhanced opportunities
to make a profi t from contraband goods or differential tariff policies.
During the seventeenth century, England, France, the Netherlands, Denmark, and even
the tiny Baltic duchy of Courland (in present-day Latvia) all established their own colonies
or took over Spanish colonies on the Caribbean islands and the north coast of South
America. Often two countries set up tiny rival colonies on the same island, which were
easily – and often – destroyed by hostile forces. The sovereignty of many colonies changed
frequently; the tiny island of Sint Maarten/St. Martin, for example, changed hands at least
sixteen times before it was fi nally divided between the Dutch and the French.
The earliest challenges to Spanish control came on the north coast of South America,
where England, France, and the Netherlands all established settlements where they hoped
to grow tropical crops for export and provide safe havens for ships from their own country.
From these bases, military expeditions to take over the highly profi table Portuguese
settlements in Brazil were launched. Several French invasions failed, but in 1630 Dutch
troops conquered the northeastern part of Brazil, and continued to expand their holdings
southward. At the time Portugal and its empire were ruled by the Habsburg kings of
Spain, and the Netherlands was engaged in its long fi ght against Habsburg domination
which ended with the Thirty Years War. Thus military actions in Brazil were motivated
in part by Dutch aims in Europe, as well as the fi nancial opportunities offered by Brazilian
sugar plantations. Spanish troops were busy fi ghting in Europe, so few could be sent,
and the Dutch conquered much of Brazil. After the successful Portuguese revolt against
Spain in 1640, local Portuguese settlers rebelled against the Dutch, and Brazil reverted to
Portugal in 1654. The Dutch then established larger settlements further north, and also
captured the English colony of Surinam, later known as Dutch Guiana, which became
the largest Dutch colony in the Americas by 1800.
As in Brazil and many Caribbean islands, Surinam’s prosperity rested on sugar
planted and harvested by slaves; by 1800, more than 90 percent of the population of the
colony consisted of enslaved Africans. Much of the area was low-lying coastal plains,
like the Netherlands itself. Using skills they had perfected in Europe, Dutch engineers
directed slave labor in massive drainage projects that increased the total amount of
cultivable land signifi cantly. Landowners then oversaw the planting of cotton, coffee,
and cacao along with sugar. Many of these goods passed through the port established
by the Dutch on the small island of Curaçao, on their way to the Netherlands and
then the rest of Europe. As Batavia was in the East Indies, Curaçao became a center for
ship-building and ship repair in the West Indies, and a place where sailors could fi nd
captains who needed crew.
Dutch activities in the Americas began as a series of independent ventures, but in
1621 a West Indian Company (WIC) modeled on the already very successful VOC was
chartered by the States General, and given monopoly trading privileges and the right
to act as a government. Because the Netherlands was at war with Spain at the time,
the WIC also had a clear military mission, which made investors hesitant to risk their
money. WIC ships did capture the Spanish silver fl eet once, and shareholders got a
50 percent dividend that year, but in general the WIC was a fi nancial disaster. It was
never able to gain a monopoly on sugar the way the VOC did on spices, and it was unable
to control the activities of private merchants, not even those who were Dutch. Despite
a huge payment from the VOC enforced by the Dutch government, the WIC went
bankrupt in 1674. It was reorganized with new directors, but no longer had military
forces or an offi cial monopoly on anything, becoming instead simply the administrator
of Dutch colonies in the Americas.
VOC-run colonies in the East Indies operated very effi ciently with only a small
Dutch population, but the WIC’s fi nancial diffi culties led many in the Netherlands to
suggest that increasing the number of Dutch settlers might be a way to make American
colonies more profi table, or at least allow them to survive. The WIC granted what were
termed patroonships to individuals; patroons got economic and juridical rights over a
piece of land, and in return they were expected to bring in settlers. Thus many Dutch
colonies were largely in private hands, though this system never accomplished its original
aim of attracting more settlers.
