The Caribbean—an imperial prelude
Columbus sensed disappointment at what he found, or rather at what he did not find, when he landed in the Caribbean in 1492.1 There were no obvious resources, no highly developed trading nations, no connections to China nor to the Indian spice merchants as he had hoped.
Neither was there a connection to the holy city of Jerusalem.2 Instead he found fever, mosquitoes and slightly built, half-naked humans living in thatched cottages—men and women who had never before heard of Jesus Christ. It was hard for Columbus to accept these facts. He did not tire of asking the Indian fishermen about ‘Cipangu’ (Japan). He stubbornly named the areas he explored ‘Las Indias’ (India) and its inhabitants ‘Indios’ (Indians). In his reports, he turned what seemed a green tropical hell into a flourishing paradise and described the Indians as peaceful and innocent.3 But this land offered nothing of material worth for the Catholic Monarchs who had already expressed doubt about the embellished calculations of Columbus’ plan to reach India by sailing westwards.Because Columbus, under no circumstances, wanted to return to Spain with empty hands, he amassed what he could. He tried to collect gold by any possible means, as presents from local people, by trade, by robbery, or through blackmail. He also captured Indians whom he intended to sell as slaves back in Spain. King Ferdinand II of Aragon accepted the gold with thanks, but his wife Queen Isabella was concerned by the treatment of the Indians, who had been described to her as so well behaved and innocent, and the proposal to augment the sparse booty through selling Indian slaves was rejected by the monarchs.4 Columbus, by this time already appointed ‘Admiral of the Ocean Sea’ and viceroy of all of the lands he discovered, followed instructions not to transport any further Indians to Spain as potential slaves.
However, this did not keep Columbus from enslaving Indians in the Caribbean on his own initiative, using as an excuse the argument that the indigenous islanders were cannibals.5 (The term indeed derives from the Carib people, cambales in Spanish, and the name was given to the Caribbean Sea at the time of the slaving raids carried out by Columbus.)Along with his nearest male relatives, Columbus gradually built an island kingdom in the Caribbean to which he attracted more and more Spaniards through baseless exaggerations of its potential. The Spaniards did not go to America to become hard-working farmers but rather with the expectation of becoming rich in no time and without great effort. Each Spaniard crossing the ocean felt, no matter who he had been before, that he was now an hidalgo, a nobleman. To keep his settlers content, Columbus assigned to them Indians required to work and produce supplies for the Spaniards, and to deliver gold tribute to them. The encomienda system in practice was not very unlike slavery.6
The first settlements nevertheless failed because Columbus chose inappropriate places for his colonies. Many Spaniards and even more Indians died, especially because the Spaniards brought germs from the Old World to which the inhabitants of the New World were not immune; and within a few decades the Indian population of the Caribbean was largely exterminated. The brutal and rapid conquest and exploitation of the islands caused protests by some Dominican friars,7 but in 1504 Queen Isabella died, and her husband, King Ferdinand II, had a particular interest in gold that he could now pursue without hindrance.
The last act of the Caribbean drama was the conquest of Cuba in 1510.8 Led by Diego Velazquez, the Indians were driven from east to west over the 1,250 kilometre- long island by fighting dogs and firearms, and systematically conquered or killed if they resisted. The name and fate of one indigenous Taino chieftain named Hatuey are known. He had already suffered painful experiences under the Spaniards on the island of Hispaniola, escaping to Cuba, where he organised opposition against the conquistadors. But there he was caught and burned alive. Already on the stake, Hatuey was asked by a Franciscan if he wished to convert to Christianity so that he would go to heaven instead of hell. Before giving his answer, Hatuey wished to know whether the Spaniards would go to heaven as well. When the priest replied that they would, Hatuey answered that he would not convert because he did not want to go anywhere that the Spaniards went.9