Thread by @tomaspueyo

Why are some Caribbean countries richer than others?Why do some islands speak one language, and others another?
Why are there still colonies there?
Why are there difference races in each?

Why is the Caribbean the way it is?
Thread 🧵

When the Spaniards arrived at the end of the 1400s, they were looking for riches. There were few in the Caribbean islands. So they didn't pay too much attention.

Eventually, they found silver on the Continent: in Mexico (Zacatecas) and Bolivia (Potosí).

https://twitter.com/tomaspueyo/status/1407740342162452480?s=20

They needed a way to transport all of that silver back to Spain. They transported the Mexican riches to Veracruz, and the Bolivian ones to Cartagena de Indias.

From there, they had to be transported back to Spain.

For that, you need to pay attention to winds.
When going from Spain to the Caribbean, you want to catch the southern Trade Winds, which take you from Spain to the Canary Islands, and from there to the Caribbean

Going back, you want to take the northern Westerlies.

So your ships will arrive to the south of the Caribbean and leave through the north.

Because you need to provide these ships food, water, and protection, you're going to need different ports for arriving and departing ships

For you to have food and water, you need islands that are big enough to have rivers and a bit of fertile lands to grow food.

This is why Spain built cities in Puerto Rico (San Juan), Hispaniola (Santo Domingo), and Cuba (Santiago and Havana).

If you're Spain, you only care about the continental silver, so the only function of the Caribbean is to support your ships.

The best way to support them is with these big islands that can produce food and water.

That's why Spain didn't care about the small islands

That's why all the way to the early 1700s, Spain still only owned the continent plus Cuba, Puerto Rico, and half of Hispaniola. They didn't need the islands for anything more than supporting the trade with Europe, for which they only needed the big islands.

Who says wealth says coveting.

Knowledge of the American wealth soon arrived to the ears of European kings and pirates.

The pirates were the 1st to strike. Then, it was privateers, supported by European governments.

The more they attacked, the more Spain strengthened its defenses. This is San Felipe del Morro in Puerto Rico.

The more they fortified their defenses, the more pirates started to attack the ships instead.

Then Spain moved to defend them, by creating Treasure Fleets: they gathered the ships from Veracruz and Cartagena de Indias in Havana, where they met a military escort

As a pirate, you want to be as close as possible to these ports. And that's why their main harbors were in Nassau (Bahamas), Port-au-Prince (Hispaniola), Tortuga (close to Hispaniola), and Port Royal (Jamaica). Still few cared about the small islands on the East. No wealth.

The more pirates attacked, the more Spain built its defense, and they all became more professional over time.

First, pirates became privateers, supported by European licenses.

Over time, they were taken over by European navies.

That process took centuries.

In the 1500s, France was the one sending privateers (corsaires) because it was at war with Spain.

By the end of that century, they had signed a peace treaty, but now Spain was in war with the British, and soon after the Dutch, who had recently gained independence.

By the 1600s, sugar starts becoming an interesting crop. People start tasting it and enjoying it in Europe. They want more.

Turns out the Caribbean has great weather for it, as well as for tobacco, coffee or cocoa.

Suddenly the small eastern islands are interesting

So now France, Britain and the Netherlands are fighting it off for all these islands. They wish they could have the bigger ones from Spain, but they can't. Spain doesn't care about these crops yet, they still just want the silver.

This is how you get this map in the early 1700s

This is what happens over the next 2 centuries (it's a gif)
Source:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Poli…

As time passes, Spain weakens. It has a bad geography to start with, plus all the silver from America creates horrendous inflation, which underdevelops its industries.

France, Britain and the Netherlands keep developing, and encroach more and more. Even Denmark & Sweden join!

To mine silver, Spain didn't need to import slaves: there were plenty of locals in Mexico and Bolivia to exploit.

But the rest of European powers wanted slaves for their plantations, because sugar requires lots of labor. The cheaper it is, the more profitable.

The islands had been sparsely populated by natives. The few that were there when the Spaniards arrived soon perished from disease and violence.

That wasn't the 1st time it happened. Genetic data suggests the natives were eradicated a few millennia earlier by continental indians

Without locals to exploit, European powers started bringing slaves from Africa in droves, especially starting in the 1700s as demand for sugar exploded.

https://twitter.com/tomaspueyo/status/1406846177065140224?s=20

That's why continental America (outside of Brazil) has few Blacks: there were enough locals, and mines didn't need the intensive labor of sugar plantations.

It's also why Puerto Rico doesn't have many Blacks: it was never used for extensive plantations

Brazil does have Blacks because Portugal had huge plantations. For the Caribbean islands, the more plantations were possible, the more Blacks were coerced there.

That's why Haiti and Jamaica have so many Blacks.

All of it changed in the 1800s.

Nationalism and Enlightenment ideas had slowly bled into America. At the turn of the century, slaves revolted in Haiti and gained their independence while France was busy with Napoleonic wars.

Soon after, it was the turn of Spain. In a matter of 15 years, nearly all countries in Spain's empire declared their independence.

Without silver to send to Spain, Veracruz and Cartagena de Indias started their decadence.

Spain was left with Cuba and Puerto Rico, which were much less useful now that they didn't serve as a gateway to the continent's silver

It started investing more in plantations in Cuba. That's when slavery from Africa subdues in British and French colonies but picks up in Cuba

Spain is weakening while the US is strengthening. The US needs to control Cuba to make sure the Mississippi has an exit into the Atlantic

It tries to buy Cuba many times, fails, and surprise surprise there's a war & the US takes over Cuba & Puerto Rico

https://twitter.com/tomaspueyo/status/1407740432662941698?s=20

Meanwhile, the small islands on the East (Lesser Antilles) are small, with a small population. Some declare their independence, many don't.

European countries keep it low key, hoping nobody notices they still have colonies there. To this day

So this is why:
- There aren't Blacks in most continental America (it was Spanish, and they had enough natives for the silver mines)
- The big Caribbean islands speak Spanish (gateway for Spain's ships to and from Spain)

- The Lesser Antilles speak mostly EN, FR or NL (Spain didn't care about these islands, but these countries did)
- The Lesser Antilles do have black populations (esp those that benefitted from plantations)

- Most Caribbean countries are poor (no infrastructure or skill investment for centuries. All the investment was to buy slaves, and so much wealth was generated because they didn't pay them wages). Kill slavery, you are left with no CAPEX and more expensive OPEX

It's taking us centuries to get away from these oppressive systems. We still have so much to do. Yet we're getting better. We need to get better faster. I'm hopeful.

More details in my latest newsletter. Did I get anything wrong ? LMK!
unchartedterritories.tomaspueyo.com/p/a-brief-hist…

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