The fi rst French colony in this area, Cayenne (later called French Guiana), was established
in 1604 on the mainland, but it never became very important economically. The
core of French holdings, and France’s most important overseas settlements, were islands
in the Caribbean, some taken from indigenous Caribs, some from the Spanish, and
some that had been largely unpopulated. Among these was the western coast of the large
Spanish-held island of Santo Domingo. Spanish colonists had brought in cattle, some of
which escaped and, as in Argentina, multiplied into large herds. Like any abundant natural
resource, these cattle attracted people seeking to exploit an opportunity, in this case
men who lived by selling leather and meat smoked on wooden frames called boucans
to the many ships that passed by. These settlements of boucaniers , or buccaneers as they
came to be known in English, were lawless and violent places where men – and a very
few women – of varying ethnic backgrounds mixed. In the later seventeenth century,
the French began to exert some control over this western part of Santo Domingo, giving
it the equivalent French name of Saint-Domingue. They slowly transformed Saint-
Domingue – which later became Haiti – into the most profi table slave plantation colony
in the Caribbean. Wealthy planters established huge plantations with several hundred
slaves, irrigation systems, and new types of processing machinery.
Other French holdings in the Caribbean experienced a similar transformation. In
the middle of the seventeenth century farms worked primarily by white indentured
servants grew tobacco, with the colonies themselves poorly run by a series of shortlived
chartered companies. Indentured servants were young men, often quite poor, who
worked a set period of years for a landowner in exchange for their passage; their terms
of service were often set by a contract. (The word “indentured,” meaning “toothed,”
comes from the fact that the edges of a contract written in duplicate on one sheet,
were then torn or cut in an uneven jagged pattern; each party was given half the sheet,
so that only authentic contracts could be fi tted back together properly.) They were, at
least in theory, protected from overexploitation by the local legal authorities.
By the end of the century, however, large plantations worked by enslaved Africans had
been established on many islands. Former indentured servants remained as overseers,
went back to France, drifted into other sorts of employment, or a lucky few became
large landowners themselves. Within a century these colonies produced half of Europe’s
sugar and coffee, allowing France to maintain a favorable balance of trade, and spurring
production in France of certain types of goods for the colonies, especially cloth. That
cloth supplied clothing for the Africans who were brought into Saint-Domingue in such
numbers that France became the second-largest slave-trading nation after Britain. The
French military took over direct control of the colonies from the chartered companies.
Colonists were expected to serve in militias, a task they resented and often avoided, and
were expected to send all their products to France, a task they also often avoided by
smuggling goods directly to other colonies or to Britain or the Netherlands.
Louis XIV’s desire for centralized control extended to the Caribbean, and in 1685 he
issued the Code Noir (“Black Code”), which among its many provisions prohibited
Jews from living in French colonies, forbade the practice of any religion other than
Roman Catholicism, regulated relations between masters and slaves, and declared that
the legal status of children would follow that of their mother, not their father. (Later in
the same year Louis extended the religious clauses to France itself, revoking the Edict of
Nantes and outlawing Protestantism.) Many of its provisions were regularly ignored,
however, as slaves were undernourished and tortured, and masters refused to baptize
their slaves or teach them Christianity.
The Code Noir set harsh punishments for slaves who ran away, but allowed people
over the age of twenty to free slaves that they owned. Some slaves were manumitted,
especially women who were the sexual partners of white men, along with their children,
and slowly the population of free black and mixed-race people grew. Estimates of
the population of the French Caribbean in 1789 include about 56,000 whites, perhaps
as many as 700,000 slaves, and 23,000 free blacks and persons of mixed ancestry. Some
of these “free people of color,” as they came to be known, became increasingly wealthy,
owning property and slaves. They also wore French clothing, purchased French furniture,
and adopted other aspects of French culture, a process white colonists disparagingly
called francisation , sometimes translated as “Frenchifi cation.” Offi cials increasingly
regarded free people of color with suspicion, and in the later eighteenth century
passed restrictive laws regarding their economic and legal position.
SOURCE 36 The Code Noir
Louis XIV issued the extensive Code Noir in March
of 1685, and two years later it was offi cially
registered in Saint-Domingue. The prologue
captures Louis’s understanding of his role as
monarch.
Louis, by the grace of God, King of France
and Navarre, to all present and to come,
greetings. Since we [Louis is speaking in the
royal “we” here] owe equally our attention
to all the peoples that Divine Providence
has put under our obedience, we have had
examined in our presence the memoranda
that have been sent to us by our offi cers in
our American islands, by whom having been
informed that they need our authority and
our justice to maintain the discipline of the
Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman church there
and to regulate the status and condition of
the slaves in our said islands, and desiring
to provide for this and to have them know
that although they live in regions infi nitely
removed from our normal residence, we are
always present to them … we say, rule, order,
and wish that which follows.
