New World Plantations

ColonialismSlaverySugarcaneTobaccoCottonCoffeeCocoaWorld MarketsMonocultivationCash Crops

Voyages of Exploration • Economics

– Trade (grains, spices, textiles…)– Lack of precious metals– Constantinople 1453

• Geo-Politics– Muslims (Ottoman Turks) pressure in the East and

North Africa– Reconquista

• Religion– Belief that Christendom is shrinking

• Columbus and The West Indies• A New World

Arrival to the Western Hemisphere

Tordesillas & the Doctrine of Discovery

• A World Divided

Pre-Columbian History

• Strong easterly winds and currents made the peopling of the Caribbean easier coming from East to West. That is, most of the people and fauna of pre-Columbian Caribbean came from what is now Venezuela and slowly moved North- West.

• Caribs: Virgin Islands, Lesser Antilles and Northwestern Trinidad.

• Siboney, Northwest tip of Cuba and Hispaniola, were the oldest group in the region and the less sophisticated.

• Arawaks: (Tainos) Inhabited the Bahamas, the Greater Antilles and Trinidad.

They also grew peanuts, peppers, tobacco, yams and corn (maize), beans and squash. They complemented their diet with pineapples and guava and several other fruits that grew in these islands. Fishing and hunting provided protein for their diet (fish, sea-turtle, manatees, shellfish, birds and rodents).

Both the Caribs and Arawaks utilized the Conuco system, which yield great amounts of Yucca which is high in starch and sugar. From this crop they made a flat bread call Cassava, and (at least the Caribs) prepared an alcoholic beverage.

Political OrganizationThe Arawaks divided their land into province-like units called Cacicazgos which were ruled by a Cacique. There were 5-6 of these in Hispaniola and maybe 18 in Puerto Rico. Cacicazgos were divided into districts and these into villages ruled by a headman who had almost absolute power unlike the Cacique who had more of a ceremonial role.Succession was Matrilineal.

Bohios

Cemí

Taíno deity

Ruins of Caparra near San Juan, P.R.

Mining for gold was the first economic enterprise in the Caribbean islands. In 1519, the gold mines were declared depleted in Hispaniola.

As the Caribbean became unprofitable the Spaniards started to look for a way to bypass it and reach Asia. Between 1518-1522, Fernando de Magallanes, sailing under the Spanish flag, circumnavigated the globe through what is known as the Strait of Magallanes (Tierra del Fuego) (modern southern tip of Argentina) and reached the Pacific Ocean, returning through the Cape of Good Hope. But by then America had become profitable as the Spaniards conquered the Aztecs and then the Incas stumbling in the process into a seemingly endless supply of gold and silver. Hernan Cortes’ adventure led to the conquest the vast Empire of the Aztecs or Mexica from the Valley of Mexico in 1521. This conquest and Francisco Pizarro’s conquest of the Quechuas in 1533 (ruled by the Inca) led to the rapid depopulation of the Caribbean, but for the important ports which were fortified, as more and more men went into the mainland to take part of the Conquista and gold and silver rush. The Caribbean was then relegated to serve as a gate to the continental lands and wealth.

Bypassing the Americas

http://www.pbs.org/opb/conquistadors/mexico/adventure1/pop-tenochtitlan.htm

"All about us we saw cities and villages built in the water, their great towers and buildings of masonry rising out of it… When I beheld the scenes around me I thought within myself, this was the garden of the world. And of all the wonders I beheld that day, nothing now remains. All is overthrown and lost." – Bernal Diaz del Castillo, one of Cortes' men in The Conquest of New Spain.

From, http://www.aztec-history.net/tenochtitlan

http://www.uncp.edu/home/rwb

http://www.historycambridge.com/default.asp?contentID=890The Potosi Mines. Engraving by Theodor de Bry. In: Girolamo Benzoni, Historia Americae Sive Novi Orbis, pars sesta, 1596.

http://www.historycambridge.com/default.asp?contentID=890

How were the Spaniards able to subdue such vast empires as the Aztec and Inca ?

Traditional explanations: – the native’s ideological and psychological collapse

brought about by the Spaniards’ cultural, psychological and religious superiority; the Spaniards’ superior weaponry and tactics

– A better understanding of symbolic systems– The Conquistadors’ superior character. – flaws within their respective political system, – misguided war-making abilities – their belief that the Spaniards were gods.

The New School contends that:• the disruption of the agricultural system and thus,

of the food supply was equally important in bringing about the defeat of the natives of the Americas

• moreover, more often than not, the Spaniards would be aided by hundreds of thousands of Indians

• and their opponents would be decimated by diseases brought by the Europeans.

Columbian Exchange and the Atlantic World

Ecological Isolation, Exchange, Mestizos, Mulattoes, Creoles and Criollos, Peninsulares,

Corn, Potatoes and Tomatoes, Slave Trade, The Middle Passage

Atlantic World, 1713, from, http://wwnorton.com/college/history/ralph/resource/atlantic.htm

Settling in the Americas• Part of the Columbian or Atlantic Exchange was

people- not only Europeans came in great numbers but they also removed and or relocated millions of Indians and brought millions of Black African slaves to the Americas.

• Disappearance of the Indians- Introduction of Black African Slaves

• Fray Bartolomé de las Casas and the Black Legend

Spanish Brutality, Theodor de Bry. In: Girolamo Benzoni, Historia Americae Sive Novi Orbis, pars sesta, 1596.

From, Jan Rogozinski, A Brief History of the Caribbean, 112

From, http://www.britarch.ac.uk/ba/ba94/feat1.shtml

What accounts for the different treatment of Black Africans? Why would they be directly enslaved regardless of status and religion? • Amerindians die off too quickly and had the means to escape and survive in the interior. • Humanitarian concerns regarding the natives.• Spanish monarchs were concerned with limiting the power of colonists- slavery gave them

too much power. • The Crown, the Church, and The Colonists were all competing over control over the

Indians and their labor.

NOT THE CASE IN AFRICA• Slave trade already existed in Africa- although slavery was of a different nature.• Until the late 1800s Europeans had no means to take over African kingdoms

– Geography, disease and African Kingdom’s military defenses• which means the Europeans could not pass laws or create systems to force the Africans to

work for them as it was done in the Americas with the Indians. • For that reason, taking Africans from Africa was the only way to control them, even if to

put them under control of the colonists.• Humans became cargo and commodity to be exported where needed- especially to the

American colonies

Spanish Colonial SocietyCaste System

The Oligarchical Elite i. Peninsulares, born in Europe, held most of the political posts and power

ii. Criollos (Creoles), Europeans born in the Americas, held economic power, little political power, sought to marry their offspring to newly arrived Peninsulares to obtain political power and favor.

The Castas • Servile Labor (Middle and lower Sectors of Society)

“Pardos” People of Mixed Ancestry • Mestizos; Indian and European, served as an in between.

Their position in society varied depending on the number of Peninsulares and Criollos

• Mulattoes; Black and European. Beyond the Caribbean Basin, were considered lower than the Mestizo.

• Sambos; Indian and Black, shared the bottom of the caste

system with Black Africans, if slightly above them.

• Indians; After the 1600s were granted scores of special rights and were protected by Spanish laws. Still, Criollos found ways to circumvent those laws and exploit them.

• Black Africans; Mostly slaves and as such were at the bottom of the ladder. Those who earned their freedom and/or were born to freed slaves were usually referred to as libertos or freed men. They were still close to the bottom of the racial hierarchy.

1500s: Slave Plantations and Military Outposts

Slavery and slave societies in the Caribbean are linked to sugarcane. Sugarcane, although important in the French and British Caribbean colonies, did not

become an important crop in the Spanish Caribbean until the 1800s, even though the crop had been introduced in Hispaniola as early as 1493, and in Puerto Rico in the 1520s.

1523, first trapiche (sugar cane processing plant) built in Puerto Rico.

A result of the lack of manpower brought by the decline of the Indian population was the introduction of Black African slaves. By 1570 every island of the Caribbean was populated mostly by black Africans, free blacks and “coloreds”.

Spaniards 426Tainos 1537African 2264Total 4227

Puerto Rico,1530 Census

Slaves working at an ingenio

Plantation Subsistence Agriculture

Farming

Ownership and Organization

Company or owner, absentee owners (mostly in the Caribbean)

Family-based Family-based, community-based

Products Mono-cultivationSugar, cotton, tobacco

Multiple crops including wild crops

different crops

Goal Export to national and international markets

Intended for grower’s consumption

subsistence and occasional trade and local markets

Size Large Very small plots Medium family or community plots

Manpower Mostly slaves, indenture servants, (wage workers-later on)

Individual, Family, Family, community some indenture servants

Different Types of Agricultural Enterprises

Main Characteristics of the Plantation System• Commercial production- producing to sell in international markets • Large scale operations. • Capital intensive— machinery, slaves, ground transportation and

shipping • Labor intensive— slaves, indenture servants, some wage workers but

they all relied on slave labor and a sharp racial division of labor• Combination of agricultural-industrial enterprise- the factory in the field• Monoculture of Cash Crops

– sugar, tobacco, rice, indigo, cotton and coffee• Year round production • Plantation economy tied to world economy • Consists of large-scale growing of tropical crops for transport to

temperate world.• Plantation economies and societies gave way to the Emergence of

regional economic blocs

The Plantations in the New World were part Regional Economies within an Emerging Global Market

– The Caribbean, North-East Brazil and the U.S. South were not-so- different.

• In fact these areas put together have been called the “Extended Caribbean”. Sidney Mintz and Immanuel Wallerstein

• Wallerstein’s notion of the extended Caribbean comprises the “coastal and insular region that stretched from what is now southern Virginia in the USA to the most eastern part of Brazil”.