I We wish and intend that the edict by the late
King of glorious memory our very honored
lord and father of 23 April 1615 be enforced
in our islands, by this we charge all our offi
cers to evict from our Islands all the Jews
who have established their residence there,
to whom, as to the declared enemies of the
Christian name, we order to have left within
three months from the day of the publication
of these present [edicts], or face confi scation
of body and property.
II All the slaves who will be in our Islands will
be baptized and instructed in the Catholic,
Apostolic, and Roman religion …
III We forbid any public exercise of any religion
other than the Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman;
we wish that the offenders be punished
as rebels and disobedient to our orders…
VI We charge all our subjects, whatever their
status and condition, to observe Sundays
and holidays that are kept by our subjects of
the Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman religion.
We forbid them to work or to make their
slaves work on these days from the hour of
midnight until the other midnight, either in
agriculture, the manufacture of sugar or all
other works …
VIII We declare our subjects who are not of the
Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman religion
incapable in the future of contracting a valid
marriage. We declare bastards the children
born of such unions …
XII The children who will be born of marriage
between slaves will be slaves and will belong
to the master of the women slaves …
XIII We wish that if a slave husband has married
a free woman, the children, both male and
girls, will follow the condition of their mother
and be free like her, in spite of the servitude
of their father; and that if the father is free
and the mother enslaved, the children will be
slaves the same …
XV We forbid slaves to carry any weapon, or
large sticks, on pain of whipping and of
confi scation of the weapon to the profi t of
those who seize them …
XVI In the same way we forbid slaves belonging
to different masters to gather
in the day or night whether claiming for
wedding or otherwise, whether on their
master’s property or elsewhere, and still
less in the main roads or faraway places,
on pain of corporal punishment …
XXII Each week masters will have to furnish
to their slaves ten years old and older for
their nourishment two and a half jars …
of cassava fl our or three cassavas weighing
at least two-and-a-half pounds each
or equivalent things, with two pounds
of salted beef or three pounds of fi sh or
other things in proportion, and to children
after they are weaned to the age of
10 years half of the above supplies …
XXV Each year masters will have to furnish each
slave with two outfi ts of canvas …
XXXIII The slave who will have struck his master
or the wife of his master, his mistress or
their children to bring blood, or in the
face, will be punished with death.
XLII The masters may also, when they believe
that their slaves so deserve, chain them
and have them beaten with rods or straps.
They shall be forbidden however from
torturing them or mutilating any limb, at
the risk of having the slaves confi scated …
XLIII We enjoin our offi cers to criminally prosecute
the masters, or their foremen, who have
killed a slave under their auspices or control,
and to punish the master according to the
circumstances of the atrocity …
LIX We grant to manumitted slaves the same
rights, privileges and liberties enjoyed
by persons born free; desiring that they
merit this acquired liberty and that it
produce in them, both for their persons
and for their property, the same effects
that the good fortune of natural liberty
causes in our other subjects.
(English translation by John D. Garrigus, Jacksonville
University. Printed by permission.)
Like Dutch colonies, many British Caribbean colonies were established during the
Thirty Years War when Spanish troops were busy fi ghting in Europe, and like French
colonies, many fi rst used white indentured servants to raise tobacco or cotton. Changes
in agriculture, the disruptions of the Civil War era, and religious differences led some
people to immigrate voluntarily through indenture contracts, while others were forced
into service. Opponents of Cromwell’s actions in Ireland and Scotland were sometimes
transported to the Caribbean, as were vagrants, debtors, and those found guilty of
minor crimes; servants and other poor people were also occasionally “Barbadosed,” a
slang term for being kidnapped and taken to the colonies.
As in the French Caribbean, the introduction of sugar created a much larger demand
for labor than indenture contracts or even kidnapping could supply, however,
and African slaves, supplied by merchants from many countries, met this need. Sugar
could only be produced profi tably on a large scale, so wealthy planters often bought
out their neighbors, then turned the actual running of the plantation over to those
same individuals or men in their families, now hired as overseers. Many poorer whites
eked out a living through hunting, raising a few crops and animals, fi shing, and doing
the few odd jobs available. The wealthy planters called them “redlegs” because of their
sunburned skin. (The American term “redneck” may also come from the sunburned
skin of poorer whites who worked outdoors in the southern colonies, though an alternative
derivation is the red scarves worn by Scottish opponents of the Church of
England, some of whom emigrated to those same colonies.) Groups of colonists also
moved from one island to another, establishing new colonies or taking over those of
other countries. British troops took part of Spanish Jamaica in 1655, for example, and
a few years later held the whole island; later British Jamaicans established a colony for
timber in the area of Spanish Central America called the Mosquito Coast (now part
of Nicaragua and Honduras). Such actions spurred return raids, with settlements and
plantations burned and slaves captured. Beginning in the 1670s, hundreds of British
colonists from Barbados settled in Carolina, where they built plantations growing rice
and indigo, also using African slave labor.