• He argues that historically, politically, and economically, the area shares a colonial past, the slave trade, and the cultivation and production of tobacco, sugar, and cotton

Origins of New World Plantations – Spanish colonists first established sugarcane

plantations in Hispaniola but quickly abandoned them – The Portuguese tried their hand in Brazil

• They had been cultivating it in the Azores, Madeira, and Cabo Verde

– Sugarcane originally from India and Asia. • Introduced to the Europeans during the Crusades.• The Portuguese quickly learned how to cultivate it• The Portuguese- were already involved in the slave trade • The crop became well established by the mid 1500s

Nature of New World Plantations

The early plantation system in the New World was based on:

– the European colonization of the Americas– what they perceived as unlimited land, – slave labor, and – export to Europe

Whites Grand Blancs Owners of plantations and the colonial administration

40,000

Petit Blancs Lawyers, accountants shopkeepers

Despised growing power of mulattos

Gens de Coleur

Mulattoes Mix of African and European

Wealthiest free people of color in the Caribbean

25,000 Banned from many occupations, marrying white people, carrying firearms in public and attending events attended by whites-

Free-coloredsMostly African-born

Emancipated-Africans Could buy property and by late 1700s they owned 1/3 of all plantation property and ¼ quarter of the slaves of Saint-Domingue

Slaves Black Africans Performed all types of tasks

500,000 90% of pop.

Socio-Economic Structure in pre-Independence Saint Domingue

Sugar Production The «factory in the field » Slaves treated as machinery- replaceable and expendable.

It took- 18 Months from planting to harvest

Field Work: Planting and Harvesting- most taxingFrom dawn till dusk, 6 days a week_ usually 10-12 hours16-18 hours a day during harvest.

Sugar Milling: Produced Moscovado «less-finished » type of sugar as hard as field worktemperatures of over 120 degrees inside the mill

Refining: mostly done in English North America and Europe

The division into plots assured that hard work never ended in a sugarcane plantation.

Slaves, in general, were expected to grow their own food.

Slaves in sugarcane plantations were seriously malnourished and overworked which led to extremely high mortality rates.

– In Haiti, conditions were so brutal that some plantations had to replace 10% of their slaves every year

– ¾ of children died before the age of 5

For this reasons, most slaves in the Sugarcane plantations of the Caribbean and Brazil- were African born as oppossed to American-born

• By 1810- the 375,000 slaves imported to the U.S. had grown to

2,000,000 and (4 million by 1860)

• In contrast, by 1810, the Caribbean, which had received over 3,500,000 million slaves had a slave population 2,000,000

Why were the slaves able to reproduce in English North America but not in the Caribbean and Brazil ?

• Cruel masters, point is profit- it was easier and cheaper to replace a slave worked to death than to care for him

• Malnourishment (almost no protein available for slaves)• Poor housing- mostly exposed to the elements • Intense work schedule, plot division and the fact that

there is no winter season in the Caribbean- work intensevile year round

• Disease • Masters prefered to bring males slaves- as the work on

the sugar cane fields were overly taxing

Unlike sugarcane- tobacco cultivation was more specialized- which accounts for the bringing of female

slaves.

• The slaves brought much know-how, making the masters dependent on them- so there was a bigger incentive for the tobacco planter to keep his skilled laborers alive than in a sugar cane plantation.

• Also, since there was an actual winter season, the slaves in a tobacco plantations had more free time- somewhat better housing- and the time to procreate.

Virginia Tobacco Plantations• Tobacco was a native crop to the Americas. • The production of tobacco in colonial times also required much manpower. • The plants had to be grown from seeds in a cold frame, set out, weeded, tasseled,

harvested, and cured. All of this work was done by man and beasts of burden.

• Low birth rates among colonists and low prices for tobacco were some of the reasons for bringing slaves to work in the tobacco fields. – With slave labor, profits from tobacco cultivation exceeded any other plant that could be grown in

what is now the Southern US.

• Tobacco, although intensive required more skill than sugar-cane cultivation so the slaves brought from Africa to Virginia and who knew of tobacco-(as the crop had been tried in Africa) enjoy certain leeway because of their much needed skills.

• On a typical plantation of more than 20 slaves, the capital value of the slaves was greater than the capital value of the land and implements.

• Tobacco became so important in Virginia’s economy, that it even acted as currency.

• According to the U.S. 1860 Census figures, 25% of families in Virginia owned slaves.

Tobaco plantation in colonial Virginia; web.mac.com/charness1/West_to_Ohio/Slavery_issue.html

Slaves in Colonial Brazil

Tobacco

Legacy of Plantation Societies• Led to the creation of rigidly-structured societies with

Europeans and their American offspring acting as a neo-aristocracy and with Black African slaves at the bottom.

• Continues to have an effect on these place’s socio-economic structures even to this day.

– 8-10 million black Africans brought to the Americas, many

more die during capture, holding and the middle passage. – Underdevelopment of Africa- as whole generations of men

were stolen– Underdevelopment of the areas that hosted plantation

societies– Persistent racial inequality and discrimination