In the eighteenth century, local confl icts and international disputes continued. The
Seven Years War brought a reshuffl ing of territories between France and Britain, and
the War of American Independence brought further changes. British colonists were
forbidden to trade with the newly independent Americans; though much smuggling
continued, it proved diffi cult to fi nd substitutes for the large amounts of grain that the
American colonies had provided to feed slaves and other Caribbean residents. There
was famine on several islands, sometimes made worse by hurricanes that were common
in the area, and yellow fever killed many immigrants. Wealthy planters and their
families spent more and more time in England, where life was more secure, and there
were far more schools, cafés, clubs, and other institutions of the newly emerging “public
sphere” than were available in the colonies. Despite these problems, however, the
British West Indian “sugar islands” were quite prosperous at the end of the eighteenth
century, and the absentee landlords gathered in London were effective in making sure
that national policies did not interfere with this.
Although the colonies of the Caribbean and northern South America were often at
war with one another, their basic economic and social structures were very similar; most
were based on plantation slavery, or on providing plantation economies with goods
that they needed. African slaves had actually arrived in the Americas as early as 1502,
though there were few in the early decades of colonization, as the Spanish and Portuguese
hoped their labor needs would be met by indigenous peoples. When death due
to disease and exploitation made this impossible, the importation of African slaves increased.
Estimates of the slave trade suggest that about 75,000 slaves left Africa for the
Americas before 1580, and during the same period, around 225,000 people left Europe,
mostly from Spain and Portugal. From 1580 to 1700, the proportions were very different;
estimates vary, but perhaps a million people left Europe for the Americas, while a million
and a half to two million people were taken from Africa. In the eighteenth century,
as the demand for tropical crops increased, the proportion grew even more skewed;
somewhere between two and a half and fi ve million people were taken from Africa,
while less than a million left Europe. Taking all the years of the slave trade together,
around 40 percent of the slaves went to Brazil, another 40 percent to the Caribbean, and
the remaining 20 percent to the rest of the Americas. Somewhere around 4 percent went
to North America, where higher reproductive rates among slaves allowed the maintenance
of the system without a large constant infl ux from Africa.
In the sixteenth century the Portuguese dominated the slave trade, while in the seventeenth
century the Dutch, French, and English joint-stock companies all carved out
set routes and areas in which they were supposed to have a monopoly. As with other
goods, however, slaves were regularly smuggled in and out of islands and ports. Laws
regarding slavery in Spanish, Portuguese, French, and Dutch colonies were, like many
other legal issues, based loosely on Roman law, which allowed slaves to be manumitted
and forbade masters to kill them. Colonies further developed their own codes based on
metropolitan directives and decrees such as Louis XIV’s Code Noir, but also on local
customs and needs. By the eighteenth century, for example, slaves in Spanish America
were allowed to purchase their own freedom through the coartación ; as long as they offered
a fair price, their masters were supposed to free them. Britain had never adopted
Roman law, nor was there much consideration of slavery in common law, so that each
British colony devised its own laws and legal precedents.
Though the Code Noir and other laws regarding slavery set harsh punishments for
slaves who ran away and for anyone who aided them, many did attempt to escape. Most
were probably returned, but runaway slaves, called maroons , formed villages and settlements
in mountains, swamps, jungles, and other frontier areas beyond the reach of
colonial authorities. Some of these communities grew so large that they were the actual
governing power in certain areas, and colonial offi cials occasionally made treaties with
them just as they did with other neighboring states. Maroons were often central fi gures
in slave revolts, which began in the sixteenth century and continued throughout
the time of plantation slavery. Most revolts were brief, local, and small, though a few
spread more widely. Fear of slave revolts was ever present, heightened by sensationalist
stories that spread by word of mouth, letters, and printed accounts of plots uncovered,
weapons gathered, and owners threatened. Fear of revolt was also intensifi ed by simply
looking around, for by the end of the eighteenth century the vast majority of the Caribbean
population, no matter which European state controlled the colony, were slaves
from Africa.
World History
